by Tamara Leigh
“Dear Lord,” she prayed as she fastened the aged garment around her shoulders, “I repent all. Stay Agatha’s hand, preserve Boursier’s life. Amen.” She pulled the hood over her head and stepped outside.
Finding the day beset by the gentle flurry of an unusually early snow on this, the last day of autumn, she whispered, “Surely it can get no worse.”
CHAPTER SIX
Bayard dropped his head back against the wall and stared at the grate as the glow without crept within. Though it was slow to invade his darkness, his eye ached for having been too long without light.
Heart pounding as if beat into shape upon an anvil, he listened across the distance to determine how many he would face.
Only one set of footfalls.
Foolish confidence, he mused. Easy prey.
Maintaining the appearance of being chained to the wall, keeping still lest the clamor of metal alerted his captor, he squinted at the increasing light and hoped he would not be blinded by its brilliance if the torch was brought within.
The one outside the door halted, and the thrust of light against Bayard’s eyelid evidenced his captor peered into the cell.
Come, he silently entreated. Step inside so you might see how harmless I truly am.
There came the sound of the torch being fit into a sconce, then the scrape of a key.
The door groaned inward, but Bayard subdued the impulse to lunge to his feet. Easing his lid open, he focused on the shadow that moved across the floor as the mantled figure crept forward with a dagger in hand.
Never had waiting been so torturous, but at last his prey was too near for any outcome other than that which he’d had days to plan. With a crash of chains, he thrust upright, causing the one before him to gasp and stumble back.
The glare of torchlight in the passageway denying Bayard the satisfaction of looking upon the miscreant’s terror, he swung an arm and was satisfied when the meeting of chain and flesh roused a cry of pain. He swung the other arm and was further satisfied with metal striking bone.
His captor-turned-captive wheezed and toppled.
Chest heaving as if he were hours into a battle rather than moments, Bayard looked upon the still figure that wavered in and out of his vision, squeezed his eye closed, opened it wide. Catching the flash of silver near his prey’s hand, he swept up the dagger, then thrust a booted foot to the man’s side and flipped him onto his back.
A groan evidenced the miscreant lived despite the blood upon his visage that ran into dark hair drawn back from his face.
Though tempted to further bloodletting, Bayard focused instead on the slack, prominent jaw, sharp cheekbones, and high brow. When the features came together, he was not truly surprised to discover they did not belong to a man.
He stared at the one who had tainted his wine to aid Griffin de Arell in this abomination—just as she had tainted it years past to aid Bayard’s wife, Constance. Remembering the day he had discovered Agatha of Mawbry’s treachery and ejected her from his lands, he recalled her cold, still gaze, heard her vow that one day she would take all from him. And so she might have.
Stoked by hatred of a depth he had denied himself for years—so destructive its unleashing could as easily turn on the one who unleashed it—he struggled against the longing to end this now. To end her.
Gripping the dagger so tightly the crack of his knuckles echoed around the walls, he talked the terrible, black emotion down by telling himself it would be better if Agatha suffered long just as he had done.
After retrieving the keys from the door’s lock, he dragged the groaning woman to the wall and fit her with one of two remaining sets of manacles. She would live—for however long he allowed it. As for the chains, they were more firmly in the wall than his own had been. Thus, they would hold her.
He straightened. Bitterness but one of many foul tastes in his mouth, he set a key to the manacles binding his own wrists and was shaking with anger when the links hit the floor.
He looked one last time at Agatha and turned away. As he did so, he heard more footfalls. De Arell’s? Nay, the step was too light for a man of his size.
“Agatha!”
A woman’s voice. De Arell had sent two women to do his bidding? It lacked sense. Griffin de Arell was a man who, with his own hand, returned thrust for thrust, blow for blow, ruin for ruin.
“Do not!” the voice came again.
Bayard strode to the wall alongside the door and, dagger ready, mused that there would be a use for the remaining set of chains.
A mantled figure sprang inside. Moisture upon hair of a dark blond color, the ends of which were tucked into a wimple fallen down around her neck, the woman halted halfway across the cell.
El stared at the one slumped against the wall. Lax arms fit with chains, chin resting upon a chest marked with blood, the only movement about Agatha was the slight rise and fall of her chest.
As El took a step toward her, a fearsome sensation skittered up her spine.
Dear Lord, he is within!
Back crawling over the wrathful gaze upon it, she strained for sounds of movement. But The Boursier was as still as one whose prey was without recourse. Though she knew she was lost, she determined she would not yield without whatever fight she could summon from limbs battered by wind and snow that had turned fierce the last half hour of the ride.
She slid a hand beneath her damp mantle, with chill-stiffened fingers pulled her meat dagger and silently entreated, Lord help me.
She swung around.
Head bare inches from the ceiling, gaze lit as if by the fires of hell, he did not move.
El glanced at the dagger he wielded, gripped her own tighter. Were she granted a chance, where should she stick her blade? His gut? But if she managed that, would the short blade gain her freedom?
It would not. She knew it as surely as she had known Agatha had come to murder him. Soon she would be The Boursier’s.
He stepped forward. “I find the smell of your fear pleasing,” he said in a ragged, hoarse voice.
Just as Murdoch had liked the fear she had stubbornly denied him. She swept her dagger forward. “Come no nearer!”
He slid his own dagger beneath his belt, advanced on her.
Despite the longing to back away, she swung her dagger when he came within reach.
As if swatting a fly, he caught her wrist in a manacle wrought of bone and muscle, and dragged her toward him.
El bit back a cry, lost her breath when she fell against him. When she finally filled her lungs, she wished she had not, for he reeked of nearly six days of close confinement.
“A meat dagger!” he scorned.
Drawing air through her mouth, she followed his gaze to the short blade protruding from her fist. When she returned her attention to his face, she shuddered. His features were sinister, as much for the glitter in his single eye as the eyepatch with its scar above and below and a sennight’s growth of beard.
A muscle in his jaw convulsing, he pried her fingers from the hilt. “A fine dagger for a wench. Stolen, I wager.”
He thought her a commoner, not only as evidenced by Agatha’s tattered mantle, but that no lady would do as she had done. It was better this way, though, for it would keep his vengeance from Magnus.
He jerked her nearer, delved her face. “’Twas you who came to my solar. You I saw.”
She gasped. Agatha had assured her he would remember nothing of what he had seen, but he did.
“You at the market,” his foul breath spilled upon her face.
Then she had not been as deeply in shadow as she had thought.
“You and the witch will pay for all,” he rasped. “And your lord, De Arell.”
Of course he believed the Baron of Blackwood responsible for this. As Boursier had meant to take Thomasin de Arell to wife, it followed her father would try to prevent the match.
Though relieved it was not Magnus’s name spoken, El cringed at placing blame elsewhere, even if it was on the deserving Baron de Ar
ell.
“What day is it?” Boursier demanded.
She put her chin up. “A day too late for you.” At least, past the middling of night it would be. But no matter how swift his destrier, he could not reach Castle Mathe in time to wed Thomasin de Arell.
He bared his teeth. “Then too late for you, wench.”
El summoned her own anger. “I am not afeared of you, Bayard Boursier.”
“Nay?” His lips curled amid the dark growth of beard. “You shall be.”
Already she was. Everything she had suffered while wed to Murdoch would not likely compare to what this man would do to her, for he possessed what her husband had not—vengeance. But she would die before allowing Boursier to bask in her fear.
“Where is De Arell?” he demanded.
“I vow, he is unaware of this.”
“You lie. Tell me!”
She glared. “I have told you.”
Boursier thrust her toward the wall where Agatha was chained. “Then I have vengeance aplenty to wreak.”
He snatched up the third set of chains to do to her what she had done to him. But there would be no provisions for Agatha and her. And their imprisonment would not be limited to six days.
He pulled her around to face him and began to fit the manacle to her wrist.
Though she knew it was futile to resist, she brought her knee up with as much force as she possessed. And found her target.
He grunted but did not bend to the pain.
“Do you still like the smell of my fear, Boursier?” she taunted.
He dropped the chain, gripped her throat, and pushed her back against the wall. His body followed, pressing against her so she could not unman him again.
Brow moist, the muscles of his face twitching, he growled, “Accursed woman!”
“Miscreant!” she returned on the bit of air allowed her.
Chest rising and falling against hers, he stared at her, then stepped back. If not that he continued to hold her to the wall, she might have slumped to the floor.
Something drew his gaze lower and made him frown, then she felt his hand on her chest.
She yelped and renewed her struggles.
Unaffected, he pushed the mantle off her shoulders. “A lady’s dagger,” he murmured. “A lady’s garments.”
Dear God, she silently beseeched, spare Magnus my stupidity.
The Boursier arched an eyebrow. “Lady Thomasin, I presume?”
El did not know whether or not to deny it. She swallowed against his calloused palm. “I am not a lady.”
“I will not argue that.” He lifted the wimple that had come down around her shoulders and considered the fine material. “But you are Thomasin de Arell. My betrothed.”
A peasant woman with blood cut by that of the nobility. Was there any gain in allowing his assumption to stand? Middle ground, she determined. “No more your betrothed, my lord. You missed by a day.”
His gaze hardened further. “I ask again, where is your father?”
She gained a full breath past his grip. “And I say again, Griffin de Arell knows naught of what I have done.”
“I am to believe you and that witch”—he jerked his chin at Agatha—“did this alone?”
“I know it must pain you to be bested by women, but ’tis so.”
Bayard stared at the woman who continued to test his anger though he held her life in the squeeze of a hand—the same woman he had chosen to wed though she was not plain of face as told.
“You should have…” a strained voice spoke from below.
Bayard looked down.
Agatha’s bloody face was turned up, gaze upon her mistress. “…should have let me kill him.”
“You are unwell, Agatha?” Bayard scorned.
Her lids fluttered, but when they lifted again, her gaze was hard. “All you have lost, Boursier. Thus, I have made good my vow.”
“All?” he snarled. “But I have you and De Arell’s daughter.”
The woman startled so hard the back of her head struck the wall.
Bayard showed his teeth in what he knew was an ugly smile. “Aye, I know who she is.”
The frown upon her face faded. “Do you?” She shifted her gaze to the one who had aided her.
“I do.” Though he had intended to chain the younger woman alongside the older one, her identity changed all. He released the De Arell woman’s throat, gripped her arm, and dragged her toward the door.
“Agatha!” she cried as he pulled her into the passageway.
“God preserve ye, my lady!” the woman called.
God! Bayard silently scoffed. As if Agatha of Mawbry knows anything of that divine being!
He slammed the door. Though he had grown accustomed to the muted light within, the torchlight in the passageway was so glaring it felt as if a shard of glass had been driven into his eye. He squeezed it closed and opened it several times before seeking the key that would seal Agatha inside.
“Do not do this!” Thomasin de Arell beseeched. “You cannot leave her—”
“Can I not?” He thrust his face near hers and was momentarily distracted by how much more comely she was in full light. If this was plain of face, Elianor of Emberly must be radiant.
He turned, cranked the key in the lock, and reached to the wall sconce.
“At least leave the torch for her!”
“As ’twas left for me?” He swept it to hand and began pulling her down the passage. A moment later, he ground to a halt. “Almighty!” he shouted, rage turning his hands into fists as he stared at walls he had not looked upon in years. Such sacrilege to have been imprisoned in his own home!
A whimper at his side returned him to Thomasin de Arell, and he saw she had dropped to her knees. The reason for her collapse was his white-knuckled fist around her wrist. It surprised him that her fine bones had not snapped.
He eased his hold enough to allow her to catch her breath, then pulled her to her feet.
She stumbled after him into the main passage that ran from the keep to the wood. As he unlocked the door that accessed the keep’s walled passages, he paused at the further realization Agatha had possessed keys to Castle Adderstone’s secret defense. How had she come by them? How long had he been vulnerable to her?
He thrust the door open, pulled the De Arell woman through, and locked the door. “Now let us see what ruin you have made of my household, Lady.”
“No more your household,” she hissed.
He turned to her. “Until someone risks their life to take it from me, ’tis mine.”
She tilted her head, causing hair the color of ripe wheat to fall across her brow. “You will tell that to the king?”
He leaned near, breathed the scent of her that sharply contrasted with his reek. “Lady, deprive a man of all, give him naught to lose, and a beast you shall unleash.” Especially if ill had befallen his sister. “As Agatha told, you should have allowed her to kill me.” He frowned. “Why did you not?”
In her silence, he sensed what seemed unease, but then she said, “That you might suffer longer.”
He should not be surprised.
As he pulled her up the first flight of stairs, it struck him that the steps were likely the source of his aches and bruises. If it was true the De Arell woman and Agatha had acted alone, they would have had to drag him from the solar. But it was not to the solar they now returned.
At the first landing, he turned left and, shortly, halted before a door hidden by a tapestry on the other side. He thrust the torch in a sconce, pressed the catch, and opened the door.
The noises from within the hall evidencing a meal was in progress, Bayard pulled Thomasin de Arell out from behind the tapestry—to the gaping surprise of retainers and servants, the former being scarce in attendance. Most noticeably absent was his sister, Quintin.
The steward jumped up from the bench alongside the lord’s chair. “My lord!”
Father Crispin was the next to gain his feet. Something like a smile tugging at the corn
ers of his mouth, he closed his eyes, crossed himself, and moved his lips in silent prayer.
As for Quintin’s mother—Bayard’s stepmother—when there was finally movement about Lady Maeve, it was in the drop of her spoon to the table.
Bayard yanked his captive across the dais and halted before the steward. “Where is my sister?”
The man dragged his gaze from the De Arell woman. “Gone, my lord.”
“Gone?” Bayard’s shout lifted the man’s sparse hair off his brow.
“In search of you, my lord.”
Bayard growled. “If I have to reach down your throat to more quickly gain an explanation, I shall.”
“My lord,” the man said, “three days was all we could keep her from her foolishness. Two days past, despite our protests and those of her mother”—he glanced at the lady who now pressed a hand to her chest as if to calm her heart—“she took to mount and told she alone would search you out if none accompanied her. Thus, Sir Victor amassed a score of knights and thirty men-at-arms.”
Fifty to protect her. At least in that, Bayard’s senior household knight had been wise. “Rollo is with her?” The man-at-arms whose duty it was to accompany Quintin when she left the castle was surely at her side, but he needed to hear it, for there was none better to hold her safe.
“I fear not, my lord.”
“What?” It took every crumb that remained of Bayard’s self-control to not shake the man.
“His mother was ailing, and Lady Quintin gave him leave to go to her two days ere she departed to search you out. Certes, had he known what she intended, he would not have left her side.”
Bayard drew a deep breath. “Were her escort well provisioned?”
“Aye, my lord, lest the weather turned foul.”
“Their destination?”
“Castle Mathe upon the barony of Blackwood, my lord.”
Then Quintin also realized his disappearance stank of De Arell. For five days had—
Only five days had passed? This, the sixth day? He looked to the windows set high in the walls. The first of night shone through the oilcloths, meaning hours remained before all was forfeit. Hours, and here was his unwilling bride, and here a priest.