Lion Heart (Hearts of the Highlands Book 4)

by Paula Quinn

  He pushed her up, almost off him, then pulled her back down. He stayed hard enough to take her to the edge of passion and satisfaction and then leaped over the side of the precipice with her in his embrace.

  They both slept until the middle of the night when Elias woke up hungry and padded down to the kitchen. He was quiet, but after only a few moments of sleeping in an empty bed, Lily woke up and followed him down.

  They baked bread together and Elias took her from behind while they kneaded the dough. He moved slowly, naked against her backside. She cried out his name and sapped the last of his seed when she straightened and lifted her arms around his neck.

  Later, they ate the bread, slathered in butter and washed it down with ale.

  “I thought the last night we were together was the best night of my life,” Lily told him, sitting next to him at the table, but I was wrong. Tonight was even better than today.”

  He smiled, looking so handsome, disheveled and weary. “I like hearin’ that, lass.”

  He popped another piece of buttered bread into his mouth and groaned with delight. “’Tis so warm. Like ye.”

  She blushed and let him chase her back to the bed.

  Morning came too quickly. Lily wanted to stay in bed and sleep for another twelve hours. But the children were coming home and she missed them!

  They washed and dressed then Elias left the house to fetch the children while she stayed behind and prepared them something to eat. She left the house to go to the field for fresh milk.

  Strolling along in the morning sun, she thought about how happy she was. She saw Hild leaving the field and the two women waved and greeted each other. “Is everything well with you and Norman and the girls?”

  “Aye, and you and Elias and the children?”

  Lily explained that Elias had gone to bring the children home but, aye, she and Elias were well. She had a hard time not blushing and finally excused herself and hurried off.

  She continued walking, feeling like a woman, sore from her husband and ridiculously happy about it. She brought her hair to her nose and inhaled. She could smell him on her. She liked it. She wanted to bring him back to bed, or behind the shed. She didn’t care where, as long as she had him. And she did have him. She was his wife, she was adored, and she was certain she would be carrying his bairn in her belly soon enough.

  She was finished living in her past with Bertram waiting to break her. Hatred hadn’t done it. Love had. She needed to be broken in order to be put back together again, the right way.

  When she saw her children running toward her a few moments later, laughing and calling to her, she waved and felt a ray of hope that the pestilence was over.

  At last, it seemed as if the tragedies were finally over.

  She welcomed her children in her arms and smiled at her husband coming toward her.

  None of them were aware of the men watching from the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Lily stood behind her table in the shop and sliced off some sprigs of potted lavender. It was three hours after they ate and no one had turned up sick. She closed her eyes and said another prayer of thanks that it seemed to be over.

  Still, almost everyone who lived had trouble getting to sleep at night. She knew of a good remedy that included lavender and chamomile and a few other things.

  “Lily?”

  She heard the dulcet voice of Annabelle and smiled, turning to look at the little girl walking in fanciful little circles into the shop.

  “Aye, my love?”

  “May I go play with Terrick?”

  “I thought you did not like Terrick’s company.”

  The petite girl looked at the herbs, not her. “I do not like him. But he is sometimes humorous and, that, I do like.”

  Lily did nothing to hide her smile at the six-year-old girl. “Aye. Humor is important.”

  She grinned and then stopped when Annabelle gave her a curious look. “Have you finished all your duties?”

  “Aye.”

  “All right, then. Find Charlie. He is likely with Elias and little Eddie at church. Father Benedict needed your fath—Elias to help him move some things.”

  Annabelle smiled. “’Tis all right to call him that. I have never had a father.”

  Lily’s heart swelled. “Very well, then. I will come get you before dark.”

  “Bring Father.”

  Now Lily did smile at the child’s back. Annabelle loved Elias. They all did.

  She examined several more stems and snipped more cuttings of lavender before she became aware of the silence from outside.

  She dropped her cuttings into a basket on the table and, stepping around the table, she walked to the open door and looked outside for Elias and little Eddie. How long had it been now?

  She looked around again. Everything was too quiet. The birds, the bugs. Even the wind had stopped. An uneasy feeling washed over her. She left the doorway of the shop and began walking toward Eleanor’s house—where her children were. She felt the need to be near them, to protect them. She passed the church and kept going, quickening her steps until she reached Eleanor’s door. She knocked and stepped inside.

  “Annabelle?”

  “Aye,” the little girl came hurrying to her. “Here I am.”

  Lily breathed a sigh of relief. “Sweeting, where is Charlie?”

  Annabelle shrugged. “He and little Eddie left already.”

  Lily frowned and went to the window. How come she didn’t see them on the way here? She told Eleanor she’d be back soon for Annabelle and then left the house and headed for the church.

  She was being foolish. Of course it was quiet. There weren’t many people left in the village. It didn’t mean something nefarious was going on.

  She hurried into the church and called out for Elias. She didn’t care if Father Benedict grew angry with her for it. “Elias!”

  #

  “I want to hang it in the hall before the sanctuary.” Father Benedict led Elias to the west wall where a very large painting of heavenly beings floating in the clouds was leaning against the wall.

  They were in the basement. Father Benedict wanted him to bring the painting above stairs. “Mayhap with Alan’s help—”

  “Elias!”

  He heard Lily’s voice above stairs and ran toward it.

  “Here!” he called back hurrying to her. She sounded alarmed.

  “Elias, are Charlie and little Eddie with you?”

  “No,” he called back, on his way up. “Annabelle came lookin’ fer Charlie. They went with her. Why?” He reached her, taking three stairs at a time. “What is it?”

  “I do not know.” She felt like a fool for alarming him. Charlie probably took the babe home for some food. “They left Eleanor’s but they never passed me. And have you been outside? ‘Tis too quiet and—”

  He was gone in the next breath. Out of her arms and into the beginning of a storm.

  The skies had changed to charcoal gray and rumbled with thunder, as if from within the earth, for Lily felt the vibration in her feet and in her legs as she left the church and stood behind Elias. She looked around and had the urge to scream for Charlie.

  “Should we head home?” she asked Elias as the wind picked up and blew her hair around her face.

  He listened for a moment and, twice, Lily thought she heard a babe crying. Little Eddie was the only babe in the village. She moved to run but Elias stopped her. “’Tis the wind.”

  She listened again and disappointment filled her. He was correct. The sound came from every direction.

  She started for home, but Elias stopped her again. He moved in close so she could hear him. “If they are home, they are safe. If they are somewhere else, I intend to find them. If ‘tis the bishop’s men, we will find their horses first, so keep yer eyes open.”

  Aye, horses…unless they took Charlie and little Eddie and left!

  Oh, she couldn’t think it. She couldn’t take another threat to her family. She felt for h
er knives hidden beneath her skirts and the ones secured to the belt at her waist. If she saw any strangers, she would throw her knives at them and question them after that.

  After taking a quick look into the few homes leading to the largest one in the village, they came to Norman’s house. They didn’t request entry from their friend or walk right in. They listened through the shuttered windows for any sounds of their children and were about to move around to the other side of the house when they both heard a muffled cry.

  They decided it was enough of a reason to enter, ready for battle. Elias asked her to stay at the church with Father Benedict, but she wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t argue too long for he knew her and he loved this part of her. “Stay close to me then, Lily.”

  She agreed to that and entered the house quietly, blades drawn.

  She knew the layout of the house better than Elias, so she led him to the different rooms.

  When they came upon the large room where Norman held meetings with appointed officials—who were mostly dead, they heard a man’s voice through the closed doors. Elias held his ear to the cool wood.

  “When the hell will he be back?” one male voice complained.

  “I do not know, James,” said another. “Do I look like his nursemaid?”

  “We have not figured out yet what you look like, Gilbert,” said another male voice. More laughter rang out.

  “Do any of us look like nursemaids?” James roared. “I did not join the bishop’s forces to look after children!”

  He’d heard enough. Elias pulled back his leg and then kicked the doors in.

  The room was quite large, more like a hall, with a long, wooden table and wooden chairs set around it. There was an enormous hearth with a blazing fire for warmth and more chairs, these cushioned, spread about the room.

  Charlie and little Eddie sat in one of them. Charlie was doing his best to keep the babe from crying. Norman and his wife and daughters were there as well. Terrified but quiet.

  Lily counted five men sitting around the table. They all bolted to their feet when the door cracked and split. She grabbed one knife by the handle and flung it at one of them. The blade settled nicely into his belly. It wasn’t likely enough to kill him but Elias leaped onto the table and hacked at the man’s throat, finishing him. He killed three more, while Lily threw her knife at the last man and hit him in the chest. He went down quickly, proving she’d hit him in the heart.

  She ran to the children while Elias checked behind more doors and curtains.

  They were alone.

  Lily thanked God that the children were unharmed. According to Norman, these men had been waiting for someone to arrive, keeping little Eddie alive until he got there.

  “He is the Bishop of Oxford, Louis Edmundson’s child,” Lily explained to the others.

  Elias vowed to kill the bishop and the man the soldiers had been waiting for. But who was he? Charlie had only heard a name. Parrock.

  They weren’t going to sit around and wait for him to show up. They had to go now! They raced for Eleanor’s house and gathered Annabelle and Terrick and his mother. Then they stopped at Alan’s and after that, Estrid’s. Nine of them were gone. Fourteen were left, not including Brother Simon and Elias. Either way, they beat the odds. Reports had come in to Norman about how sixty percent, possibly more of the people in London were dead. Lily wanted to weep for every one of them, but now was not the time. Now it was time to move. Where would they go?

  Elias was leading them back to the church. One by one, he made certain everyone entered. He directed them to the basement with Father Benedict, then he shut the door and stayed above stairs with Lily, Alan, and Norman. Lily filled the others in on what they knew. The bishop wanted his son, little Eddie, dead. While many kings fathered illegitimate children, most bishops did not.

  “We will protect him with our lives,” Alan swore.

  “Let us hope it doesna come to that,” Elias said.

  He stationed them near a window on every side to look out for any movement. There shouldn’t be any, for no one else was left.

  Lily stared out of a window on the west wall. Elias covered the south. It was closest to her but still far enough away that they could not speak without shouting.

  What kind of monster was this Parrock that he could do the bidding of another even when asked to kill a child? Oh, she hoped Elias got his hands on that one. She wondered how they had found her and suffered the horrible notion that Bertram hadn’t died after all—again. No. She had seen all the blood. He had been bleeding out on the floor.

  But what if he hadn’t died?

  She turned, wanting to go to Elias for reassurance. Her one hope remained that Charlie and Norman hadn’t heard mention of Bertram, nor had they seen him. Then how had Parrock’s men found little Eddie?

  The rush of horses’ hooves outside her window snatched her breath clean out of her body. It was them! How many? They passed her window! She jumped up and ran to the next window in their path. It was the one Norman was guarding. She looked out. Three riders. She ran to Elias with Norman behind her.

  He was already on his way to them. “Three. There are three of them,” she told her husband. He nodded and they all ran to Alan’s window to look out at Norman’s house.

  The three men dismounted slowly, cautiously. One of them called out. No one answered. That was because his men were dead.

  “They are goin’ to start searchin’ the cottages,” Elias told them. “Then they will come here. I want ye all to go down—”

  “No!” Lily was the first and the loudest to refuse. Alan and Norman were not far behind.

  “There are only three of them,” Elias argued. “I will have no trouble with them. Ye will do I say in this,” he said to all of them but stared at Lily. “The children need their mother, my love.”

  “They need their father, as well.”

  “They will have him,” he promised with a tender smile. “I will be well. Now go.”

  She went, rather than have it appear as if he had a wife who defied him at every turn.

  In truth, she was happy to get back to the children. They looked terrified. They had been through so much, each one of them. “There are only three men,” she said, reassuring Charlie when he insisted on going above stairs to help Elias. “I have seen him fight. He will return to us.”

  Still, Charlie climbed the stairs and sat at the top, by the door. He pressed his ear to the wood and closed his eyes.

  Lily wiped hers and went to Father Benedict and asked him to lead them in prayer.

  #

  Bertram hunkered down on the other side of a slight ridge to the west of Alan and Helen’s cottage and watched everything. When he saw Parrock arrive, his blood went cold. How could the commander’s men have arrived before him? Granted, it had taken him and Tristan a little longer to arrive because of his condition. He could not help from slipping out of the saddle. The pain of bouncing was unbearable. A few times, MacPherson had threatened to throw him from the saddle and continue on without him. But Bertram knew that he was now a pawn in the hands of a proficient killer for hire. For that’s what the Highlander did to earn coin. He killed and, according to him, many prominent Scottish barons wanted Louis killed and had hired MacPherson to do it.

  “Why do they want Louis dead?” Bertram had asked him before they got here.

  “Because he is a madman. He should never have been given the honor of his title but Edward needed a man in the church as cruel and as devious as he was.”

  Bertram looked at Tristan now, lying on his back in the grass, knocked out cold by a rock to his head. What was he supposed to do? Tristan was never going to let him kill Lily or the boy. He only wanted to make certain Lion Heart was alive and well and then he was going to go after Louis.

  Bertram didn’t kill the Highlander. If it weren’t for him, Bertram would have died at Parrock’s hands. But he hoped his good deed didn’t come back to bite his arse. It was only the second one he’d done in his l
ifetime. The first was when he let the babe, called little Eddie after his father, live.

  He would have liked to use MacPherson’s bow and arrow but he feared the man would awaken. He could have killed Tristan but all he had was the rock and hitting the Highlander hard enough to knock him out had taken every bit of strength Bertram had.

  He had to move. He took his time, holding on to trees. He needed to rest after a moment or two, but Tristan would not sleep all day and Bertram wanted Lily dead, so he kept moving. He didn’t care about escaping. She had taken everything from him and then tried to take even more. If he died, so be it. He was taking her to hell with him.

  He made his way toward the church at about the same time as Parrock’s men did.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Elias kicked open the heavy, wooden church door. He waited with his axe in one hand and his sword in the other. He didn’t step outside. He had the advantage over the soldiers since they had to come at him through a doorway. The first man in received a chop to the throat with Elias’ axe. He left it where it landed and blocked the heavy blade of the second man with two hands. He rolled his wrist around and made his blade dance through the air. It sliced across the second soldier’s face, neck, chest, and belly. All in a matter of seconds. The man dropped to the floor bleeding from everywhere.

  Elias didn’t think either man was Parrock. No, the commander waited outside for him.

  With one last look at the basement door, Elias left the church. His eyes were like that of a hawk’s on its prey. Patient and merciless. Where was Parrock hiding? He would come out soon enough. He was alone, and he should be afraid.

  Elias made his way to Eleanor’s cottage carefully, and then to Joan and Clare’s empty houses. “What kind of fearful boys does the bishop send to fight me?” he called out.

  He heard a movement in Clare’s cottage and went closer to it. “Come now, Parrock. Surely everythin’ ye heard aboot me isna true. What matter is it that I killed eight of yer men? It only means ye hired unskilled peasants. Come oot and fight me and let us see who stands at the end.”