Chapter 108

I did not pick it up at once.

A stable lass who ran to a lady’s dropped glove would be remembered. So I walked the dun up to the trough and back, and on the third turn I let the rope slip, and he put his head down to snatch at a frozen tuft by the gate, and I bent to gather the rope and came up with the glove inside my sleeve.

Nobody looked. Nobody ever looks at the one holding the horse.

I did not open it until we were in the loft with the ladder pulled up behind us.

It was grey kid, very fine, made for a smaller hand than the one I remembered drawing a bow. I turned the cuff back. On the soft inside of the leather, scratched rather than written, gone ragged where the point had skipped, there were two words in a quick slanting hand I had last seen on the outside of a folded note.

Boats. Late.

I remembered then that a lock of her hair had come down as she reached the gate, and I had not understood why. She had taken a pin from it and writte