Well, she thought, perhaps if I’m lucky a coach will pass me on this road, but I’m not going to stick around this creepy old place. With a deep breath, she left Ardnaroch behind, hurrying away from its furtive glances and whispered suspicions.

She couldn’t shake the unease the man had sparked in her. She had never seen anyone so finely dressed in all of her life. Could he have been from beyond the Shadow Lands? And what was it the apothecary had called him? Brother? Where had she heard that before?

She didn’t stop until Ardnaroch was barely a speck in the distance behind her. She felt vulnerable enough without the prospect of being followed.

Even so, it was a relief to get moving – if she ignored the sense of foreboding that she was never, ever going to reach Kelseth, let alone conserve enough energy to actually be able to help Alice when she got there. After so long cooped up in one attitude, squeezed between grumpy people in a rattling stagecoach, the simple act of walking along a driftway was a comfort.

She stretched her arms above her head and rolled her shoulders, encouraging the stiffness away from her muscles. Her heart slowed to a more comfortable rhythm and her speed dropped off to a sustainable fast walk. If the man had intended to follow her, she’d have spotted him by now.

No, he was just a bizarre, nosey man wanting to know what a young girl was doing wandering about alone. He was no different to anyone else.

She rearranged the bag on her shoulder; it was growing heavier as she walked. She wished the book Alf had given her had been less of a physical burden. But even with the weight of it, she couldn’t bring herself to rip out the relevant pages and abandon the rest of the book by the side of the road. Books were too precious for that.

A furtive glance behind her confirmed that Ardnaroch was but a distant, fading place to which she’d be happy never to return. But then she spotted something strange.

Something coming towards her.

Lily’s hands started to shake uncontrollably. She glanced around for somewhere to hide, but she was surrounded by flat, bleak moorland.

He was coming for her, she knew it deep in her heart. And there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go.

She was trapped.

Chapter Seven

Lily squinted through the gathering drizzle as the hazy shape came closer and closer. Instinctively, she leapt backwards, tripping over an unseen boulder. She clattered to the ground with a thud and cried out as her ankle twisted painfully beneath her.

She scrambled away from the road, dragging her throbbing ankle along the ground before crouching awkwardly in a pathetic patch of heather. All she could do was lie there half-hidden whilst her assailant grew ever closer.

The sound of hooves echoed through the air. After the sinister gold-robed man from Ardnaroch, a highwayman was about the worst possible thing she could encounter. This had to be more than bad luck; she had been followed.