Free Come the Morning by Heather Graham Page B

her assessment of one situation or another. She couldn’t forget the way he had looked at her when they’d parted.
    As if they’d been saying good-bye .
    They had swum together in the lochs, ridden fields, cliffs, and hills, studied Latin, French, English, Gaelic, and even Norse together, played at science and mathematics, and read endlessly, translations of the Greek tragedies, Italian romances, so much more. They could laugh together, argue together, roll in the grass together, sit in long silences. Ewan held no surprises for her; he listened when she spoke. Life with him would be all that she wanted.
    She could not accept the thought that she would not only have to bear the agony of losing her father, but endure seeing a strange Norman lackey of the king take his place. She really wasn’t a fool; she understood the way the world worked, just as she understood King David. But while she had breath to fight, she could not allow the king’s lackey to take her father’s place—or her own. She couldn’t simply lie back and allow her life to be taken without fighting the best battle she could wage.
    Mellyora looked to the window in her room at the fortress. It was very small; this was a defensive fortress, built strongly from stone.
    Yet the river ran by it; if she could just get to the river, she could reach her cousin Daro’s men.
    â€œI cannot argue this any longer!” she announced with sudden determination.
    Forgetting Jillian, Mellyora hurried from her own larger chamber into the smaller one behind it where Jillian slept. The window here was cut a bit larger—and let out onto a wooden platform of battlements.
    She could easily step outside the window. And there was scaffolding set up where they continued to work on the battlements. In the darkness, she could swing down the wooden scaffolding without being seen, and, if she enwrapped herself in one of Jillian’s plain brown woolen capes, she could simply walk out the gates.
    What then?
    At the river’s edge, she’d have no choice but to steal a boat. Not steal. She smiled suddenly. King David had been the first Scottish monarch to mint his own coinage. She’d leave the boat’s owner a handsome coin bearing the king’s own image.
    â€œMellyora?” Jillian called to her.
    Mellyora hesitated. “Go back to your tapestry, Jillian. I am sorry to have upset you. I need some time alone,” she said.
    She softly closed the doors between the two rooms.
    Quietly, she dug into Jillian’s travel trunk and found the cloak she required. She slipped it around herself, drawing the hood low. It was a deep brown color, and would blend well with the night.
    Mellyora crawled onto the window seat and squeezed her length through the narrow window. She leapt softly down to the wooden battlement beyond the window and hurried along it.
    She paused, seeing the distance between the place where she paused and the scaffolding just beyond. She inhaled, wondering if she was willing to risk her own life for her freedom.
    Freedom was a gift worth many risks. She’d heard it said, many times, by many men.
    It would be a long fall if she made a leap—and didn’t catch the crossbeam of the scaffolding.
    Ruling was wisdom, her father had taught her. Decide if it can be done. And if it can be done …
    Then do it with courage.
    She stepped back.
    Ran … and leapt.
    She caught the crossbeam, swung down upon it, caught a lower beam, and then another, and another.
    She jumped the last few feet to the ground.
    The common courtyard at Stirling was not crowded, neither was it empty. By night, fishermen returned from their journeys along the river; wives rushed home from the last of their bartering; wool, dye, and food merchants closed up their stations for the night. Mellyora blended with them. Nearing the gates, she hurried to walk close behind a peddler leaving the city walls. To someone watching, it would appear