Sebastian had no doubt as he rode that there would be trouble for what he was doing now. Riding away like this, against his mother's orders, avoiding the marriage she had set for him? For a noble from another family, it would have been enough to warrant disinheritance. For the son of the Dowager, it was tantamount to treason.
"It won't come to that," Sebastian said as his horse thundered onward. "And even if it does, Sophia is worth it."
He knew what he was giving up by doing this. When he found her, when he married her, they wouldn't just be able to walk back into Ashton in triumph, take up residence in the palace, and assume that everyone would be happy. If they were able to return at all, it would be under a cloud of disgrace.
"I don't care," Sebastian told his horse. Worrying about disgrace and honor had been what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He'd put Sophia aside because of what he'd assumed people would think about her. He hadn't even made them raise their voices in disapproval; he'd just acted, knowing what they would say.
It had been a weak, cowardly thing to do, and now he was going to undo it, if he could.
Sophia was worth a dozen of the nobles he'd spent his time around growing up. A hundred. It didn't matter if she had the Masked Goddess's mark tattooed on her calf to claim her, she was the only woman Sebastian could even begin to dream of marrying.
Certainly not Milady d'Angelica. She was everything that the court represented: vain, shallow, manipulative, focused on her own wealth and success rather than anyone else. It didn't matter that she was beautiful, or from the right family, that she was intelligent or the sealing of an alliance within the country. She wasn't the woman Sebastian wanted.
"I was still harsh with her when I left," Sebastian said. He wondered what anyone watching would think, with him talking to his horse like this. Yet the truth was that he didn't care now what people thought, and in a lot of ways, the horse was a better listener than most of the people around him had been at the palace.
He knew how things worked there. Angelica hadn't been trying to trick him; she'd simply been trying to put something she knew he would find unpleasant in the best way possible. Looked at through the eyes of a world where the two of them had no choice about whom they were married to, it could even be seen as a kindness.
It was just that Sebastian didn't want to think that way anymore.
"I don't want to be stuck in a place where my only duty is to keep breathing in case Rupert dies," he told his horse. "I don't want to be somewhere my value is as breeding stock, or as something to be sold on to promote the right connections."
Looked at like that, the horse probably understood his predicament as well as any noble could. Weren't the finest horses sold on for their breeding potential? Didn't those nobles who liked to race the length of country lanes or ride to the hunt keep records of every line, every foal? Wouldn't every one of them kill their own prize stallions before they allowed a single drop of the wrong blood to enter the bloodlines?
"I'll find her, and I'll find a priest to marry us," Sebastian said. "Even if Mother wants to charge us with treason over it, she'll still need to persuade the Assembly of Nobles."
They wouldn't just kill a prince on a whim. Probably, some of them would be sympathetic, given enough time. Failing that, he and Sophia could always elope into the mountain lands of the north, or slip over the Knifewater together unseen, or even just retire to the lands Sebastian was supposed to be a duke of. They would find a way to make it work.
"I just have to find her first," Sebastian said, as his horse took him out of the city, into the open countryside.
He felt confident that he would catch up to her, even with how far ahead she had to be by now. He'd found people who had seen what had happened when she ran from the palace, asking guards for their reports, then listening to stories from the people of the city. Most of them had been cautious about talking to him, but he'd managed to get enough fragments together to at least get a general sense of the direction Sophia had been moving in.
From what he'd heard, she was in a cart, which meant that she would be moving faster than a walking pace, but nowhere near as fast as Sebastian could move on horseback. He would find a way to catch up to her, even if it meant riding without rest until he did it. Perhaps that was part of his penance for pushing her out in the first place.
Sebastian pressed forward until he saw the crossroads, finally slowing his horse to a walk as he tried to work out which way to go.
There was a man asleep against the post of the crossroads, a straw hat pulled down over his eyes. A cider jug beside him suggested the reason he was snoring like a donkey. Sebastian let him sleep for now, looking up at the sign. East would lead to the coast, but Sebastian doubted that Sophia had the means to take a ship, or anywhere to go if she did. South would lead back to Ashton, so that was out.
That left the road leading north, and the one leading west. Without any additional information, Sebastian had no idea about which route to take. He could try looking for cart tracks on one of the dirt sections of the road, he guessed, but that implied that he had the skills to know what he was looking for, or to pick out Sophia's cart from the hundreds of others that might have gone past in the days since then.
That left asking for help, and hoping.
Gently, using the toe of his boot, Sebastian nudged the foot of the sleeping man. He stepped back as the man spluttered and came awake, because he didn't know how someone that drunk might react to the sight of him there.
"Whaddizit?" the man managed. He also managed to pull himself up to his feet, which seemed quite impressive under the circumstances. "Who are you? What do you want?"
Even now, he seemed to have to hold onto the post to steady himself. Sebastian was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea.
"Are you here regularly?" he asked. He both needed the answer to be yes and hoped that it would be no, because what would that say about the man's life.
"Why do you want to know?" the drunk shot back.
Sebastian was starting to realize that he wasn't going to find what he wanted here. Even if this man spent most of his time by the crossroads, Sebastian doubted that he would be sober often enough to notice much.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I was looking for someone who might have come by here, but I doubt you can help me. I'm sorry to have bothered you."
He turned back toward his horse.
"Wait," the man said. "You…you're Sebastian, aren't you?"
Sebastian stopped at the sound of his name, turning back toward the man with a frown.
"How do you know my name?" he asked.
The man staggered a little. "What name?"
"My name," Sebastian said. "You just called me Sebastian."
"Wait, you're Sebastian?"
Sebastian did his best to be patient. This man was obviously looking for him, and Sebastian could only think of a few reasons why that might be the case.
"Yes, I am," he said. "What I want to know is why you're looking for me."
"I was…" The man paused for a moment, his brow crinkling. "I was supposed to give you a message."
"A message?" Sebastian said. It seemed too good to be true, but even so, he dared to hope. "From whom?"
"There was this woman," the drunk said, and that was enough to fan the embers of hope into a fully fledged fire.
"What woman?" Sebastian said.
The other man wasn't looking at him now though. If anything, it looked as though he was half drifting back to sleep. Sebastian caught hold of him, half holding him up, half shaking him awake.
"What woman?" he repeated.
"There was something…a red-haired woman, on a cart."
"That's her!" Sebastian said, his excitement getting the better of him in that moment. "Was this a few days ago?"
The drunk took his time considering it. "I don't know. Could be. What day is it?"
Sebastian ignored that. It was enough that he'd found the clue Sophia had left for him. "The woman…that's Sophia. Where did she go? What was her message?"
He gave the drunk another shake as he started to drift off again, and Sebastian had to admit that it was at least partly from frustration. He needed to know what message Sophia had left with this man.
Why him? Had there been no one else Sophia could leave her message with? Looking at the man he was all but holding up, Sebastian knew the answer to that: she'd been sure that Sebastian would run into him, because she'd guessed that he wouldn't be going anywhere. He'd been the best way to get a message to Sebastian if he followed.
Which meant that she wanted him to follow. She wanted him to be able to find her. Just the thought of it was enough to lift Sebastian's heart, because it meant that Sophia might be prepared to forgive all that he'd done to her. She wouldn't provide him with a way to follow her if she didn't see a way for them to be together again, would she?
"What was the message?" Sebastian repeated.
"She gave me money," the man said. "Said to say that…damn, I know I remembered it…"
"Think," Sebastian said. "It's important."
"She said to tell you that she'd gone off to Barriston!" the drunk said with a note of triumph. "Said to say that I'd seen it with my own eyes."
"Barriston?" Sebastian asked, eyeing the sign at the crossroads. "You're certain?"
The town didn't seem like a place that Sophia had any reason to go to, but maybe that was the point, given that she had been running. It was a provincial kind of town, without the size or the population of Ashton, but it had some wealth thanks to its glove industry. Perhaps it was as good a place as any for Sophia to go.
The other man nodded, and that was enough for Sebastian. If Sophia had left him a message, then it didn't matter who she had chosen to deliver it for her. What mattered was that he'd gotten her message, and he knew which way to go to follow her. As thanks, Sebastian tossed the man by the crossroads a coin from his belt pouch, then rushed to mount his horse.
He steered the creature west, heeling it forward as he set off in the direction of Barriston. It would take time to get there, but he would push as hard as he dared on the way. He would catch up to her there, or maybe he would even overtake her on the road. Either way, he would find her, and they would be together.
"I'm coming, Sophia," he promised, while around him, the landscape of the Ridings sped by. Now that he knew she wanted to be found, he would do anything he had to do to catch up to her.
