Exile’s Bane by Nicole Margot Spencer Read Free Book Online Page A

amazement must have pressed him to explain, for he went on. “The earl ordered her expelled from Tor House.”
    My mouth dropped open in shock. I searched his face. Prince Rupert’s warning to the earl echoed through my mind, and it astounded me that my uncle would cross such a man.
    “Your condition tells me your fate at his hands will be far worse should you remain here.”
    I touched my temple, where a painful knot had formed. To elicit such a response from my loyal captain, it must have looked scandalous.
    “I can give you enough time to clear the valley. But then I must report to Lord Devlin, insisting that you shoved me into the wall and fled through this doorway. Do not allow yourself to be caught, Lady Elena. There are places you can go, people who will support your claim. You must find them.”
    “I will. I promise.”
    “Your short sword is in its sheath with Kalimir’s tack, should you need to defend yourself.”
    “Thank you, Captain,” I whispered fervently. I moved quickly through the door and down the passageway.
    The stable was busy with stable boys running here and there. They were taking the horses out beyond the walls, even with the weather like it was. After three months of confinement, I could understand why the horse master would want to get his horses out to crop fresh grass, even if it was wet. From the shadows behind the stable doorway, a boy left the stable’s east aisle with two horses and took them past me out the stable door.
    As soon as he passed out of sight beyond the gate, I slipped down the west aisle and into the back where Kalimir was stabled. The great bay had been wounded at Edgehill when my father died. The deep slash wound in his mighty shoulder had been slow to heal. He was a skittish stallion, though not around me, not anymore. I entered the straw-strewn stall and hugged his neck. He whickered, content. But his war sense must have detected my alarm, for he side-stepped, once, twice. I quickly got his bridle on, the blanket and saddle on his back, girth secured, and the sword that my father had given me strapped in its sheath on the saddle.
    By the time I saddled Peg’s mare and led her to Kalimir’s stall, Peg herself came running down the stable aisle, her cloak waving around her. Distraught, her face beamed in a splotchy red agony of alarm.
    “Wallace says I have to leave, that the earl has banned me from Tor House, like he did Thomas!”
    Thomas, another of my father’s charities, had been brought to Tor House the year after Peg. We had grown up together, the three of us, me, Peg, and Thomas. But upon his arrival in 1642, without explanation, Uncle Charles had banished Thomas from ever setting foot near Tor House again, on pain of death.
    “It is worse than that, Peg.”
    “From Mrs. Lowry.” She pressed a rolled cloak into my hands. Her big cape flared open and displayed a clean homespun dress, which the good housekeeper had also undoubtedly supplied to her.
    “I would rather a pair of pants,” I said.
    “Oh, Elena. Ye can be so coarse.” Peg’s face screwed up in dismay. “Put it on. And how could things possibly be any worse?”
    “The earl has denied my dowry rights.”
    She bit at her lower lip and expelled a deep breath. “Did not thy father leave a dowry-paper?”
    “The earl burned it. He made me watch.”
    “Oh, Lord. What happened to thy face?”
    “It does not matter. I will have Tor House back.” I whipped the cloak on, appreciative of its warmth as it settled about my shoulders.
    A smirk twisted Peg’s full mouth and her brows went up, as though to say, and how do you think you’ll do that .
    “For now, we must flee, you and I. But you don’t have to stay with me. It would be dangerous for you, in any event.”
    “How so? What is it ye intend?” Her piercing brown eyes raked me from head to toe and back again, as though I had lost my mind.
    “To get help, supporters.” A deep, shaky breath belied my outer calm. “We must