Free Georgette Heyer by Royal Escape Page B

heart, good mother, but I fear my face will grieve you, for I never yet heard any call it fair!' He moved towards her, and took her hand, and led her to the settle by the fire, and made her sit down upon it, and himself dropped gracefully on his knee before her, looking up at her with merriment dancing in his eyes.
      She put out a gnarled hand, as though she would have laid it on his head, and then drew it back. 'Eh, my liege, what have they done to your bonny curls?' she asked him.
      'Why, they cut them off, mother, that I might not be known.'
      'I would I might have had one to keep!' she said. 'The good-year! the fine shoulders of you, and your royal father the little dainty prince that he was! Welladay! that I should have lived to be so honoured!' She ventured to put her hand on his shoulder, smiling a little tremulously. 'I bless God that He has allowed my sons to be the instruments of your Majesty's deliverance,' she said. 'I am the proud woman, yea, and they are proud men, to have so great a trust reposed in them. If they should fail you, my liege, they be no sons of mine.'
      'Good mother, if all my subjects were as honest as your sons I had had no need to fight for my kingdom,' he replied. 'I know not how I can ever redeem the debt I stand in to you all, but here is Charles Stewart his pledge that redeem it he will.' He kissed her cheek as he spoke, and rose up from his knee.
      'My liege,' she said, with tears dimming her sight, 'you have warmed this old heart of mine. God bless you and keep you safe!'
      'Master, it is time and more that we budged,' Richard said. 'We have nine miles to go, and the night very dark.'
      'I am ready,' the King answered, and put the battered hat on his head again, and picked up Yates's broom hook. The three men whom he would not allow to accompany him knelt to kiss his hand, and bid him God-speed. Richard opened the door, and after looking cautiously up and down the lane, nodded to the King to pass out into the darkness.

Four

    'Who Goes There?'

    Madeley was situated east of the Severn, and could be most easily reached from Hobbal Grange by the highway leading through Tong and Shifnal, but as Richard Pend erel knew that some of the rebel troops were quartered in both these places he proposed to the King that they should make their way across the fields, and down the less frequented lanes with which the country was inter sected. The King agreed to it, but it was not long before he was regretting his complaisance. At all times unused to rough walking, he found the journey over meadows and through coppices difficult. He was continually missing his foothold in the dark, or stumbling over a tree-root, or a mole-hill, and at every step the tightness of the shoes he wore caused him real pain. A little in advance of him, Richard plodded on, with his tireless, graceless gait, some times remembering to turn, and help the King through a hedge, or over a deep-cut ditch, but often forgetting that the King was not a country-born fellow, nor one whose body had been hardened from childhood to such exertions.
      Charles made no complaint; he was, in fact, a little out of patience with himself for blundering so often, and for feeling so acutely the discomforts of ill-fitting shoes, and a rough shirt. Once he was compelled to call to his guide not to go so fast, for he had fallen behind and was in danger of losing Richard altogether; but when Richard stopped, and came back to lead him more carefully, he managed to crack a jest at his own expense.
      Richard's dread of encountering some late wayfarer made him choose to go over the open country, even when a track offered. To the King, it seemed as though he selected the most difficult route he could find. Some times brambles would claw at his coat, or throw out long prickly stems across the path to entangle his feet, and tear holes in his stockings; at others, he would find himself walking into a tree that loomed up suddenly before