“Your seneschal has the mesnie assembled on the training field. They are prepared to leave on your command.” A tear escaped Mam’s eye.
He turned, his chest a frozen sea of animosity. He would not offer her sympathy, nor would he ever forgive her for not protecting his wife. “Do ye weep for Lizbeth or for the daughters Gloucester stole from ye?”
“All of them. Regardless of your accusations or your feelings toward me, I am proud to call Lizbeth daughter.” Mam’s voice cracked.
“Ye can tell her that when I bring her home.” He strode toward the exit while his heart tore deep within his chest. The fools were going to kill their horses. Lord Hollister had pushed their steeds hard across the border and through England’s West Marches. They rode all night on the open road, guided by the moon, then continued their hurried journey throughout the following day. Every valley they crossed and every knoll they crested put more distance between her and her protector. Rope bound her ankles beneath the belly of her exhausted mare, and her fingers worked to keep blood flowing through her hands, which were tied at the wrist. While her comforts were few, she at least gained solace knowing Eli and Martin were safe from his cruelty. Lord Hollister had lurked outside Skonoir Castle like a sinister shadow awaiting his prey. Thank God Broc hadn’t been the one to enter the glen. Not only would Lord Hollister be in possession of the rest of the document, but he wouldn’t have blinked while he killed her husband. Too many had already died because of her and that document. Now she feared she would pay a grave sentence for stealing it. A punishment she would accept as long as no one else suffered. John’s limp body came to the forefront of her mind. Celeste’s child would enter this world without a father. There was no doubt Smitt and the five warriors who’d accompanied him across the border were dead too. And all of it because of her. She had brought naught to the clan worthy of their loyalty, but loss. When they rode past the ancient stones, she wondered if she’d been cursed by one of her ancestors. It seemed everyone dear to her suffered a tragic death, as if her love alone had damned them. ‘Twas foolish thinking, but Broc would be safer if he didn’t love her. Her eyes locked on Lord Hollister’s back. He acted the arbitrator of her curse, casting judgment without justice, the same as he had with Kamden and Emma. Love had cost them everything.
Despair weighed heavy inside her as she stroked the mare’s chestnut mane and wished she’d found a place in her trews for Mother’s rosary. Instead, she drew up Mother’s memory for comfort and watched a dying sun slip behind a black wood. At the bottom of the next valley, a cluster of tents sat alongside the river. She counted twenty-two. White puffs of smoke smoldered within their midst and the hustle of men brought the camp to life. Lord Hollister reigned in his stallion outside the setting. With the flick of his wrist, he ordered the entire Yorkist battalion to continue, all save for the one man whose horse she was tied to.
Up until this point, her enemy had paid her little heed. She was just another body on a horse, but as the army left her in his clutches, she feared his reasons for not making the final jog down the knoll had solely to do with his desire to punish her. “Get her off the horse.” He dismounted and stepped toward the river’s edge to relieve himself. Dread washed through her gut, making her near ill. The sentry stood beside and peeked up at her with pale green eyes that didn’t lack compassion. He’d led her mare throughout their travels and taken her to the brook for relief on three separate occasions. Never once did he speak to her. He pulled a dagger from his waistband and cut the rope binding her ankles. When he offered her assistance, she shook her head in little movements, silently begging him not to follow orders. The coward closed his eyes, shielding himself from her pleas. Regardless of how tightly laced her fingers were in the horse’s mane, he managed to tug her to the ground. “Please do not leave me here with him,” she whispered into his shoulder, but he pinned his chin to his chest and sidestepped around her. Lord Hollister pivoted and started in her direction, tucking himself back inside his trews.
“Take the horses to camp and inform Buckingham of my arrival.”
“Would you not prefer to tell him yourself?” she suggested and watched the sentry mount and give his nod of understanding. Lord Hollister made a familiar tsking sound. “I much preferred the Lizbeth who knew how to control her tongue. I daresay the Scot has done more than ruin you.”
His approach made her breathing quicken. His sour scent reminded her of blood, lust, filth … hatred. He gathered slick inky hair back in a thong at the same time he gave the sentry a final glare that sent him scampering over the knoll. “Come, Lizbeth. I fear you are soiled.” He wrapped one hand around her bound wrists and jerked her toward the riverbank.
“Nay! Please!” Lizzy screamed until the flesh in her throat became raw. She dug her heels into the sludge as anxiety distorted her vision at odd angles. Her fear made her unnaturally strong, allowing her to slip from his grip, but merciless hands wrenched her back by her braided hair. She slid down the bank, writhing, turning, straining to escape, but he seized her calves. Her nails filled with silt while her pulse echoed out of every pore in her skin.
Lord Hollister sloshed into water up to his knees, dragging her behind him. “Do you know what I did to my wife when I found her abed with your brother?”
She barely heard his question over the pounding in her ears. Icy water crawled up her legs the same time bile inched up her throat. She didn’t dare answer.
“I ordered her a hot bath.” He cocked one brow and pushed her into water that reached her waist. A strong current pulled at her ankles. She clasped onto his wrist for leverage.
“Please. I do not—“ “I even helped Emma scrub the filth from her skin when the water cooled to a temperature I could tolerate.” His hand curled around her neck like a sorcerer’s claw and dunked her below the surface.
Painful silence hollowed her ears. Blackness enveloped her. Water filled her open mouth. He pulled her out.
Air. Sweet, cool air. She gasped for it. Choked on it. “I saved Emma. The day I took her to wife she was scheduled for execution on Tower Hill alongside three other women. Her crime: lascivious thoughts and lewd behavior. She was supposed to spend three days in the stocks, after which she would know the punishment of a sound flogging with a braided whip. I should have let her serve her sentence. Mayhap then she would have known whom she belonged to.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Instead, she spread her whore’s legs for your brother.”
The last of his statement hummed through her ear as he pushed her under with both hands. Her knees hit the riverbed, slamming into rock. She shook violently and tore at his trews beneath the water. Screaming.
With a jerk, she resurfaced. She gagged and spit, all the while sucking in air. “Please, no more,” she begged in a hoarse voice.
“I thought of Kamden as a son. I fostered him from the time he was a boy. Whilst your father taught him how to wield an ax, I taught him how to brandish a sword. And how does he repay me? He steals my wife.” He twisted her head so she could look at him, but her eyes only registered the blurred edges of shadows surrounded in a sea of white light. He shook her. “Can you imagine, Lizbeth, what it was like to discover the sons I provided for were not even my own? And they knew. Those little bastards lied to me right up until…” He paused and then immersed her once more. Her struggle lessened. She couldn’t fight him. Broc’s image appeared in her mind’s eye. She cried out to him—a mute scream drowned out as she sucked in wet air. Her head lifted from the surface, her lungs so filled with water she couldn’t even inhale.
“What in God’s name are you doing, man?”
The faraway question came out of context.
“Get her out of the water.”
Lord Hollister hauled her from the river and tossed her onto the bank. Before she could experience any mental reprieve, her gut convulsed and water spewed from her lungs like a geyser.
She sucked in air in starving gulps while her eyes blinked to see past her dark hair coiled in a silky web ar
ound her face. A fair comely man sat astride an all-white mare. Buckingham.
She’d seen him before in the crowded streets of London. He held himself high with an undeniable air of nobility. She didn’t know whether to feel more angst or relief. At the moment, she was too weak to decide.
Buckingham dismounted in regal fashion, brushing the lint from full black velvet sleeves woven with silver threads. “Do ye think her husband will give us the document in exchange for her corpse?” he asked Lord Hollister, who stood at her feet in a crop of tall grasses with his head bowed. Oddly, his all-powerful countenance withered into what reminded Lizzy of a whipped dog.
“Nay,” Lord Hollister answered, his pitch eyes fixed on her, oozing with contempt and evil.
“Then curb your wicked lusts and find your rest. We ride for Northampton at dawn.”
Buckingham bent to one knee and cleared the hair from her face. She jerked back, not expecting his gentleness. He set her on the back of his mare, then mounted in front of her and nudged his steed into a trot. Shivering, she fell against the warmth of his dry velvet surcoat, wishing he were Broc and not the man she suspected of poisoning her king. Regardless of who he was, she felt a gratitude toward him. “Thank you.” “I am neither your friend nor your savior, Lady Ives. You should prepare your soul, for I’ve every intention of returning you to Lord Hollister once I have possession of that document.”
Chapter 20
Hunkered in the glen outside the East Midlands, Broc awaited word from the spies he’d sent into Stony Stratford as well as Smitt’s return from Northampton. After nights of following Gloucester’s progress across England, the Protector of the Realm had finally collected the young sovereign from the queen’s family.
The firelights of Northampton reflected off the Nene River and the moon cast its glow over an array of tents erected along its bank. Gloucester’s cavalcade had set up and broke down more times than Broc could count. If the wretch’s army didn’t need such frillery, he could probably have been to London by now.
Broc wanted to rip through the canvas of each tent until he found her. Lizbeth was in there. His heart told him so. She’d become so much a part of him, he swore he could feel her weeping. Her fears had become his own. He clutched his chest trying to suppress the ache gripping his heart that had grown more painful every day he existed without her.
“As God is my witness, I will not fail ye, Lizbeth,” he whispered the reassurance to himself and kissed the gold crucifix hanging around his neck.
“I have her location.” Smitt, dressed in Gloucester’s colors, pointed to a tent on the east side of the river. “Fourth one from the bridge.”
“How many guards?”
“Two. Both securing the entrance. Want me to kill ‘em?” The bruises had mostly faded from Smitt’s face, leaving him as bonnie as ever, all save for a pink line at the corner of his mouth and a slight droop in his left eye.
“Mayhap.” Broc secured six weapons on his person and then removed his scarlet surcoat, leaving him in a black hair shirt, black trews, and black boots. He would become a silhouette in the night. “I’m going in by way of the river. If I dinnae return, kill them, get Lizbeth, and return home.” Broc gave him leave with a nod of his head, thankful to have his support. Though Broc had his own battalion of Maxwell warriors, their number didn’t make up a tenth of Gloucester’s army of Yorkists. While desperation pecked at him to storm into Gloucester’s retinue after Lizbeth, Broc’s conscience refused to return home with news of more death. As much as he wanted to believe the Scots could win any war, he wouldn’t put his men against such a large army. With the practiced stealth of a warrior, he maneuvered through the trees until the canopy of the wood no longer shielded him. He inched his way across the clearing and down the cold dewy grass of the riverbank. The slight ripple atop the river produced only a drone hum, not even enough noise to drown out the song of mating insects. He eased one boot into frigid water, then the other, and filled his lungs. Without pause, he pushed off the bank and dropped beneath the water’s surface. Golden rushlights guided him and reminded him of the fire in Lizbeth’s eyes. Keeping the bank at his left, he pushed the water behind him and counted tents.
One, two, three, four.
He resurfaced slowly, silently, easing his breathing in controlled draws, and scanned the river’s edge. The area was dark and vacant behind the tents, but an orange haze refleeted firelight glowing on the opposite side. The melody of a minstrel plucking out a ballad to pay homage to his dead king spiraled into a sky filled with living stars and muted Broc’s climb out of the river. His garments clung to him, wet and heavy, as he crawled on his belly up the muddy bank to the back of the tent.
A man cackled in a high-pitched laugh on the opposite side of Lizbeth’s tent. “I treated him right fine, I did. The man had a set of cullions that filled my hand.” “Ffaith! A virgin lad, was he?”
“Aye. His tewel was too tense to be anything but.” With the heel of his hand, Broc freed his ears of water. If he understood correctly, he suspected Lizbeth was at least safe from the attentions of one of her guards. Ignoring their continued conversation, Broc nuzzled close to the canvas and listened. Though quiet, he heard steady draws of air. If there was another person in the tent, then they were dead, for no one slept quieter than his angel. She whimpered and Broc yearned to cradle her in his arms and stand guard at the gates of her slumber. He controlled his wants and focused on retrieving her. He prayed she wouldn’t fight the water. Twas the only way to get her back to safety. Back in his arms, where she belonged.
He pulled a freshly sharpened sgian dubh from the top of his boot and cut a slit in the canvas. Her scent hit him like a rush of pleasure. Sweet, heady, his. Broc’s erection was instantaneous. He rolled his eyes beneath their lids, knowing the last thing he needed was to be aroused at such an inappropriate moment. But damned if he could control it. Pulling the canvas back, Broc’s eyes adjusted to the dim glow of Lizbeth’s candlebox. She lay in a straight line directly in front of him on her back atop a pallet close enough for him to touch her hair. A tray of food sat at her feet by the tent’s entrance. He slunk beneath the canvas and basked only a moment in the warm air of her tent and then cupped his wet hand over her mouth.
She jerked and knocked the candlebox on its side. Total blackness enveloped them.
“Shh. ‘Tis I, angel. All will be well now,” he whispered and kissed her hair beside her ear, dripping overtop her. Her arms reached behind her and wrapped around his head, embracing him, filling him with much-needed life. Tremors attacked her, followed by a fit of silent sobs. She kissed his face through her tears while his heart punched the ground beneath him. Everything inside him rejoiced. This woman was his mate, chosen by God. He would do anything to protect her.
Unable to deny himself this small moment, he kissed the beating pulse below her earlobe at the same time his hand slid beneath her arm and pulled.
The rattle of metal sounded like the raising of a portcullis in his ear. ‘
She stuck in place.
The guards hushed outside the entrance.
God’s hooks and blood and teeth and bones! She was chained. Chained! He was so close to having her back. He ached to the marrow in his bones for wanting to free her. He cupped her chin and caressed her silken lips with his thumb while he waited for the guards to resume their discussion; then he pressed his unshaven cheek against hers. “Tell me ye have a key.”
She shook her head and turned into his ear. “You must go, else they’ll kill you. Too many have already died because of me. I will not let him take you, too.”
He could only imagine the turmoil she’d been in, fashing over everyone but herself.
“John survived the attack, as did Duffy and Reynold. I ride with thirty men, Smitt included, and we are here to collect ye and take ye home.”
She blew an audible breath and whispered her thanks to God. “You must go to the Tower.” “I will not leave ye here. I cannae.”
She hugged
him tighter, her actions contradicting her brave words. “I cannot help my nephews, but you can. Did you bring the document?”
“Aye.”
“Lord Hollister intends to kill Eli and Martin upon his return. He despises them and has no use for them now that he has me. As long as he knows the document is in your possession, he will keep me alive.”
“Nay. I’ll take ye now. We will both go to the Tower and to the devil with the damned document.” He had to get her out, but now worried over the boys’ fates. She wouldn’t be able to prevent Hollister from killing them the second he arrived back in London. The minstrels song ended, forcing them into silence. At the request of one of Lizbeth’s guards a more jovial tune soon followed.
“I will not let Lord Hollister win. He must be punished.”
“I’ll kill him.” Broc intended to do so anyway. “Then Buckingham wins.” She combed her fingers through his slick hair, pushing water down his neck and easing his tension.
“Go to the Tower. Find the boys and get them out. Lord Hollister once confined me to an antechamber in the Wardrobe Tower. He may have done the same with the boys. Gloucester plans to enter London on the Sabbath. Get the document to him. You have the chance to make peace between our countries. Is it not worth the risk?” “Nay,” he answered slightly louder than their whispered words. Damn her! She played on his weaknesses. The guards’ conversation cut short. Broc held his breath. The silence was interrupted only by the beat of Lizbeth’s heart. A shuffling of feet stirred. A yellow slit drew a line at the tent’s entrance.
“Have ye need for anything, Lady Ives?” The nasally voice came from outside.
“Thank you, Manfred. I will need the privy pot dumped in a moment. Prunes,” she replied quickly.
“Very well, m’lady. Let me know when ye are finished.”
Only moments later, the guards settled back into their chattering. “I am safe. Lord Hollister spends all his time worming his way into Buckingham’s good graces, and Buckingham does the same with Gloucester.”
Her One Desire Page 24