The man thrust up a staying hand, and she nodded, recognizing his order to stay still and silent. They must be careful. Veronique, realizing she was defeated, could have ordered her thugs to gather her belongings and steal whatever else in the chamber was of value. The thick door might be muffling the sounds inside, and thus Juliana would be walking into danger.
Inhaling a steadying breath, she pondered how Edouard would enter the solar. The image of him striding out of the shadowed far stairwell into the sunlit bailey—bold, determined, and without the slightest trace of fear—filled her mind. He wouldn’t hesitate to barge through the doorway. This warrior would likely do the same.
The man-at-arms pushed down the iron handle and shoved the door open. It swung wide and, with the jarred squeak of hinges, slammed against the wall. Keeping his back to the panel, his hands on his sword, he darted inside, then returned a few moments later and bowed to her. “’Tis deserted, milady.”
Deserted except for the scent of Veronique’s rosewater. “Thank you,” Juliana said. She strode in, pushed the door shut, and locked it, as Lord de Lanceau had commanded.
The stillness of the chamber settled around her like a weighty cloak as she glanced about. Mayda’s musical laughter, soothing murmurs, and anguished sobs lingered in the shadows along with Rosemary’s hungry cries. The essence of these memories was intensely poignant. Was it only days ago that Mayda had died?
Eyes stinging, Juliana looked at the rumpled sheets on the bed, silk garments heaped on the floor, and numerous pots and grooming items strewn across the trestle table. Her mouth tightened on a painful flare of rage. How thoroughly Veronique had claimed the space that belonged to the lady of the keep.
“No longer,” she said firmly. “Never. Again.”
For Mayda, for Rosemary, she’d vanquish every trace of Veronique’s presence here.
Juliana crossed to the bed, grabbed a feather pillow, and yanked off the linen case. Her hands itched to smash into it all those precious pots of creams Veronique coveted, to snap the comb into tiny pieces, to destroy every tool of seduction Veronique had used to manipulate Landon and many other men to her will.
As Juliana turned to the trestle table, faint sounds of battle carried from the shuttered window. She moved to it and threw the shutters open, letting in a breeze. While she couldn’t see much of the fighting, shouts, hoarse cries, and clashes of metal rose to her. Somewhere, down in the chaos, Edouard was fighting with his sire.
Oh, Edouard. Please stay safe. I cannot wait to see you again.
Her worry for him grew, and she took herself away from the torment of the cacophony. She must keep busy, do what she could here to restore peace and order to the castle, and get rid of Veronique’s influence.
Juliana crossed to the table, opened the pillowcase, and began to stuff items inside. Soon, the case bulged, and she fetched another from the bed. Once the tabletop was cleared, she walked about the solar, snatching up any items she didn’t recognize as belonging to Landon or Mayda.
Later, she must pack up their belongings, as well as her own. The task would have to be done anyway, since a new lord would shortly be appointed to rule Waddesford Keep and he’d be moving into the chamber.
Some moments later, she removed the dirty bedding and dumped it by the door, then dropped the filled pillowcases with the linens. When the battle was over, she’d see all of Veronique’s items destroyed. Every last one.
Savoring a heady sense of satisfaction, she walked to the center of the room, set her hands on her hips, and looked about to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. As her gaze traveled over the bed, a small object glinted behind one of the rear legs. She went to the bed, stooped, and, with a strangled gasp, picked up the silver baby rattle.
Hands shaking, she stood and looked up at the shadowed ceiling. “As soon as I can, I will find Rosemary, Mayda,” she whispered. “Wherever we end up living, she will be well cared for. I swear it.”
A breeze whispered in through the window. Juliana stilled. She no longer heard the noises of battle.
Hope soared within her. Did that mean . . ?
Three brisk knocks sounded on the door.
A KNIGHT’S PERSUASION
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With a brutal roar, Edouard plunged his sword into the mercenary’s gut. He recognized the thug who’d helped drag him up to the tower and force him into chains. Moments ago, the fool had tried to sneak up and stab him in the back. A deceitful attack.
Grunting in pain, the mercenary tried to lash at Edouard with his dagger, but the blade skated on the chain mail hauberk Edouard had stripped from one of his sire’s fallen knights and donned earlier in the battle. Standing firm, his breath rasping through his teeth, Edouard held the mercenary’s murderous, dulling stare until the thug slid sideways to the ground, dead.
Yanking his sword free of the corpse, Edouard spun on his heel and assessed the fighting around him. Before this mercenary had become separated from his cohorts, he’d been among a protective group encircling Tye and Veronique. Despite her abandonment of Tye on the wall walk, they seemed to have decided that fighting together was their only hope of escape.
A futile hope. They were clearly defeated.
Edouard’s father, Dominic, and at least twenty knights surrounded the villains, their swords flashing in furious strokes as they fought the mercenaries of the group who remained alive. Tye also wielded a sword he must have taken from one of the dead. His face white with pain, he hobbled on an injured leg, while he slashed the blade at the advancing warriors. He wouldn’t be able to keep up his fight for long.
Step by step, the warriors edged forward, tightening the entrapment while forcing the villains back against the bailey wall.
Capturing them, Edouard noted, appeared all that was left before his sire claimed victory. Bodies were scattered across the ground and, in places, slumped over the edge of the wall walk. Near the entrance to the dungeon, prisoners, mainly mercenaries, were being bound and kept in order by Aldwin and more men-at-arms. The drawbridge and entrance to the forebuilding were heavily guarded; Tye and Veronique couldn’t get in or out of the castle even if, by remote chance, they escaped the attacking warriors.
“Fight harder, idiots,” Veronique shrieked over the din of colliding swords. Agony distorting her features, hair a snarled mess, she cradled her broken arm against her bosom. “Think of the gold I will pay you!”
“Surrender,” Edouard’s father yelled back. “You cannot escape.”
“He lies!” Spittle glistened on Veronique’s smeared lips.
“Heed me well,” de Lanceau bellowed, his words carrying across the bailey. “My knights control every way in and out of this keep. Lay down your weapons. Yield to my men. Refuse, and you will die.”
“Fight!” Veronique screamed.
With a grisly cry, another of her mercenaries collapsed to the dirt.
Edouard glowered at her, focusing all of his hatred of the past days upon her. You will yield, Veronique, as my father commanded. On my honor, as a knight, I will see it done. Adjusting his grip on his sword, he crossed the blood-soaked ground to join the fight.
Anticipation humming in his blood, his gaze locked with Tye’s. Rage and loathing blazed in Tye’s eyes. He spun away, swiftly deflecting a blow from a man-at-arms.
Edouard’s sire stepped back from the fray and wiped his brow. His chest rising and falling with exertion, he glanced at Edouard, clearly sensing his approach.
“I have come to fight,” Edouard said.
“No need, Son. This battle is already won.”
Edouard struggled against his rising frustration. “I want to fight them, Father. After all they have done to me, Juliana, and so many others, I want to see them vanquished. I need to know they can no longer inflict their evil.” Especially upon Juliana.
“I feel the same way about those two.” A bitter smile curved his sire’s mouth as his gaze fixed on Veronique. “How many years I have waited to capture her. Finally
, she will stand trial and be condemned for the crimes she has committed. Finally,”—his voice shook—“I will have peace from her madness.”
A pained scream rang out, and Edouard dared a glance at the fight. Another mercenary careened to the ground, narrowly missing Veronique as he fell.
“You have fought well for me today, Son,” his sire went on, wiping his sweaty face again. “While you may want to see this fight brought to its end, I ask another duty of you. One I would prefer not to assign to anyone else.”
Surprise, sharpened by a glimmer of pride, ran through Edouard. “What duty?”
“Take five men-at-arms with you to the solar. They will join the others in standing guard outside while Juliana retrieves the hidden jewels. Bring the riches to me.”
Edouard nodded and turned on his heel.
“When you return,”—his sire added, an odd tension in his voice—“there is a very important matter we must discuss.”
***
“You lied to me, Mother.”
Snapping her attention from the burly mercenaries shielding her from de Lanceau’s men, Veronique glared at Tye. How dare he address her with such contempt, especially in front of their enemies? Fury raged as intensely as the agonizing pain from her broken arm.
Grinding her teeth, she struggled to think beyond her physical distress, to focus on her loathing of Geoffrey that had helped her evade capture in the past and kept her alive.
“Lied?” she demanded, the word drowned by the crash of swords as her mercenaries thwarted a fierce attack. “About your chance to kill your father and seize all from him? Is that what you mean?”
Tye’s wan face was slick with sweat. Limping, he lunged at a man-at-arms, deflecting a strike, and his whole body stiffened at the resulting collision. Tye was in great pain. Regret, born from maternal instincts she couldn’t seem to suppress, lanced through her; she forced it aside.
A grisly choking noise, accompanied by spraying blood, warned her that one of the mercenaries was mortally wounded. She took an instinctive step back, groaning as she misstepped on the stony ground and jostled her arm. “You will defeat your father—”
“Another lie. We are surrounded. Backed against a stone wall.” Each of Tye’s words shot from his lips like bits of ice. “Why should I believe another word from you, when you lied to me about Father?”
Astonishment plowed through Veronique, turning her innards cold. Anguish underscored his voice, a pain that ran deeper than any physical injury he had received today.
“You left me on the wall walk,” Tye went on. “You thought only of saving yourself. You did not care whether I was slain or escaped.”
Wretched boy! “You are a champion warrior!” she shrieked. “You can defend yourself.”
Tye’s burning gaze slammed into her. “Tell me, Mother, why Father tried to save me from falling from the battlement. He offered me his hand. He wanted to save me!”
Veronique swallowed an ugly flare of disquiet. She’d spent years cultivating Tye’s hatred and forging him into the brutal warrior she expected him to be. Geoffrey had shown him kindness? ’Twas a complication she’d crush like a beetle, for she aimed to keep her hold upon Tye. She must, in order to escape.
“Why did he try to rescue me?” Tye demanded. “Why?”
Did he think there was fatherly generosity behind Geoffrey’s gesture? Did Tye presume he might get his sire’s acceptance? Fury boiled inside her that Geoffrey had found and preyed upon this weakness in Tye. Geoffrey intended to turn their son against her. “Your father tried to save you so he could imprison and interrogate you. If you died in the fall, he would never be able to wrest information from you.”
“I do not know. In his eyes, I saw—”
“What he wanted you to see,” she sneered. “No doubt your sire gilded his offer with false words about his chivalrous intentions. He did not act out of honor; he hoped to manipulate you so you’d be easier to capture. How right you were to refuse his trickery and risk the fall. Our injuries will heal and soon—”
Tye brought his sword arcing down toward a man-at-arms.
A gurgle erupted close by. As a warrior crumpled in her direction, eyes rolling back into his bleeding head, she took another backward step. She sensed the wall looming behind her, less than a hand’s span away.
“Listen to me, Tye,” she said, her words muffled by the din of fighting. “For years, I have protected you from your sire. Even now, I have not failed you. Remember when you told me that you believed the missive from Geoffrey was a trick?”
“Mother—”
“Listen!” she hissed. “I thought well about what you said. The mercenaries your father claimed were fleeing the keep today? Not all of them left because they feared being conquered.”
Tye glanced at her, his gaze filled with suspicion.
“I dare not say too much, except that during our trysts, Landon confided secrets that will be of interest to King John. I paid a mercenary to deliver a message for me if Geoffrey decided to attack Waddesford.” She indulged in a laugh, but grimaced as her arm throbbed. “The king will be most eager to hear what I have to say.”
“You will tell him,” Tye said with a mirthless grin, “in exchange for our freedom?”
She grinned back. “You will get that opportunity to cut down your sire, Tye.” As the last mercenary fell and de Lanceau’s men-at-arms swarmed in, she said, “We are not vanquished. That is most certain.”
***
At the raps on the solar door, Juliana started.
Three knocks. The signal Lord de Lanceau had described, if accompanied by—
“Juliana,” Edouard called from outside.
Unable to hold back a delighted cry, she set the rattle on the table, rushed to the door, and unlocked it. Drawing it open, she saw him standing beyond, grinning, his sword sheathed at his side. The chain mail he wore, though, was spattered with blood.
“You are alive!” Before she could think better of it, she threw herself into his arms. Only then did she remember de Lanceau’s armed men in the passageway, who exchanged bemused glances.
Her body collided with Edouard’s, and he grunted. “Of course I am alive.” His broad arms wrapped around her, embracing her with the scents of sun-warmed metal, fresh air, and sweaty male. A truly pleasing blend of smells, because he was alive! She’d remember his scent always, even when he was gone from Waddesford.
Refusing to acknowledge the sadness chasing that thought, she stepped out of his embrace and smiled at him. “Is the fight won?”
“Aye. Veronique and Tye are trapped in the bailey. My father will soon have them as his prisoners. Their treachery ends today.”
“Good. Are you all right?” Her gaze dropped to the blood on his armor. “Were you wounded?”
“A few nicks, but naught of concern.” Signaling the men who’d accompanied him to wait outside, he brushed past her into the solar. Once she’d followed him inside, he shut the door.
A wicked thrill shivered through her that she and Edouard were once again alone. ’Tis a senseless thrill, her conscience answered. With Veronique’s tyrannical grip on the keep destroyed, Edouard would be returning to his duties for his father. He’d be marrying Nara.
Juliana’s stomach twisted, for on the wall walk he’d admitted he cared for her. Could that make any difference, though, since he was pledged to Nara? How did Juliana manage to say that she believed she loved him? That none of the disagreements between them mattered anymore? That if, by some chance, he cared enough to want to marry her instead of her sister, she’d say “aye” without the slightest delay? She couldn’t let him leave the keep without telling him that truth.
His cool, steady, captivating gaze locked with hers. Again, she felt that wondrous surge of joy and anticipation. Could he see in her eyes how she felt? Oh, God, could he see?
He looked away, swallowing hard, obviously fighting a tempest churning within himself. He turned his back to her, his hands clenching and unclenching. Her gaze
skimmed over him, memorizing the curves, lines, and angles of his masculine beauty as she would before sketching him.
In her mind, she made him hers forever.
Before she could venture to break the silence, he muttered, “I smell rosewater.”
“Not for much longer,” she managed to say. When he glanced at her, she gestured to the heap by the door. “These are Veronique’s belongings. I plan to throw them over the wall walk. I will smash them on the rocks, break them, rip them into tiny, worthless pieces . . .”
“I will gladly help.” Edouard lips formed a tight smile. “I cannot wait to rid this castle of all remnants of Veronique.”
“Most of them, anyway,” Juliana said. They couldn’t change the events of the past few days. The memories they both had of Veronique would be with them for the rest of their lives. Her cruel grip on this keep, though, was gone.
Edouard dragged a hand through his mussed hair and faced her, his expression solemn. “Juliana, I know you and I have a great deal to discuss. But I am afraid that conversation must wait. Father wants us to retrieve the jewels and bring them to him.”
A great deal to discuss, her mind echoed. Anxiety snaked its way through her. Did Edouard plan to tell her that whatever he’d said on the wall walk, they could never be together? That he’d never meant to raise her hopes?
She pushed the agonizing thoughts aside. Lord de Lanceau had given important orders. They must be obeyed.
“One moment,” she said, before hurrying into the antechamber. Reaching beneath her pallet, she pulled out the sketchbook—still, thankfully, where she’d left it—and opened it to one of her drawings of Mayda. The most important one, she silently acknowledged.
When she started toward the trestle table, she sensed Edouard’s gaze traveling over her. Not a cursory glance; an intense stare that assessed her from head to toe. A look she might mistake as . . . possessiveness. A wanton excitement raced through her, and she bit down on her lip, using the discomfort to help her refocus on her task.
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