by Tamara Leigh
“I am.”
With a smile that revealed surprisingly white teeth, Agatha turned to lead her into the devil’s lair.
“I know what you do.”
Bayard had wondered how long before she stopped hovering and spoke what she had come to say. He returned the quill to its ink pot and looked up at his half sister who stood alongside the table.
Jaw brushed by hair not much longer than his, she said, “You will not sacrifice yourself for me.”
He wished she were not so perceptive. Though she had attained her twentieth year, she regarded him out of the eyes of the old. Yet for all the wisdom to which she was privy, she was a mess of uncertainty—the truest of ladies when it suited, a callow youth when it served. And Bayard was to blame, just as he was to blame for her broken betrothal. Had he not allowed her and her mother to convince him it was best she not wed, the king could not have dragged her into his scheme. Of course, it truly was advisable that she not take a husband.
“Pray,” she entreated, “wed the Verdun woman, Bayard.”
He would laugh if not that it would be a bitter thing. “I assure you, one Verdun wife was enough to last me unto death.” He curled his fingers into his palms to keep himself from adjusting the eyepatch.
Her brow rumpled. “Surely you do not say ’tis better you wed a De Arell?”
He shrugged. “For King Edward’s pleasure, we all must sacrifice.”
Her teeth snapped, evidence it had become impractical to behave the lady. “Then sacrifice yourself upon a Verdun!”
Never. Better he suffer a De Arell woman than Quintin suffer a De Arell man. Of course, he had other reasons for choosing Thomasin. The illegitimate woman was said to be plain of face, whereas Elianor of Emberly was told to be as comely as her aunt whose beauty had blinded Bayard—in more ways than one. Then there was the rumor that Elianor and her uncle were lovers and, of equal concern, that she had given her departed husband no heir. He would not take one such as that to wife.
“Hear me,” Quintin said so composedly he frowned, for once her temper was up, she did not easily climb down from it. “As Griffin de Arell already has his heir, ’tis better that I wed him.”
Feeling his hands begin to tighten, he eased them open. Regardless of which man she wed, regardless of whether or not an heir was needed, she would be expected to grow round with child.
He forced a smile. “’Tis possible you will give Verdun the heir he waits upon.” And, God willing, she would have someone to love through what he prayed would be many years.
Quintin drew a shuddering breath. “I will not give Magnus Verdun an heir.”
He sighed, lifted his goblet. “It is done, Quintin. Word has been sent to De Arell that I ride to Castle Mathe four days hence to wed his daughter.” Though the wine was thick as if drawn from the dregs of a barrel, he drank the remainder in the hope it would calm his roiling stomach and permit a fair night’s sleep.
He rose from the chair. As he stepped around his stiff-backed sister, he was beset with fatigue—of a sort he had not experienced since the treacherous woman who was no longer his wife had worked her wiles upon him.
“Make good your choice, Bayard,” Quintin warned.
He looked across his shoulder. “I have made as good a choice as is possible.” Thus, she would wed Verdun, and the widow, Elianor, would wed the widower, De Arell, allying the three families—at least, until one maimed or killed the other.
“You have not,” Quintin said.
Pressed down by fatigue, he stifled a reprimand with the reminder she wished to spare him marriage into the family of his darkest enemy. “If I give you my word that I shall make the De Arell woman’s life miserable, will you leave?”
She pushed off the table. “Your life, she will make miserable.” She threw her hands up. “Surely you can find some way around the king!”
He who demanded the impossible—who cared not what ill he wrought. Though Bayard had searched for a way past the decree, it seemed the only means of avoiding marriage to the enemy was to vacate the barony of Godsmere. If he forfeited his lands, not only would Quintin and her mother be as homeless as he, but the De Arells and Verduns would win the bitter game at which the Boursiers had most often prevailed. Utterly unacceptable.
“I am sorry,” he said, “but the king will not be moved. And though I have not much hope, one must consider that these alliances could lead to the prosperity denied all of us.”
Her jaw shifted. “You speak of more castles.”
He did. When the immense barony of Kilbourne had been broken into lesser baronies twenty-five years past to reward the three families, it was expected licenses would be granted to raise more castles. However, the gorging of their private animosities had made expansion an unattainable dream.
“Accept it, Quintin.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and crossed the solar. The door slammed behind her, catching a length of green skirt between door and frame.
Her cry of frustration came through, but rather than open the door, she wrenched her skirt loose with a great tearing of cloth—their father’s side of her. Later, she would mourn the ruined gown—her mother’s side of her.
Though Bayard had intended to disrobe, he was too weary. Stretching upon his bed, he stared into the darkness behind his eyelid and recalled the woman at the market. Not because of the comely curve of her face, but the prick of hairs along the back of his neck that had first made him seek the source. In her glittering eyes, he had found what might have been hatred, though he had reasoned it away with the reminder that his people had suffered much amid the discord sown by the three families. And that was, perhaps, the worthiest reason to form alliances with the De Arells and Verduns.
Curiously aware of his breathing, he struggled to hold onto the image of the woman. As the last of her blurred, he determined it was, indeed, hatred in eyes that had peered at him from beneath a thick shawl. A shawl that made a poor fit for a day well warmed by sun.
CHAPTER THREE
The squire made a final, muffled protest and slumped to his pallet.
“Now The Boursier,” Agatha said, pulling the odorous cloth from the young man’s mouth and nose.
For the dozenth time since slipping out from behind the tapestry, El looked to the still figure upon the bed. Though the solar was dark, the bit of moonlight filtering through the oilcloth showed he lay on his back.
El crossed to the bed. “Does he breathe?”
“Of course he does.” Agatha came alongside her. “Though if you wish—”
“Nay!” She was no murderer, and holding him captive would accomplish what needed to be done.
“Then make haste, my lady.” Agatha tossed the coverlet over Boursier’s legs so they could drag him down the steps of the walled passage. And drag him they must. Though the older woman was relatively strong of back and El was hardly delicate, there was no doubt Boursier would still outnumber them.
El put her knees to the mattress and reached to the other side of the coverlet upon which he lay. As she did so, her hand brushed a muscled forearm. She paused. It should not bother her to see such an imposing man laid helpless before his enemies, but it did. Of course, once she had also pitied Murdoch. Only once.
Returning to the present, she began dragging the coverlet over his torso. When she reached higher to flip it over his head, his wine-scented breath stirred the hair at her temple and drew her gaze to his shadowed face.
By the barest light, something glittered.
She gasped, dropped her feet to the door.
“What is it?” Agatha rasped.
El backed away. “He…” Why did he not bolt upright? “…looked upon me.”
Agatha chuckled. “It happens.” She pulled forth the cloth used upon the squire and pressed it to Boursier’s face. “But let us be certain he remembers naught.”
Would he not? Of course, even if he did, the glitter of her own eyes was surely all he would know of her. Heart continuing to thunder, El wa
tched Agatha sweep the coverlet over Boursier’s head.
“Take hold of his legs,” she directed.
El slid her hands beneath his calves. Shortly, with Agatha supporting his heavier upper body, El staggered beneath her own burden. Boursier seemed to weigh as much as a horse, and by the time they had him behind the tapestry, he seemed a pair of oxen. Perspiring, she lugged him through the doorway onto the torchlit landing.
“Put him down,” Agatha said as she lowered his upper body.
With a breath of relief, El eased his legs to the floor.
Agatha closed the door that granted access to the keep’s inner walls and jutted her chin at the wall sconce. “Bring the torch.”
El retrieved it, and when she turned to lead the way down the steps, a thud sounded behind. She swung around.
Agatha had hefted Boursier’s legs, meaning his head had landed upon the first of the stone steps. “Nay!” she protested. “We must needs turn him. His head—”
“What care you?” Agatha snapped, lacking the deference due one’s mistress. But such was the price of her favors.
Still, El could not condone such treatment, for a blow to the head could prove fatal. “We turn him, Agatha. Do not argue.”
“My lady—”
“Do not!”
Agatha lowered her eyes. “As you will.”
El assisted in turning Boursier and, shortly, Agatha gripped him about the torso. His feet taking the brunt of the steps, they continued their descent. At the bottom, Agatha dragged him through the doorway that led to the underground passage.
“Give me the key, and I will lock it,” El said.
Continuing to support Boursier, Agatha secured the door herself.
Trying not to be offended, El led the way through the turns that placed them before the cell.
When Agatha dropped Boursier inside, once more having no care for how he fell, El glared at her.
From beneath a fringe of hair that had come loose from the knot atop her head, Agatha raised her eyebrows.
El held her tongue. She supposed the rough treatment was the least owed one whose grievance against Bayard Boursier was great. Agatha had spent a year in his household serving as maid to his wife who had also been El’s aunt. For one long year, Agatha had aided Constance when Boursier turned abusive, and comforted her when he took other women into his bed. Given a chance, it was possible she would do the baron mortal harm.
El fit the torch in a wall sconce, then aided in propping Boursier against the cell wall. She tried not to look upon him as she struggled to open a rusted manacle, but found herself peering into his face. And wishing she had not.
She returned her attention to the manacle and pried at it, but not even the pain of abraded fingers could keep from memory her enemy’s dimly lit face—displaced eyepatch exposing the scarred flesh of his left eyelid, tousled hair upon his brow, relaxed mouth. All lent vulnerability to one who did not wear that state well.
“Give it to me.” Agatha reached for the manacle.
El jerked it aside. “I did not come to watch,” she said and glanced at Boursier’s other wrist that Agatha had fettered. Wishing the woman would not hover, she pried until the iron plates parted, then fit the manacle. As she did so, his pulse moved beneath her fingers—weak and slow.
Alarmed, El asked, “How long will he sleep?”
“As I always err on the side of giving too much, it could be a while. Perhaps a long while.”
“But he will awaken?”
Agatha shrugged. “They usually do.”
Murdoch always had.
“And most content he shall feel,” Agatha added.
As Murdoch had felt, which had many times spared El his perverse attentions, just as what she did this night would spare the De Arell woman Boursier’s abuse.
El extended a hand for the keys and, at Agatha’s hesitation, said firmly, “Give them to me.”
The woman’s nostrils flared, but she surrendered them.
El met the upper plate of the manacle with the lower. It was a tight fit, one that might make it difficult for blood to course properly, but she gave the key a twist. As she rose, she looked upon Boursier’s face and the eyepatch gone awry. She struggled against the impulse, but repositioned the half circle of leather over his scarred eyelid.
Behind, Agatha grunted her disapproval.
El considered the pack of provisions. There was enough food and drink to last six days, after which she and Agatha would release Boursier.
Though she wished she did not have to return to this place, Agatha was of an uncertain disposition—not to be trusted, El’s uncle warned. Not that the woman would harm the Verduns. She simply did not take direction well, firm in the belief none was more capable of determining the course of the Verduns than she. Thus it had been since Agatha had come from France eleven years past to serve as maid to El’s aunt.
“We are finished,” Agatha pulled her from her musings.
El knew they should immediately depart Castle Adderstone, but something held her unmoving—something she should not feel for this man who had stolen her aunt from another only to ill treat her. “What if he does not awaken?” she asked.
“Then death. And most deserving.”
Once more unsettled by Agatha’s fervor, wishing it had been possible to take Boursier on her own, El frowned in remembrance of how quickly the woman had agreed to help—and how soon her plans had supplanted El’s. Grudgingly, El had yielded to Agatha, who was not only conversant in this place, but had possessed the keys that granted them access to Castle Adderstone.
“Do not forget who he is,” Agatha said, eyes glittering in the light of the torch she had retrieved.
El peered over her shoulder at Boursier who was no different from Murdoch—excepting he was mostly muscle whereas her departed husband had been given to fat. And that surely made this man better able to inflict pain and humiliation.
Lord, what a fool I am! she silently berated herself for feeling concern for one such as he. It is no great curiosity that Murdoch made prey of me.
“Never shall I forget who he is,” she said.
Agatha lowered her prominent chin, though not soon enough to obscure a childlike smile.
Telling herself she did not care what pleasure Agatha took in Boursier’s suffering, El stepped from the cell.
As Agatha pulled the door closed, she beckoned for the keys.
“Nay,” El said, “I shall hold to them.”
The woman’s lids sprang wide. “You do not trust me, my lady?”
El longed to deny it, but said, “Forgive me, but I do not.” She locked the cell door.
Feeling Agatha’s ire, she followed the woman from the underground passage, taking the light with them and condemning Boursier to utter darkness. A darkness that would not lift for six days.
All of him ached.
With a breath that tasted foul and a groan that bounced back from walls that seemed too near, he opened his eye and blinked in an attempt to fathom the bit of light provided by torches lit about the inner bailey. But no glow penetrated the window’s oilcloth. All was black, as if he were blind.
He wrenched a hand toward his right eye and jerked when a rattle resounded around the room and metal links struck his forearm.
Disbelief slammed through him, then anger. Shouting above the clatter of chains, he thrust his arms forward. If anyone was near, they would know he had awakened from whatever had rendered him senseless.
A memory—there one moment, slipping away the next—stilled him. Was it something he had seen before whatever had drugged him had taken full effect? Something heard? Felt?
He groped backward, but that which he dragged forth had little form due to the darkness in which it was bred. There had been a glimmer as of one whose eyes gathered bare light. And a scent. But that was all he had of the one who had stolen him from Castle Adderstone. How—?
The wine! After all these years, had Agatha returned to make good her threat of ruin?
Forgetting his aches, he bellowed and strained against the manacles, but no one came to part the darkness that was so complete it returned him to the question of his sight. Had the last of it been taken from him? Was there light upon his face he could not see?
He touched his right eye. It was there, but in the presence of light, would it yet see him through the world?
He clenched his hands. Had Agatha stolen him from his bed? Likely. But it might also be Griffin de Arell who would not wish his daughter wed to a Boursier, regardless that his illegitimate offspring could not be dear to him. Then there was the possibility this atrocity involved both Agatha and the De Arells. Though the woman was occasionally seen on Verdun lands, Bayard’s men had caught sight of her on De Arell’s barony. Thus, Bayard was likely imprisoned at Castle Mathe.
He pressed his palms to the wall at his back and groped along the slick surface, but that beneath his fingers revealed nothing of the place at which he was held. His right hand brushed something. Another prisoner? If so, either dead or unconscious to have not been awakened by Bayard’s raging.
Grudgingly grateful for the length of chain that permitted movement on both sides, he felt a hand across what turned out to be a pack. He dragged it onto his lap and tossed back the flap. The first bundle he pulled out smelled of dried fish, the next was a loaf of bread, and there were two large skins of wine.
Provisions? Meaning none would be coming for him soon? Meaning he was not meant to die? Why? For the suspicion his death would cast upon the De Arells? For how long—?
“Six days!” he shouted and continued to shout until his throat felt as if sliced through.
He dropped his head back. If he did not escape before the last day of autumn, he would not wed the De Arell woman and Godsmere would be forfeited.
“Lord!” he called upon the one to whom Father Crispin would counsel him to turn. Even so, it was more a cry of anger and frustration than an appeal for aid.
Perhaps I should have chosen the Verdun woman, he silently seethed. It was as Quintin had pressed him to do. Quintin who was alone except for her needy mother. Quintin who did not always act upon the wisdom gifted her.