by Nicole Locke
He glanced at her clothing. Her reasoning was sound. Everything explaining Eldric wouldn’t be. Her father had sent her to kill him. If her father knew she yearned for him, he’d never take her back and she could never save her sister.
‘You’ve never been captured before. A man who knew you?’
‘A man who believed me an enemy and to him I am. It was Eldric of Hawksmoor.’
Her father let out an almost gleeful chortle. ‘That took time.’
‘Time, but now it’s done and I sought you out immediately.’
‘A true penance.’ He cocked his head. ‘There’s that sound again.’
‘Your men are next door. The walls were always thin. If there is trouble, one of them would have come here.’
‘True. They are good men. Not the best. You were trained better. Which always made me wonder why you didn’t immediately kill that spy.’
‘I shot my arrow three times at that man.’
‘Yes, but three times you grazed him. That first time, you merely killed his friend. Hardly a satisfying end.’
His words were a stab to her chest. If Thomas hadn’t moved at that moment, she could erase Eldric’s grief! Eldric, who didn’t deserve her guilt. How long must she remind herself of that?
‘Isn’t one English warrior as good as another?’ she said.
‘But something wasn’t right about that either. I saw your arm, you weren’t aiming for his friend. I think it was an accident. And as for the other two times...to miss your target twice more? I couldn’t suffer it! I had to let loose my own weapons to kill the others.’
‘Why didn’t you kill Eldric?’
‘Everything I do is to train you so you can become a better warrior than any we face. I ordered it and therefore you were required to kill him. The others felled by my own hand were simply to ease my annoyance.’ He smiled. ‘But now my annoyance has ended since you are here after he captured you. How did you finally kill Edward’s spy?’
‘He hid my weapons and, when I could, I gave him a tincture.’
‘Poison. Well done.’ He eyed the dried blood on her neck. ‘I’ve created you well. Yet...why did you harm me that day I faced the Buchanan and Colquhoun? Me, the one who loved you most. We were close to finishing our mission. I would have laid the world at your feet.’
Always back to that day. Her father wouldn’t understand if she told him she was brimming with Mairead’s grief and frustration. There was nothing she could say. She’d already bled for him this day. The sting in her neck from his dagger wasn’t enough, her poisoning of Eldric barely registered. What else ever satisfied Sir Richard when his anger was at its peak?
Ah.
‘Take out your dagger, Father.’ Turning to her side, keeping her gaze on him, Cressida knelt. Felt the unforgiving cold of the floorboards seep into her knees. This wasn’t like before when she apologised. Now she knew she had to do more.
Sweat pricked her back as unwanted memories lashed her heart. All these years and the feel of this posture was familiar. She swore she felt the cuts against her back all over again. She’d suffer them as many times as she had to, to rescue a child from the fate she’d been met.
‘What do you play at?’ he said.
She lifted her tunic to show him her back. ‘Many a winter I was left in the trees by your camp, but for the first time in my life, I felt the cold. You won’t trust me, so I will do what I must to secure that trust once again.’
He dropped his empty goblet, she heard the whisper of a released dagger. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, this pleases me very much.’
His voice was steady...but his eyes held that maniacal gleam of victory and that look she understood now. Lust.
She shivered again. Braced herself for whatever he’d do to her. Now that she fully understood this man, whatever he decided, whatever action committed, would scar her back...and her soul.
But she’d do anything to save her sister, for the chance to return her to a happy home. One that could never be Cressida’s.
When she felt the prick this time, she knew, absolutely knew, he would slice along the scars he’d already made. She slowed her heart. Exhaled and prepared for the worst.
An explosion of splintered wood!
Her father spun, sliced her back. ‘What have you brought to my—?’
The door slammed open and Eldric stormed into the room. Dark clothing, even darker expression. His hair unbound, his blue eyes blazing.
A vengeful angel and one who was not welcome.
Chapter Fifteen
Eldric almost collapsed the moment he took in the room. Cressida kneeling, a man with a dagger, the bright stream of blood trickling down the pale curve of her spine. The angry welt of the freshly stitched wound a glaring reminder of what she already suffered.
‘No!’ Leaping over the space, ramming his elbow into her captor’s weapon arm, shoving him to the floor.
Why he didn’t kill him immediately he didn’t know. Instinct? Cressida’s warning gasp?
A gasp he knew with utter certainty wasn’t for his well-being, as he raised his gaze to her. Her pale hair was ruthlessly plaited back, her expression absolutely devoid of any emotion. Gone was the elusive vulnerability that had once captivated him. This wasn’t the woman he’d held, touched, kissed. Everything in her was as still and silent as death.
This woman was one he’d never truly met. She was as he always imagined her being: the Archer. His enemy, a nemesis, a killer, her demeanour as iron-clad and cutting as the weaponry she wielded.
Except...except her tunic was still hitched around her hips where she had pulled it up to present her back to the man he had captured beneath his body.
He ruthlessly dug his knee into her father’s shoulders. The man’s grunt was merely a low chuckle. He hitched his arms further back and revelled in the hiss.
‘Release him, warrior, or I would think you mean ill will to us both and will act accordingly.’
Her voice. When had she ever spoken to him in such a cultured monotone? Even when she pretended to be a healer, there was a softness to her. When she became Cressida she swayed him with the emotion in every syllable that fell from her lips.
When he said the words he should never have said, her words wobbled, then shouted her disappointment. Now she was only empty glare and empty words.
How long had he been incapacitated by her potion, delayed by the search and the mercenaries he fought to gain entry? What had she endured in the time he couldn’t get to her?
His eyes locked on hers. ‘You poisoned me. Left the ship. This is your father, isn’t it? I have him beneath my knee. Tell me what to do.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What to do? I thought it was clear, when I fed you that tincture, what I desired from you. I poisoned you just as you expected I would.’
She’d poisoned him to keep him on the ship to protect him from this insignificant man, from the mercenaries whom he’d already dispatched. There was no danger. They simply needed to retrieve the child and return to the ship. There he could apologise to her. Explain what a fool he’d been.
He’d heard the exchange between father and daughter. The secrets revealed! He needed to tell her his secrets. Tell her everything.
But what to do when she acted so at odds with who she truly was? He was here—couldn’t she see that the danger was over? He scanned the room; listened for any outside disruption. Nothing. Yet her expression never changed. Did she know something he did not? He would proceed with caution.
‘I never expected poison,’ he said. ‘Nor was it something I wanted.’
A slight curve to her lips that did not soften her eyes. ‘I poisoned you as I always wanted. As you deserved.’
Her eyes. There was what he was looking for and hoping never to see.
He was a fool. An utter fool. This woman before him wasn’t cold and distant beca
use she was hiding some scheme, because she played some game. It was because he had hurt her. His words he never should have said, that he could never take back, had done this to her.
The man attempted to rise. Cressida’s attention went to him.
‘Release my father, warrior, or else you’ll wish the poison had done it’s foul deed.’
Her father, who had held a dagger to her back, who had injured her already. A trail of dried blood curved like a macabre necklace along the pale column of her neck.
Release this man after all she had shared, after what he’d done, what Eldric knew he would do again? This man who’d kidnapped a child and meant to do them all harm.
He wanted, needed, to deny her. But he’d only deny the Cressida from before. This woman was not she. Until he apologised for the rest of their lives, he needed to grant her what she desired. Her father. A man who, no matter how foully, had raised her.
With a curse, Eldric released him and stood in front of the exit. Cressida grabbed a table linen and went to her father, felt along the arm he’d pummelled and twisted.
‘It’s not broken,’ she said, wrapping the linen around it.
The man remained on the floor, cradling his limb, a sweat on his brow.
There was some resemblance between them. Their height, the pale hair, though his was much darker than his daughter’s and his eyes much paler. Unlike his daughter, however, everything about him was withered. An odd glint to his eyes, though he was in pain.
Eldric had just fought five men far more trained than he’d ever encountered before. If he hadn’t had the element of surprise, he wouldn’t have succeeded. But he hadn’t felt fear at all, not once, until now. This diminished man with colouring similar to Cressida, but with none of her elegance, none of the warmth in her gaze, but a fanatical sheen, chilled him to the bone.
‘She was supposed to kill you,’ the man gasped. ‘Help me up.’
‘Forgive me, Father.’ Cressida supported her father until he stood.
Eldric glanced to the woman who seemed infuriated by his arrival. He didn’t know what to expect when he pursued her, certainly not her rushing into his arms because he’d rescued her, though a part of him wished for nothing else. But this wasn’t anything he could fathom. Siding with the man who had harmed her, asking for his forgiveness! He needed to step carefully. To hold back.
But the battle roared in his veins. His sword hand twitched. He wanted nothing more than to rage and fight. To finish this. He must, he must hold!
‘The amounts of poison it takes to harm me varies, but the quantity is not for the weak-hearted. Most would get it wrong.’ He addressed her father, said what needed to be clarified in case...in case this miniscule man intended harm. Cressida might side with her father, but he would continue to protect her.
‘Pity. Healing is such an inaccurate occupation and it would have made it simpler if you were dead already.’ His gaze swung to the door. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘He’s felled our men, Father,’ Cressida said.
The man’s eyes turned calculating. One man. One trivial man and no other enemies to surprise him, but somehow Eldric didn’t like his odds of surviving this encounter. Not with Cressida acting as she was.
She had been...she had been kneeling before this man, presenting her scarred back to her father’s dagger. Now, she stood beside him as if to protect him. And all this time she’d known Eldric had killed the other mercenaries. Eldric clutched his sword. Willed his arm to remain still.
Cressida’s father was evil incarnate. There could be no good in him. None. He’d harmed her! Even now her tunic was plastered to her back from the cut he had given her. This man would be dead but for the woman who stood beside him.
Again, he had to re-evaluate everything and came to only one conclusion. She knew everything and there was nothing to hide. He’d apologise, but only in private, when he could confess. Declare all of himself. Dedicate his life to her. God’s heart, he wanted that now!
‘Tell me what to do with him,’ he demanded of her. ‘What is his fate?’
‘Do what with whom, Eldric of Hawksmoor?’ The man smirked. ‘Hmm, hardly polite, my not introducing myself. I am Sir Richard Howe, at the English King’s demand.’
Cressida gasped.
‘Don’t worry, dear, he won’t live long enough to tell the tale,’ Howe said.
‘Your men are dead,’ Eldric said. ‘How do you think to rid yourself of me when I intend to live long enough to kill you?’
‘Now I know those were the sounds I heard earlier. The ones you dismissed, my daughter.’
‘I gave him the tincture held in my boot. The one you perfected. I thought it stronger than that. I don’t know how he found me. Nor is he welcome.’
‘Where are our manners? Of course he is welcome. I had always wanted to meet one of Edward’s privileged men.’ Howe wagged his finger. ‘You understand, though I attempted to prevent it, it was only a matter of time before we met. I know friends of yours and have heard many tales.’
Eldric feared to ask whom he knew. Were they merely other of Edward’s spies, or the friends he protected, Robert and Hugh?
Everything about this meeting seemed fated. There were too many coincidences, too many ties between them. Years of entanglements until they were all snared. Trapped. Is that why Cressida acted the way she did—was she trapped? Where was his training? As a spy, he knew to observe, to wait, but the longer he stood, the more the warrior side of him emerged.
‘They were clever like you,’ Howe continued. ‘How did you find us?’
He shrugged. ‘Fortune.’
No matter how much training he had, Eldric wasn’t prepared for the outcome before him. When he had woken, he knew Cressida had fled the ship.
After a few choice words with the Commander, who pointed the way, he came to the cluster of houses. All the while he searched, he worried she could be somewhere else beyond, where he couldn’t find her.
The desperation, the words he had stupidly accused her with pounded in his head, his heart. One look. One look from her as she accused him of being a coward was all it took for him to remember who she was and who he needed to be for her. Not some naive warrior, but a man prepared to make the difficult decisions for her...with her.
He searched and searched until he heard her voice, heard words that he couldn’t quite comprehend. So he stepped closer to listen, which was a mistake. Five men with swords rushed out of the attached house. Mercenaries who had to be killed.
But no matter how brutal the fight, no matter how much he was knocked back, none of it affected him as significantly as this seemingly simple conversation. None of them affected him like the truth.
He’d heard almost all the conversation between Cressida and her father. Heard about the Jewel of Kings, about Warstones and Buchanans and Colquhouns.
Heard that Cressida hadn’t killed his friends. Thomas! It had been but an accident!
And even with all these certainties, he could tell her none of it. Not with her father watching them both, not without understanding what he’d landed himself in.
The father must be attended to before he could have Cressida again. He knew what mistakes he had made, but he didn’t know what had transpired while he recovered. He didn’t know what her decision would be when it came to him, her father or the sister they’d agreed needed rescuing.
But his patience, his training, was fraying when faced with the ultimate truth: he didn’t know whether he’d get a chance to love her.
* * *
Cressida felt the dull prick in the back of her neck. The sharp wetness of her tunic sticking to the fresh wound in her back. Everything else about her was numb.
Eldric was here. Eldric who rushed in, took down her father, killed his mercenaries, all as if he cared. His eyes, blue, clear, looking on her with determined devotion. Then the c
onfusion as she stared blankly at him, determined not to reveal any of the treacherous emotions overwhelming her when it came to him.
Now, now he looked as if he valued her. As if she was some prize he could never win. Cressida refused to believe any of it. Yet she hated he was here confusing her. He thought her soul beyond repair, that she could never be good. Never...right.
Eldric had told her that, so why was he here?
Worse, she wanted to poison him again, but not to kill him as she told her father. She wanted to save him. Foolish man! She’d done it to protect him. To keep him on that ship, to never become entangled with her father, his spies, the Warstones. His insurmountable alliances. Even if her father died, there would be others and more after that.
When Eldric took her to the Tower, he might as well be right along beside her.
All the while, for her sister’s sake, she stood beside her father. Because her father was cunning, because Eldric had killed some men, but she wasn’t certain he’d dispatched them all. Because she needed more answers from her father.
But her intentions wavered under the useless hope Eldric’s presence created. She couldn’t help but think they had a chance. He’d killed the mercenaries. Her father’s arm was harmed and he was no match against Eldric. Better still, the child should still be safely ensconced in the attached house.
What chance? Eldric had said those words to her. He’d made clear he didn’t want her.
She couldn’t trust either of them. She only had herself and her sister only had her. She would not fail the child.
‘Fortune brought you here!’ Her father laughed. ‘We’ll see how fortuitous it is for you soon enough, shall we? In the meantime, would you care for wine? I’m afraid I don’t have any food left.’
‘Father, what would you have me do?’ Cressida said, pleased her voice remained devoid of her thoughts.
Eldric’s gaze went to her. His stance ready to fight, his eyes... Was he pleading? ‘I won’t dine here. I’m...done with this. What’s going on? Tell me.’
‘You can leave, Eldric, and never return,’ she said, ‘or, since you dispatched my father’s men, I can fight you.’