Her Lord and Protector (formerly titled On Silent Wings)

by Pam Roller

  “I am over Alexander,” Agnes said with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “Do you know that the Earl of Rochester will court me?”

  Katherine started. “Ellis?”

  “Yes. Mother said she made sure of that after he—well—”

  “What did he do?” Surely he hadn’t ruined Agnes in the seconds it took Katherine to speak to Sarah. She took a last sip, then set the tankard on the bench. She would have to direct the servants to change the ale barrel when she returned to the Hall.

  “Nothing, really.” Agnes blushed. “Just kissed me.” She raised her tankard to her lips.

  “Do not drink that, Agnes. There’s something wrong with it.”

  “Oh, no. ’Tis fine.”

  “The earl has questionable intentions, Agnes. He is only after money. I know this because—”

  Agnes’ lips, wet with drink, curled into an ugly sneer that took Katherine aback. “You dare to ruin my life even more than you have? You took Alexander away from me right at the time when he could end his mourning for his worthless wife. Now you are trying to talk me out of a rich earl’s attentions.”

  “No, I am not.” Katherine touched her forehead in an attempt to quell the sudden dizziness sweeping through her. “Ellis Potts wants wealth. You...do not have it. He just...wants to....” What was she saying?

  “Ellis wants me. He didn’t want a hatchet-faced slattern like you.”

  Katherine flicked her gaze back and forth and tried to figure out where she was. In the garden. Talking to...Agnes.

  “Katherine, are you all right?”

  “Don’t know...feel faint.” The blue flowers near her feet blurred into a gently rocking sea.

  “You are just tired. Drink.”

  Katherine tried to lift the tankard. “Heavy.”

  “Here, let me help.” Agnes raised it to Katherine’s lips.

  Katherine swallowed with effort. “I will...go inside.”

  “In a moment. I am not finished talking to you.” The movement of Agnes’s arm left a trail of shimmering black as she tossed the remains of Katherine’s ale onto a shrub.

  Katherine tried mightily to keep her eyes open. The children’s voices in the boxwood maze echoed in a trill of fading waves. “Get Alex,” she whispered.

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “You should have married the baron,” Agnes said, her voice raspy with hatred. “Then Edward would have Elizabeth.” She gripped Katherine’s shoulders with clawed fingers. “You killed Elizabeth by being here. And you’ve ruined everything I planned. Alexander was meant for me, me!”

  “I...what have you done...I am with child.”

  Agnes’ voice pounded in echoing waves. “Mary always drank down all the laudanum I gave her in her brandy. That and the mercury made her miscarry. The clodpoll believed me when I told her it was Alex who poisoned her.” She laughed, a tinkling sound like tiny dancing bells. “I’ve no time to make you go mad, and you are too strong to let me push you out of a window. What I gave you will work much faster, although most of it got spilled because of my poor brother’s sniveling.” Her hands released Katherine’s shoulders.

  Katherine could no longer move her mouth to speak. Through weighted lids she saw the ground rush up to meet her.

  A sing-song voice came from far away. “At last. I shall be Lady Drayton.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Where was Katherine? Alex looked around, his height making it easy to see over the crowd. She seemed not to be in the Hall.

  Sarah Cooke had led a still-crying Edward away to sit with her. Robert stood near the whiskey barrel talking to some of the other men who seemed intent on getting drunk before Elizabeth’s burial at dawn tomorrow morning.

  Agnes appeared on the other side of the coffin. “Lord Drayton, I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  Alex took in her tear-streaked face and trembling chin. “I know you were good friends.”

  “I wish to be your friend, too.”

  Alex held back from barking out a bitter, sardonic laugh. “Thank you for coming today, Agnes.”

  A commotion turned Alex’s attention toward the front door. “What’s all the to-do?”

  “Lord Drayton!” came Stephen’s sharp, alarmed voice. “Lady Drayton’s lying on the ground!”

  ****

  “Dear God,” Alex moaned as he lifted his limp, unresponsive wife and carried her into the house at a run. “Oh, dear God.”

  He laid her on the couch in the parlor. “I do not think she is breathing.”

  Robert knelt, his whiskey breath wafting over Alex’s shoulder. “Whatever could have happened?”

  Alex couldn’t answer. A deep trembling had taken hold of him. His throat seemed to clamp shut as he watched her not breathing, not moving. His heart shredded. “Breathe, Katherine. Breathe!”

  Agnes leaned into his line of vision. “Father, is everything all right?”

  He heard Sarah’s shaky reply. “Agnes, didn’t you see Lady Drayton just a while ago? You two went out the front door together.”

  “Yes, we went outside to talk, and then I came back in,” Agnes said with a catch in her voice. “She seemed fine when I left her.”

  Alex swung toward her. “Did you see anyone? Was she alone? Where is Stephen?”

  “He is here.” Carly crouched in one corner with a white-faced Stephen, her arms wrapped around him.

  “I saw no one,” Stephen said, his voice quavering. “I came out of the maze and there she was. Is she dead? Is she dead, too?”

  Agnes straightened, her eyes riveted on Katherine, and tapped her chin. “I did speak with her briefly,” she said. “She wanted to remain alone after accepting my apology. She did mention something about being with child. I wonder what happened?”

  “She is with child?” The old, black fear slammed into Alex. He cried out and grabbed Katherine’s shoulders. “Wake up! You have to wake up!”

  No response. Her lips were pale, her eyes shut tight.

  He lowered his head to her still-warm chest. “You can’t be dead. I can’t go through this. Please. Katherine, please. I love you so much. Wake up.”

  Hopelessness slithered into him like a thousand cold snakes. Katherine was dead. As was his child.

  He couldn’t save them.

  “What curse has fallen upon me?” he moaned, his tears flowing freely. “What did I do to deserve such wrath?”

  He became aware of hands on his shoulders and back. Sam knelt beside him.

  “Millie and I will take care of her,” Sam whispered, tears shining on the baggy creases under his eyes. “Go to your bed and lie down. ’Tis a terrible day.”

  Alex shook him off and lurched to his feet. “I shall burn this castle to the ground!” he declared. “’Tis cursed with death.” He swung toward Carly and Stephen huddled in the corner. “We will leave this place. And never return.”

  Later, Alex sat in the great chair in his bedchamber. “I cannot do it, Sam,” he said, his head in his hands. “This is tearing me up inside. Everyone I have ever loved has died. I cannot look at her dead in a coffin for three days. She had so much life in her. I can’t do it.”

  Sam touched his shoulder. “Do you want to....”

  “Yes.” Alex raked stiff fingers through his hair. “’Tis not proper, I know. But I can’t do it.”

  “We’ll bury her tomorrow with Elizabeth, then,” Sam said.

  “Tomorrow. Yes.”

  The next morning, Alex stood in the family graveyard and stared around him. Four little stones stood in a neat row. His babes, all dead before they’d left Mary’s sick womb, lay within the ground wrapped in their tiny white shrouds. To their left, Mary’s tombstone stood, and those of his parents.

  Behind these, two fresh holes in the ground now held the coffins of Elizabeth and Katherine.

  Katherine. His throat tightened with sorrow. His wife. His lover, mother of his child. Dead. He wanted to follow her into the ground. She had left him an empty shell.


  He had thought he could never love again, but she had taken his icy heart in her soft warm hand, and melted it.

  “Alex, we can go back now if you wish. The rest of the mourners are returning to the house.”

  Alex turned to Sam on legs that felt years older. “Yes.”

  ****

  Scattered scrape and tumbling sounds reached her ears. With a gasp, Katherine opened her eyes to full blackness. Groggy with sleep, she tried to sit up. Her forehead met with something hard. Her headboard, perhaps? Was it night? She widened her eyes to see, but it didn’t help.

  Her hands skated down something smooth and solid above her. Shifting, she felt her elbows connect with the same at her sides. Icy knives of steel cut through the last of her dazed mind. She was trapped in some sort of box.

  What was happening? She sucked in breath, and the smell of freshly hewn wood and dank earth assailed her nostrils. The sound above her came again, flat and thick.

  Her lungs wouldn’t fill. “Alex!” Her voice was weak, too weak for anyone to hear. She pushed at the top and sides of the box. “Alex!”

  The dull thump sounded again above her. At that moment, an image rushed into her head of a day filled with the stench of a city burned to the ground, of a day when she slumped at her father’s grave, unable to block out the sound of dirt falling onto his coffin.

  The same sound resonated above her right now. Katherine went rigid.

  Dear God! Did they think her dead? Were they burying her?

  She gasped for breath and began to pound on the lid. “Alex! Help me!”

  Perspiration beaded her face. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Blackness stuffed itself into her nose and mouth and would smother her, make her go utterly and completely mad. She thrashed and sobbed, trying to tuck up her legs and rock her body from side to side.

  No! NO! She had to get out—get out—God! She was in hell—worse than any torment the devil himself could concoct.

  “Alex....” Her heart slammed her chest and her lungs burned in their effort to suck in air.

  I’m not dead!

  With all her strength, Katherine beat at the walls of her prison.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Alex turned to take a last look at Katherine’s coffin, now partially covered with dirt. He would return home now, would put Stephen and Carly into the carriage and go as far away from this cursed place as possible. To the sea, perhaps, to live on a cliff and watch the sun set on his life.

  Somewhere a faint knock sounded, fast and furious. He glanced at the burial man beating dirt from his shovel with his boot.

  “Lord Drayton?”

  Agnes. Alex barely glanced at her.

  As she hurried up to him, she stumbled and gave a small, alarmed cry. Alex grasped her arm to keep her steady. When she stood, she leaned into him.

  “Thank you, my lord. Gramercy, ’tis a wonder you were standing here to catch me. May I walk back with you?”

  Alex nodded only out of politeness. “If you wish.” He turned away, but then heard the sound again. A muted thumping, as if someone with thickly gloved hands were knocking on a door. “What is that I hear?”

  Agnes blinked and glanced around. “I hear nothing, my lord. If you please, may I take your arm? I have a chill today, and you are so warm. And...I would like to comfort you.”

  Alex shook his head and put up a hand. “I do not want your comfort.”

  Agnes’ mouth opened, then closed. Her gaze dropped to the ground. “Is there no chance for us, then?”

  Alex’s grief pinpointed in a flash of fury. “What is wrong with you? There never was a chance with us.”

  “Oh, Alexander.” Her moist-eyed gaze slid left and right, and she licked her lips. “I wanted to be your wife. I—I love you.”

  Alex wasn’t listening. There it was again, that knocking sound, but fainter now and slowing in cadence. He fell to his knees and peered down into the hole where Katherine’s coffin rested, covered now by a thick layer of dirt. The sound was coming from there.

  Thump. Thump. Then, silence.

  The man with the shovel had stopped and was staring down into the hole.

  A sudden, sick tilting in Alex’s gut made his hands grow clammy. The breath left his lungs. Edward’s words rushed back, words he’d spoken to Agnes on the day Alex stood outside the herbarium with his book. Do not touch that. It is mandrake root. Makes one sleep like the dead.

  Words tore from Alex’s throat as he leaped into the hole and frantically dug away at the dirt. “Oh, God. She is alive. She’s alive!”

  ****

  Voices. Murmurs. Dank earth smell and inky blackness.

  Death slithered through her mind.

  Shouting. God’s angels had come to fetch her.

  A scraping, then, furious and fast, as if the world around her were falling apart. And more shouts, these frantic. And clearer.

  The pounding above her grew horrendous. These were no angels. Hell must be her destination.

  Screaming.

  “Agnes, what have you done?”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Open it!”

  A grating along the top edge spilled sudden light into her prison. Katherine opened her mouth and sucked in life.

  A face drew close to her. “Katherine. My love.”

  Large hands cradled her cheeks. Warm lips pressed to hers.

  Alex.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  He couldn’t stop watching her. Katherine slumbered peacefully next to him on their bed, one hand curled loosely into a fist on her chest. Gently, Alex skimmed his hand over the back of hers and followed the curve of her fingers.

  The purple shadows under her eyes would fade. Healthy color would return to her smooth cheeks.

  She stirred beside him.

  He looked past her at the slivers of golden afternoon sun that rimmed his heavy drapes. His heart had been like those drapes, shutting out whatever bright hope and love that had tried to break through.

  But now his heart had opened, and the light streaming into it was Katherine. She had given him a second chance at happiness.

  “I love you,” he whispered in her ear.

  Katherine opened her eyes, stretched, and smiled at her husband. “I love you. What hour is it?”

  “Almost four of the clock.”

  “I could fairly sleep the day away.” Katherine brushed a stray hair from Alex’s forehead. “Do you think our child will be all right?”

  Alex lay a hand on her belly. “The doctor seems to think so. You continued to breathe throughout your sleep although no one could see it. And he said anyone daft enough to use soap on an injury such as mine had to be too stubborn to die.”

  Katherine gave Alex a pensive look. “Agnes. Is she...?”

  “Gone,” Alex said, handing Katherine a goblet of watered honey with orange. He tried to keep the venom from his voice. “For so long I thought it was my fault. She did all those things to Mary, my children, to you—to be my wife. They took her away this afternoon.”

  Katherine sat up and sipped the drink. “What will become of her?”

  Alex shrugged. “Mayhap Rochester will step in.”

  “Mayhap not. I am sure he is gone on to his next conquest.” Katherine placed her cup on the bedside table and snuggled into Alex’s arms.

  His heart began a fast thump with her soft kisses on his chest. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice hoarse, and hopeful.

  Reaching down, she stroked him. “Very good. And I know how you are feeling.”

  Alex turned her on her back and lay over her, giving her a slow, tender kiss. She tasted of honey. His lips trailed over her cheek and forehead. Raising his head, he saw her shadowed as usual by the dimness of the room.

  He sat up. “Do not move.” He got out of bed and walked to the windows. One by one, he flung open the drapes.

  The sun spilled in like a beacon of hope.

  He turned to look at her. “You are even more beautifu
l in the sunlight.”

  Katherine opened her mouth in astonishment and propped herself up on one elbow. “But the drapes. You want them closed.”

  “No more.” Alex went to her. “The past is finished. I want no darkness in our home.”

  “Our home,” Katherine sighed happily as he lay down and took her in his arms. “Joy and light. And children to fill it.”

  “And love,” Alex said as his lips met hers. “Always love.”

  About the author

  Born in Caribou, Maine, Pam Roller grew up an Air Force brat, residing in several U.S. states and in Europe. She discovered a love of fiction writing years ago while taking a college creative writing class. Residing in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley with her family and a myriad of SPCA pets, Pam teaches and writes historical and contemporary romance fiction.

  Visit Pam at www.pamroller.com

  Dedication

  For my family for their love and support

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six