The Bride Gift

by Sarah Hegger

  “I command you.” Stephen’s voice rose shrilly. “Or I will have you shot like a beast.”

  “Guy.” Crispin was suddenly beside him. The haze over his vision cleared. “You must release him. The king has called for archers.”

  “Nay,” Guy growled, baring his teeth.

  “You cannot help Helena if you are dead.” Crispin said the one thing that penetrated Guy’s rage. He dropped Ranulf, who hit the floor with a sharp crack of bones meeting a hard surface.

  Good. Guy sheathed his weapon and turned to face his king’s wrath.

  Stephen’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his face as he tried to form words. Guy had never seen him so angry.

  Finding his voice, Stephen raged, “What right have you to flout your king? I should have you hanged for this.”

  Ranulf struggled to his feet. Someone had brought him a cloth for his neck and he held the linen to his wound. “Sire, I believe Sir Guy acted under the false assumption that I have harmed his lady.”

  “Lady Helena?” Stephen’s frown deepened. “What has this to do with Lady Helena?” He glanced over the faces before him. “Where is Lady Helena?”

  The need to reach for his sword almost overpowered him, but Guy held his peace.

  “That, I believe,” Ranulf said affably, “is exactly what Sir Guy was trying to ascertain.”

  There was a light smattering of laughter from the hall at Ranulf’s tone.

  Now Guy was even more certain Ranulf was behind Helena’s absence. His gut clenched, hard.

  “God’s bones, man!” Stephen roared at Guy. “What has Sir Ranulf to do with any of this?”

  “Might I?” Crispin spoke quietly, but his manner arrested the king’s attention. “There has been much bad blood betwixt Lystanwold and Dartmoore. Sir Ranulf has made no secret of his desire to wed the Lady Helena. I believe my brother’s assumption is not so ludicrous as it would appear.”

  “Verily,” Ranulf replied with a nod. The smile didn’t move from his lips but malice glittered in his eyes.

  A quick glance from Crispin confirmed Guy’s increasing worry. Had he just delivered himself neatly into Ranulf’s hand?

  “Lady Helena is a prize to make any knight lose his head,” Ranulf continued. “Because of that, I would hear what Sir Guy accuses me of.”

  Frustration rose like bile in the back of Guy’s throat. He had no accusation because he had no idea where Helena was.

  Crispin came to his rescue. “Guy suspects foul play.”

  “Foul play?” Ranulf had twisted his expression into one of concern. “Is the lady dead?”

  “Nay,” Guy growled. “She is missing.”

  “Missing?” Stephen threw up his hands. “Have you checked her chambers? Women are apt to take issue and go to ground. For this, you break my peace and draw steel before your sovereign?” Stephen’s mouth tightened into a furious line. “Take him.” He motioned to his men.

  “My liege.” Crispin hastened forward. “Mayhap we should discover if Sir Guy’s fears are baseless before we accuse and find him wanting?”

  “An excellent notion.” Ranulf rubbed his palms together.

  Stephen turned to Ranulf. “You are in agreement? You have been most grievously insulted.”

  “Who am I to judge a man when he fears for his lady?” Ranulf cast his eyes downward. “I lost my dear lady not so many years back.” He turned back to the tapestry. An unseen lady sighed softly as Ranulf gazed lovingly at the beautiful, flaxen haired girl whose image wove into the threads.

  Guy wanted to spill his belly. He clenched and unclenched his hand. Steel was too good for the whoreson playing this game with terrifying skill. Guy vowed he would rend him limb from limb with his bare hands.

  Crispin touched his arm and he started. The desire to kill the bastard was like a sword through his vitals and he fought down the cloud of red obscuring his vision. For Helena, I must remain in command.

  “Very well.” Stephen nodded abruptly. “Search for the Lady Helena.” He snapped out the command. “And include Dartmoore Keep in your search.”

  Ranulf looked slightly affronted but inclined his head in agreement.

  “Sir Ranulf remains here.” The king pointed at Guy. “Chain him.”

  As two men approached Guy cautiously, Ranulf drawled, “Might I suggest you include the good Colin in your search? I do not believe I have seen the lady’s kinsman in the hall this eve.”

  “Eh?” King Stephen looked from Ranulf to Guy. “Is that not the cousin she sought to wed?”

  “A sorely disappointed man, to be sure,” Sir Ranulf replied.

  Something within Guy snapped.

  Venting on all who attempted to restrain him, his fury burst forth. Bone shattered beneath his fist. His boot lashed out. Blood sprayed in an arc as he rained down vengeance on his attackers. His pulse pounded in his neck. When a hand fastened on his arm, Guy twisted and brought his fist down. A cry of pain sounded.

  He exulted in the sound.

  As Stephen’s men sought to subdue him, Guy raged, impervious to pain. More men joined the fray. Their blows rained down upon his head and body as, by sheer weight of numbers, they forced him to the ground. And still Guy fought.

  He was dead to the pain as they dragged the chains about his wrists and ankles. His eyes locked with Ranulf and violence boiled in his blood.

  He would break Ranulf over his fist and leave him bleeding on the stones.

  This was not done. It would not be done until Ranulf lay dead at his feet.

  Chapter 26

  The hours bled past slowly. Helena heated water and Rosalind bathed the stranger’s wound. He awoke intermittently, mumbling words that made no sense. They discussed escape, but Rosalind wouldn’t get far.

  “Guy will come for you.” Rosalind leaned over the man, bathing his head in cooling water.

  “Aye.” A rush of love warmed Helena from the inside. Guy would come for her, wroth with her or not. If only she hadn’t followed Colin into the forest, but found Guy instead and spoken with him. “I made him angry. When he would not challenge Ranulf, I . . . spoke badly.” Confessing her troubles to Rosalind seemed to keep the dread at bay.

  “Guy is not the easiest of men.”

  “He has been nothing but kind to me,” Helena defended hotly.

  Rosalind threw her a wry look and bent back to her patient. “He is quite a handsome devil.” She finished ministering to the wounded knight and returned to the bench by the low fire. “I am beginning to regret calling out to you in the woods.” Rosalind winced as she lowered her body onto the hard seat.

  Helena sighed, troubled. Rosalind had been roughly treated for one so far into her term.

  “Why did you?” she asked.

  “I must have been desperate for company.” Rosalind snorted with weary laughter. “Considering how cordial we have been.”

  “Aye.” Helena glanced past Rosalind to the man in the bed. He seemed to be resting more comfortably.

  Their gaolers had pushed some bread and charred bits of meat through the door. After Rosalind boiled the meat into a broth, they had taken turns feeding it to the man, who was as weak as a kitten. How long he had been left to suffer?

  “Do you know who he is?” Helena nodded toward the pallet.

  “Not an idea.” Rosalind arched, pressing her fists into the small of her back.

  “He must be important for Ranulf to have kept him alive,” Helena mused. “How do you fare?” she asked as Rosalind shifted her bulk into a more comfortable position.

  “This babe sits heavy,” Rosalind replied.

  Outside the men had grown raucous and Helena suspected they were drinking. They wouldn’t have dared if Ranulf were about, for he demanded mindless obedience from those who served him.


  With a sore heart, she thought again of Colin. She had known he was bitter when she was married to Guy. But this? As deep as her anger had grown, still she ached for the boy who’d shared her childhood.

  “I do not understand,” she said. “About Colin and Ranulf. Why he did it.”

  “You are very sheltered, my lady.” Rosalind gave a soft laugh, but there was nothing mocking about her tone. “I would guess Colin is in love with Ranulf. It must have been a long-standing, unrequited sort of love. Ranulf used it against him.”

  Helena gaped at her. Such a thought had never occurred to her.

  “You must not judge your cousin too harshly. It can be a lonely existence for men such as Colin, and Ranulf would have exploited his pain,” Rosalind said.

  “Is that not a sin?”

  “The church considers it to be so.” Rosalind closed her eyes and rested against the wall behind her.

  “Do you?”

  Rosalind lifted her shoulders wearily. “I do not know. In my life I have found many things I took to be truth do not appear the same under closer scrutiny.”

  “That sounded very . . . sage.”

  “Aye, well . . . even a whore like myself is capable of profound thought.”

  Helena had no answer for that.

  “Such as Guy,” Rosalind continued. “He appears to be this omniscient knight, but he has a weakness.”

  “He does?”

  Rosalind gave a snort. “Have you never wondered why he speaks so little?”

  “He is a fighting man.” Helena pretended to dismiss the question. As if the question has not caused more than a little annoyance.

  “Guy is a tangle tongue. He has been afflicted with it since he was a boy. He does not speak because he believes it weakens him to tumble and trip over his words as he does.”

  Helena’s jaw dropped. Guy was always so powerful and in control. He didn’t seem to be the sort to have a weakness. Her main irritation with him was that he never spoke enough. Now, it made so much sense. Of course, he kept his words limited. Guy would hate the weakness of a slack tongue.

  “He is a good man.” Rosalind shifted her legs restlessly. “Guy promised to help me. He knows if Du Basson discovers me like this, he will never let me see my boys again.”

  They sat; waited. Guy must have noticed their absence by now. Would he be frantic? Helena had to smile at the notion of a frantic Guy. Nay, he would wear his grim expression and appear calm, deadly, intent on his purpose.

  “I am afeared,” she whispered at last.

  “Aye, he is a bad one.” Rosalind didn’t need to explain whom she meant.

  Somewhere deep in the night a fox barked, a melancholy yip that sent shivers down Helena’s spine. The silence was more terrible than anything. In the quiet, it became harder and harder to keep the fear at bay.

  “He was wed to my sister. He killed her,” Helena murmured softly.

  “How?”

  “Slowly.” She ached, remembering. “He squeezed the life out of her day by day until Bess just lost the will to live.”

  “Did he beat her?”

  “Aye.” Cold rage washed away Helena’s fear and she clung to the strength it gave her. “Bess would never say, but there were always marks on her flesh. At first, she came often. Then her visits became less and less. Finally, she did not come at all.”

  Rosalind didn’t offer any words of comfort or sympathy and for that Helena was grateful. They sat, bound together by an ages-old feminine understanding, sharing the burden of their womanhood, the pain and the cruelties.

  Something caused Helena to look up. The man on the cot was awake and staring at them. Had he been listening? She nudged Rosalind as excitement coursed through her. What a victory, to have snatched this man’s life away from Ranulf . . .

  Even for just a few hours.

  Chapter 27

  Guy paid no mind to the guards dicing in front of his prison. They were the least of his concerns. He’d been chained and left in the dungeons beneath the keep. The king worried he might escape. It was a just concern.

  He shifted to ease the pain in his shoulder. As he sat in the dank confines of the keep, each ache and pain inflicted on him by his jailers made itself known. A wiser knight would have gone quietly and chosen to fight another day.

  Where Helena was concerned, Guy was not a wise knight.

  She wasn’t at Dartmoore. Ranulf had been too happy to allow his castle to be searched. The emissaries would return on the morrow or mayhap even the next day and they would report nothing amiss there. The whoreson had secured her elsewhere.

  Clever, blasted Ranulf. He had played Guy and the king like a pair of lyres.

  Guy had lost his mind in the hall. Sweet Jesu, the pain of failure was worse than the combined hurt of all his bodily wounds. He had failed her. His wife was in danger and he was chained to the wall like a common villein. Despite all his lofty principles and his smug certainty he wasn’t his father’s son, in the end he had behaved exactly like his sire. He had lashed out like a wounded beast and, in so doing, condemned his lady to die.

  “Well, that was pure idiocy.”

  Guy’s head jerked up at the snide comment. Bridget stood on the other side of the bars with a water basin and some cloths in her hand. She turned to address one of his guards. “Open this door, you oaf. Let me see to his wounds, so the king will have a good body to swing.”

  The men grumbled, but none were stupid enough to ignore Bridget. One of them got up to let her in. He locked the bars behind her.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself?” Bridget set the basin on the floor. An astringent smell rose from the container as she dipped a cloth into the water.

  “Aye.”

  “You daft sot.” Bridget slapped the cloth on his cheek. It stung like the very devil. Before he could jerk his head back, she had him by the ear to keep him in place. “Your scouts are back,” she whispered.

  Guy went very still.

  “Just within the forest there were some tracks, a man and a woman.” Her tone dropped, so low that the men outside could hear nothing.

  Guy nodded.

  “Stop squirming,” she chastised him loudly. “Any man that takes eight to bring him down can put up with a little witch hazel.” She dabbed at the corner of his mouth and he flinched again. A ministering angel she was not, but Guy’s entire being focused on what she might say next.

  “They went south, the man leading and the woman trailing. There was no sign of a struggle.”

  That was one thing at least. Not much, but enough for him to breathe again.

  “They were joined by another woman,” Bridget continued. “This one was heavier, not walking comfortably.”

  “Rosalind,” Guy guessed.

  “No names,” she reprimanded. Then, louder, “Oh, do not be such a prude!” She ripped his tunic with one deft yank just as a few of the men looked up, then nudged each other knowingly. “I’ve seen more naked men than I care to.”

  She hissed at the sight of dark bruising across his ribs. “They did not spare you, did they?”

  Blue and red marks mottled his chest, turning ripe purple in a large patch over his left side. He vaguely remembered a boot to that region.

  “This will hurt. You might want to yell,” she advised softly. As the cloth hit his ribs and Guy let loose with a shout of pain, Bridget muttered, “Willie came. He says Rosalind has been missing for the same amount of time as Helena.”

  Water slopped over his chausses and onto the earthen floor as Bridget crawled around to his other side, dragging her basin across the floor. “Ewayne followed the tracks for a while. They were making no attempt to hide their traces. They stopped in a clearing.” She paused and roughly doused his stomach with more water.

  Guy cursed alou
d even as he nodded in understanding.

  “There were men waiting for them. At least three. There were signs of . . .” Her words trailed off to nothing.

  “Signs of what?” Guy had to make an effort to keep his voice low and controlled.

  “Blood. Some attempt had been made to cover it up, but there was a lot of blood.”

  The edges of his vision darkened. He feared there was more.

  “The men left, but they had a spare horse with them,” she whispered. “It was shod as a pack animal, not a destrier, and it was heavily loaded.”

  “Heavy enough for a body?”

  “Or two people. I sent a man after the horses, but I wanted to discover the source of the blood. It was Colin.”

  Relief washed over Guy, dizzying and sweet in its fervour. “Where is he?”

  “Dead.” Bridget wrung out her cloth and went to work on his broken knuckle. The manacles on his wrists clanked loudly over the floor. “He took a stomach wound from a sword. It was not an easy death. There was no sign of a fight. He was ambushed or taken by surprise.”

  “Or mayhap he already knew what was about to occur.” Guy had to close his eyes and fight for calm. The rage threatened, just on the other end of madness. That little bastard had betrayed her. It was a pity Colin was already dead, for Guy would have taken great delight in exacting penance from the whoreson.

  “Aye.” Bridget gathered up her things.

  “The men and horses?” Guy stopped her as she creaked to her feet. “Which way did they lead?”

  “Southeast.” Bridget’s gaze met Guy’s.

  It made sense. Ranulf wouldn’t risk them going anywhere close to Dartmoore.

  Bridget worked more of her strange sort of magic while Guy mouldered below the keep. Messages were sent and arrangements made without him being any the wiser. The first he knew of it was when Willie and his nimble fingers appeared at the door of his cell to free him.