He said it so dramatically that she giggled. But there was something more in his meaning, something deeper as she began to recall the history of their association. His small statement had brought that about and her smile faded as she gazed into his handsome face.
“You have proven that from the start,” she said softly, her manner turning sincere. “I have not thanked you for the kindness and concern you showed me when you could have just as easily have disregarded me entirely. I am… grateful. Very grateful.”
It was the first genuine thing she had ever said to him and his heart softened. He began to feel that liquid warmth flow again and as he gazed into her lovely eyes, he realized that her words, her manner, were giving him hope. Hope that there might be something more than polite acquaintance between them.
“I will always show you kindness and concern,” he said quietly. “And I am your sworn servant for life.”
“For life?” she repeated, a smile on her lips. “That is a bold declaration, Weston. Your future wife may have something to say about that. She may not appreciate the fact that you have made such a declaration to another woman.”
He cocked an eyebrow, grinning as his dimples carved deep channels into his cheeks.
“I would not worry over that,” he assured her, watching her shake her head in amusement at him. His smile faded. “I swore the night we met that I would always treat you with respect. I meant it.”
Amalie was beginning to feel the warmth again, too. It flowed between them, binding them, filling them, until her heart was pounding loudly against her ribs. Weston’s warm blue eyes had that effect on her and it was increasingly difficult to resist him.
“I appreciate that,” she murmured. “More than you know.”
The warmth was drowning them both. Weston just stared at her, unable to look away, feeling something deep in his chest that he could not describe.
“Will you please answer a question?” he begged softly.
“What question?”
He looked rather pained, his mouth working as he searched for the correct words. “When… when I look at you, I see such beauty and strength,” he murmured. “I noticed it the night we first met and it grows stronger by the day. You have wit and compassion and honor; I have seen these things in you and it makes me increasingly troubled as to why a woman of your magnificence would try and take her own life. Can you please explain this to me? I truly wish to know because I am terrified that one of these days, I will not be there to save you from yourself. I feel as if I am living with an axe over my head, waiting for it to fall at any moment because I am still not certain you will not throw yourself from the battlements when I am not looking. It haunts me, my lady, in ways you cannot imagine.”
Amalie was staring at him intently as he finished his sentence. “But why?” was all she could think to ask, earnestly, as if she was desperate to understand. “Why would you feel this way? I am nothing more than a captive, the sister of your enemy. Why would you feel this way about me?”
His dark blue eyes were unguarded. “Because I do,” he said simply, but there was passion in his tone. “I do not know why I do, but I do. I cannot let anything happen to you and I need to know what is so horrible that you would feel the need to kill yourself. Do you not understand, Ammy? I would kill for you and I would die for you. I will protect you with everything that I am, always. But I cannot protect you from yourself and that sickens me. Will you not tell me why you would do this to yourself?”
She could hear his interest in her in his voice, his desire to have something more than a normal acquaintance with her, but her emotions were reeling and the most recent thoughts of a marriage she would never have suddenly weighed very heavily on her.
God, what she would have given for a marriage to Weston but it began to occur to her that if he remained at Hedingham for any length of time, the truth of her condition would eventually become apparent to him. He would see it and lose all respect for her; she knew it. She could not let that happen. She couldn’t stand to see his disgust for her in his eyes.
Tears began to fill her eyes, pain such as she had never known enveloping her. She felt as if she had been stabbed in the heart as the meaning of his declaration sank deep.
“Oh… Weston,” she breathed. “Why on earth would you say such things to me?”
He tried not to look embarrassed or contrite, realizing that he had said everything he’d wanted to say to her without truly spitting it out directly. He could only answer her with the truth.
“Because my heart tells me to,” he whispered. “I cannot explain it more than that.”
Instead of turning and running from him, she acted on impulse; moving to the man, she put her soft hands on his face and very gently kissed him on his left cheek.
Amalie dropped her hands and moved away from him quickly; the action was like the blink of an eye; quickly there, quickly gone, but the heat, the desire, had been unmistakable. Weston stared at her in astonishment as Amalie forced a tremulous smile.
“You are very kind and very sweet, Weston,” she whispered. “I swear that you do not have to worry about me any longer. What happened on the night you arrived… I was momentarily insane. I cannot tell you more than that but it will not happen again; I swear it. You needn’t worry over me any longer.”
Before he could say a word, she fled to the spiral stairs that led up to her chamber. Weston stood there, heart pounding, feeling her kiss on his cheek as the greatest single gift he had ever received. It had been soft, sweet, delicious. Had she not moved so quickly, he knew he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her deeply. He realized his hands ached to touch her, his arms to hold her. But she had fled swiftly, leaving him speechless and thrilled.
He wiped his fingers across the spot she had kissed, bringing them to his mouth and brushing his lips against them, wondering if he could taste her. He could.
Weston did not follow her when she fled. Amalie was a delicate creature emotionally and he knew she would not take it well if he followed her. She needed to be alone, to unwind herself, to breathe again after the emotional day she’d had. But he knew for a fact that he would have those spiral stairs closely watched for any sign of her.
He sent a servant to find Esma.
Chapter Seven
Weston was standing on the outer wall of Hedingham, watching the activity in the bailey below. It was a truly massive place that could house an enormous army. So far, he had six hundred men from Bolingbroke to command plus the two hundred personal retainers he had brought with him. With an eight hundred man army at his disposal, it was an impressive sight.
When he hadn’t been focused on Amalie since his arrival, he’d been surveying Hedingham and inspecting the troops. Since he was a man who liked strict order, the first thing he did was create an armory in the northwest tower of the outer wall because there seemed to be no central armory at Hedingham.
The second item on his agenda was to build a troop house to hold the bulk of the army which was, as of now, sleeping in any dry place they could find. Most of them loaded up in the banquet hall and in the galleries while a few of them found lodgings in one of the smaller outbuildings that was, for the moment, vacant.
Weston knew that it wasn’t a prime time of year to be building but he also knew it would give the men something to do, so he and his knights began to organize the men into groups; there were those that would collect rock and stone, those that would shape it, and those that would build. They had started their ambitious project yesterday and he was pleased to see that things were falling in to place.
His plan was to put the building against the western wall near the north tower and he stood now, gazing down on the men who were clearing away the foundation for the building. Heath was particularly good at building and he watched the red-haired knight down in the middle of the action, directing the men to clear away and compact a foundation that would, when finished, house close to five hundred men on two levels. He planned to incorporate a secon
d story into it. It would be a big building that would take up a good portion of the lower bailey but, fortunately, the lower bailey was enormous and had room to spare.
It was enough to keep his time occupied but he kept looking up to the enormous keep, imagining Amalie within the walls. Their last conversation still had him reeling; her soft kiss on his cheek, the sheer beauty of the woman. He’d caught glimpses of her humor, her wit, and it had him enamored just like everything else about her.
Weston could sense a tremendous amount of strength behind the lovely façade and it was something he wanted to get to know much, much better. The only reason he hadn’t flatly informed her of his interest was because she was still so emotionally fragile. He was afraid it would somehow upset her. So he had resorted to kind words and innuendos instead. At least he hadn’t driven her off. Not yet, anyway.
As he stood upon the battlements with his enormous arms crossed, watching the activity below, John mounted the ladder from the bailey and came to stand next to him. The big, bald knight made some small talk with him, shouted a few heckles down to Heath, before turning his full focus to his liege.
“How are your ribs?” he asked.
Weston twisted his torso gingerly. “Sore,” he said. “I will not wear this damnable wrap beyond today. The only reason I allowed the surgeon to wrap me was because Lady Amalie seemed so distressed about my injury. It was to ease her more than me.”
John’s gaze drifted from Weston’s torso to his face. He’d been spending a lot of time with Lady Amalie; they all knew it. She was a beautiful little thing so no one particularly blamed him, but rumors had already started about his interest in her, something that John doubted Weston was aware of. He’d been so singularly focused on the lady that there hadn’t been time for much else. His activity on the battlement right now was a rarity.
“She has been through a great deal, no doubt,” John commented. “Who knew that Sorrell was capable of such atrocities?”
Weston nodded faintly, watching Heath as the man surveyed off another section of digging. “If I ever see that man again, I intend to have serious words with him,” he said. “To beat a woman, any woman, is a travesty.”
John lifted his eyebrows; he, too, was watching Heath below. “It was not simply the beatings but the humiliation as well,” he said. “To announce to the entire castle of his conquest is purely despicable. It wasn’t as if he raped a lowly serving wench; he was speaking of a well-bred lady and should have kept his mouth shut. The man is no better than a dog.”
Weston was still gazing at Heath but as John’s words sank in, he lifted his head, struggling to process the words as if someone had spoken a foreign tongue to him. He didn’t quite comprehend at first. His gaze was fixed on the keep as he blinked, digesting the words, coming to understand them. Then, he looked at John.
“What did you say?” his voice sounded strangely confused.
John met his gaze. “I said that Sorrell was a dog. If I see that man again, I will….”
Weston cut him off, brutally, smacking him in the chest with an enormous fist. “Nay,” he growled, suddenly sounding quite lucid and dark. “Before that; what did you say about raping a serving wench?”
John wasn’t following him; he spoke as if it was something they both already knew. “I said that it wasn’t as if Sorrell raped a serving wench and boasted about it,” he said. “He abused the earl’s sister and then announced it to the entire castle. What kind of man would do that?”
Weston was staring at him with a stone-like expression, so tightly coiled that any small movement would crack him.
“Where did you hear this?” he finally asked.
John heard the tone, studied the body language, and began to realize that Weston must not have heard the rumors. The man had been so busy with Lady Amalie that he’d not spent much time with the men, at least not enough to hear what they knew about Sorrell. Most of Weston’s company had been kept with the lady or his knights, not the troops that had been here during Sorrell’s tenure. There was some fear in John’s expression as he replied.
“I heard it from some of Sorrell’s men,” he said steadily. “Were… were you not told this, West?”
The hand that had so sharply thumped him now grabbed at the collar of his tunic. “Told what?”
“That Sorrell raped Lady Amalie,” John said quietly. “The night he nearly beat her to death, he went about announcing his conquest of the lady for all to hear. I suppose it was his way of punishing Robert de Vere by brutalizing the sister. If you’d only speak to some of the men, they can confirm this. Sorrell told everyone who would listen that he raped the lady and was damn proud of it.”
Weston just stared at him, a strange slack-jawed expression coming to his face. It was clear he was shocked, but the truth was that he was beyond shocked. He was in the world of outrage and astonishment, so much so that he could hardly contain it. He couldn’t believe what he was being told but, in the same breath, it explained everything Amalie had been unable to tell him. She had admitted to being beaten, of course, but rape was an entirely different issue.
It was no wonder the woman had been trying to kill herself; the most precious thing she held of value had been brutally taken from her, shame beyond measure heaped upon her as a foolish commander had boasted of his deed. The thought of Sorrell brutalizing that petite, beautiful woman nearly had Weston exploding; his ability to contain himself grew weaker by the moment.
“What else do you know?” he growled.
John didn’t back away although he wanted to. “Nothing more to that regard,” he said honestly. “But I have heard some of the men say that you are following the same path that Sorrell did.”
“What does that mean?”
“That you are showing the same interest in her that he did right before he raped her.”
Weston let go of John’s tunic in a sharp gesture, stunned. His dark blue eyes were wide. “Are they truly saying that?”
John nodded. “They are,” he replied. “But they do not know you the way I do. They do not know that you are virtuous and chivalrous. I know you would never brutalize the lady and have told them so.”
Weston looked away, horrified. His hands formed enormous fists which he braced against the parapet, hanging his head as he digested what he had been told. It was difficult to consume everything at once but his most prevalent thought was of Amalie; he felt ill when he imagined her going through such fear and torture. She was a tiny scrap of a woman against a fairly large man. He was sure she had fought for all she was worth; he had seen it that night in the vault, the panic she had exhibited when she had awoken in the straw and realized Weston was next to her. Now, it all made sense.
Knowing she was compromised, his interest in her should have died at that very moment. For any other woman, it would have; chastity in a woman was the most important thing to him, more important than money or titles or connections. But as repulsed as he should have been, he found that he couldn’t bring himself to feel it. All he wanted to do was pull Amalie into his arms and swear to her that it didn’t matter. The problem was that he didn’t know if he truly could. His moral code told him one thing while his heart told him another.
He left the battlements without another word and made his way to the outer bailey, marching through the muddy rivers caused by melting snow. The keep loomed ahead and he looked up at the soaring walls against the blue expanse of sky. He had to see Amalie; he wasn’t sure what he was going to say to her but he knew he had to see her. His head, his heart, felt as if it was about to explode but he maintained his composure, struggling as he entered the inner bailey and made his way into the keep.
It was still and quiet as he made his way into the keep through the enormous fore building and took the stairs up to the great hall. A few servants were going about their tasks, two of them seated before the great hearth and stripping great bough of rushes from two huge branches. He could smell the pine. He continued up the spiral stairs until he reached the four
th floor where Amalie’s chamber was. Moving down the dark corridor to her door, he knocked softly.
His second rap pushed the door open slightly; it had not been locked. Curious, he pushed the door open further and was met with Esma and Neilie. Esma had garments in her hand and Neilie was sweeping near the hearth. When they saw Weston, they froze like frightened animals.
Weston noted their expressions as he moved into the room. The first thing he noticed was that Amalie was not there. He looked at Esma.
“Where is Lady Amalie?” he asked.
Esma swallowed. “She is not here, m’lord.”
His brow furrowed; he didn’t like the sound of that. “Where is she?”
Esma glanced nervously at her sister before taking a deep and steadying breath. “She told me to give you a message, m’lord.”
“Message?” Weston repeated, increasingly concerned. “Esma, where did she go? You know that you are not to leave her alone.”
Esma nodded quickly. “I know, m’lord,” she said. “She is not alone.”
“Then were in the hell is she?”
“The nuns are with her.”
He was thoroughly perplexed but rather than explode, he held up a calming hand. If he yelled, he would frighten the women and he’d never get anywhere that way. He took a deep breath to steady himself.
“Start from the beginning,” he said patiently. “What is Lady Amalie’s message to me and where is she?”
Esma clutched the few garments she had in her hands against her chest like a shield, as if to protect herself from de Royans’ anger.
“She said to tell you that she is very grateful for your kindness but she will no longer be a burden to you or to Bolingbroke,” the old servant had tears in her eyes. “She has gone to live with the nuns.”
Weston wasn’t much clearer than he was before. “Where?”
“In town,” Esma told him. “There is a nunnery that was started by Lady Amalie’s ancestor. The Benedictines live there.”
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