The Rock by Monica Mccarty Read Free Book Online

would be content with such a plain hilt of horn without a jewel or bit of gilding to be seen, but ’twill serve for a simple soldier.”
    “Not for long,” Johnny replied with all the fierceness of a boy who had looked up to his older brother for fourteen years. “I know you will work your way up in the ranks quickly. It might have been faster if you’d kept enough of the coin to buy a decent horse.”
    Thom made a face. Though he’d never trained seriously with a sword, it was riding that might prove the biggest barrier to his goal. He wanted to be a knight, and as had been pointed out to him all those years ago by the Douglases, knights needed to ride. “Aye, well, you know how I feel about horses.”
    Johnny grinned—his older brother’s problems with horses (even when shoeing) was a source of great amusement to him—but then sobered. “Da is grateful, Thommy. Even if he doesn’t show it.”
    Thom nodded. “I know.”
    But his father was like him: stubborn and proud. He’d thought that Thom realizing he didn’t have a future with Lady Elizabeth would keep him here; he didn’t realize it would send him away.
    Thom was leaving. He’d taken half the money his mother had left him and used it to purchase a blade blank to make a sword and other armor he would need to join Edward Bruce’s army. Under normal circumstances, he would have offered his sword to his lord, but as he would sooner run his new blade through James Douglas’s black heart, after what he’d done to Joanna—taking her innocence when he had no intention of marrying her and leaving her alone with an unborn child to mourn—Thom hoped to find a place in the king’s brother’s army. Not surprisingly, Douglas had granted him leave to go.
    The other half of his coin he’d given to his father to expand the forge. It was enough to replace his tools and hire two new apprentices if he wished. At first Big Thom had refused the money, but Thom could be stubborn, too. Besides, he pointed out that half should rightly belong to Johnny. Had she lived, their mother would have wanted him to have something.
    “Must you go tomorrow?” Johnny said. “Can’t you stay for the Shrove Tuesday feast at the castle?” The day before the start of Lent was one of the biggest feasts of the year.
    Thom stiffened. Not just because a mention of the castle inevitably conjured up thoughts of Elizabeth, but because it also reminded him that there was only one castle in Douglas now. Shortly after Thom’s fateful rooftop meeting with Elizabeth, Jamie had returned to Douglas for the third time to rid Castle Douglas of Englishmen. He’d succeeded, in the process slaying the captain whose sword Thom had just returned and slighting his own castle to the ground. Only embers and piles of rocks remained of the once great fortress.
    Thom shook his head grimly. “I’ve stayed longer than I intended already.”
    “Jo is better?” Johnny asked.
    Thom nodded. It had been Joanna’s terrible accident after Sir James Douglas’s departure that had kept Thom here for the additional week. She’d nearly been killed after colliding with a horse, following an argument with Jamie that she refused to discuss. But it was the loss of the child that he wasn’t sure she’d ever recover from.
    “She’s out of danger,” Thom said, though he suspected it would be a long time before Joanna was “better.” But he’d done what he could for her, and a glimpse of Elizabeth when he’d gone to visit Joanna at Park Castle had told him he’d delayed long enough.
    “I understand,” Johnny said, though it was clear that like their father, he did not. Though his brother was excited for him, and wanted to hear all about his adventure, Thom knew Johnny would never follow in his footsteps. His brother had everything he wanted right here.
    A knock sounded on the door. Bending over the bed to start putting his extra clothes into his pack, Thom told Johnny to see who it was.
    Thom heard the door