Adolphus Paget’s body was brought through the aisle and placed on a table at the far end. The oblates draped him with a sheet.
That could be me, Padraig realized. Or Lucan Montague.
Or Beryl.
Kettering came to his side before Lucan’s, his earlier stilted aloofness with him now replaced by a distracted air and what appeared to be new lines of concern about the priest’s eyes and mouth. He placed a basket of pungent herbs on the floor.
“Where is Beryl?” he asked as Kettering bent to inspect the wound on Padraig’s ribs.
“She went to lie down,” he muttered. “She’s been through an ordeal.”
“I ken. I was there,” Padraig reminded him. “Ow!” he exclaimed as the priest pressed into the cut.
Kettering straightened and wiped his hands on the towel hanging on his cincture. “You’ll be fine while I attend to Sir Lucan. I will plaster your wounds when I’ve finished with him.”
Padraig reached out and grabbed the priest’s arm, staying him when he would have turned away. “I want my father’s pin back.”
Kettering shook him off without a response and then picked up the basket and went at once to the end of Lucan’s cot.
“Soak the foot through three changes of water,” Kettering announced with a sigh, “and then we shall see it bandaged. You must not walk on it, Sir Lucan. I’ll need to check it hourly, that it does not fester. At the first sign—”
“No. No, no, no,” Lucan interrupted, coming onto his elbows. “You’ll not amputate my foot.”
Kettering fixed him with a look. “I’ll not watch you die.”
“Padraig,” Lucan called crisply. “Assist me.”
Padraig turned his head with a quirked brow. “I think you should listen to him, Lucan.”
“I require you to get your Scots arse over here and assist me in liberating my person from this crypt before God’s butcher turns my foot into mince.”
Padraig couldn’t help his bark of laughter. It was the first time he had heard Lucan Montague lose his composure, and his resultant language was too humorous to ignore.
“Let him soak it and bandage it, Lucan,” Padraig reasoned. “He’s nae cleaver in his hand now, doos he?”
“Thank you, Master Boyd,” the priest said stiffly, but he didn’t quite meet his eye.
“I’ll help you keep Sir Lucan under control,” Padraig said easily. “If, while you tend him, you tell me why you think my da’s pin belongs to you.”
Now Kettering did turn his eyes to Padraig’s.
But it was Lucan who came to the priest’s rescue, turning his head to regard Padraig. “Did Tommy tell you how he came to be in possession of the pin?”
Padraig shook his head. “Nay. Only that it and the man who’d given it to him had once saved his life.”
Kettering’s temper was just barely in check; Padraig could see it by the color returning to his cheeks. The priest went to the hearth to dip ladlesful of steaming water into a metal dish. When he returned to the bedside he seemed to be under a bit more restraint.
“Thomas Annesley wasn’t given it. He stole it.”
Padraig opened his mouth to argue that his father was no thief, but Lucan again inserted himself in the argument.
“I don’t think he stole it,” Lucan said quietly as Kettering helped him into a seated position on the side of the bed. “Thomas Annesley told me the tale of the night he ran from Darlyrede House. The night he met your father, Kettering.”
Padraig felt his head draw back. “Your father was also at Darlyrede?”
“No,” the priest said in a clipped voice. He set the pan on the floor and added cooler water from a ewer near the bed. “He was only passing on the road with his friend, Blake, that night.”
“Yes, Blake,” Lucan agreed. He hissed for a moment as Kettering guided his foot into the water. “Thomas claimed he was direly wounded in his escape from Darlyrede, and that your father stopped on the road to help him. Thomas’s injuries were so severe that your father gave him his hat pin upon which to bite so that he could seat Thomas on his own horse.”
Kettering looked into Lucan’s face for a solemn moment. “Yes,” he agreed quietly. “That is something he would have done, even not knowing who Thomas Annesley was.”
“But when Thomas heard that the two men unwittingly planned to return him to the very place from which he was so desperate to escape, he became more frightened, and he used the pin to spur the horse onward, thwarting their good intentions to help him.”
“Ah-ah,” Kettering said, his thoughtful expression fleeing before the frown that cascaded over his feature. “Even was the story you were told true up until that point, Sir Lucan, you—or Thomas Annesley—have left out vital information.” Kettering looked directly at Padraig now.
“My father and his friend were found dead on the road only a half mile from Darlyrede House the next morning. Thomas Annesley had robbed them both of their horses and their possessions—the pin, Blake’s prayer book, what little coin they carried—and then he killed them before escaping.”
Padraig felt his stomach in his throat. Yet another crime of which Padraig’s father was accused that Lucan had concealed the details of. He was shaking on the inside now. It made sense why Kettering had asked about the prayer book in the corridor when Cletus died, and Padraig couldn’t help but remember all the times Tommy had prayed over their meals, prayed over their flock, or prayed over Padraig’s own mother as she lay dying.
As if Kettering had read his thoughts, he asked quietly, “Do you have the book, Master Boyd?”
“I already told you—nay,” Padraig said in a choked voice. “Da never had one that I saw in all the years of my life. I swear to you.”
“It’s simply not possible that Thomas Annesley killed those men on the Darlyrede Road,” Lucan interjected. “By the time he’d gained Scotland, he was nearly dead himself. He’d been shot and nearly bled to death.” Lucan paused a moment, letting the idea of that settle about the room like the first smoke of a new fire, waiting for the scent and the sting of it to be realized, accepted.
Padraig understood right away. “How could an unarmed man so gravely injured overpower, rob, and then kill two grown men outfitted for travel?”
Lucan nodded. “Precisely.”
“Then who did?” Kettering demanded.
Lucan paused for a long, long moment, and then simply shook his head. “I cannot say for certain. I’m sorry.”
Kettering walked toward Padraig’s cot and sat down at the foot of it with a sigh. The priest stared at his hands, bloodied from his work on Lucan’s foot. He lifted the towel lying across his lap and wiped at his stained fingers absently.
“It was a hat pin,” Kettering said. “At least, that’s what it became. It had originally been a shard of a battle shield from Agincourt, where my father had been a soldier when he was little more than a boy himself.” The priest paused, shook his head. “The English never should have won. The fighting was so fierce, they were so outnumbered. My father had been wounded and thrown to the field—he said he could see nothing for the hooves and mud and bodies. He knew he was going to die. He crawled beneath the long battle shield of a fallen French soldier, and he prayed without ceasing through the night, begging God to spare him.”
Kettering looked up toward the end of the room where the wall met the ceiling, but Padraig didn’t think he was seeing anything in the chamber. “When the fighting was over and he finally crawled from beneath that shield, it was in pieces. Splintered, my father said, by the sheer number of arrows that had pierced it, the horses that had trampled him. He took a splinter of the shield and vowed there, on that field, that he would devote the rest of his life to serving God, in thanks for sparing him.
“Once he had returned home, he began his studies for the priesthood while he healed, and he carved the splinter into the
pin. He was never without it. When I was a boy he often recounted his night on the battlefield—likened it to the garden of Gethsemane, he said, only God had seen fit to pass the cup from him. His faith was so great—it’s why I became a priest myself. I never dreamed after surviving such horrors that he would be shot down in the middle of a road in his own land.”
“Shot?” Padraig repeated.
Kettering nodded. “He and Blake each received a bolt in the chest, to that I can personally attest. When news reached me of his and his companion’s death…I was devastated. I came to Darlyrede and I buried my own father. That is how I know so intimately how he died. I buried Cordelia Hargrave as well—Thomas Annesley’s betrothed. Lord Hargrave saw to it afterward that my mother and siblings were cared for, and he offered me charge of the chapel. And here I have remained.”
The chamber was silent, filled with Kettering’s grief, Padraig’s confusion, and the enigmatic thoughts of Lucan Montague. Padraig could not think of anything to say—Kettering had been his enemy before, Lucan his friend. Had their roles reversed?
The priest sighed and stood up. “I’ll change the water now.” He went around the far side of the other cot and wiped Lucan’s foot with the towel at his waist before picking up the basin. He carried it out of the door leading to the bailey.
“I know you’re angry, Padraig,” Lucan said quickly in a low voice. “But if I had explained all the connections between the accusations against your father, you wouldn’t have trusted me to help you.”
“You’re right, I wouldna’ve.”
“And I can’t blame you. I made a pledge to bring Thomas Annesley to justice, aye. For the crimes he committed. And especially for the murder of my parents.”
Lucan glanced toward the doorway through where Kettering was returning and finished in a rushed whisper. “But perhaps now you understand why I no longer think he is guilty of any of it. In fact I know he’s not.”
“The difference between us, Lucan,” Padraig murmured, “is that I’ve always known it.”
* * * *
Iris shuffled the pages back into her portfolio just as she heard the scratching on her window. She admitted Satin, somehow mustering the energy for a smile.
“I don’t have anything for you yet,” she warned when he went straight for the hidden niche in the wall. She gently scooped the cat out of the way and then placed her portfolio inside before reattaching the panel, and then set about at last changing the gown stained with Padraig Boyd’s blood.
She held the material in her hands and stared at the dark splotches, brown against the crimson fabric. Stroking her thumbs against the stiff stains at once returned her to the sober mood that Satin’s arrival had briefly dispelled. All the secrets, all the lies, all the years of darkness within these walls—what would be the outcome? The final verdict? Had Padraig Boyd come all this way, risked his life and his freedom for naught?
And what would their future be, in the aftermath?
Iris placed the gown on the back of the chair, then bent down to scratch Satin’s chin and scoop him up. “Back out you go,” she said, rising and walking to the window. “I’m going to go check on Lucan. I’ll bring you un petit gouter later.”
“Meow.”
“Well, you can’t go with me, I’m sorry.” She unlatched the window and placed the cat on the deep stone ledge, encouraging him through the opening when he balked.
She banked the fire that was just finally starting to warm the chamber in earnest and slipped into the corridor.
Padraig Boyd was waiting for her in the shadows, leaning his tall, wide frame against the stone wall. He straightened as she pulled the door closed behind her.
Iris glanced up and down the corridor. “Padraig, what are you doing here?”
He walked toward her at once and took Iris into his arms, lowering his mouth to hers and kissing her. She stood dumbly in his arms for a moment, but with her next inhalation, smelling his scent, feeling the roughness of his upper lip against her own skin, his strong arms about her, she relented. Her arms skimmed up his shoulders, mindful of the bulky bandage beneath his shirt, until her fingers were sliding through his hair, holding his head to hers.
His kiss, his embrace, was like shelter to her after so long—decades, it seemed—being on her own, with no one to care for her but herself. Here, now, was this strong man, this good man, who wanted her.
He wanted her, yes, but perhaps that was only because he didn’t truly know who she was.
The thought caused Iris to pull away. “Padraig,” she whispered. “I’m sorry about last night. But we can’t carry on like this.”
“Tell me you’re nae in love with Lucan.”
“I’m not at all in love with Lucan.”
He lowered his head again, as if to continue the kiss, but Iris turned her head and pulled out of his embrace, feeling as though she was dragging the weight of a boulder with her.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
“I mean it. We can’t do this,” Iris said. “There’s too much at stake for both of us.”
“I say we must do this, for the verra same reason.” Padraig stepped toward her again, but this time he only took her hand. “Beryl, either of us could have died today. It’s clear there are people who will go to whatever lengths they must to see me gone from Darlyrede, dead or alive.”
“I know,” Iris said, her conscience twisting every time he called her by that name—the name of the maid who was dead. The name of the girl who no longer existed, who had never existed in the role Iris was playing. “It’s dangerous for us both. It’s why we must not allow ourselves to be distracted.”
“Are you telling me I don’t already distract you? That we doona distract each other?”
Iris looked away.
“Is it your past?” Padraig pressed.
She turned her face to look at him again. “Yes.”
True.
“I doona care,” Padraig said with a gentle smile. “I already know, and I doona care.”
Iris swallowed. “You know what?”
“I know about the abbey, and why you were there,” he said.
Her heart pounded in her chest. “I don’t think you do.”
“Nay, I do,” he insisted. “And I doona care about your station. Whether I win Darlyrede House or nae, nae matter the pretty manners you’ve taught me, I’m still the same man I was when I first arrived here. And nae matter what happens, I want you to know that I intend to make you mine. I wish to take care of you.”
Iris felt her eyes welling with tears. “This isn’t Caedmaray, Padraig. It doesn’t work that way here. And you don’t know me as you think you do.”
“I know you in the only way that matters,” he insisted yet again. “I know your heart.”
She pulled her hands away. “I have to speak to Lucan.”
Padraig frowned. “Why? Asking his permission, are you?”
Iris shook her head and then looked both ways down the corridor. “No. The masked man in the wood, he told me he killed Euphemia Hargrave. I need to tell Lucan alone.”
“I doona understand,” Padraig said. “You doona wish me present when you’re discussing things that concern Darlyrede?”
“I have to ask him about your father,” Iris said. “And I don’t want to further upset you. I need you to have faith that—”
Padraig’s brows raised. “Am I some wee bairn now, that needs your sheltering?”
“No,” she insisted. “But I know how you loved him and—”
“Love him,” Padraig corrected. “I still love him. He’s nae dead.”
“You are so quick to defend him,” Iris reasoned. “I just need—”
“What does any of this have to do with you any matter?” he demanded. “You serve Caris Hargrave, and you were to train me up to be a proper Englishman. What does anything my
father did or didna do have to do with you?” He looked at her closely for a long moment. “Searrach warned me that you were keeping a secret. I’m wondering now if she wasna right. If I’m playing right into your hands. Have you been lying to me?”
Oh, God help me, Iris prayed silently.
Tell the truth as often as you can, she reminded herself.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes?” he repeated incredulously. “Yes, you’ve been lying to me?”
She nodded briefly.
Padraig’s handsome face was a mask of confusion. “About what?”
Iris took a deep breath. “Come with me to see Lucan.”
Padraig’s frown deepened.
Iris couldn’t stand the pain that his wary confusion was causing her. Whether Lucan liked it or not, Padraig was going to learn the truth about her that night. He might hate her afterward, she knew.
And so Iris did the only thing she could think of in that moment. She reached out for him and kissed him again, pressing her lips against his with all the hope she felt in her heart while the tears pressed painfully against her eyelids. Hope that Padraig would listen and understand. Hope that he would forgive her. Perhaps even still consider loving her when it was over.
She pulled away and leaned her forehead against his. “No matter what happens after tonight,” she whispered, “I’ve never lied about how I feel about you.”
This time it was Padraig who stepped away from her. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
Chapter 15
Iris followed Padraig through the corridors of Darlyrede House to the courtyard, and then once more toward the chapel. The atmosphere was tense—news of the assault in the clearing had spread quickly, and everyone they passed fixed them with curious stares, whispering to their companions. Indeed, the very stones of the keep seemed to be murmuring.
It was only through sheer determination that Iris managed to place one foot in front of the other, nearly skipping to keep up with Padraig’s long strides. Her entire body felt jumpy, as if she’d been struck by lightning, in anticipation of what was to occur.
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