The Hijacked Bride

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8

MONIKA WAS ONLY able to say goodbye to Abaigael, her sons being yet asleep and her husband having left for work already.

They stood outside the front of the cottage while Hayes was loading up Little One around the back.

"Farewell, Monika. You are always welcome to call our home a place to lay your head, the same as your brother is always welcome to," Abaigael told her as she hugged Monika tightly to her chest, causing a sudden and unexpected pang of homesickness for her mother's arms to shoot through her. "And take care of Faolin. Don't let him get into any trouble again."

Again? It didn't surprise her that Hayes was a troublemaker, but just what had he been up to in his lifetime? She didn't dare ask the friendly hostess, though. Monika was meant to be Faolin's sister, not Hayes' prisoner- and Faolin's sister would know if her brother had gotten into any trouble in the past, wouldn't she?

She longed to give her real identity away. But she was afraid of what Hayes would do.

"Thank you, Abaigael. I won't forget you and your family, or your hospitality," Monika whispered, as she stood still for a moment longer in the older woman's strong embrace.

Should she tell her now? Tell her that she was in a bad place, that he was no brother of hers? Maybe if she just murmured it for only Abaigael to hear, she'd have an ally, someone to help rescue her from him. Maybe she'd have enough time to get away.

But just as she had almost made up her mind to risk it, a hand grabbed her arm from behind and pulled her away. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, she thought. Or think of him, for that matter. Could Hayes read her every thought?

"Let's go," his gruff morning voice said from behind her. "We need to be on our way."

Abaigael stood in the doorway of her house and waved until they were out of sight, Little One plodding along once again, the sky only just beginning to light up as they started out once more and the silence between the two of them stretching as they travelled.

"Are you going to kill me?" Monika asked, breaking through the quiet at a time when the sun had climbed higher into the sky, hours after having left the village of Beag. Her voice was low but loud enough for Hayes to hear.

She hadn't expected his body to quiver at her words, but it did, ever so slightly, before he straightened up again, his back tense.

"No," was his simple reply. "If I had, don't you think I would have done so by now?"

"Then what's going to happen to me?" she demanded, proud of how her voice did not wobble, although it was only by sheer willpower that she had managed it.

He didn't answer, though, and started to hum the tune that he seemed to have a habit of humming from time to time. She was sure she recognized it, but couldn't figure out why it was familiar.

He was unbearable. Insufferable.

Monika wiped her brow with her sleeve and shifted herself back in the saddle, deep in thought and woe as the long, tiresome journey continued. Slowly, her eyelids drooped, and the plodding of Little One and the lazy, soft touch of the autumn sunlight lulled her.

*

SHE WOKE UP with a start, and to her mortification, discovered that she had fallen asleep against Hayes. The bed she had slept in at Abaigael's house had been modest at best, a straw mattress on the floor, and although she was used to being a maid and sleeping in a small, musty smelling bed, even the palace's worst was finer than what she'd lain upon last night.