She watched Hugh’s gentleness with Leo, the ruffling of his hair, the tucking of the thick coverlet securely under Leo’s chin, nestling into the crook of Leo’s arm a ragged, stuffed, appendageless doll. And even though she was furious at Roderick’s closest friend, she realized that Hugh and Leo truly loved each other, and it made Michaela a bit sorry for what she was about to say to him.
But not sorry enough to not say it.
Hugh straightened from the bed and seemed to give an exasperated eyeroll to see Michaela still standing near the doorway.
“You don’t give up, do you?” he whispered, and walked past her through the doorway.
She followed close on his heels, pulling Leo’s door to softly after her. “Was it not you who told me to be relentless?”
Hugh walked down the corridor ahead of her and threw his hands over his head. “Absolutely no concept of context!” He glanced over his shoulder. “Very well, then—where would you give me your fierce dressing-down for whatever atrocities you believe I’ve executed against you, Miss Fortune?”
“Your chamber is closest, is it not?”
A score more paces and Hugh shoved open a door on the right side of the corridor. Michaela realized that Sir Hugh’s room lay between Leo’s and Roderick’s, and she was not at all surprised. She followed him into the room.
All of the suites at Cherbon were lavishly outfitted, from the architecture itself to the rich furnishings, but Hugh’s room was luxurious to the extreme. It seemed as if he had taken bits from all about the keep—from about the world, really—to decorate his private space, and Michaela imagined the room would rival many a royal chamber.
There were wide, upholstered benches and armchairs, their velvets glistening in the dim light and tossed over with rich throws and cushions; thick, sculpted rugs in vivid colors Michaela had never seen covered the whole of the floor, giving the room a close, hushed atmosphere, and she felt as though she was walking on a dense mattress. The bed was draped in what appeared to be bright silks, with more shiny cushions and throws tossed about and slinked over the edges of the mattress. Bright, polished weaponry—some pieces quite strange—adorned the walls, between elaborate tapestries depicting scenes of men in battle, of old Roman gods, of people in various stages of undress. Giant, dyed feathers and dried grasses stood in tall ceramic urns. The room had a sweet smell of lingering incense and Michaela had to admit that she was quite jealous of Sir Hugh Gilbert’s home at Cherbon.
“I am rather surprised you took it upon yourself to help Rick mount a horse. Looking at you, one would not think you had the strength.” The man flopped down in one of the upholstered chairs, tossing one leg carelessly over the arm. He laced his fingers together over his chest and regarded her with weary amusement. Outside, the rain arrived on Cherbon with a roar.
“I likely don’t,” Michaela answered. “Roderick mounted on his own.”
Hugh’s eyebrows shot up. “Obviously he had a stableman assist him before you arrived.”
“No, we all—he and I and Leo—arrived at the stables together. I saw him mount. He seemed to do quite fine—why would you insist he need help?”
“I don’t know why you’re lying to me but—”
“I’m not lying to you! Ask him yourself.”
“Fine! I will! Now get on with whatever you have to say before I throw you out of this room. You’re terribly annoying, Miss Fortune, and I have had quite my fill already of annoying women.” He sighed and leaned his head back against the chair, his eyes closing as if already dismissing her.
Michaela felt there was no need to dance around the subject. “Why do you hate me? What have I done to offend you so, Sir Hugh, that you would set out to sabotage not only my own efforts at Cherbon, but Roderick’s very future at his family home?”
“Oh, spare me,” Hugh muttered.
“No, I shan’t,” Michaela insisted with a frown. He wasn’t going to quip his way out of this. “You lured Elizabeth Tornfield here with hopes that she might persuade me to leave Cherbon, didn’t you?”
“You’re paranoid, Miss Fortune,” he scoffed.
“I am not! You gave me advice under the guise of ‘helping me,’ and each time I followed it, Roderick moved farther away!”
Hugh held up both palms and raised his eyebrows. “Then you obviously executed my advice incorrectly. Proof that you are no woman for Roderick Cherbon,” he said simply.
“I am the only woman for him,” Michaela insisted. “And how dare you think to take upon yourself the machinations of his life! You are supposed to be his closest friend!”
“I am his closest friend.”
“No! No, you’re not!” Michaela stepped toward him, her fists clenched at her sides to keep from throwing something at him. “A friend would seek to aid Roderick in gaining everything he desires, everything he needs—not plot against him to keep him weak and miserable.”
Hugh laughed. “You are the interloper here, Miss Fortune. I have known Roderick for more than three years. I have been through battle with him, sickness, seen him over Death’s very threshold and back again. If there is one of us in this chamber who knows what Roderick needs, well”—he looked her up and down—“it is certainly not you. I know you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you might one day come to love him, but in truth, all you will be good for is making him miserable.”
“I already love him,” Michaela said fiercely.
Hugh seemed more than a little shocked for several moments. But he recovered, and his smug look returned. “You may think you do, but you don’t truly know him. He is a wealthy novelty for you, and perhaps a bit of a charity. But for myself, for Leo—the three of us have a history together. You can never surmount that. You’re an outsider.”
“Perhaps I was when you departed for Tornfield, but no longer,” Michaela challenged. “He’s sought me out in your absence, confided in me.”
Hugh smirked. “Really? And what great secrets did he impart, hmm? What he wanted for his din-din?”
“He told me about Aurelia. That Leo is not his son by his blood.”
“Well, that is impressive, I concede. But it’s hardly something that you would not have learned eventually, any matter.” Hugh shrugged. Then his eyes narrowed, and a wicked gleam came into them. “Has he told you he will never make love to you?”
Michaela’s face burned. “Yes. But I believe I can change that. It’s only…only reluctance due to—”
Hugh laughed uproariously. “You can’t change that, ducky! Trust me, that condition is most permanent.” His face sobered. “You think you’ve got him though, don’t you? That you and he and Leo are going to be one jolly family, and Miss Fortune will right any little trouble Lord Cherbon seems to have, isn’t that it? Thank you so very much, Sir Hugh, for devoting your life to this man and his son, but now that I’m here, we have no further need of you. Good day and good luck. Well, I will tell you now, Michaela”—Hugh rose from his chair suddenly and advanced on her—“you will never do it. You can never know the man he was before Heraclea—how unlike his father he was when he came to battle.”
His very stance before Michaela seemed to challenge her. “Did he tell you, when we engaged, all of us were nearly starved, our supply routes having been cut off for weeks? There were few horses left for the soldiers to fight on because we ate them, Miss Fortune. We were ambushed in our camp, in the dark of night. Most men were slaughtered before they could gain their feet and flee, and the ones who did escape—myself and two generals included—could only do so because Roderick mounted his own horse and rushed into a band of attackers alone. A score of Saracen soldiers on horseback, armed with lances and swords, swarmed ’round him like beez-z-z-z.” He let the last word draw out maliciously. “I watched it—weaponless, helpless! They dragged him from his horse and only left him because they thought him dead. Roderick Cherbon’s last act of selflessness saved my life.”
Michaela’s throat was so tight she could barely force words through it. “But did you n
ot also save his? By taking him to Aurelia?”
“What I did was no noble act. I had already lost everything, I had nothing to go back to. No home, no family, all my friends were dead, save the man who had saved me. Roderick was the only sane thing left to cling to. Him, and then Leo.”
“You saved Roderick’s life so that you would have someone to support you?”
“I wish it were as simple as greed! I took him to Aurelia so that he might live, yes, but I needed him to live so that I could spend the rest of my life trying to repay him for what he did. My life, at last, had meaning, purpose.” Hugh stepped closer to Michaela. “Every move Roderick makes, every word he utters, every curse at me, every slight now for you, stems from that battle. From what he lost when his father forced him on that pilgrimage. Roderick was never like Magnus—the man who drove Dorian mad, mad enough to kill herself, leaving her only surviving child in the clutches of those monsters. And now Roderick reckons it was he who had it wrong all along—his father was the man in the right. I am the only one who can change that, for I am the only one who knows what he’s been through.”
“Noble sentiments, Sir Hugh,” Michaela said. “But I don’t believe it. Roderick needs a woman—a wife. He needs softness in his life now, and I can—”
“You can’t be his woman, you stupid bitch! He won’t let you!”
“He will in time!” Michaela insisted. “Because I love him, Hugh! I’ve told Roderick as I will tell you: they’re only scars! I don’t care—”
“They’re not just scars, Michaela!” Hugh roared, and Michaela thought she saw a welling of tears in Hugh’s cold eyes. “His leg is gone!”
Michaela went stone-cold in an instant, and chills overtook her skin. “Why…why would you say such a thing, Hugh?”
“Because it’s true.” There were tears in Hugh’s eyes—cold, angry, resentful. Guilty. “A handsbreadth below Roderick’s left knee—nothing. Gone. No foot, no ankle, no calf.”
“That’s impossible,” Michaela whispered.
“I was there when they took it. I held him down.”
“But he walks! His boots—”
“His left boot is a construction. Wood, wool—leather straps to above his knee. That’s how I know you lied to me when you said he mounted his horse alone—what’s left of his leg and the boot he wears has not the strength to see him into the saddle, and to mount with his right is impossible; his left leg has not the flexibility to raise up and over.”
“But he did mount alone, I saw him!” Michaela felt she had been flung back into one of her nightmares.
“You likely saw what Rick wanted you to see, is all. And that is why he will never make love to you. He is not whole. He feels he is no longer a man—can’t mount a horse properly, can’t fight. He would never let you see him like that. Only me. Only…me, Miss Fortune.”
“But he”—Michaela swallowed hard. “He’s destroyed his walking stick. He no longer uses it! Since you’ve been gone—”
“I don’t know what game you play, but I will not allow it to continue,” Hugh growled, and for the first time, Michaela knew a growing fear of this handsome, lanky man. He was furious with her. “You don’t deserve a man like Roderick Cherbon, and I will not let you have him!”
Michaela huffed a nervous laugh. “Why, Sir Hugh, it sounds as though you yourself are in lo—” Michaela broke off abruptly as Hugh Gilbert’s face paled and he turned away from her.
She brought a hand to her mouth for a moment, as the pieces fell into place. “You’re in love with him,” she whispered.
After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder at her, although his eyes fell short of her face. A slight, sad smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Guilty,” he said quietly.
“Oh my God.” Michaela walked past Hugh to sit upon one of the upholstered benches. Her legs would no longer support her. “Does he know?”
Hugh laughed. “Of course not. What kind of fool do you take me for, Miss Fortune? I know that any affection Rick holds for me is not…is not of the same nature as my own. But I don’t care. I only want…” He trailed off with a wave of his hand.
“You only want to be with him,” Michaela supplied.
Hugh nodded. “It is enough for me. Him and Leo. Perhaps you are not so stupid, after all.”
“But if you know that he will never—why can you not let me have a chance to make him happy, as a woman can? As Roderick wants?”
“Womanly affection—bah,” Hugh scoffed. “Overrated. You don’t know that’s what Roderick wants.”
“I do. He’s shown me, in his chamber, and mine,” Michaela said gently. Oddly, she no longer wanted to hurt Hugh, but he must know that Michaela would not give Roderick up. She loved him, too.
He looked toward the long windows of his chamber, dark save for the shocking flashes of lightning. “What are you going to do then, Miss Fortune? Out me? Tell Rick my sordid little secret so that he might loathe and detest me and throw me from Cherbon? Would you see me ruined to the very end?”
“He wouldn’t,” Michaela said. “He cares for you too much, Hugh. But, no, I will not disclose your secret.”
Hugh glanced at her again, and Michaela thought he no longer looked like the smooth, polished man she had known him as. He looked lonely and shaken and sad, and Michaela felt his rejection from where she sat.
“Thank you, Miss Fortune.”
“But I will not stop trying to win him,” Michaela said. “We are to be married, and I would have him as my husband in truth. Perhaps the three of us, you and I and Leo, we could give him the happiness, the friendship he deserves?”
“Perhaps,” Hugh said. “But you know it would never work for long.”
Michaela frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“One man, two lovers—messy business.” Hugh let his sardonic smile slip onto his face briefly. “He must choose one of us.”
“I agree,” Michaela said. “And when he does, we must honor his choice.”
“You’re saying that if Rick sends you away, you’ll go?”
“I’ll go,” Michaela promised.
“Even though it means the ruination of your family, and that Rick will likely be forced to leave England with Leo and me?”
“I’ll go,” Michaela repeated solemnly. “But you must agree that, if he chooses me, you will no longer try to interfere in our relationship, or sabotage my efforts with him. I would not see you turned away from Cherbon for what you’ve done for Roderick and Leo, but should you force my hand, Hugh…”
Hugh gave her a sad smile. “I’ll not force your hand, Miss Fortune. I do have some pride left.”
Michaela rose and stuck out her hand. “We are agreed, then?”
Hugh clasped her fingers and looked directly into her eyes. “You weren’t supposed to fall in love with him,” he said quietly, and then released her hand. “But we are agreed. Now, how are we to go about finding out about his…you know.” Hugh did a shuffling dance.
But Michaela was already on her way toward the door, and unwilling to tell Hugh the nature of her desperate mission. She paused, her hand on the latch, to look back at him. “You’ll mind Leo if I’m not back before he wakes?”
Hugh frowned. “Of course. I daresay I’ve been doing it longer than you have and am leagues better at it, any matter. I’m rather surprised he has not come for me already because of the storm.”
Michaela smiled. “Thank you, Hugh.”
“Miss Fortune,” Hugh called as she was just slipping into the corridor, and she paused. “What are you going to do?”
Michaela closed the door softly.
The corridor was black, icy and damp, but beneath her gown, the link was warm against her skin. Had Michaela withdrawn it on its long chain, she would have seen its glow.
The storm beyond the thick walls of the keep was worsening and every stone-jarring boom of thunder caused her already-pounding heart to shudder in her chest. There were no windows in the dark corridor, but for once, Michaela was glad
of it. She thought that if she was made to look upon the startling, dazzling lightning, she may just die of fright.
Michaela had the distinct feeling that this was no normal storm. She could feel its malevolent heaviness creep through the corridor along the inky seam of floor and wall, as if watching her with gray eyes, trailing her, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, to stop her from doing what she intended.
In a moment, she stood before Roderick’s door. She laid her cheek against the wood, her eyes closed, straining for any sound from beyond. But the thunder was coming in waves now, thwarting her. Like the relentless hoofbeats of a hundred horses carrying their vengeful riders from the darkness, it crashed louder with each report, perhaps now only as far away as the black bend of the corridor.
She let her fingertips skitter down the smooth wood to the latch of the door and opened it in the masking silence of the thunder.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roderick let the lightning lash him as he lay on his bed, as if the white-hot flashes would cleanse him of his damned uncertainty, of his fear of his own life waiting for him beyond his safe chamber—what he was, what he was becoming.
His nonexistent left foot itched madly again, and it took everything he had not to spring his body together on the mattress and claw at his boot, or dig his heel into the coverings. It was madness, madness, and he knew it.
He had still not removed his boots, and now he was afraid to. More afraid of it than he had ever been in the whole of his life. He was fairly certain of what he would find if he did: the same thing that had been there when he pulled the boot on.
Nothing, of course.
But what frightened him was the possibility that once he removed the boot, the sensations he’d felt for the past two days, the increased mobility he had, would vanish. As if, by taking off the boot, he would renege on his part of the bargain he had unknowingly entered into with some dark force.
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