Several of the castle guards were in the background, peeking their heads through the gaping doors to the hospital’s main foyer. Amongst the gawkers was the dynamic teacher/apprentice duo of Samuel and Timothy. They all wanted to catch a glimpse of what had to be one more piece of the chaotic puzzle that was the last five hours in Gwent’s royal castle.
There had been an assassination attempt that had been foiled before it truly started, countless arrests, and inexplicable damage to the castle’s interior. There was also the crushed, lifeless body of their former superior, Captain Thurlow, heaped at the base of the eastern wing’s outer wall. When ogling bystanders such as Samuel and Timothy also considered King William’s death and Prince Leopold’s inauguration, the last twelve hours had yielded more excitement for the citizens of Gwent then they had seen for at least fifteen years. Samuel wished he had a cold beer to accompany the spectacle.
“I am ecstatic that the barbarous lunatic is finally dead,” Frome declared from Marion’s side. “How could he have hurt an innocent girl like this.”
“When can she accompany us home?” Marion inquired of the robed man that she correctly assumed was a physician.
“When she awakens,” replied the man. “Her wounds are all quite superficial. Even the laceration on her face. I would like to ask her a question or two about it before she goes, however.”
“Such as?” Marion asserted, feeling a maternal defensiveness arising within her.
“I am wondering if she observed the instrument that was used to cut her.”
Gabriel’s head lifted.
“What do you mean?” Marguerite beckoned, dabbing at her weepy eyes with a dark blue handkerchief. “Wouldn’t Thurlow have just used a knife? Surely he had a knife.”
“No,” the doctor explained, “it was not a regular blade that cut her. It was thick and haphazardly jagged, like a slivered stone or a shard of glass.”
Gabriel shot to his feet, the wooden chair flung to the ground behind him. Everyone, including the doctor, was startled. “It was not Thurlow who did this,” Gabriel announced.
“What?” Frome exclaimed. “If not that bastard then whom?”
Gabriel dropped his head to his chest, his eyes furrowed in severe contemplation. He didn’t know. It tortured him to admit it. There had to be someone who saw something or could provide some kind of clue. There had to be…
Gabriel’s head turned like a hawk toward the clinic doorway where two oafish guards were watching the situation like overgrown teenagers. He recalled the annoyingness of having to pass the two guards that night on his way into the castle to find Ella. He had tried to be polite when he requested entrance, but the older guard would not yield. He yammered on about having already allowed too many people in already. Just before Gabriel struck the impertinent guard in the face, he heard the younger and slower guard utter to his partner:
“Yes, but those were all just ladies. And one of them was looking for her daughter. We didn’t do anything wrong, did we Samuel?”
As Samuel watched the large, diabolical beast that had already broken his nose stride toward him that morning in the clinic, he feared the worst. He tried to flee, but there were too many bodies to mull through.
“You there!” Gabriel hollered to guard who had been so very impertinent, “Don’t move!”
Gabriel forcibly took Samuel by his arm. As he was about to depart with the nervous guard through the rapidly dissipating swarm of spectators, Gabriel turned back to Marion.
“When Ella awakens,” he beseeched, “tell her I will be back. I have something very important to tend to.”
Chapter Forty
Isolda had barely been able to undress before she’d collapsed on her bed. She could not recall ever having been so exhausted as she was in those wee small hours of the morning. Her head spun in a collage of the previous night’s activities. Had it all been a dream? Isolda recalled so many images, but she could not piece them together. Where was Aislinn? Had her daughter preceded Isolda home? She knew, as the mother, she should have looked in on both of her daughters before she retired herself hours before. But she’d failed to fulfill her maternal obligations. There was no opulent excuse that Isolda could concoct. She simply had not done it.
Perhaps she was afraid of what would happen when her twin daughters inevitably woke and began flooding their mother with questions. What would she say? How could she explain to them that they all might as well have just been dead?
Could she confess to them the lengths she had gone to preserve their honor?
You have no idea how unfair, Ella.
A horrific pounding echoed through her room, rattling the thin walls. Isolda hated that about her home: such thin walls. She clutched her forehead in her hand, willing it to become impervious to any and all distraction. She could simply stand no more.
Bethany excused her servant kindly and made her way to the front door. She was dressed quite nicely and her hair was even remarkably fashioned for so early in the morning. She’d woken up revitalized. She felt like a new person.
Bethany opened the door and was taken aback by such an unusual and eclectic party of callers. In the front, none other than King Leopold. He was flanked on both sides by two guards. On the right, Miles Gamely. To Leopold’s left was Oli Roget, Miles Gamely’s best friend and the king’s new bodyguard. As if that were not enough, behind the three men stood another guard whom, whilst indeed a uniformed officer, could not have looked more misplaced. Bethany giggled a little below her breath at the guard who appeared so oblivious and wholly embarrassed by his swollen nose. When she’d last seen him, his nose was undamaged.
“Your Highness, please do come in,” she said, stepping back, her head bowed. “To what does my family owe so wonderful a surprise?”
Leopold led his company forward until they were all standing resolutely in the narrow but spacious vestibule of the Armitage’s splendid estate. Bethany was rendered speechless. Leopold had only been the king of Gwent for less than a day and he already carried himself with a stateliness that she had never seen before in anyone. Only as she was about to close the door did she notice the fifth caller standing a few paces from the front steps. The man who Bethany only recognized as ‘not Ella’s uncle’ was standing fixedly, watching the entire exhibition like a mysterious spy. He did not make a sound but somehow Bethany knew not to close the door completely.
“Your Ladyship,” Leopold said, returning Bethany’s greeting as she approached him, “I apologize for the early hour. There are two purposes for our visit here this morning.”
Bethany waited. Lord Henry Armitage emerged from a private study just adjacent to where Leopold was standing. His face was glazed in shock and amazement.
“Will you be so kind as to fetch your mother, the baroness,” Leopold requested, so politely that it made both Bethany and her father somewhat suspicious. There hinted an air of nefariousness in his majesty’s tone.
“Of course,” Bethany said and she turned toward the staircase.
“That won’t be necessary, Bethany,” Isolda said from the summit of the tapered staircase, donned in nothing but her exquisite and impenetrably thick satin robe. “I am already here.”
Henry looked up at his wife. He’d always known her to be a haughty woman, but what could possibly have been her motivation for exuding such arrogance in the presence of so dignified an audience?
“Baroness,” Miles Gamely spoke for the first time, “may we please see your hands?”
“What?” Isolda sued, wrapping her arms around her torso and taking a slight step backwards.
“It seems your niece was viciously assaulted in the castle last night by an unknown assailant,” Miles went on, “and it appears as though the weapon was a piece of glass from a broken window. Examination of the evidence revealed that there was indeed a long shard of glass near where Ella Delaquix was lying. There was blood, as expected, on the tip where her face was cut. But there was also some on the other end of it. We can only conclude th
at whoever attacked her was also wounded in the process. Now I must insist: please let us see your hands, Baroness.”
Isolda’s face had turned pale white. She stared down angrily at the man who spoke to her so presumptuously. “How dare you!” Isolda spat. “Ella is my family and I would never hurt her. I wasn’t even at the castle last night.”
Leopold severed his trancelike stare at Isolda, his future mother-in-law, and turned his attention to Samuel. The man, who at that point was willing to sell his own mother for a bottle of rum, looked back at the king before he spoke.
“I saw you there, Baroness, outside the gate,” Samuel revealed ineloquently. “You went in with Captain Thurlow. I saw you with my very own eyes.”
“Mother?”
Isolda was startled when she heard Aislinn’s voice in her left ear. Her daughter was emerging from the hallway that led to the private bedchambers of the Armitage family. Isolda had not even sensed her presence.
“I will apologize for nothing!” Isolda screeched, curling her fingers into a fist that, with the condemning laceration on her right hand, turned out to be rather painful. “I do nothing but for my family. Ella took everything from us. And she did nothing to deserve it but have a pretty face. Then she pouted and wept like I was the one that was being so very unfair to her. She has no idea how unfair life really is. Look at my daughters! They are as ravishing as Ella and yet Aislinn was sent home in disgrace last night. She went back just for you, King Leopold, and you spurned her! Just because you wanted to fawn like a satyr over Ella! Well, I had had enough. Ella is not so very pretty now!”
Isolda’s mirage of recollection was becoming plain to her. It had not been a dream. She’d seen Ella lying there, only partially conscious. Even in her desperate condition, she was still so ravishing. She would always get whatever she wanted because of her damn face! Isolda could not control her rage. All she could think about was leveling the playing field for once and letting Ella experience all the attention in a way she’d never dreamed. It had been too perfect an opportunity and Isolda had taken it.
And she would have done it again.
“What are you talking about, Mother?” Aislinn begged, her face aghast. “How was I sent home in disgrace? I went to the ball, but then I left the castle with the Duchess of Timmelin and all the other guests after the announcement was made that the king died. I never went back.”
“Why are you saying these things, Aislinn?” Isolda exhorted frantically, her face turning from white to red. “I told you to return to the castle and you did. Those idiotic excuses for guards told me you were there!”
“Well, they must have been mistaken,” Aislinn contended, stepping closer to her mother on the dramatic stage that was the mezzanine of their interior balcony. “After you left last night, I tried to do as you instructed but I couldn’t. My door was locked from the outside. I banged and hollered for an hour but no one heard me. I was trapped. Then this morning, when I tried to exit again, the door was unlocked. Like it had never happened.”
In Aislinn’s explanation, she appeared almost as desperate as her mother. It had been more than unnerving to be captive in her own bedroom, slamming her fists against the door for someone to let her out. She even considered trying to escape through the window but feared the fall would seriously harm her. More than just fear, however, was bewilderment. Her door had never locked from the outside on its own. Someone had to have done it.
“This can’t be happening!” Isolda nearly shouted. “You were there, Aislinn. I know it!”
“No, she wasn’t,” Bethany proclaimed, her voice a calming energy against Isolda’s increasingly propulsive tirade. “It was me, Mother.”
Both Isolda and Aislinn were stricken by a brutal hush.
“I heard what you said to Aislinn last night, Mother,” Bethany went on, trying not to enjoy her disclosure too much. “I heard it from my own bedroom. Like you’ve always complained, our walls are so shamefully thin. And I was just about to curse you both for destroying my own magical evening when I was set upon by a most self-serving idea. I decided it was my turn to take a chance on myself, since you never did. After you’d left, I snuck over to Aislinn’s room and locked the door. Then I hid the key. I was not dressed for the occasion but I couldn’t very well steal the yellow gown that I loved so much off from Aislinn’s body. So I retrieved one from her heap of unworthy discards. The gown that Aislinn had preferred in the beginning was still quite stunning. It was pink. Her favorite color. Not mine, though. I like yellow.”
Bethany took a step and eased into the vacant space alongside Leopold. She took his hand in hers proudly. “Remember when you told me,” she said with the sheerest pleasure she’d ever experienced, “that God would give us a kingdom? Well, it didn’t happen that way. But He did give me a king.”
Isolda fell forward against the railing. Bethany could not help but feel guilt for seeing her mother so undone. No matter how many times she had wronged Bethany, Isolda was still her mother. She was the only mother Bethany would ever get. Those ties were supposed to bind them forever. When Bethany looked over at her sister, however, what once had been just a tinge of regret transformed into an assault of remorse.
Aislinn peered down at her twin sister and the look that befell her face was not one of anger or even shock. It was sorrow. Aislinn felt like a rock had been thrown at her chest. She had never been a kind enough sister to Bethany. She knew it. She’d been sick about it that whole horrific night. She knew, objectively, that her twin sister had every right to take her own pride back after it had been so deviously taken from her by her own kin. But still Aislinn was heartbroken. Betrayed, even if there was no merit for it.
Would it ever have occurred to you to simply tell me that you were going to take my place instead of tricking me and leaving me to wail from my bedroom like a squealing pig? Aislinn thought but did not say out loud. Why didn’t you just ask me first? I would have agreed…willingly. I would have given you back your dress and told you I was sorry.
But Bethany had failed to give Aislinn such a chance and what once had been a fragile but living relationship was forever tarnished.
You said you took a chance on yourself because no one else would, Sister. Perhaps you are right. But last night has proven that you never once took a chance on me either. I suppose now we are even; and the chance for both of us is gone.
Bethany could not look at her twin sister. She knew she had hurt Aislinn. She could feel it. She turned and faced Leopold, the man she had fallen in love with, and took fleeting comfort in his eyes. He saw Bethany’s heaviness of heart. She’d told him, just hours before, that she would only accept his proposal of marriage once he knew the truth of her true identity and why she’d done what she had. Leopold had not struggled for even a moment to overlook the deception, but he did take the time to heed that while, in the beginning, it had been quite exhilarating for Bethany to enter her own arena of espionage, it was not easy for her to risk losing her family. Especially Aislinn.
“You wretch!” Isolda screamed at Bethany and began descending the steps. “How could you deceive your own mother like that? How could you do that to your sister? I always knew it. I knew it would have been better if you had been Isabella’s daughter instead of mine! You are just like her. You are conniving and unfeeling!” Isolda had reached the bottom of the steps.
“Stop it, Mother!” Bethany demanded. “Stop blaming a ghost for every one of your failures. You can pretend all you want that Isabella is the devil but it will never erase your own sins.”
“That woman was the devil! I would have done anything for her to like me, but she only ever despised me in return.”
“You lie,” Bethany exclaimed.
“It’s true, child.” Henry said.
Silence.
Henry’s declamation did more than still the storm. It teased of another one far worse, which had yet to reveal itself.
“What?” Bethany said, looking at her father; the man she hardly knew and ne
ver respected.
“What your mother says is true,” Henry repeated. “Isabella did hate her. She hated her for many years. She only ever hid it in front of you children.”
Bethany gasped. Aislinn could barely stand. Tears were streaming down her cheek.
“That can’t be,” Bethany said, almost pleadingly.
“Why are we supposed to believe you?” Miles interjected, though he could not deny the inkling in his brain that he should remain as far from the domestic inferno as possible. “Of course you would say anything to protect your wife.”
Henry chortled. “If you knew even an iota about me or my wife, you would know the gross error of your claim,” Henry asserted. “It is not too difficult to tell that she can barely stand to be in the same room as me. In fact, it has been that way from before she and I were even married.”
“Be quiet, Henry,” Isolda choked out.
“I loved her back then,” he went on. “In some ways I love her now though I believe her to be the worst kind of woman. She is rather smart, however. And she is right about one thing. Isabella Delaquix could barely look at her.”
“Henry, shut your mouth!” Isolda shrieked.
“Oh enough, Isolda!” Henry shot back. “Stop pretending you are such a victim. You are not. Isabella had every reason not to trust you.”
“She married my brother. We were family. She had no right to reject me like she did, just because she was a duke’s daughter.”
“That was not why and you know it! You betrayed her as no family ever should, and on her and Thomas’ wedding day of all days.”
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