Free Exile’s Bane by Nicole Margot Spencer

bushes.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Returning to Bolton. Are you coming?” I asked, anxious to be away. He had been gone long enough for the sun to finally show its bleary face through the mist.
    “Yes.”
    “How was your meeting with the general?” I asked.
    His copper-colored hair fell over his shoulder as he checked the saddle girth on the roan. He turned back to me with a confident smile.
    “The general would rather leave tactical decisions to hardened officers. My presence merely assures that these decisions are made in the manner Prince Rupert prefers.”
    “That’s quite a responsibility, isn’t it?”
    He shrugged, apparently comfortable with his prince’s instructions and what he must do to fulfill them.
    “War is in my blood,” he stated flatly.
    “Really? You mean, as a Scot?”
    He turned slowly and gave me a vicious, yet culpable look.
    “You are not proud of your abilities? They have certainly served the King well.”
    He turned away with an unhappy grin.
    “What I meant to say,” I amended, seeing his uneasiness, “is that my uncle would kill anyone who dared usurp his authority.”
    “Oh, to be sure,” he said with a quiet laugh. “But General Gordon considers it a great relief to have someone to deal out the strategy of a march or of a situation, as we are in now.”
    He seemed more in control of his feelings, speaking on a subject with which he was comfortable. General Gordon must have been one of those gentlemen without military expertise who had been appointed to his rank as a political favor. Yet he was apparently wise enough to bow to advice from his experienced officers—or in this case, Prince Rupert’s experienced officer.
    I placed a slippered foot into the stirrup.
    “Don’t do that,” he said gruffly, a warding palm raised at me. “We will leave your horse with the troops. I have another for you, more appropriate to our journey.”
    “Like that pitiful nag you have chosen over your own stallion?”
    An explosive laugh boomed out of him. “Ajax is a war horse, as is your stallion. Either horse would attract attention in Bolton.”
    “I will not part with Kalimir,” I insisted. With a casual hand, I flipped trailing strands of hair back over my shoulder.
    “Why not? I’ll see he’s returned to you.”
    “I’m sure that is your intention.” I shook my head. “But he is one of the few things my father left to me that has not been taken over by my uncle. I’ll not leave him.”
    He opened and shut his mouth, studied the mud and the hardy grasses at his feet, then looked back up at me with a gleam in his gold-flecked eyes.
    “If we run into Roundheads, can you play the part of a Puritan lady?”
    Smiling within at this man who did not know my shameless nature, I assumed an exaggerated posture of cheek-sucking primness.
    “Of course,” I intoned, palms together and raised as in prayer, adoring eyes raised to the sky. “Holy and meek, I am. My husband, Alderman Tucker, awaits my arrival. He would be most distressed were I held up. He might even have to contact his friend, Lord Fairfax, with a serious grievance were I held up too long.”
    “Is there an Alderman Tucker in Bolton?” Duncan asked, with a deep-voiced chuckle.
    “Yes, and a proper Puritan he is, too, who spouts of his connections with Fairfax.”
    “Good. I shall be the lady’s devout servant.” He picked up the oversized black hat.
    “You will have to keep your hair covered.”
    “Yes, my lady.” He donned the hat and hurriedly tucked up his bright hair.
    “I had heard that Prince Rupert engaged in this sort of disguise, to check up on his enemy. It’s true, then?”
    His white smile flashed. “Were he here, he would already be in Bolton, one way or the other.”

    We passed the cannon I had come upon beforehand, its captured crew and two oxen, which I had not seen at all, struggling now to return the way they had come. The sun remained a watery, early afternoon companion. We were still