Candle in the Window: Castles #1

by Christina Dodd

  Damn! Saura had affected him more than he realized. Raising his hand to his band of soldiers, he signaled them to dismount. His squire lowered his banner and together they slid to the ground to rest and prepare for battle the following morning.

  “How could you kill my dog?”

  “I didn’t kill him. My men killed him. I just got him to sit still long enough so they could tether him.”

  “Bula knew you,” Saura said in misery. “He knew you were a friend of William’s. When he should have attacked you, he didn’t because he knew his master let you in his house.”

  “When I ran after you, he didn’t trust me any longer. He mauled one of my men so badly I had to leave him there to enrich the soil. So you see, I didn’t kill that dog. I couldn’t kill him and subdue you at the same time.”

  “You’re mad.” Saura sat before Nicholas in the saddle, her knees on either side of his horse and her skirt tucked up beneath her. He held her with his arm, leaning her back against his chest. She hated it, she hated to touch him and she shuddered when he touched her, but she had no choice. The battle to subdue her had been swift and brutal and lonely. There had been no one in the forest to help her, no one to save her when he had wrestled her to the ground. Her frenzied use of her fingernails and her eating knife had only earned her marks on her face and a swollen wrist, and a grudging respect for her captor’s ability to wield his strength. Everyone had a contempt for his knightly skills, but she now held a healthy respect for his cunning and brutality. And a healthy fear of his obsessions.

  “I’m not mad,” he assured her. “I’m brilliant. The normal run of mankind isn’t worthy to receive my foot on their neck.”

  “This is despicable.”

  “Dishonorable.” She felt him nod in agreement. “So sly and sneaky and clever it’s hard to believe one man could have planned it.”

  “Aren’t you ashamed?” she asked desperately. “You’re soiling the very men who fostered you.”

  He laughed in genuine amusement and dropped a light kiss on her neck. “Lord Peter of Burke is nothing but a pious old windbag. Always blathering on about knights and the sanctity of your sworn word and the contracts of loyalty.”

  “He means it.”

  “Of course he does. More than that, he lives it. ’Twas so easy to fool him, ’twas pathetic.” He grunted. “William wasn’t so easy—that’s why I’ve enjoyed it so. William worships at the altar of logic, and so I planned very carefully. You see, he doesn’t believe I’m the logical blackguard.”

  “You aren’t the logical blackguard. Why are you doing this?”

  “’Tis no mystery.” His hand began a slow slide up and down her arm. “I was the fourth son of my father. Did you know that?”

  “Nay, I thought you had one brother, your eldest.”

  “Aye, that was Lance. But there were two others ahead of me, and my father used to exult at his good fortune. Three healthy boys before me. I didn’t stand a chance to inherit, and he was glad.”

  Nervously, Saura urged him to continue. “Didn’t he like you?”

  “My father….” His hand dropped to the reins again and his voice developed a nasty sneer. “My father was a man like William. Big and fierce. He lived for fighting. And my brothers acted like brawling gods, always propping themselves on a horse and going at the quintain. They didn’t understand me, understand how I could increase the property by using my brains. Only my mother understood me.”

  “Your mother? She understood you and your brothers?”

  “The other boys betrayed her, leaving her alone in the castle while they fought and got wounded and worried her into illness. I held her hand as she coughed and wheezed when they came home with bruises and broken bones. She used to get so sick she couldn’t care for them. She had to leave them to the nursemaid.”

  “She left her sick children in the hands of a nursemaid?”

  “Mama was too delicate to care for such rambunctious boys,” he said piously.

  “Hm.” Saura withheld judgment.

  “The boys always said they were sorry, but they went out and did it again. I watched her cry when my brothers left for fostering, and I swore I’d never make her cry like that. God, how I hated them.”

  She felt the muscles of his chest tighten, as if he would explode into violence, and asked timidly, “Did they beat you?”

  “Oh, nay. Nay. Just treated me with a kind of contempt that lashed at my bones.” He laughed with an unpleasant snarl. “Beat me? Nay, they tried to make a man out of me. Tried to make me enjoy getting my head smashed in. My father used to say he didn’t understand how he could have sired such a sneaky little wheyface.” The horse jolted forward as his hands struggled with the reins. “He sent me to Lord Peter to be fostered because Lord Peter was the best knight in all England.” He puffed out his chest and lowered his voice in imitation of his father. “Lord Peter had bred the best fighter in all Christendom.”

  A return of her normal spirit made her protest, “You can’t tell me Lord Peter and William were cruel to you!”

  “Nay, indeed. The only reason I became a knight was because of Lord Peter’s constant coddling. I hardly ever saw his contempt. William wasn’t so clever at hiding his.”

  She didn’t answer; she knew that was true. He fell into a brooding silence, but soon they climbed and broke into the sunshine and Saura knew they’d reached the road. Both Nicholas and the horse perked up and his hands began their slow wandering on her belly. Desperate to divert him, she asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To Cran Castle. ’Tis my finest keep. It sits high above the sea on the great white cliffs. The great hall is drafty with the wind off the ocean, but the solar is better than Burke’s.” He laid his stubbly cheek close against hers in a parody of affection. “I picked it especially for you.”

  Never the fool, she twisted aside, saying shrewdly, “And for its defensibility?”

  He chuckled, that low and breathy sound that had haunted her at Burke and now raised goose bumps on her skin. “That’s one of the reasons I love you. You’re so pragmatic.”

  When he’d had her down on the ground in the woods, his knees in her back and her wrists twisted up and behind, he’d spoken in that rasping voice chill with intent. “I could take you right now,” he’d said, “but I’ll teach you to love me first.”

  The memory made her want to pull her knees together over the horse’s neck in convulsive fear, but she was afraid to move and call his attention to her open position. Instead, she argued, “This is silly. You can’t love a blind woman. You might love my lands, but never me.”

  “Your lands are indeed attractive, but you’re wrong. I do love you. At first I only coveted you, as I covet all of William’s possessions. But as I watched you with William, in my heart bloomed a great longing to be the object of your loving attentions. When I saw how enamored of you he is, that greed turned to love.”

  “You mean you love me because William wants me.”

  “Nay,” he corrected. “I love you because William loves you. He’s devoted to you. He lives for you.”

  “He doesn’t love me, not really.” Despondent tears unexpectedly filled her eyes as she remembered his restrained courtesy before he’d left.

  “Oh, he loves you. I recognize all the signs,” Nicholas said in the singsong voice of a gossip. “He loved his other wife, too, you know, but I think he loves you more.”

  “What do you mean?” She felt stifled; she knew she shouldn’t encourage this conversation, yet she couldn’t resist hearing his analysis of her William.

  “With Anne, he was content, pleasant, happy. With you, he’s not content, he’s desperate for you all the time. He’s happy when you’re happy, always looking for ways to please you. He wants to kill the men who look at you. He dotes on you at mealtimes, as if you were some dish fixed just for him.”

  Wanting to believe, yet afraid, she laughed unsteadily. “Oh come, Nicholas.”

  With evil intent, he added, “He’ll c
ome after you.”

  The blood froze in her veins. “He’s not at Burke. He’ll not realize I’m gone.”

  “I know. I saw him go haring off toward Charles’s castle. I’ve been watching since the last full moon.”

  “Since the last full moon.” Her statement no longer contained surprise.

  “After the wedding, I had to go to Cran and prepare it for you and give my orders. Then I came back and lived in the woods, but you never came out. You were all I was waiting for,” he explained intensely.

  “Am I so important?”

  “Fair lady, you are the center of my whole plan! With your capture, I’m assured of you and assured of William!”

  Her hands curled at her waist. “He’s gone, I tell you. He’ll not know where I am.”

  “He’ll know. He’ll know soon if he doesn’t know already. I’ve made sure of that.”

  Feeling like a complete idiot, William stood below the walls of Charles’s castle and roared, “You can’t surrender, plague take you! This is a siege!”

  Charles leaned out one of the crenels in the battlements and shouted back, “You’ll win, what the hell difference does it make? I don’t even know why you’re besieging me!”

  “You jest!”

  “Jest! I stand here in ignoble nudity, shivering in the cold air, a beautiful damsel left unsatisfied in my bed, and you say I jest? You are mad,” Charles said with heavy conviction.

  “I’m not mad,” William denied.

  “You are if you stand out there when the drawbridge is open and a healthy fire burning on my hearth. But do as you like.” Charles turned away and cried over his shoulder, “I’m too cold to argue with you.”

  William shifted from one foot to the other. His forces had waited until the early morn to attack, waited in the first cold snap of the year for the sun to rise. Now the men-at-arms crouched on their haunches or leaned against trees and observed their breath as it steamed in the frigid air. They didn’t look at William, standing alone and furious, or at the castle, where the drawbridge lowered with majestic slowness.

  William stared at the beckoning gate and then at his men. A trap? “God’s teeth,” he muttered. Adjusting his belt, freeing his sword, he strode forward over the bridge and into the bailey.

  Trained to think with their master’s brain, half of his force followed on his heels, and the other half remained outside on alert. The knot of men who walked into the clear area inside the walls stared around them with bright eyes. The partially dressed soldiers inside stared back in disgust, yawning, shivering. They were in such a state of unreadiness William reeled with horror. “God’s teeth,” he muttered to Channing. “Didn’t my father train Charles better than this? He’d be destroyed in a siege.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t think he’s got anything worth fighting for,” the man-at-arms suggested.

  William whipped around and glared, and Channing shrugged. Turning back, William paced up to the door of the keep and peered in. Nothing. No hidden soldiers, no boiling tar to fling on him. He drew his sword and climbed the stairs to the great hall. Nothing. Just servants scurrying back and forth placing clothes on the trestle table and the smell of fresh-baked bread rising from baskets on the sideboards. He edged into the room, keeping his back to the wall and feeling absurd, and his men imitated him. By the grimaces on their faces, he suspected they felt even more absurd, and he straightened and said, “God’s teeth,” one more time.

  This time he said it loudly, and Charles answered as he pushed aside the screen that hid his bed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, William, but you’re a dunce to think you can get anything out of me. Blood out of a stone would be easier.” He tucked his shirt into his breeches as he spoke, and William could see a very pretty serving maid peeking at him from beneath the covers on the bed.

  “I didn’t come to take your lands,” William protested. “I’m not so dishonorable. I came to kill you.”

  Charles stopped, his hand still caught in the material, and stared at William as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Kill me! Does your father know about this?”

  “Aye.” William floundered beneath the hurt in Charles’s eyes. “You were the logical choice, you see, to be trying to kill me.”

  “Holy Mary and all the saints.” Charles walked to the bench at the head table and sat down heavily, his back to William. Placing his hands on his knees, he shook his head in amazed disbelief. “What in the name of heaven makes you think I’d try to kill you?”

  “You need the money,” William explained simply.

  “The money?”

  “Well, we can’t figure out why someone would try to kill me unless ’twas for my lands and my—”

  “Maybe,” Charles interrupted, rising to his feet and facing William. “Maybe ’tis because you’re a pompous stew head who deserves a good beating! I’ve changed my mind. Take your men and get the hell out of my hall and we’ll fight. You dullard! You lout, you addlepated—”

  William held out his hands and shouted above Charles’s roar. “You’ve convinced me.”

  “Convinced you? Curse you to hell. Get out of my castle, you yellow-bellied lickspittle!”

  “Charles, I need your help.”

  Charles stopped short, his tirade suspended by disbelief. “You’ve never needed my help in your whole life,” he accused.

  “I need it now. Someone is threatening my wife and me.”

  “I thought you took care of that when you killed Arthur.”

  William jerked. “How did you know that I killed Arthur?”

  “Everyone knows you killed Arthur. Think, you dunderhead! At your wedding, no one mentioned it to you, but does that mean no one gossiped about it? Nay. ’Tis generally acknowledged you killed Arthur when you discovered he’d been the one to blind you.”

  “Good God,” William said blankly. “I never thought.”

  “I suspected that,” Charles said, but without his previous harshness. “Well, bring your men in and we’ll break our fast and talk.”

  “Aye, I need that. I need that very much.”

  “William said you would never have killed Hawisa.” The wind blew off the ocean now, tossing the tendrils that had escaped her braid and making her shiver with the chill. As they’d ridden, they’d been joined by more and more of his men, riding up and dropping in line behind them. Saura felt surrounded, out of control and panicked. “That once you owned Hawisa you would have maintained her.”

  “I had to kill her. She threatened you.”

  He said it with such simple menace her breath caught in anguish. “If you want me because William wants me,” she said carefully, “if you love me because William loves me, will you still love me when William is dead?”

  He didn’t say a word, lax with surprise. Then he mused, “I hadn’t thought about it like that. William has been in the way for so long, I can’t imagine a time when he’s not here. Will I still love you?” They rode for so long in silence, Saura almost jumped from the horse in desperation. When he spoke, that breathy lust had settled into his voice. “You know, I believe I will. I really believe I will. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of you.” His arm tightened on her waist and placed a kiss on her neck, moist and repulsive.

  She wished she hadn’t asked, for what good answer was there? He would kill her or he would keep her, and the choice between an unshriven death and life under his hands seemed difficult and depressing. Difficult and depressing. She laughed harshly. An understatement indeed.

  His mouth wandered up to her cheek, fueling the fever of curiosity that seized her, and she couldn’t control her question. “What happened to your two middle brothers?”

  “They died while I stayed at Burke, quite beyond my control, I assure you. My father died, too.” Nicholas sounded replete with satisfaction. “Thus when I returned home, I had only my eldest brother ahead of me in line for the inheritance. Lance was so honorable, just like William, and so gullible, just like Lord Peter, and killing him was so easy.”

/>   “You killed your own brother?” She’d begun to suspect it, but even so she recoiled. “How?”

  “Nothing so crude as fighting.” He laughed as if he were pleased with himself, and added matter-of-factly, “I poisoned him.”

  “Holy Saint Wilfred.”

  “He called on Saint Wilfred. He called on all the saints before he died. Do you know his convulsions made him look like a puppet on a string?” He sounded analytical, and her gorge rose in her throat. “It took him three days to die. Three days! I was in an agony of suspense, fearing he’d recover and rob me of the position I’d worked so hard to obtain.”

  “Please….”

  Protesting, she swayed in the saddle, but he misinterpreted her pain. “Oh, don’t worry. He did die, and without any more help from me. But next time I’ll give a larger dose of the herbs. I beat the witch who gave them to me. She knows her duty now.”

  With a jolt, she realized the hopelessness of pleading for William’s life; any man who spoke of killing his own flesh and blood with such casual contentment could hardly be moved by words of mercy and kindness. No longer did she fear the rape and horror that threatened; that fear was overthrown by the conviction she must save William from this fiend. For the first time on this dreadful ride, she began to plot.

  “Whoever it is killed Hawisa,” William reminded him.

  “Then it can’t be Nicholas.” Charles wiped his chin with his napkin. “He’d never destroy anything that could make a penny for him.”

  “That’s what I said,” William agreed. “But who’s left?”

  “You?”

  “What?”

  “Somebody killed that slut. Saura was the logical choice.” Charles laughed. “Listen to me. I’ve been with you too much.”

  William pounded one fist on the table. “Saura didn’t kill her.”

  “Nay. If Saura’d tried to kill that big, hulking maid, Saura’s neck would be broken. Still, she threatened Saura and Saura threatened her in return. Thus, I can’t help but suspect you.”