Lady's Pursuit (Knight and Rogue Book 6)

by Bell, Hilari

  “Caro.” Rupert’s head bent till it rested against hers. “Father will be devastated. And if you wanted nothing more to do with me, and court, and my whole wretched family, I couldn’t blame you. Do you, Meg? Want to be rid of me, I mean?”

  She hesitated, and he added hastily, “Though before you make up your mind, Michael is right about the child. We’ll cancel all those projects. Our baby will be born — and loved — just as it is. But ... do you still want it to be our baby?”

  Given all she’d been through, I could see why she wanted to think about it. But after a moment, in which I could count his every heartbeat in Rupert’s throat, she dropped her head against his shirt.

  “Yes,” she said. “I must be mad — and I surely wish your father would hurry up and disown you, because I hate the idea of going back to court. But you, I still want. Even after all of this.”

  “Well, I might be able to hasten that disowning thing,” Rupert said. “Will you marry me, Meg? Right now, before we go home?”

  My lips parted in a silent whistle. The Liege had threatened to dissolve any marriage, but if Rupert could convince someone to bind them, the laws around marriage were strong enough that — without the consent of both parties to the pledge — ’twas hard to undo. Though whether the High Liege would prefer to leave his throne to the son who defied him by marrying a Giftless girl, or the son of the woman who’d plotted to kill his Heir might be a tossup. However...

  “I think you’re right,” said Fisk, beating me to the words by half a breath. “It’s easier to present someone with a done deed, and persuade them to get over it, than to persuade them to accept it before it’s done. And that being the case... I mean, if Rupert can find someone who’ll bind him and Meg, I think we might as well, ah...”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” said Kathy. “Of course I’ll marry you. Right now, today. I wanted to do it when you first proposed. You were the one who—”

  Fisk, smart man, did the sensible thing and kissed her.

  After a while, Michael picked up a lantern and went down to check on my prisoner — given the admiration in Kathy’s eyes, I meant to take full credit for all the dogs’ hard work.

  But after a few minutes of listening to their voices, without being able to make out words, Kathy shifted restlessly in my arms.

  “We might as well go down. I can tell you’re not paying attention anymore.”

  “Hey,” I said, stung. “I’m not the one whose eyes keep drifting toward the stairs.”

  “How do you know what my eyes are doing, if yours aren’t open?”

  “Why don’t you both go.” Rupert sounded amused. “You can get those fellows chained up in the coach before Meg and I come down, so she doesn’t have to see them. Unless you want to spit in Noye’s face, my dear?”

  “No.” I could see the shiver that went through Meg’s body. “I don’t want to see him, ever again.”

  Trying to murder the Liege Heir might be considered treason — I didn’t think the judicars would even have to bend the law very hard — so the only time she was likely to see him would be when she testified at his trial. Though that depended on what evidence lay in those letters she’d mentioned ... and whatever confessions Michael could extract from him.

  “Come on.” Kathy pulled herself from my arms as she spoke. “I’m dying to find out what they’re saying.”

  There was a reason I loved this woman.

  But when we went down the stairs, the conversation wasn’t worth giving up our cuddle.

  “I already admitted I recruited others to aid me,” Noye said. “And I knew those smelly trappers would tell the law everything, so you can hardly threaten me with their testimony. You can testify yourself that I wanted to kill the Heir.”

  “But why did you want to kill him?” Judging by the exasperation in Michael’s voice, he’d asked this question before.

  “I already told you, I hate him,” Noye said. “I’ve hated him for years. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I finally did something about it.”

  “Seriously? You’ve got to come up with a better story than that,” I told him. “Why would anyone hate Rupert? He’s a nice lad. And before you invent some woman, who chose him over you, bear in mind that the judicars are going to want her name. And then they’ll go ask her about it. So unless you can think of a girl you actually flirted with, who did fancy Rupert...”

  Noye, who had opened his mouth to embrace that idea, closed it.

  “It wasn’t a woman. I acted alone, and I did it because I hated him.”

  “For no reason at all?” Michael said skeptically. “Hatred enough to kill?”

  “There were times in court when I tried to win his favor, his patronage, and he ignored me,” Noye said firmly. “He didn’t even seem to see me, and I found that an intolerable insult.”

  I had to admit, this was a better story. When Rupert said he hadn’t noticed any attempts to attract his attention, Noye would claim that as confirmation instead of denial. However...

  “That’s rubbish,” said Kathy. “You never paid attention to anyone but the Liege Lady, and everyone who’s been in court with you knows it. Including the High Liege.”

  “Yes, well, he’s not a judicar.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But he’ll make an impressive witness.”

  “I don’t care.” Though judging by the stark fear growing in Noye’s eyes, this was a lie. “I acted alone, because I hated him. And nothing will induce me to say otherwise.”

  “Does your fealty mean so much to you?” Michael said gently.

  “I owe no fealty to the High Liege,” Noye announced. “I hate him, too.”

  That sounded a bit more sincere ... though it made the case against him worse.

  “Michael wasn’t talking about the High Liege,” I said. “He meant your fealty to the Liege Lady. Which reminds me, we’d better take you down to that carriage you’ve been hauling poor Meg around in, and find those letters she told us about.”

  I wished Meg had been there then — his face couldn’t have shown more shock or anguish at a death blow. Then he crumpled in on himself, and refused to say more, or even look at us.

  So Michael untied him from the pillar and checked my knots on the rope around his wrists. And with Trouble — all right, True — pacing at his heels and Fearless running in wide circles and growling, we left the mill and emerged into the moonlit night.

  Unlike mine, Michael’s prisoner had escaped. I would have rubbed that in, but he said the reason he’d tied him up so carelessly was because he was in a hurry to save us. And furthermore, that if True hadn’t come to help me capture Noye, his man would probably still be there. And we had Noye, so anyway, it hardly mattered.

  The carriage was parked in a clearing behind the mill. Before she climbed in to search it for Noye’s saddlebags, any concealed weapons, and the key to the shackles, Kathy touched the sprouting scars where the crest had been scraped away.

  “I never thought about it,” she said, “but before she married the Liege, Carolyn Miller’s family crest was an ear of corn, with the leaves spreading out to the sides.”

  “So what?” said Noye sharply. “Even if it was her carriage once, anyone could have bought it.”

  The shackle key was in his saddlebags. Remembering Kathy’s and Rupert’s description of Meg, chained inside this carriage when we attacked it, it gave me considerable satisfaction to lock them on Noye’s wrists. While I did so, True and Michael held him at tooth and sword point, respectively.

  We took the saddlebags back into the mill, and Rupert and Meg brought down the other lanterns and helped us read those letters; love letters, embarrassingly explicit ... and written in what Rupert identified as the Liege Lady’s own hand.

  “This will kill Father,” he said grimly.

  “I doubt it. A man’s wife can’t be doing all this...” I waved a sheet that had made Kathy blush so hard I’d taken it from her. It made me blush too, a little, and left me torn between the hope that
it would give her ideas, and the fear that it might raise her expectations too high.

  It took me a moment to remember what I’d been saying.

  “She can’t have been doing all this with another man, without your father seeing some hint of it,” I went on. “He may be shocked, he’ll certainly be hurt ... but he must have suspected.”

  “But why keep these letters?” Meg asked. “I can see that he loves her, but they’re appallingly incriminating. And this last one, where she asks him to ‘dispose’ of a parcel she’s ‘come to find too inconvenient.’ It’s almost enough to hang him, on the strength of that alone! Can he have intended to bring it forward if he got caught, and get himself off the scaffold by incriminating her?”

  “No.” Michael, Rupert and I all spoke together.

  “In the first place,” said Rupert, “it won’t get him off. In a conspiracy to murder, the man who does the deed is held equally guilty with the man — or woman — who gave the order.”

  “I know that,” said Meg, the law student.

  “He kept her letters because he didn’t think he’d get caught,” I said. “They never do.”

  Though a man who was willing to kill for love might have risked keeping them anyway.

  We’d even found a reply to that letter, which he’d written but waited to send, assuring his “true heart” that he’d properly disposed of “the parcel” she’d entrusted to him. He added that he’d wait a few more weeks before returning to court, but that she had nothing to concern herself with. Along with her original instructions, it was damning.

  “But none of that mattered,” Michael finished. “Do you know the old root word of ‘fealty?’ ’Tis the same as ‘fidelity.’ He’ll never betray her, even if he hangs for it.”

  “And he might not,” said Meg. “It convinces us because we lived through his attempts, but Rupert’s name is never mentioned. It might not be enough to convince judicars they have sufficient evidence of a hanging crime. That requires a higher standard of proof than a case in which a debt, wrongly settled, can be paid back.”

  “You may be right,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. The only one it has to convince is the High Liege.”

  And that, it would certainly do.

  We waited till dawn to leave the old mill, and despite all the evidence of just how badly love can go wrong, Kathy sat beside me on the carriage bench. She even let me drive, though I suspected she might be better at it than I was.

  Michael was a better driver, but he and True were in the carriage keeping an eye on Noye. After a half an hour riding on Champion’s saddlebow, Meg had switched to riding Tipple, and the other horses trotted behind the coach with Fearless at their heels. When he wasn’t whining to join us on the driver’s bench, where there was barely room for Kathy and me — not to mention how the carriage horses might react to a big predator perched behind and above them. Though only because they didn’t know what a sissy he really was.

  I had become somewhat attached to the absurd beast over the last few weeks, but now, with the sun beginning to warm the cool morning air and the world stirring to life, I preferred to have Kathy to myself.

  “...but even after we turn Noye over to the sheriff,” she was saying, “I don’t know how Rupert thinks he’s going to convince someone to marry him to Meg. Legally, anyone who’s done fealty to the High Liege, even through their own liege, can accept a marriage oath ... but there’s not a mayor or judicar in the Realm who’d be willing to offend the Liege. And a baron’s reaction to this situation would make Fearless look brave.”

  “Probably.” Even as I spoke, Rupert guided Champion nearer to Tipple and reached out to touch Meg’s shoulder. If the horses had been the same height, I swear they’d have held hands. “But even if he can’t make good on that sweeping promise — and given the determination he’s shown so far, I wouldn’t bet against him — we’re a long way from your father’s influence. Kathy ... are you sure? Because if you want to back out, now is the time. The Liege is probably ready to throw Michael and me in gaol, we won’t see a fract of any reward, and your father has been known to disinherit children if they piss him off sufficiently. And marrying me would just about do it.”

  “You,” said my beloved, “are the most incredible worrywart. The family members I care most about are Michael and Benton, and they won’t disown me. We’ll figure out the rest of it between us. Are you sure?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “But whatever else went wrong in their lives, my mother and father loved each other till the day he died. And she went right on loving him, after. It doesn’t stop with death. That’s one of the things that scares me, that kind of grief. Even if it doesn’t happen till we’re both wrinkled and toothless. But even when we were poor, as long as they were together...”

  “I’ve never been poor,” said Kathy. “But I don’t think my parents ever loved each other. Oh, they get along fairly well. But they married because Mother’s dowry included a river dock my grandfather needed, and her father wanted more fertile farmland. Mother does the woman’s work, and Father the men’s, but they never seem to work together. They sent me off to make the same kind of marriage with Rupert ... and I was running from that as hard as I could, even before we ... well, we’d met before. But you know what I mean.”

  She tucked her arm through mine, a casual possession that was almost as heart-stopping as a kiss.

  “I can see that,” I said. “But even when there’s love and partnership, like my parents had, it’s not like it is in the plays, when ‘A little flame of love sprang up in their hearts, and it never died or wavered, even to the end of their days.’”

  She snickered at my recital of one of old Makejoye’s gaudier passages, but I went on, “Living without enough money is hard, even with love. And I don’t think I could bear it if you stopped loving me.”

  “So,” said my darling, “because you’re afraid I’ll fall out of love with you, you’re trying to convince me not to marry you? And you say your father taught you logic?”

  I had to laugh.

  My parents did have the partnership Kathy wanted, but it was Michael who’d taught me how to be a partner. And my parents who, despite everything, had taught me love.

  “I know love doesn’t always work out,” Kathy added soberly. “If you want a horrible example, look at poor Noye.”

  “I grant you, he’s poor Noye.” The man might hang for his love, after all. “But he loves her as much as it’s possible for a man to love a woman. So at least he’s had that.”

  “Yes,” said Kathy. “But that’s why he’s ‘poor Noye.’ Because he loves her, as you said, as much as a man can. And I don’t think she loves him.”

  “You don’t... Didn’t you read those letters?”

  “That’s what makes me think it,” Kathy said. “She’s made love to him, any number of times and in all sorts of peculiar... Well, they sounded peculiar to me. But that’s all there was in her letters, Fisk. Passion, yes. But nothing of tenderness.”

  I thought back on what I’d read, and this time I managed to think about it with my brain instead of my crotch. Given the content of those letters that wasn’t easy, but...

  “You’re right,” I said. “All heat, no heart. I think he knows it, too. That’s why he said he had nothing to lose. You’re right. Poor Noye.”

  “And is that how you love me?” Kathy barely waited for my headshake. “’Tis not how I love you, either. So we’ll be like your parents, instead of Noye, partners as well as lovers. And that love will make whatever else becomes of us the brighter.”

  I knew it wouldn’t be that simple, because life isn’t. Particularly when you don’t have much money. But she was right about the rest of it.

  “Deal,” I said.

  And I swear, a little flame of love sprang up in my heart.

  If I’d ever doubted that gentle, scholarly Rupert would make a good High Liege, he settled the question when we reached town late that afternoon.

  We took our prison
er to the local sheriff, where Rupert announced himself, as himself, and proceeded to lay down the law ... almost as if he was already the Liege, who could.

  He had returned of his own accord, he told the sheriff, so “that outrageous reward” would not be paid. To anyone.

  A moderate reward, for service to the throne in time of need, might be forthcoming if he did what Rupert wanted. The first thing he wanted was for Noye to be taken back to Crown City by the sheriff’s men. To enable that, Rupert charged Noye with kidnapping, and the attempted murders of the Chosen Heir, the Heir’s affianced wife, and the Heir’s unborn child.

  The sheriff looked at Meg, with her bloodstained dress and wild hair, and his eyes widened. But he hastily summoned a clerk to write up the charges, and quietly sent off several other messengers.

  We found out about that when the mayor arrived, just in time to hear Rupert’s next demand, which was a bath and a clean dress for Mistress Margaret, so she could be properly clad for her wedding. Which would take place, he said, before sunset. The “or else” was unspoken, but everyone heard it anyway.

  The sun sets late in mid-summer, so that left almost three hours before the deadline. The mayor was happy to provide the bath, the dress, and dinner and lodging for the night, as well. But he spent the walk to his house, and the better part of a hastily assembled dinner, explaining all the reasons why he couldn’t, possibly, marry the Liege Heir to anyone. His excuses started with the semi-legal quibble that the person who took Rupert’s marriage oath should out-rank him, all the way down to his lady’s helpful contribution that preparing a proper wedding for the Heir would take weeks, if not months — the dress, the feast, just assembling the musicians...