The Flower And The Sword

by Jacqueline Navin

  He seemed like a giant, his head grazing the low ceiling and his broad shoulders eclipsing almost everything else from view. Ignoring her, he stripped his gloves and unwound a scarlet sash, a remnant of his altar-server costume, and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her.

  “Let us clear up a few things before we begin, shall we?” he said. She could view his face in profile. His expression was stern and for all the familiarity of those features, he seemed almost unrecognizable. “I am not taking you to some foreign land to sell you into slavery. Garven told me of your fears.” His lip quivered, as if in acknowledgment of a jest. “I am not going to beat you or harm you in any way. Of that, I give my word.” He sighed, lifting a hand. “Now, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

  He was mocking her. Somehow, that cut through her dazed fear. “I thought you dead all these last months. Why could you not at least send word that you were alive?”

  “I would have imparted the good news sooner, but what with organizing the men for the ambush and such, time slipped away. But I suppose there is no excuse. I could have at least sent a brief message. ‘Hello, my darling, treacherous wife. I am not dead as you intended. I cannot wait to be reunited. Look for me at your next wedding.’”

  Lily ignored his biting words. “How did you escape?”

  “I have my brother to thank for that. We St. Cyrs are a resourceful lot. Combine that with our legendary stubbornness, and, well, there is not much that can hold us down. But, to your credit, you and your family almost succeeded.”

  Lily shook her head. “I never wanted your death, even when I thought you guilty. It almost destroyed me when I thought you had died.”

  Finally he looked at her, and she cringed at the coldness in his eyes. They seemed to blaze with icy ferocity. “How very touching. Not that I believe it, of course. You lied for your family’s revenge and you are lying now. I wonder, Lily, if you are capable of truth.”

  Lily closed her eyes against the condemning fire of his. “Elspeth cannot lie, and yet she did. I suspected it, but only after. You never hurt her, did you?” She opened her eyes again, forcing herself to look at him.

  “That is the first time you asked me.” Rogan’s voice was full of emotion. A flicker of pain passed over his features, gone before she knew if it had ever truly been there. “It was one of the things that gave you away. You were too quick to say me guilty.”

  Rogan leaned back, wincing slightly as his back touched the wall. Gradually he relaxed in degrees. When he was settled, he gave her a lazy look. “My back, it still pains me. The scars are stiff.”

  Lily looked away, swallowing hard. She could hardly bear to think of the pain of his stripped back, nor any of the other sufferings he had borne at the hands of her family.

  “I had a great deal of time to think, these last months.” Rogan sighed. “When one is confined to lie flat on one’s stomach, unable to even raise one’s head high enough to look at another human face for the pain that small action would cause, one generally has a great deal of time to give matters their due consideration. And, I certainly had sufficient topics to meditate upon.” He stretched out his legs, flexing them to work away the stiffness and fatigue. “Need I say that you were chief among them?”

  Lily was tempted to reach out a hand and touch his rigid shoulder. How she ached for his gentleness. “You think I betrayed you. But I was betrayed, too, that day. I knew nothing of their conspiracy! Could you not see how distraught I was? I wanted to die myself. And afterward, oh, God, afterward…”

  “You play the part of doting lover so well, even now it amazes me.” His lip curled. “No wonder I was so completely taken in. Lord, I almost blush when I realize how naive I was—me! After all I’ve done and seen, there I was, behaving like a bare-faced boy smitten with his first love, pleading with you to just listen to me.” His eyes clouded to an unfathomable gray. “I suppose my pride can take the bruising if I confess that your betrayal stung deeper than the stripes on my back.”

  “What possible reason could I have for doing such a thing?” she asked.

  “Why, revenge, my sweet.”

  “Revenge? What should I care about revenge?”

  “For Alex’s rejection of your sister.” His perusal reflected only a vague interest in her protestations. “I hardly expect you to admit the truth,” he said.

  “You know nothing of the truth!” she accused, finding strength in venting some of her anger. “How can you blame me for this? Do you know what torture I went through, thinking you dead all these months?”

  He sprang forward, his civility gone and his eyes wild with the ferocity of a wolf. “Tell me, Lily, was your torture anything like having the flesh flayed from your back with a razor-sharp strip of leather? Was it anything akin to being beaten within a breath of life and dragged into a stinking dungeon and left to die? Did you know that when my family’s physicians got to me, one of them fainted dead away, like a woman. Someone had tended me, but the wounds were torn anew during my escape. They marveled I survived.”

  Lily’s fledgling courage fled and she shrank away from his wrath. He did not relent. “So tell me about your tender regrets, wife, and move me to pity you. I can bear it, I assure you. After all, it can be nothing as terrible as lying in blinding pain that feels like it will take you over the brink of madness.” He turned suddenly and leaped from the bed in a single, fluid movement. She could see he was shaking, struggling for control. “Such experiences can reduce a man to his most basic elements. Change him forever. I suppose I am changed, Lily. I am no longer the fool I was.”

  With an effort, she pushed herself away from the wall. She stood, squaring her shoulders. In a calm, quiet voice, she said, “My crime is that I stood against you, and for that I am guilty. You say I never looked to you and asked you if you were innocent, and I confess, I did not. For those things, you have a right to revile me. I despise myself for such a terrible mistake. As for the rest, I never conspired against you. What should I care for Catherine’s revenge? Aye, I stood with my family because I had good reason to think you the knave. Yet, on this you refuse to hear me. You do the same thing to me, Rogan, that you hate me so much for doing to you—condemn without hearing my explanation.”

  His body was still for a long time. When he did not respond, the tension began to ebb from her as she thought perhaps he had finally realized the truth in her words.

  His movement came in a rush. He whirled and leaped at her, his large hand grasping her chin and shoving her head up against the wall. His body held her pinned, a well-muscled leg on either side of her preventing the slightest movement. His face was only inches from hers.

  Lily was terrified. He could crush her, break her easily with his untamed strength. His voice was low and coarse. “I said I would not harm you, and I am a man of my word. But I will not be responsible if you goad me beyond my endurance. I regret my self-control is not what it should be, but it has been tested mightily of late. So, I must give you fair warning,” he said as he pressed her back harder, coming so close that their noses almost touched. “Never, never, simper about your innocence. I do not want to hear your lies again. Do I make myself clear?”

  She bobbed her head. Just as suddenly as he had pounced he released her. She rubbed the bruised flesh where his fingers had been. When she looked up, he had his back to her again.

  She was still frightened but, God save her from her impulsive tongue, she could not keep herself from asking, “Why did you come for me? If you hate me so, if you will not listen?”

  “To give you exactly what you bargained for but never intended. You will live as my wife.”

  He turned his head, lifting his gaze from her feet to her head in a searing look and added cryptically, “But there are many types of wives.”

  She said carefully, “I do not threaten, but merely observe. My father will come looking for me.”

  “He will not find you.”

  “But he will know to come to Kensmouth.”

  “W
e are not going to Kensmouth.”

  “But you said that I am to live as your wife,” Lily puzzled. “And your home is at Kensmouth.”

  “I also told you that there were many kinds of wives.” He turned, standing with his feet braced, arms crossed against his chest, looking for all the earth like a smug satyr. “I intend for you to live at another place. I would not contaminate my own household with you.”

  Lily blanched. “You intend to lock me away?”

  Rogan looked her over, the coldness in his eyes touching her skin and chilling her. “You will have a small household for yourself, an isolated place in Linden Wood. It is a pleasant enough place, a cottage really, with a small retinue of servants to help you, though you shall certainly have your share of chores. I imagine it will be much different from your privileged life at Charolais. There I will have you all to myself, so the better to serve my purpose.”

  Lily hated herself for the fear in her voice. “I do not want to be alone.”

  “Well, I did not want to be dead, but that made no difference to you.”

  “You risked your life just to take me prisoner?”

  “I do not intend you to be simply a prisoner. I will live at Kensmouth, but I shall visit. You and I are legally wed, and I do not intend to cheat myself of heirs.” His eyes flickered over her cruelly. “Though I have doubts whether I can overcome my revulsion of your nature to see the duty done. I suppose with the aid of darkness, some clever imaginings and a few cups of wine I could do it. I am hoping, anyway, since I do want children to carry on my name.”

  His words fell on her as if each one were of granite, crushing her under their cruel weight. She felt battered, no less than had he struck her with his fist. “That is no way to live,” she whispered.

  “Ah, yes, that is the point. You did not think I would simply allow you to go without retribution, did you?”

  “You will leave me and our children alone and isolated away from the rest of your family, the rest of the world? Forever?”

  He raised a brow. “I said nothing about leaving the children with you. I would not dream of allowing you to have anything to do with them. They will be removed immediately after birth and raised in my household at Kensmouth.”

  She felt a terrible wave of nausea rushing up from her stomach to lodge in her throat. “You would steal my babes from me?”

  “I would no sooner entrust them in your care than leave them with a she-wolf,” Rogan sneered. He took a step forward. “You see, I will control everything in your life. Who you see—which will be no one—what you do, what you wear, where you go. There is nothing that will come into your life without passing my approval. You will be my wife, but you will live only by my grace in all things. That is my revenge.”

  She felt dizzy. Her legs buckled and she collapsed onto the bed and covered her face with her hands. His voice floated above her. “When I was making my long recovery, I came to this, the perfect vengeance.” He paused, his voice almost winsome. “Never-ending penance for your crimes. It will go a long way to ease my complaint against you.”

  Lily looked up and searched his face for some sign of mercy. She said, “You could never be such a beast.”

  He offered nothing more than a crooked smile. “I have suffered beastly things, Lily, and most of them at your hands.”

  Their gazes locked for a long moment, hers in anguish, his in triumph. Then Rogan shifted and looked away. “Get some sleep,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We dock close to noon and then we have a long ride ahead. You will need your stamina.”

  He left her, locking her in behind him. It struck her as almost funny. They were aboard a ship—where was she to go? But the scraping metal sounded like a death knell mourning her freedom forever more.

  Chapter Twelve

  The house sat in the midst of a clearing that was neither deep nor broad. In fact, it was barely enough space for the small dwelling and a narrow border of ill-tended gardens. The lacy canopy of intertwined branches overhead made it appear rather gloomy and forlorn all alone in the thick wood.

  Lily had no idea where they were, indeed the only thing she did know was they were still in England, and that she had surmised only by the conversations she had overheard between Rogan’s men. They had traveled north, she guessed, for it was colder here and the damp was biting.

  They had ridden for three days after the ship docked, and each one was a study in torture as Lily had been made to ride with Rogan, enduring his silence, his implicit loathing. During the long hours, she comforted herself by mentally rehearsing long speeches where she would find the right words, blended with the exact degree of indignation, to break through his rigid contempt. The effectiveness of her righteousness would make Rogan understand his grievous error, followed by his great remorse, and finally there would be a blissful reunion as Rogan begged her forgiveness.

  But these were only fantasies. She dared not give voice to the carefully plotted discourse she spun in her dreams, for this Rogan, the Rogan who had come back from the dead to punish and avenge, was a formidable man.

  Now she viewed what was, she assumed, her new home with disgust. It had two stories, judging by the row of shuttered windows under the eaves of the thatched roof. Inside, she would later learn, the kitchens were attached to a large lower room that served as the gathering place, with two tiny chambers leading off for the servants. A wooden staircase led to an upper corridor where three plain rooms housed bedchambers.

  This was where she was to live? And the only servants about were two rather grim looking persons poised by the front door. One was a severe-looking matron with small, intense eyes, the other a tall, awkward-looking fellow with a balding pate covered inadequately by a few precious strands of hair. The two stared solemnly as Garven lifted Lily down from the stallion and motioned her to go stand by Rogan.

  “This is Sybilla, and her husband, Thomas,” Rogan said.

  The decayed house combined with the reticent faces of the servants snapped Lily into action. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. Never before had she endured such humiliation as the past few days. Reckless rage possessed her, and it felt so good after the numbness of her fear.

  “I am not going in there,” Lily stated evenly.

  Rogan studied her for a moment, his eyes narrowing.

  She inhaled, drawing herself up to stand firm against his icy stare. “This is not a suitable house. I am not setting foot inside the door.”

  “Suit yourself.” Rogan shrugged. He turned his back on her and called out orders to his men to join him in the stables. Before he left, he glanced back at her. “It matters little to me where you sleep. But this place—” he spread his hands to encompass his surroundings “—is where you will stay.”

  To her utter dismay, he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving her quite alone.

  She looked around after the men had gone, pulling her mantle tighter about her shoulders. The thick press of bracken crowded in on every side, dark and smelling of earth and moisture, even in these barren months of midwinter. She was struck by the strange, alien feeling of the place, being used to the low grasses of the moors, the crouched, twisted forms of the trees that survived on tiny patches of fertile earth and the huge heaps of boulders that jutted up abruptly. Here, so far from Cornwall, she felt as if she were in some enchanted wood like the sort in the stories she had heard, where evil things dwelled in shadowed secrecy, watching and waiting to prey on the unaware.

  She shivered, more from that last thought than the cold.

  “It ain’t no matter to me if you want to catch your death out here, but me and Thomas are frozen.”

  It was Sybilla, glaring at her hotly with those strange eyes. Beside her, Thomas’s steady gaze made Lily cringe.

  “Go on inside, then,” Lily said sharply.

  “Very well, mistress,” Sybilla said deferentially enough, but her voice held no respect. She spun about and disappeared through the doorway. Thomas, however, continued to stare in
silence a long moment before loping away.

  Lily was surprised by the hot sting of tears in her eyes. Rogan would leave her with these two?

  Rogan’s men came back from seeing to their horses and filed past her. Feeling very much the fool, Lily wandered away from the house a bit, walking the narrow ribbon of path that wound through the overgrown herb garden. What was she to do now? She had said, within plain hearing of everyone, she would not set foot inside the house. Why had she been such an idiot? What had she been hoping for—that Rogan would suddenly say, “Oh, of course, let me take you to Kensmouth where you will be more comfortable.”

  She shook her head. Her temper would gain her nothing. Here she was, standing outside in the bitter cold, all alone, with no one to care about any of it.

  Groaning, she became aware of another disadvantage. The aroma of soup reached her and her stomach heaved. So she was cold, alone and starving.

  The soulful howling of a wolf cut through the still air just as the first flurry of snow began to fall.

  * * *

  Inside, Rogan’s head snapped up at the sound.

  Andrew caught his look and frowned as Sybilla ladled out soup for the men. His eyes slid to the door as if he were thinking of going after her.

  “Do not,” Rogan warned, but he was tempted himself to relent. No doubt his pigheaded wife would allow herself to be devoured before admitting defeat and coming inside.

  “It is snowing,” Garven said.

  The comment annoyed Rogan. The old knight had a soft heart.

  “Bread,” was all Rogan said, jabbing a rude finger at the loaf farther down the table. But the tension was mounting within him. The wolf cry had him truly worried. Spiteful pride was one thing, but this foolishness would have to be—