by Tamara Leigh
He jerked at the voice so near his ear he felt its gust, grimaced as he drew breath amid the odor curling into his nostrils. Desperate to place himself, he sought saliva and found a small pool beneath his tongue. Scooping it onto his palate, he held it there.
“He is conscious,” the voice once more assailed Griffin.
“Now.” The answer was distant and gruff, and as Griffin’s consciousness further roused, fingers scraped the back of his injured scalp and the hairs protested as they were gathered tight and his head yanked up.
Even before the face of the one before his own shed its blurred planes, before he noted the fairly recent cut that ran jaw to cheek, which Thomasin had dealt to avoid ravishment, he knew it. Otto.
Aye, Griffin de Arell lived, though it was intended he would not much longer.
He did not know what made him smile, but he felt how uneven that unfitting expression was and thought of Quintin, who had hated it ere she loved it.
“This will make you scream,” Otto said, though what shone from the eyes above that mouth belied satisfaction. Weariness there. Fear. Regret.
As Griffin swallowed the precious saliva, he mused it was good he was not alone in feeling regret. And if there was any way to cast off the fetters he was only now becoming aware of, he would make certain the last thing this one felt on earth was regret so keen all of him would be flayed ere hell embraced him.
“Now!” That other voice again.
Griffin slid his gaze to the right. By the light of a dozen candles and slices of day shining through the seams of shuttered windows, he saw the figure before a set of doors, a black cloth wrapped around his head and lower face.
Realization struck, but not as to the identity of the one giving the orders. That Griffin knew and was certain was the same who had landed the flat of a sword to the back of his head. It was the place to which he had been brought that surprised—the small church outside the village of Cross where he and Quintin had wed.
If he looked left, he would see the altar before which the nuptial mass had been intoned, if he looked down, he would see the kneeler upon which he had perched beside his wife to pray for their marriage. And to which he was now bound, the padded bench beneath his knees, the raised wood shelf beneath his upper chest and shoulders. It was the latter that caused him the greatest pain, his weight on the shelf pressing the arrow deeper. But though tempted to raise that shoulder to relieve the pressure, it likely kept him from bleeding out.
Strain and numbness in arms stretched taut over the front of the kneeler, wrists secured by a rope whose tension he felt in his ankles, he guessed the rope was threaded beneath the kneeler to ensure he remained hunched over with his back exposed—his flesh bared.
Whatever awaited him, and he could imagine it, having seen what had been done to Serle, he would want to scream, and who would hear him but—?
He yanked his thoughts around and was ashamed to only now question the fate of the priest who had wed Quintin and him. Had they killed him?
Returning his gaze to the one who was to do the other’s bidding, he snarled, “Where is the man of God?”
“Absent.”
Did Otto speak true? Was the priest ministering to the villagers? Before Griffin could enquire further, the one at the church doors shouted, “Do it now! They draw nearer.”
Once Griffin made sense of that last, he was suffused with the satisfaction of knowing the Foucaults were as trapped as he—that Boursier, Verdun, and De Arell men were outside the doors.
No longer feeling the strain at the roots of his hair, realizing he held up his head though fingernails dug into his scalp, he determinedly raised both sides of his smile. “Aye, boy, do as told.”
The younger man drew breath through quivering nostrils, exhaled against Griffin’s brow. “’Twill be over all the sooner do you scream,” he said so low it seemed his words were meant only for Griffin.
Griffin stared at him, then said loud, “Now, knave, ere Simon Foucault once more turns his knife on his beloved son.”
Otto’s eyes sprang so wide his lashes bent beneath his eyebrows.
“Aye, I know you lied when you told Verdun your father died in France,” Griffin pushed his voice to a strength that made his throat feel bloodied. “We all know, just as King Edward shall soon learn the truth of the mercenary who serves him for his own ends.”
Footsteps sounded—boot soles scraping, leather uppers creaking. As they advanced, Griffin chuckled at the color draining from Otto’s face. But then his throat closed, and he coughed to open it. The jerk of his bent body thrusting his shoulder against the wood shelf and driving the arrowhead deeper, he suppressed a groan and called, “You would have a boy work a man’s ill? Of course, mayhap this mistake of your loins is more man than you.”
The boots halted to his right, and he peered sidelong into eyes the same color as Quintin’s. “Whether you call yourself Sir Francis Cartier, mercenary of King Edward, or Simon Foucault, baron of naught, you lose.”
Seeing Foucault draw an arm back, he was prepared for the blow and the cut of the ring from cheek to nose that was little compared to the injury dealt his shoulder and the back of his head. Next a blow that would bruise his jaw, and another that would swell his eye closed.
You are not thinking much, he told himself. You are not thinking at all. Think, Griffin, else regret will be the death of you.
“How long have you known?” the mercenary demanded.
Discovering Otto had released his hair, Griffin turned his face back and saw Simon Foucault had dropped his head covering down around his shoulders.
“Long enough to lay the trap into which you blundered.” Griffin deliberately moved his gaze over the puckered skin of the man’s lower face. “Hurts, does it not, those steel teeth tearing through the flesh of your deceit? Cracking the bone of your plan to put Kilbourne back together?” He sighed. “I had nearly given up hope of bringing you down this day—thought ’twould be the morrow ere we could try again—but of a sudden there was Otto.” He flicked his gaze to the son. “And now I am fair certain you are quite short on brigands. Thus, you are finished.”
He had not thought Simon Foucault could be more unsightly, but when his ruined mouth expelled a curse past bared teeth and gums, he was monstrous.
Griffin steeled himself, but when he jerked, it was from surprise that it was Otto who was knocked back by Simon’s fist.
“You showed yourself!”
Otto raised an arm before his bloodied face, splayed his hand as if that would prevent him from being struck a second time. “I vow, ’twas not my intention.”
“This night! You had but to remain out of sight, and this night we would have been inside Mathe, our blades dripping with the blood of our enemies!”
“You do not know Serle would have let down the ladders—that he would be able to access the garden passage!”
As Otto once more suffered a fist that collapsed him against the altar, Griffin quaked with the effort to contain the fiery pain of injuries stirred by anger. Telling himself strength would be wasted on raging against bonds he could not break, he forced himself to delve the reason Serle had not revealed he was to admit the brigands to Mathe this eve.
Because he had no intention of doing Simon Foucault’s bidding? Because he feared his family would further distrust him? Or had he held that knowledge close in the hope that if the three barons failed to end the Foucault threat, he might still save Constance—that, pressed, he would have let in the brigands?
Griffin quaked again. If Serle had revealed the attempt to breach Mathe this eve, the trap in the wood would not have been necessary. Instead, the trap would have been set atop the walls, and those who climbed the ladders slain. Rhys’s father and Quintin’s husband would not be here now.
“Serle!” The name ripped from Griffin’s throat like a blade scoring the inside of its scabbard as it was wrenched free.
And Simon Foucault laughed as he straightened from Otto whose gushing nose painted his
teeth red. “Not surprisingly, betrayal runs deep in your family.” He peered into Griffin’s upturned face. “A brother’s betrayal—more difficult to stomach, I wager, than that of men who vow to put their liege first. I almost feel for you, De Arell.” He looked back at Otto. “Get up. There are deeds to be done and messages to be sent.”
As his son gained his feet, Simon nodded at Griffin. “Do it.”
Otto unsheathed his dagger and moved behind and to the side of their captive. Then a hand was on Griffin’s back as if Otto sought to brace himself for what was required of him.
When Griffin felt the horizontal line cut into his flesh—the top of a T—he did not cry out as he had been warned he should.
“Deeper,” Simon commanded.
Otto did as told. But when only a groan escaped Griffin, Simon shoved a hand between the kneeler’s wood shelf and his captive’s shoulder and dug his fingers into the torn flesh around the arrow wound.
“Almighty!” Griffin roared.
“Ah, the price of dirt,” Simon bemoaned. “Never did your father believe ’twould be this high, hmm? And what pleases me most is the debt is far from paid.”
The next dig of his fingers shifted the arrowhead, and Griffin’s bellow nearly covered the pounding on the door.
“Simon Foucault,” Boursier called, “release the Baron of Blackwood and your deaths will be mercifully swift.”
“We should have left De Arell to die—should have ridden on!” Otto cried.
Folded over the kneeler, narrowly peering at beads of perspiration sliding down the hair before his eyes, Griffin anticipated the blow it seemed Otto did not—that which caused the dagger to slip and open their captive’s flesh where a cut was not intended.
As before, he withheld his shout, but Simon once more commanded it by jamming his fingers into the wound.
“God’s eyes!”
“Better,” Simon drawled, then called, “Move away from the door, else I gut him.”
Between deep breaths and the gnashing of teeth, Griffin listened.
“You know what he is thinking, De Arell?” Simon said. “That here is an opportunity to rid himself of an alliance he never wanted—to keep his sister out of your bed.”
Griffin considered the possibility, but the Bayard Boursier and Griffin de Arell of years past were no more. All Simon Foucault had spent his life upon had crumbled.
There—a murmur of voices and retreating footsteps.
Simon clicked his tongue. “Alas, your men and Verdun’s are with him.” He lowered his hand to his side and wiped bloody fingers on his tunic. “You secured the rear door, Otto?”
“Aye,” his son choked, then said with accusation, “We shall die here.”
“Quite possible.”
“I am not ready to die!”
“Pity. ’Tis easier done when one is ready.” Simon returned to Griffin. “You are not ready, are you, De Arell?”
Quietus, Griffin reflected on that which his father had only once spoken of, though Griffin suspected it was often on the old baron’s mind.
“You still have hope you may yet bed Quintin Boursier, hmm?”
Quintin de Arell, Griffin silently corrected. A good reminder of those for whom he had reason to live. Rhys. Thomasin. Quintin. He lowered his lids, imagined awakening with his wife curled against him. Watching her. Awaiting the opening of her eyes upon him—eyes not at all like Simon Foucault’s though the color was the same.
“If we take him with us under threat of death should they follow,” Otto said, “we might escape.”
Simon sighed. “They will follow, De Arell will die, and then we shall die.”
“We must try!”
With effort, Griffin lifted his head and peered across his shoulder at where Otto grasped his crimson-edged blade.
“We make our stand here,” Simon said.
“But—”
“’Tis decided, though if you are eager to say your last prayer, I can do this alone.”
“D-do what?”
“Take our revenge on those even more deserving than Ulric de Arell’s whelp. Now if you are with me, cut him.”
Otto’s throat bobbed, but he drew near again and once more set a hand on Griffin’s back. Then he made the cuts while Griffin pressed his tongue hard to his palate and turned his mind to what was being carved into his back. Two letters now. And when the word traitor wept crimson down his back, what then? Would they cut his chest as had been done Serle?
If so, it would require untying the rope binding him to the kneeler to turn him. And therein lay opportunity.
“And now we ask for terms,” Simon said. As the bracing hand on Griffin’s back tensed further, Simon said, “You will like these terms, De Arell.”
When he revealed them, Griffin shouted again, demanding in a voice he feared would not carry to those outside that the terms not be honored. But another blow to the back of the head returned him to the dark of what could as easily be death as life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lady Elianor did not suspect, worry and pregnancy-induced fatigue having taken her abovestairs minutes past.
Lady Thomasin did not suspect, worry and her offer to escort the other lady to her chamber having removed her from the hall as well.
Thus, it was all for Quintin to question the urgency surrounding Sir Mathieu when he entered the hall. With an obvious effort to appear as if naught were amiss, he ascended the stairs and went from sight.
Quintin glanced at the servant she had instructed to tell Cook to proceed with the stew of mixed meats for supper now it was too late to bring boar to table even if the hunting party returned to Mathe this moment.
Why have they not? she questioned what normally would not concern her. Often a hunt required substantial daylight hours to deliver enough meat to feed those who took their meals in the hall, especially when hosting a great number of guests.
“My lady?”
She looked to where Rhys sat at a small table across from Eamon, who had surprised the nobleman’s son with his knowledge of the game of chess that had occupied them these two hours.
“Aye, Rhys?”
“No boar for supper?”
“I fear not. And ’tis likely the meal will be served later than usual.”
“I grow hungry.”
“As do I,” Eamon said and received the usual—though increasingly less severe—reproachful look from his companion.
“Take yourselves to the kitchen. Cook will prepare something to keep you until supper.”
The boys murmured agreement but returned to their game.
As expected, Arturo came out from beneath a table to follow Quintin across the hall to the stairs, which would prevent Rollo from following.
Upon reaching the second floor, she heard Elianor’s and Thomasin’s voices behind the door of the chamber the Lord and Lady of Godsmere had been given and determined it was best neither was disturbed by what might prove unfounded suspicion.
“But you…” Quintin glanced at the wolfhound keeping pace with her. “…I do not suppose you will allow me to proceed alone?” When he began the ascent of the stairs beside her, she muttered, “Of course not.”
Not that it mattered. With or without Arturo, Diot would alert the old baron of a visitor, as evidenced by the little dog’s bark long before they reached the door.
As Quintin raised a hand to knock, the door opened.
“What do you here, my lady?”
“Discovering what you do here, Sir Mathieu,” she said loud to be heard above Diot.
He glanced at the growling Arturo. “I intend no disrespect, but I consult with the old baron on a matter I am certain your”—he cleared his throat, likely to mask having nearly named Griffin her husband—“betrothed would not wish you bothered over.”
She did not like the guardedness in his eyes, to which she had not been subject since before the day he had witnessed her marriage. “Your lord has sent word?”
His jaw shifted. “My lady—
”
“Is it the brigands? Did they take the bait?”
“Lady Quintin, I—”
Ulric de Arell called something she could make no sense of above the little dog’s din, then she was yanked inside in an attempt to keep out Arturo. But the wolfhound lunged past the door whose closing struck him in the haunches.
While Griffin’s senior knight cursed, the big dog raced forward and Diot sprang from the foot of the bed to the head where his master sat propped against pillows.
“Down!” the old baron shouted and swung the walking stick up off his lap and cracked the wolfhound across the muzzle.
“Arturo!” Quintin cried, hastening to where the dog backed against a wall and shook his head and rubbed it on a foreleg.
When she bent to him, he bared his teeth, and she drew back in remembrance of the day Griffin had prevented him from ripping out her throat. But then he lowered his lip and lifted his head toward her.
Relieved there was no blood on him, though that side of his muzzle would surely swell, she cautiously set a hand on his head and turned toward the bed.
Diot was tucked beneath an arm on the old baron’s far side, only his head visible. Blessedly, he had exchanged barks for growls.
Though tempted to berate Ulric for striking Arturo, Quintin knew it had been necessary to subdue the wolfhound. Looking from the masked man to the knight who had positioned himself between Quintin and the bed, she said, “Tell, Sir Mathieu.”
He glanced at the old baron and received a nod. “I have word of Baron de Arell’s capture by Simon and Otto Foucault.”
She sucked a breath, groped a hand down Arturo’s neck, and gripped his shoulder. “Is he…?”
“He lives and is held at the church outside the village of Cross.”
Where they had wed. “My brother? And Baron Verdun?” Had they been lost on some meadow defiled by slaughter?
“Minor injuries only,” the knight said, and as she thanked the Lord, continued, “It appears the brigands are defeated. Only a handful escaped.”
She swallowed. “How many brigands are in the church?”
“’Tis believed only Simon and Otto Foucault.”