Stealing Heaven

by Madeline Hunter

  However, other joinings lived within the physical ones, and her heart could not contain them. Nor could she ignore the delight that she took in the friendship they shared before and after they made love, when he held her on that feather bed and they laughed and spoke of unimportant things.

  On the fourth night, despite her longing to continue those truces, she forced herself to remain in her chamber, to prove to herself that he had not completely vanquished her will.

  He did not take it well.

  “Where were you last night?” Marcus asked the question as soon as he sat down at the high table. The evening meal had been delayed because he had ridden out before dawn and not returned until late.

  “I knew that you needed to leave early this morning, and thought it best not to disturb your brief rest.” It was a lie, devised in a blink when she saw his tight jaw. She wanted to kick herself for being such a coward.

  She forced herself to summon something of the woman she had been before she met him. “There will be other nights when I do not come. Nights when I am tired, or when I have my flux. Or when I do not choose to come.”

  His hand reached to cover hers on the table. It seemed a more possessive hold than normal. “If you are tired, you can sleep in my arms. If you have your flux, you can still give me your company. If you do not choose to come, I want to know why.”

  She sighed with exasperation. “You already know why.”

  “I think that I do, but it is not the reason you will throw at me. It is because you are afraid.”

  “I have nothing to fear from you, Marcus.” Annoyance made the statement more a challenge than an admission of trust.

  “You have everything to fear from me. I am the man who holds your life in my hands by day and your heart in my hands by night. The daughter of Llygad does not worry much about the former, but the woman in you is a coward about the latter.”

  She really resented his calling her a coward. That she had used it herself did not matter. She did not want evidence that he understood the war taking place inside her, or that he suspected the ground her duty was losing.

  “But what you fear with me is something we are not allowed to speak of, isn’t it, Nesta? My apologies.” He raised her hand and kissed it. “Come to me tonight.”

  “I am not yours to command in this, Marcus. Even our mockery of a betrothal does not give you that right.”

  “You have given me the right. Come to my chamber. There are things I must tell you.”

  Of course, summoned like that, she could not go.

  She lay in bed that night, glad he had made it easy for her. He might speak seductively of not subverting her, but that had been his intention all along. Now he was annoyed because she had proven that those brief truces would be on her terms, and that the pleasure would not make her clay in his hands.

  She managed to feel very proud of herself for a while. The contented sleep of the virtuous did not come, however, and the night passed with her tossing on the bed, arguing the Tightness of denying him, trying to ignore that her confusion only proved just how divided her heart had become.

  She was awake when commotion broke out in the yard at dawn. Suddenly it sounded as if a hundred horses milled inside the walls.

  She went to her window and lifted the oiled parchment. A small army had entered Anglesmore. She took in the armor and weapons and the tall knight in the lead. His handsome profile was so harsh as to make Marcus appear mild. Banners flapped around him. They bore no colors and marks that she knew.

  As she watched he turned his head to reveal the other half of his face. A horrible scar sliced it from top to bottom, defiling the beauty he had been given. It was the kind of scar that made one wince and look away.

  The implications of the scene outside sank in. A horrified sense of betrayal spilled through her.

  She threw on a loose gown and stormed out of her chamber. She went down to Marcus, and not as a lover. She found him in his chamber, already armored.

  He glanced at her, dismissed his squires, and coolly turned his attention to adjusting his knight’s belt.

  “There is a new knight in the yard, a fearsome man with two faces,” she said.

  “That is Addis de Valence, who was warden here after I got Anglesmore back. He was also one of the men who helped the King depose Mortimer. He is my good friend, and you will treat him with every courtesy.”

  “He brought a small army with him. At least fifty entered the yard, and it sounds as if there are many more outside the gate. They do not look to be stopping for a brief rest.”

  “The steward will see to their comfort while I am gone.”

  She didn’t give a damn about their comfort. “You called for him, didn’t you? You asked him to bring that army here.”

  He nodded, and went to a table holding some bread and ale and downed the contents of the cup. He appeared very calm. Her own blood was boiling.

  “Your message must have been sent some time ago. You knew he was coming, and said nothing.”

  His gaze snapped to her, suddenly fiery and stern. “Is that what you expected? Is that why you came to this bed? You thought that I would confide in you before I made my moves? I promised not to try and subvert you, but did you just assume that you would subvert me?”

  They were devastating questions, and they sliced to the center of the turmoil filling her. The truth behind her feeling of betrayal stared her in the face. She had expected him to warn her. She had thought that because of their intimacy he would give her a fighting chance.

  He must have read her thoughts on her face, because his expression hardened. “For a woman with such famous experience, you do not know men well. A knight does not discard his duty so easily. This knight certainly doesn’t. Not for the brief truces and simple pleasures you offered, especially when you have made it clear just how brief and simple they are to you.”

  Grabbing his sword and gauntlets, he strode past her. “Your father’s men have begun killing. Word has come that some Welsh chieftains have joined them. So now we truly have a rebellion, as your father wanted and you planned. A little one still, and I will not permit it to become a big one. I will not see Wales flayed alive in the name of a doomed cause. Hopefully, Addis will be enough help.” He paused at the door. “If you had come last night, I would have explained this to you, so that maybe you would understand.”

  After he left, she could barely move. She gazed numbly to where he had been standing, looking so handsome and perfect in his armor, so beautiful despite his severity.

  She could see the bed from the corner of her eye. Memories of sharing it with him hurt her heart. She thought that she had truly left the days behind when she came here, but her disappointment proved that she had not.

  Nor had he.

  Had his mind been full of strategies even while he held her? In the sweet silence after they made love, had he been counting knights and archers, and deciding how to crush the dream?

  She shook her head at the depths of her self-deception. It had been foolish to pretend that their passion could exist separately from their rivalry. She laughed at how absurd the notion had been, but as she did a sharp fullness in her chest rose to thicken her throat. Disillusionment flowed up until her eyes teared, leaving her laughing and crying at the same time.

  She turned and fully looked at the bed, and grinned at her stupidity as the tears snaked down her cheeks.

  Addis de Valence, Lord of Barrowburgh, gazed thoughtfully up at the hilltops. “The alliance that you suggest would lead to strife such as these parts have not seen in two generations. If Llygad’s men join with a powerful marcher lord, these bandits will start a major war,” he said. “It is well that you called me instead of the local barons, Marcus, if this is your suspicion. It would not do to have a viper in your camp.”

  “I called you for other reasons. I trust your restraint, and your control of your men. I do not want this to end in a bloodbath.”

  “You may have no say in that if this grows. Edw
ard will not lose Wales, even if it means burning it to the ground to keep it. He cannot afford to. The solution in Scotland was hardly a victory. He cannot have ongoing trouble on two borders, nor have men whispering that he is weak like his father and is losing everything that his grandfather gained.”

  Marcus listened as he and Addis shared some ale during a brief pause on their ride. Around them his men also took their rest. They had ridden hard for hours to reach the northwestern edge of his lands, to investigate reports that some of Carwyn’s men had ravaged an English manor and attacked a convoy of merchants.

  The evidence of raids had been plentiful, but once again the thieves had disappeared. Addis had joined the troop even though his own arrival had occurred just before their departure. He still wore the armor that had clad him when he rode through Anglesmore’s gate.

  Marcus weighed his old warden’s words, not surprised that they matched his own conclusions. Everything that Marcus knew about warfare and governance, and much that he had learned about men, he had learned from Addis. He could not have had a better teacher. Addis was a great warrior, and under his tutelage Marcus had quickly made up for the crucial years of missed training. Through Addis’s example he had also learned to be a different kind of lord from what most men would have taught.

  Addis downed more ale and frowned. He appeared fit and young, especially if one saw him as Marcus did now, from the good side. The other, the side with the scar, displayed the marks of experience that gave him the wisdom that Marcus respected.

  “I can think of three border lords who might be tempted, but only if the prize was Wales itself, with himself as king,” Addis said. “The autonomy of the Lords Marcher has always bred ambition for more. No English king has ever truly controlled them.”

  “You speak of me and my father.”

  “Your grandfather was given Anglesmore late. Your family has lived here for generations, but only recently has the power been yours. The fealty is stronger then, as your father proved. It is different for the families that have held their lands since the Conqueror set them up as little kings. They see themselves as sovereign in ways the new lords never will.”

  They remounted their steeds and moved forward. “Somewhere in the mountains an army is forming, Addis. I do not think it is very large yet, but there have been some deaths for which the English lords will want to extract a harsh revenge.”

  “If you called me and my men, you must be planning a campaign.”

  Marcus nodded. “I have been tracking the men who raid for days, and getting nowhere. They stay on the move, and are not rejoining Carwyn. He is keeping me occupied while he builds his strength. I will not give him more time to do so. It is my intention to go into those mountains, and use Llygad’s own manor as a stronghold. I will bring this little war to him. I want to finish this before whatever alliance is at work is a fact.”

  “And the daughter? With her in your household, you may already have a viper in your camp. Since this betrothal has not stopped them, but only made them bolder, you should remove her to Stratford. He will learn quickly enough if she is involved.”

  “I cannot do that.”

  “It is the wisest—”

  “I cannot.” It came out harshly. He set his horse to a faster pace, and felt Addis’s gaze on him as the horse beside him kept up.

  “You have learned much about hiding your thoughts, Marcus, but your face will always be an open book to me,” Addis said.

  Marcus glanced over and saw a slight smile on Addis’s mouth. “Just do not tell me that I am a fool. God knows I tell myself that ten times a day, and I do not need to hear it from you.”

  “I am the last man to tell another that wanting the wrong woman makes him a fool.” The smile thinned to a hard line. “But I warn you now that if this woman’s betrayal lures you to your destruction, I myself will hold the sword that takes her head.”

  Marcus rode on. The betrayal was probably inevitable, and all the small pleasures in the world would not stop it. His destruction, however, was not. Nor was hers.

  They crested a hill and a little village came into view in the distance. Marcus’s attention sharpened on a commotion swirling around the collection of huts and cottages.

  The people were just dots, but they clustered and milled like so many ants on a piece of bread. He could see three horses at the edge of the crowd.

  “Llygad’s men?” Addis asked.

  “We will see.” Marcus spurred his horse to a gallop, and led his troop into the shallow valley.

  He knew long before he rode into the village that he had not found any bandits. A different kind of violence had disrupted this tiny hamlet.

  A tall tree grew in the clearing by the water well. Three bodies hung from one of its thick branches. Several men and women sagged in heaps beneath the swinging feet, numbed from the horrible ordeal of sparing their kinsmen from suffering by speeding their deaths. An old woman still clung to the legs of a man, her weight stretching him.

  Marcus and Addis reined their horses up thirty paces from the execution. Marcus surveyed the crowd of stunned villagers, and his gaze quickly lit on two men wearing the livery of Arundal, the powerful lord who held some marcher estates, including Clun to the northeast.

  They sat on stools near a tree stump to the side of the well, calmly drinking ale and munching cheese. Not their ale and cheese, Marcus guessed.

  A stormy darkness began seeping into his head. He dismounted and pushed through the crowd. He heard his voice speak with a calm he did not feel. “What has happened here?”

  One of the soldiers, a burly red-haired man, brushed his mouth of cheese crumbs. “They attacked a merchant from one of our towns. We were sent after them, and we caught them here.”

  “You are no longer on Arundal’s lands, but mine.”

  The man shrugged. “Saved you the trouble, then, didn’t we?”

  The madness in his head grew. He looked at the hanging bodies. “You are sure these were the thieves?”

  “Followed them here, as I said.”

  The old woman released her grasp on the legs and spun around to Marcus. “My son had not left this village in weeks,” she said defiantly. “These men are not bandits or thieves. Ask anyone here. We tried to tell them, but they listened to no one.”

  Addis led three members of their troop to the tree, and they began the task of cutting the bodies down.

  Marcus watched the morbid ritual, and heard the wails of the women as they claimed their menfolk. The fury in his head turned ugly.

  “It sounds as though you hanged the wrong men. I think that you wearied of tracking thieves you could not find, and decided to end the duty quickly. After all, one dead Welsh man is as good as another.”

  They protested, but the glint in their eyes showed they agreed with the last part.

  Marcus walked over to them, and absently poked at the stolen cheese. “You have dared to usurp my rights of judgment on my own land, and then execute innocent men while you eat their families’ food?”

  The two ceased chewing and froze. Their nonchalant demeanor disappeared.

  “Hard to say where one estate ends and another begins in these hills,” the red-haired man offered. “If we have erred, my lord will compensate you.”

  “If you erred, it is not for your lord to pay, but for you.”

  Silence fell all around them. The two men rose, and with quick, nervous glances took in the wall of armor and horses. It grew so quiet and still that a low whimper to Marcus’s left sounded like a scream of despair.

  He turned, and saw a woman staggering from a tiny hut. Blood trickled from her lips where she had been struck, and other marks showed on her face and neck.

  He strode forward and swept the woman into his arms. For a moment, as he examined her battered face, rage owned him so completely that he lost hold of his sense.

  Another figure darkened the threshold of the hut. A man, also wearing the livery of Arundal, strolled out, smiling and contented. Fixing his g
arments distracted him, and he was well away from the door before he noticed the many stares aimed at him.

  His glance shot to his comrades, and then to Marcus. He tried a smile. “She was one of the thieves’ woman,” he said, assuming that explained it.

  Marcus carried his burden over to some women and laid her among them. He returned to the tree, and gazed up at the thick limb. “We need three new nooses, I think.”

  The red-haired man straightened with indignation. “You cannot. We are sworn to—”

  “If I err, I will compensate him.”

  His men prepared the tree. The condemned watched aghast as the ropes appeared and nooses were formed. A villager gladly braced his weight against the ladder set against the trunk.

  Marcus waited, his head bursting.

  Addis came to stand beside him. “You must not. You know that,” he said quietly.

  “Are you saying my judgment is not just?”

  “It is just, and I share your outrage, but this is unwise.”

  “It is very wise. If I let them go, there will be no judgment at all. Arundal will not punish his own for killing a few Welsh villagers.”

  Three of his archers were binding the men’s hands. The three soldiers reacted with horror at this evidence that Marcus was serious. The archers began pushing the first one toward the tree.

  “Then do not let them go,” Addis suggested. “Bring them back to Anglesmore, and keep them until you are satisfied that there will be justice. But if you do this, the other marcher lords will see it as evidence that you cannot be trusted to protect England’s interests, and you will have a little war with Arundal even as you try to deal with Carwyn Hir.”

  “Do not preach politics to me. This is not about that.”

  “Nay, it is about powerless people made victims, and a woman raped by a man who expected no one who matters to object. It is their misfortune to have committed these crimes on the land of a man who has suffered such things himself. I understand that, but others will not.” He placed his hand on Marcus’s arm. “You must not do it this way.”