Her Lord and Protector (formerly titled On Silent Wings)

by Pam Roller

  “But I cannot face him,” Katherine said in her raw, guttural half-whisper.

  The thrill that should have surged in hearing her own voice was crushed by the weight of her heartache and shame. Her own father was a traitor. A murderer! Nothing could have prepared her for Alex’s revelation.

  Leaving was her only option. He wouldn’t want her here to remind him of his tragedy. What man would?

  He didn’t love her. And now, she couldn’t hope that he ever would. Katherine closed her eyes as her heart’s last fragment of hope squeezed itself gray and died.

  “What will happen to me? What will I do?” She brought her hand to her throat and bent her head with coughing.

  “No, no, ye mustn’t overwork yer throat,” Millie said, rushing to her. She fell to her knees and tentatively stroked her hair. “There’ll be time enough t’heal.”

  “Yes,” Katherine choked. “Time enough. To forget him.”

  ****

  She is not at fault, lad,” Sam said softly. “Have mercy on her plight.”

  “Sam.” The word was a breath, but warning enough.

  “You need not do this.”

  “’Tis done. She is gone. And she wished it.”

  “But she is your wife now. Did you want her to go?”

  Alex drained his ale and set it on his desk. “No. But this is best. Now that she knows.”

  Sam picked up the tankard and set it on a tray. “Alex?”

  “I do not want to talk about it.”

  “Do you love her?”

  The question caught Alex off guard. For a moment he sat quiet and still, watching the numbers blur on one of the ledgers she had corrected. “I love no one.”

  Sam didn’t answer, and left the study with a hard click of the door. Alex knew what Sam was thinking.

  But this was best. Hadn’t he told her repeatedly that he didn’t want her here? Even though he’d married her, his distrust had only made her leave him. And living here would only remind her of her father’s murderous act. It made perfect sense.

  Yet the castle, only hours after her departure, seemed so forlorn, just as it had been before she came here.

  “I am a lying caitiff,” he muttered.

  No. He trampled the warmth that tried to fill his heart. Loving someone only meant death and heartache.

  “Lying caitiff,” he repeated. He stared, unseeing, at the freshly sharpened quill in his hands.

  Where had he heard those words?

  “Her words.” He drew in a quick breath and jerked up his head. “Her words! She talked. She talked! And I missed it! God’s bones, I missed it!”

  He leaped to his feet, knocking his knees into the massive desk and lifting its front legs off the floor. The tidy stacks of papers and ledgers toppled. His ink bottle fell off and left a curved ribbon of glistening black along the planked floor.

  Alex raced from the study, headed for the servant stairs since they were closer, and took the steps three at a time.

  At his bedchamber door, however, he stopped. Why fetch his cloak? Why try to bring her back? She would only grow to hate him, or fear him for some reason.

  He turned. As if on their own volition, his feet took him in another direction, toward her bedchamber. Mary’s chamber.

  He opened the door and stepped inside, then took in the colorless drab. Why had he put Katherine in this dreadful room? Simply because she would have a good view of the front of the house?

  No. That wasn’t it at all.

  He’d had this room readied for Katherine because Mary had chosen it for its distance from his bedchamber. Mary had wanted to be as far from him as possible.

  He hadn’t even met Katherine when he’d chosen this room, but had wanted her away from him and assumed she would wish the same.

  At the window, he flicked aside the drapes and stared down at the empty carriage drive. “Katherine,” he whispered. “What have I done?”

  Then, he looked down at his hands clutching the window sill, and yanked them away. This was the sill that had held Mary before she jumped. This window meant death. A finality to madness.

  Horrified, he turned and saw the room as it had been the night she’d died, smelled the fear prevalent in the sour stench of her bruised, perspiring skin.

  He couldn’t bring Katherine home. He couldn’t dare love her.

  All at once, the sorrow slammed into him. Alex collapsed to his knees and clutched his nauseated stomach with both hands.

  The agony was a thousand swords strong.

  “Stop. Please.”

  He fought the wretched heartache with gritted teeth, his eyes squeezed shut, warding off the blades that stabbed at his emotions again and again. He cursed the raw wounds that wouldn’t heal without the love of the woman who had soared in and out of his life on silent wings.

  Alex pressed his forehead to the floor, his voice gritty with intensity. “I had to let her go.”

  And the blades tore into him with fresh strength, ever deeper, slashing until the pain wrenched his soul. He fell onto his side, his voice now a moan. “What do you want?”

  From long ago, his father’s eyes met his in tender love, even as death took him.

  “Alex!” his mother’s terrified voice echoed. “Run!”

  “Don’t hurt Mama. Please.” It was only the whisper of a boy, unable to look away, as the man slit her throat and then came at him.

  The boy already knew that he’d find the murderous lecher, oh yes, and when he did, he’d first kill his family and then tear him to pieces.

  And now Mary was here, Mary as she’d been at the beginning of their marriage. Carefree and loving. And then four years later. Suspicious. Hateful.

  She’d crouched by her bed, snarling at him as he crept forward, hands outstretched. “Mary, please.”

  “You’re trying to kill me. Get away. Get away!”

  “Better go,” Agnes had said from one corner.

  He’d left the room. And Mary jumped from the window.

  “I couldn’t save you,” Alex whispered now as he curled his body on the floor. “Any of you.”

  Now the murderer’s daughter shimmered before him—Katherine, her hand warm on his cheek, her eyes full of love and acceptance.

  “Katherine,” Alex whispered. “Come back. I love you so much.”

  In that instant, he surrendered the past. Finally, the blades pierced his iron heart and ripped open every buried hatred, every anguish, every shame he’d ever hidden away and obscured with a mask of indifference.

  He grieved. Dear God, he grieved.

  Alex clutched his face and wept.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Later, Alex left the bedchamber feeling different. Cleansed. Lighter.

  He would bring his wife home, where she belonged. With sure strides he headed down the upstairs corridor.

  Elizabeth was almost at the top of the stairs. “I have been looking for you,” she said. “Why did Katherine leave?”

  He paused in his stride. “Her father was a spy. He murdered my parents.”

  Tears sprang to Elizabeth’s eyes. “Oh, how terrible. And now you’ve sent her away?”

  “No. ’Twas her decision.”

  “You-you do not hate her for what her father did, do you?”

  “Of course not. I am going to get her now.” Alex started to turn but then noticed the card Elizabeth held. “What is that?”

  Elizabeth’s smile brightened her face. “The baron is coming to call on me.”

  “The baron?” Alex frowned.

  Elizabeth held out the card. “Lord Wiltshire. He wants to see me!”

  “No.”

  “Alex—”

  “I said no. We did not part on good terms. He only wanted Katherine as a wife because she couldn’t talk. What would he want with you?”

  Elizabeth went pale. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying the baron likes women who have a disfigurement.”

  “That’s not true! He was a perfect gentleman
when he was here that night.”

  “He is a cruel fop who enjoys belittling women. Elizabeth, I will not give consent for a courtship—if that’s what he has in mind.” Alex crossed his arms. “What of Edward? I saw him kissing you last night. Did he propose?”

  Elizabeth hesitated. “No. Agnes said she doesn’t think he will.”

  “I will speak to him when I return. It is time he asked for your hand.”

  “But the baron may wish to court me. He—he excites me.”

  Alex grimaced. “You are not serious. That old stinkard?”

  “I like him.” Elizabeth lowered her head.

  Alex didn’t have time for this. “All right, Bethie. I will let you choose for yourself.”

  Elizabeth threw her slender arms around him. “Thank you, Alex!”

  His cousin had never hugged him before, and Alex hid his awkward surprise by saying, “I need to leave now.”

  Elizabeth released him. “Oh, I have sent for a midwife for Clara. She is ready to give birth.”

  “Send Stephen to the barn if he doesn’t want to stay there,” Alex said as he escaped down the steps.

  Minutes later he swung up on Neos and raced down the road toward Lobb’s Inn in Chiswick.

  Halfway there, he met the returning carriage. He stopped to tell the coachman to go back to the inn for Katherine’s trunks, but his words were cut short when Millie, her face reddened with weeping, stumbled out. Had Katherine come home on her own?

  The open carriage door revealed that she wasn’t here.

  “M’lord,” Millie began.

  “Where is Lady Drayton?” Alex demanded

  Millie began to sob. “She is in town, m’lord.”

  “You left her alone at the inn? Why?”

  “The inn? I wasn’t ordered to take her to an inn,” the coachman said, his face creasing in confused worry.

  Alex went rigid as he swung his gaze up to the coachman. “What are you talking about? Of course you were.”

  Millie sobbed, “Why did ye do this to her, m’lord? She’s done nothin’ to deserve it.”

  Alex’s voice rose to a near shout. “Where is she?”

  “Patsy Eberly’s brothel,” said the coachman, his voice shaking. “Lady Agnes said you asked her to give me Lady Drayton’s destination.”

  “Brothel?” Alex choked. “No! You were to take her to Lobb’s Inn!” Without waiting for an answer from the maid and coachman, he kicked Neos into a gallop off the road into the forest. The shortcut would buy time—perhaps a half hour.

  Alex prayed that he wasn’t already too late.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Fly, Neos!”

  Trees blurred as he raced through shafts of sunlight, through copses of fresh green growth. Birdsong and the skitter of startled woodland creatures were all but lost in the muted, rhythmic pounding of Neos’ hooves on the wet decayed foliage of the forest floor.

  He had to get to her.

  Would she ever forgive him for this slipshod mistake? Likely not. She’d hate him.

  “Agnes.” Alex spat her name into the rushing wind.

  Why had he let Katherine go? God’s nails, she was his wife!

  She was his, and he might not reach her before the men got their hands on her. Hot viral dominance filled him. He gritted his teeth and bowed low over Neos’ neck to give the horse full rein down the woodland path.

  “Fly!”

  The crack of a gunshot registered in his mind even as he felt a searing pain in his shoulder.

  Neos, shying at the sound, lurched to the left and threw him off the saddle.

  Alex hit the ground and rolled until his chest slammed into a tree. He lay still for a moment and tried to force air into his crushed lungs.

  He had no time to react before a man was on him; no time to pull his rapier from its scabbard before he felt a blade cutting his throat.

  ****

  Katherine pushed open the filthy window and gulped in fresh air.

  “Better not be tryin’ anything,” a thin but deadly voice yelled from the hallway.

  The room stank of sex, sweat, and vomit. The door wouldn’t lock, and a skinny snake of a man stood in the hall to prevent her from leaving.

  Despite his sinewy strong arms, she would escape. No one could stop her. Did they actually think she was a whore, come to make money for that horrid Patsy? The woman had actually slapped her when she had tried to explain that it had all been a mistake, that she would reenter her carriage and be on her way to the inn.

  But the coachman had insisted that his directions, given through Lord Drayton, had been to bring her here. That was good enough for Patsy, and her man had practically carried Katherine down the hall and dumped her in this room, then locked the door until Patsy came to give her instructions on how to treat the men who would visit her this night.

  Katherine wiped away fresh hot tears and swung one leg over the sill. She had no time to cry over Alex, wouldn’t waste time on him. Their marriage was finished.

  Her feet hit the ground. Turning, she lifted her skirts and dashed toward the street.

  At the corner of the house, she skidded to a stop. Outside the front of the brothel stood a throng of men. There was Patsy on the steps, hailing Katherine as her fresh whore—not young, but beautiful nonetheless.

  Katherine backed away until she was out of sight, then turned and stifled a thin scream as she found herself face to face with her guard.

  He backhanded her across her cheek, then shook her. “Where th’ hell ye goin’, slut?”

  ****

  Alex gazed up at the rogue’s face, almost hidden beneath a dirty tangle of thick brown hair and beard. A hand rummaged through the pocket of his waistcoat and closed on his leather money pouch.

  Alex gripped the man’s wrist. “I have to—” he choked, and with great effort sucked in breath.

  The knife pressed harder and split the skin on his neck.

  “Now, now, sir,” the highwayman soothed, his smile and soft voice a contrast to his heinous act. “No need to die today, eh?”

  Alex loosened his hold, and the knife eased. Blood trickled down his neck.

  Where was the pistol? Certainly the thief hadn’t time to reload. But he also had a sword, and the knife.

  The rogue stood and pocketed the pouch, then glanced behind him at Neos, who stood nearby stamping and huffing. He turned back toward Alex. “G’day, to ye, sir,” he said, ludicrously polite.

  He ambled toward Neos.

  With a pained groan, Alex sat up. The man’s hand was inches away from the bridle. There was no way Alex would get to Katherine in time without the speed of his horse.

  “Neos,” he said gruffly. “Fly!”

  Neos reared, snorted, and backed away from the thief.

  “Cur!” the man snarled as he turned back toward Alex and withdrew his sword. “Should ‘ave cut yer throat.”

  Alex staggered to his feet and realized with a shock that the other man almost equaled him in size. He reached for his rapier but agonizing pain ringed his shoulder. His right arm was useless for wielding the sword.

  He stumbled back as the thief came at him swinging both sword and dagger.

  With his left hand Alex tugged his rapier free. He parried the thief’s sword just before it reached his throat. The dagger followed, slashing an inch from his chest.

  They parried and thrust, circling, lunging. Alex grew dizzy with pain. He fended off both blades left-handed, but saw his own desperation mirrored in the calculating gleam of the thief’s eyes.

  Dear God, how had this happened? Katherine needed him. He had to get to her.

  This had to end.

  “Give back my gold and you may live to see another day,” he panted as he fended off yet another drive of the thief’s sword.

  Pausing, equally winded, the thief took a step back. “Come now. Is it so important that ye’d die fer it? Look at ye.” He gestured with his sword at Alex’s shoulder. “I shot ye. Yer bleedin’. And now I g
ots ter kill ye.”

  “Then keep the gold.” Alex, gritting his teeth in pain, unclasped his cloak. “Allow me my horse. A woman needs me.”

  The highwayman raised his brows and laughed, clearly enjoying the banter. “Needs ye? Aye, needs yer cock, no doubt. Who is this wench ye fancy grindin’?”

  Alex’s voice went low with fury. “Get out of my way or I’ll kill you.”

  “Ye’ll ‘ave to kill me,” the thief said, his lips curled in a sneer, “because I want yer horse, too.” With a yell, he leaped forward and lunged at Alex with his sword.

  Shouting with rage and pain, Alex twisted to one side as he wrenched his cloak from his shoulders. He hurled the cloak over the thief’s head and drove his rapier through the cloth.

  A sickening pressure slowed the sword. Jerking it out, Alex then yanked the cloak away to reveal blood spilling from the highwayman’s eye.

  With a cry, the thief fell to his knees, staring in bizarre astonishment with his remaining eye. He crumpled forward.

  Alex dropped his sword and stumbled back. He gulped air as he took in the highwayman’s limp body, and then closed his eyes.

  Blackness swam into him, made him unable to focus. He slumped to the ground.

  Warm nose on his head. A nudge.

  Neos stood over him. With shaking hand, Alex gave his velvet gray nose a weak rub. Then, grimacing, he crawled to the dead man and retrieved his money.

  “How long?” he asked the black clouds that were overtaking the sky. “Am I too late?”

  A low rumble of thunder to the west answered him.

  “Easy, boy,” he whispered to Neos as he got one foot in the stirrup. Grunting against the pain of his wounds, he pulled himself up into the saddle. His neck was no longer bleeding, but his shirt and waistcoat were crimson from the bullet wound. He pulled his soiled cloak around him.

  With grim determination, he nudged Neos toward town.

  One hour later, when he got close to the brothel, he turned the horse down a narrow alley two buildings up and slid off the saddle.

  “You, boy.” He held up a shilling to a narrowed-eyed boy who looked about twelve. “Hold the reigns of my horse until I return. You will get two more.”