Protected by the Knight's Proposal

by Meriel Fuller

  ‘Do you blame me? If it hadn’t been for you, seeing me at the river, then we would have succeeded with this!’ Cecily wound the ribbon tie of her nightgown round and round her forefinger, tightening the narrow strip of fabric until her fingertip turned white. ‘My future...our future is in your hands. There must be something that you need. There must be some way I can persuade you not to tell Lord Simon.’

  Her eyes rose, meeting the fiery intelligence of his expression, then dropped to trace the firm outline of his lips, the mouth that had so recently claimed hers. Her heart skittered, then raced. An idea that was so dishonourable, so outrageous, grasped her mind in such a way that she spluttered aloud with incredulity. Yet it might be the only way. The only way she could persuade him to keep silent.

  ‘Or...’ Cecily cleared her throat, curling her bare toes inward. A shiver whipped through her spine, yet her skin was clammy. ‘Are you...are you married?’

  Unprepared for her question, Lachlan looked up sharply, a muscle twitching in the tanned leanness of his cheek. He frowned. ‘No.’ His reply was blunt, stark. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Mayhap I could offer you something else.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the stone walls would condemn her for what she was about to do. But as the words fell from her mouth, she realised the whole hideous wrongness of them, the blasphemy. She was not that sort of woman, a seductress. Her experience was limited, a few fumbled couplings with her husband. She clapped her hands across her mouth, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I... I...no, sorry. It was nothing.’ She knotted her fingers, distorting them savagely until the skin stretched over her knuckles bone-white. ‘Forget I said anything. I made a mistake.’

  ‘Are you offering me your body...in return for my silence?’ He stared down at her, incredulous, the low velvet burr of his voice echoing around the confined space. Her skin was the patina of fresh pouring cream, a lustrous, satiny texture. He folded his arms firmly across his chest. ‘Do you have any idea what you are doing?’ Christ, he thought, what would it be like to lie with this woman? To peel that vast, voluminous nightgown from her velvet skin, to test the sleekness of her flesh against his own?

  ‘No...no,’ Cecily stuttered out, staggering back so that her heels jabbed painfully against the stone wall, lifting her arms to ward him off, to push him away, if need be. ‘I told you, I made a mistake.’

  His eyes flashed over her, blue fire. A shower of sparks igniting her chest. Her breath caught in her chest, then plummeted, looping unsteadily. His pulse beat slowly in the enticing hollow of his neck, his skin honed and taut over the corded muscle. A shiver of sensation, the slow burn of excitement stacked, layer upon layer, in her belly. What was happening? She closed her eyes in shame, unwilling to look at him.

  ‘Maybe not.’ He placed one fingertip on the point where her pristine white neckline met her skin. Touched gently.

  Fire shot through her, a dagger strike. The flutter of contact made her gasp, raw intimacy galloping through her veins like wildfire. Yet she did nothing. She could not move.

  He traced around her neckline, up, up, to the tremulous hollow of her throat, until his hand opened, cupping her cheek. His palm was rough, the skin calloused from years of riding, yet his touch was infinitely gentle, his fingers splaying out along her delicate jawline. Her ribs acted like a cage, compressing the air in her lungs—she could not breathe. Her dark eyelashes drifted down, brushing the curving fullness of her cheek.

  Against his fingers, her skin held the texture of fine silk. He was so tempted. It had been a long time since he had lain with a woman. He had purposely thrown himself into every battle the King offered him. The constant fighting kept the demons of his mind at bay and stopped him thinking. Thinking about the past. It kept him sane. His eyelashes dipped. He inhaled her fine scent, the perfumed smell of roses. Lust coiled slowly: a treacherous animal awakened, pawing the ground. Waiting.

  ‘Lachlan!’

  A shout at the end of the corridor. A door opened; an iron latch clacked upwards. Lachlan’s hand flew from Cecily’s cheek, a reluctant retreat, and she stumbled back against the stone wall, shoulders hunching forward. A blade of sunlight cut through the window chink, striping across the velvet nap of her cloak. She lifted one shaking hand to her forehead, allowing it to drift to her ear, her chin, self-consciously, as if she were trying to hide her face from him.

  ‘Lachlan! Where are you?’ the voice demanded. ‘Bring the woman back, now! Be quick!’

  He stared at the slender figure pinned against the stone, the pulse at her throat bumping rapidly above the low, dipping collar of her nightgown. What in hell’s name was the matter with him? Something about this woman was leading him astray: was it her delicate beauty, or the determined flare of courage he saw burning in her eyes? She seemed so alone, caught between a spiteful mother and Simon’s vengeful wrath when he found out the truth. He wanted to comfort her, to turn her into his chest and hug her tightly, yet he should be marching her back to Simon with no hesitation. Logic chivvied him, yet he stamped it down.

  His mind grappled with the enormity of what he should do. The consequences of the maid’s actions would be huge. There was a chance she would be condemned to death for her betrayal. What a waste. As Lachlan’s gaze swept over the delicate angles of her face, the lustrous curve of her bottom lip, he saw the vulnerability in her expression. The false bravado in the determined tip of her chin. It was a look he recognised. The language of his childhood after he had lost his family, after he had lost everything. Was that how she felt? How could he consign her to such a fate?

  ‘Go on, then.’ Cecily’s voice was dull, clagged with defeat. ‘You’d better take me back and tell all.’ Her mouth hardened in challenge, as if willing him to do his worst.

  Hesitation swept over him. He was caught, between a loyal friend who he had known for years and this maid, who he had not known above a day. There should be no question about his course of action. But she forced him to pause. As if she had wrought a spell on him, scattering his senses.

  ‘Lachlan!’ the male voice was strident, hectoring, as it bounced along the stone walls of the corridor. ‘Get a move on, will you?’

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. Disloyalty jagged his conscience. Cecily pushed herself away from the wall, lifting her chin at a defiant angle. The smooth curtain of her hair swept beneath her chin, falling over the high curve of her breasts. She took a step forward. ‘We may as well get this over with.’

  Lachlan snared her forearm, strong fingers manacling her sleeve. The warmth of his fingers seared her chilled flesh. With no intention of committing the maid to her words, he grasped at the one thing that would gain him a little more time, time to find out the true circumstances of the situation. ‘No.’ His response was terse, hurried. ‘I shall say nothing for the moment.’ His eyes flicked over her, steely, determined. ‘And neither will you. You have bought my silence with a promise.’

  A sagging weakness gripped her knees; as she swayed, his fingers tightened on her arm: a support. Relief flooded through her. ‘I... I...’ she stuttered out, unable to find the words.

  His eyes gleamed over her. There was no time to tell her that his intentions towards her were completely honourable. ‘You can thank me later.’

  * * *

  The door to the bedchamber was ajar. She placed her hand on the knotted wood and pushed. After the chill of the corridor, a wall of heat hit her, thick and foetid, laced with the last clinging remnants of childbirth.

  She stopped, so abruptly that Lachlan crashed into her back. His arms lifted instinctively, cupping her shoulders, steadying her for a moment before falling away. A vast trembling seized her at the sight before her eyes.

  Isabella lay in the big bed, cradling the baby, the deathly white of her skin streaked with tears. Her mother was beside her, fussing with the woollen shawl around the
baby’s face. At Cecily’s entrance, her thin face jerked upwards, her features rigid, taut with hostility.

  ‘She’s the one you want!’ her mother declared, jabbing one bony finger towards Cecily. Her cold stare swivelled around to Lord Simon. ‘She dreamed the whole plan up. Threatened to turn us out with nothing if we didn’t dance to her tune!’

  Cecily gaped at her mother in horror. What was she saying? Her whole world tilted crazily, the ground beneath her feet wavering, unreliable. Her brain clawed at the air; she lurched back in shock into a wide, broad chest supporting her. A hand gripped her elbow, bracing her upright. Lachlan. The stranger who had been prepared to help her. For a price.

  ‘It’s not true,’ she whispered. But her voice went unheard.

  Simon turned stony eyes upon her. ‘Now it all makes sense,’ he said. ‘This is the reason you’ve been keeping me from the castle all these months! My poor brother must be turning in his grave at your trickery. Thank God he didn’t live to see this. Did you help him die, as well?’

  ‘Nay, I did nothing to him!’ Cecily’s voice rose in panic, hectic colour flushing her cheeks. ‘He was wounded, in France, you know that!’ She threw her hands forward, a gesture of remonstration. Of protest. ‘I did my best, my lord, I was at his bedside every day, changing his dressings, giving him water, feeding him.’ Her voice hitched, then lowered with the memory of her husband’s death. ‘But the wounds were too deep; they had become infected on the journey home.’

  ‘And then...’ Marion stepped forward, her mouth tight ‘...when she realised that she might lose the castle because she had failed as part of her wifely duty to become pregnant, she decided to use her sister’s pregnancy to dupe you, my good lord!’

  Cecily’s eyes flared across to her mother, anger rising in her veins. ‘Why are you doing this, Mother? It was as much your plan as mine. We are both culpable.’

  ‘You little liar,’ Marion said, her mouth clamping into a narrow line.

  ‘Do you truly hate me that much?’

  Marion flicked pale eyes over Cecily’s face. Yes, her gaze spoke. Yes, I truly do.

  ‘I would never have known if the baby hadn’t started wailing,’ Lord Simon said. ‘You banished your poor sister, weak from childbirth, into that cold antechamber, but she heard her child. She dragged herself back through, sobbing, half-mad with the grief of being separated from her baby. My men had to help her back into the bed. How could you be so cruel?’

  ‘It wasn’t cruel!’ Cecily protested. ‘Isabella, my mother...we all decided on this plan together! And we would never have been forced to do this if you had left us alone! But you kept on, day after day, sending your men to intimidate us, continually petitioning the King. You forced us into this position!’

  ‘This castle has been in my family for generations, young lady,’ Simon roared at her. ‘It belongs to my family, not yours! And if the King wasn’t so busy fighting in France then he would have ordered you to leave and married you off to someone else.’ Simon jabbed his fingers towards a cowering Isabella. ‘Where is the father of that baby? What does he have to say about all this?’

  ‘He...he died,’ Cecily supplied.

  ‘And they were married?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘Hell’s teeth! I cannot believe you intended some fallen knight’s by-blow to inherit all this! I should send you all to the gallows for this!’

  ‘Oh, my Lord Simon...’ her mother stepped forward, her manner obsequious ‘...surely you can see that it was all Lady Cecily’s doing?’

  ‘No, quite frankly, I cannot,’ he bit out savagely. A dull, ruddy colour flared across his gaunt cheeks. ‘She must have had help. There was no way she could have carried this whole deception on her own.’ He sighed heavily. ‘But I am prepared to be lenient. I shall place you and Lady Isabella under house arrest, here, at the castle. Lady Cecily, however, must face the King for this and we will hear what he has to say about the whole affair. You shall all be punished, in one way, or another, make no mistake.’ He flicked his gaze towards a couple of his house knights, standing by the door. ‘John, Walter, take Lady Cecily to the dungeons for the night.’ His lips curled in a half-smile towards Cecily. ‘That should help you to realise the severity of what you have done.’

  The men gripped Cecily’s arms, leading her out of the chamber, down the spiral staircase, deep into the bowels of the castle. Constructed below the east tower, on the same level as the river, the thick stone walls of the dungeon seeped with water. In the light of the flickering torch, held aloft by one of the guards, the moisture gleamed, glutinous slimy green trails running down the walls. Wisps of straw, old and broken, covered the flagstones.

  The iron-barred door clanged shut behind them, the key pocketed. Without a word to Cecily, the men retreated, the flaming light climbing the walls with every step until at last she stood in darkness, shivering in her velvet cloak and the thin, diaphanous material of her nightgown.

  Her breath was tremulous, the air squeezing in and out of her lungs at a juddering pace. She sank to her knees on the wet, mossy flagstones, folding her body forward so that her forehead rested on her lap. And she wept. Great gasps of noisy, shuddering tears, rolling down her cheeks, spilling over her hands cupping her face. Her mother’s expression, contorted with hostility, filled her mind. Horrified her. Sweet Jesu, she had never realised how much her mother hated her until now. Despair and sadness cascaded through her. Nothing had mattered to her more than winning back her mother’s love after what had happened to Raymond. She had wanted it so much she had been prepared to commit a crime. Only now could she see the full error of her ways.

  * * *

  Lachlan’s fists curled by his sides as he watched Simon’s men grip Cecily’s arms and lead her away. The hulking guards only served to emphasise the slim delicacy of her figure, the sheer vulnerability of her position. But as she walked past him, she lifted her chin and snared his gaze. Despite risking everything to secure her family’s future, she had failed, yet he read the determination in her shimmering green eyes, the flash of steely truculence. His heart flared with recognition at her courage—she was not about to give up. Not like he had done, all those years ago.

  ‘Coming?’ Simon asked. ‘Let’s eat in the great hall.’ He glanced at Marion, at Isabella and the baby in the bed. ‘I will have some food sent up for you two, but you will not leave this chamber, do you understand? A guard will be posted at the door.’

  Sitting on the low stool by the bed, Marion pursed her lips. Nodded.

  ‘And what about Lady Cecily?’ Lachlan asked, tilting his head in question.

  Drawing his dark brows together, Simon scowled. ‘She can go without this evening. That should teach her to try and outwit me.’

  ‘That seems hardly fair, when these two are allowed to eat.’ Lachlan thought of Cecily, curled into a tight little ball in the dungeon, hungry, shivering with cold. Despite what she had done, this was no way to treat her.

  ‘Why are you so bothered?’ Simon narrowed his brown eyes towards his friend. ‘She means nothing to you; she’s a chit of no consequence.’

  Wrong, thought Lachlan. I think of her all the time. Her green eyes and quick smile stalk my thoughts. He shrugged his shoulders, forcing himself to appear uninterested. He didn’t want Simon asking him any searching questions. ‘I think you should treat her the same as the others.’ He flicked his gaze over to the bed. ‘You’ve sent her to the dungeons; the least you can do is provide her with food and warm clothing.’

  ‘You’re becoming soft in your old age, Lachlan.’ Simon laughed at him, clapping him around the back and walking towards the door with him. ‘All right, I shall have one of the guards take food and clothing down to her.’

  ‘I will do it,’ Lachlan found himself saying.

  Simon stared at him, his mouth dropping open with astonishment. Lachlan shrugged his shoulders. ‘You k
now what your men are like, Simon. Who’s to say one of them won’t take advantage of her?’

  ‘Lachlan, you astonish me. You are the same Lachlan, aren’t you, who charges head first into battle, who wields his sword with infinite dexterity, dispatching adversaries with a swift, practised flick? Why are you bothered what happens to her? Since when did you become so caring?’

  Since I pulled a green-eyed angel from the tumbling river, thought Lachlan. Since then.

  Chapter Seven

  Nerves jangling, Cecily lurched to full consciousness. Panic bolted through her, scything her soft flesh; her heart raced. What had woken her? A tiny noise, a rustling perhaps? God in Heaven, was it a rat? Opening her eyes, she saw nothing. Only a thick dark space, black and suffocating, that cloaked her in immediate despair. Her muscles ached from the cramped position in which she had fallen asleep; pins and needles tingled uncomfortably in her legs. She rose to her feet, wriggling her toes, trying to mitigate the feeling.

  Someone was coming. Footsteps approached: resolute, determined. Not close, but descending the steps purposefully. The sound that had woken her. She took a deep, shaky breath, stretching her neck to one side, then the other; raising her arms up in the air to exercise the taut muscles in her shoulders. The time had come to stop feeling sorry for herself. The time had come to fight. Her mother did not love her and nothing Cecily could do was ever going to bring that love back. The realisation was harsh, but she had to acknowledge the truth. Self-pity would not help her now and it certainly would not help her to escape her current predicament.

  Quickly, Cecily crouched on all fours, crawling, her hand splaying out over the floor to locate something, anything, which she could use as a weapon. Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she encountered slimy stones, unidentifiable debris. Her fingers grazed a pile of loose stones that had fallen out of the wall. A single stone could be a weapon, of sorts. Hoisting a heavy lump to her shoulder, she positioned herself behind the iron gate, waiting. She had nothing left to lose.