The Slayer's Redemption

by Marliss Melton

  Christian watched with interest as the abbot flailed. He seemed to hang for a moment in thin air before he stumbled down the stone steps. Christian snatched Ethelred out of harm's way as Gilbert plowed headfirst into the wall before him, striking it so hard he collapsed on the floor. Blood gushed from his shaved head.

  “Oh, dear,” Ethelred exclaimed.

  Christian marshaled his features into a semblance of concern as the fallen abbot failed to move.

  “Is he dead?” Ethelred inquired.

  Blood formed a widening puddle under Gilbert’s cheek. “I think so.”

  “Hmm,” the good abbot murmured.

  Without a word more, they skirted the fallen figure and followed the weasel up the stairs and out the door.

  Clearly God did reward the righteous, Christian considered, though he did not quite count himself a righteous man—not yet anyway. Still, of all the events that had taken place that morning, none seemed so miraculous as Clarisse slipping her hand into his and squeezing it.

  She’d given no indication of loving Alec, or even favoring the young man more than him. That made it such a simple thing to shuck the mantle of darkness that Christian had worn for years and trade it for a cloak of another color.

  Clarisse du Boise wanted a champion? So be it. He would be the noblest hero she could possibly imagine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dazed by the afternoon’s events and light-headed from hunger and fatigue, Clarisse swayed atop Christian’s huge destrier. But then he heaved himself up behind her, and the instant his arms encircled her, her weakness subsided. He turned his mount, and, in the next instant, they were plunging down Rievaulx’s steep hill bound for Helmsley.

  Helmsley. And Simon. Her heart rejoiced to know that she was heading … home. Yet, in truth, Heathersgill was still her home, and where her mother and sisters awaited rescue. She had yet to find a way to free them.

  From the abbey’s open gate, Alec lifted a hand in farewell. His anxious expression bespoke of his eagerness to inform his brethren of their circumstances. They would likely be dubious, at first, to hear that their abbot had instigated their illness. However, finding him dead in his herbal, surrounded by the evidence of his experimentation, they would soon embrace the truth, especially when their health returned.

  Craning her neck to see Ethelred, who rode double with one of the men-at-arms, Clarisse assessed his health. He had agreed to go with them to Helmsley to recover. Later, one of Christian's knights would escort him to York; Ethelred would carry evidence of Abbot Gilbert's treachery to the archbishop in the form of his own ledger. His pallor and his frailty gave her a moment’s concern. Yet in the next instant, she found him smiling slightly with his face turned to the sun, and she knew he had suffered no lasting damage.

  Nor was she any the worse for wear. The scent of heather and gorse floating on the warm air helped to dispel her distress and the memory of being chained like a hound. Leaning back against the broad chest supporting her, Clarisse heaved a sigh of contentment. The wind lifted her loose-flowing hair and whistled through the threads of her boy’s attire, carrying away the rank odor of her prison cell. To think that, after all the evil thoughts she’d attributed to him, the Slayer had troubled himself to rescue her.

  After all the lies she had told him, was he willing to shelter her still? Did this mean that he would help her with Ferguson?

  “Take your rest, my lady,” he said in her ear. “You are safe now.”

  His assurance came as a balm to her anxious heart. As they galloped through Abingdon, past the market where she had first approached Sir Roger, the sense that every experience had happened as fate preordained further reassured her.

  The roll of the galloping horse lulled her slowly into a light trance. Her heavy-lidded gaze fell to Christian’s loose grip on the reins. He wore no gauntlets, she noted. Watching his long, tanned fingers curl around the leather strips, she recalled how they had coaxed her body toward surrender and then to unimaginable pleasure, stroking her most private place. How she longed to feel him touch her there again!

  She must have drifted off to sleep. When the rhythmic motion of the horse ceased, she roused to find herself still in the saddle but alone with Christian. They had come to a stop in the meadow whilst the men-at-arms continued into the castle before them. The last of them had just clattered over the drawbridge and out of sight.

  “What do we here?” she asked, looking up and back at him.

  She felt him dismounting. Several strands of her hair, caught in his chainmail, went with him. “Oh!” she cried, reaching up to save her scalp.

  At her yelp of pain, he snatched her off the saddle with him and in the process took them both off balance at once. They tumbled into tall stalks of wildflowers, with Christian taking the brunt of their fall and Clarisse landing soundly on top of him.

  “Are you hurt?” he wheezed, the breath clearly knocked from his lungs.

  “Not at all.” Rolling off him onto her hands and knees, she found that her hair was still caught. The strands had worked their way between the links, and she doubted she could pull them free without tearing her locks asunder.

  While working at the troublesome snags, she asked again, “What do we here?”

  “You said you would have naught to do with me even if I crawled on my knees begging your forgiveness,” he reminded her, his voice gentle as he pinned her with a somber gaze.

  Guilt elbowed its way to the forefront of her feelings. “Did I?”

  He nodded. “Even so, I intend to apologize before we enter the castle.”

  The confession made her stare at him in surprise. “But why here?”

  He smiled at her sheepishly. “So none would witness my humility,” he admitted.

  She punched him in the ribs and came away with bruised knuckles. “Oh! Help me free my hair,” she snapped, shaking her wounded hand.

  Adjusting the links of his mail, he helped her unwind the snared strands.

  “Thank you.” She pushed to her feet, brushing grass from her boy’s braies. Yet still, he had not stood to join her. They stared at one another in silence.

  A moment later, he clambered to his knees but went no farther.

  “Do you see me on my knees, Clarisse?” His voice was thick with some unspoken emotion.

  She froze at her name on his lips, realizing what he was doing.

  “Stop, Christian. ’Tis unnecessary to grovel. I spoke in haste that night. As did you, I believe.”

  A breeze rippled past them, sloughing the petals of the brightly colored flowers. Beyond him, the moat winked under the bright sun. The most notorious warrior in the borderlands remained on his knees before her.

  “Your hand, my lady.” He held his out and waited.

  With a leap of her pulse, Clarisse floated out a hand for him to grasp. Pleasure coursed up her arm as he stroked her palm before bringing it to his lips. He brushed his open mouth over her palm rather than her knuckles, and she shivered.

  “I am groveling,” he said, as if she hadn’t realized. “Will you forgive me now?” From beneath his lashes, he cast her a pleading gaze.

  The heat of his mouth reminded her of the scorching kisses they had shared the night he made his demands. Parts of her body, which his touch alone had awakened, tingled with remembered pleasure.

  “The fault is mine, as well” she insisted. “Because of my lies, I deserved your mistrust. I forgive your threat to send me back to the Scot.”

  “All is forgiven, then,” he assured her, but then his jaw tensed. “So long as you swear never to flee Helmsley alone and at night again.”

  “I swear,” she said, matching the imperious expression on his face with one of her own. “As long as I am not driven to it.”

  He growled in frustration at her lack of obedience and stood up, still holding her hand and now towering over her. Yet she ignored both his growl and his attempt to intimidate her, instead focusing on his words.

  “Does that mean I am stay
ing here, my lord?” Hope beat its wings within her.

  “Aye, if you will it.”

  “As your son’s wet nurse?” she prompted. “Or your prisoner, perhaps?”

  “As my wife,” he retorted, his gaze growing sharper. “If you will have me as your husband.” His voice betrayed the tiniest thread of uncertainty.

  She deliberated. The sun grew warm upon her shoulders. Could this be the realization of all her hopes? Was he really offering her everything she longed for and needed? Yet, he’d made no mention of loving her. The oversight kept her from basking overmuch in his proposal.

  “May I ask why you would marry me and not just keep me here against my will? Such barbarity is expected of you, after all,” she dared to point out.

  His expression became impossible to read. “Simon needs a mother,” he offered, “not just a wet nurse.”

  “I see.”

  “And you need a warrior strong enough to defeat your stepfather,” he added.

  True, and that was all she had ever wanted—until that particular moment as a longing for more, much more, reared unexpectedly.

  “Will you kill him for me?” she requested, thrusting aside her foolish romanticism. With Ferguson dead and gone, perhaps they might heal and move on, leaving the tragedy of her father’s untimely and brutal death behind them.

  To her surprise, it took him a while to answer. “Aye,” he said at last.

  The simple word flooded her heart with relief. Tugging her hand from his grasp, she turned and walked a short distance away, keeping her back to him. Pausing amidst a patch of tangle roses, she considered his offer from every angle, ignoring the odd disappointment that pinched her heart.

  Did she think, as the eldest of three daughters, she could afford to marry for love and not for practical reasons? Of course not. Simon, who was to inherit Helmsley one day, required a mother to rear him gently. Moreover, she, of course, whose family suffered at Ferguson’s hands, required a powerful champion to wrest back their home and avenge her father’s murder. Linking herself with Christian meant accepting the darkness that brooded inside of him and consumed him at unexpected moments. Still, Clarisse could use his fearsome reputation to her benefit.

  “Very well, then,” she decided, turning back.

  She flinched to find him standing immediately before her and had to crane her neck to look in his eyes.

  “I agree to wed you, my lord,” she said, feeling a distinct tremor in her knees as the words left her lips.

  A look akin to triumph lit his ruthlessly handsome face. He took a step closer, driving the breath back into her lungs. Very gently, his large, lethal hands cupped either side of her face.

  “You will never regret it,” he vowed, his gaze boring into hers.

  She wanted badly to believe him. The latent strength in his fingertips was as much to be feared as to be celebrated. With equal parts trepidation as relief, she allowed him to pull her closer and to seal his promise with a scorching kiss that promised much more pleasure soon to be shared in the marriage bed. His tongue licked the seal of her lips, and she parted them, accepting his invasion and his promise.

  What thrilled her more—the anticipation of his intimate touch or the certainty that he would free her family? She found she could not determine.

  Clarisse left Mass early the next morning, using Simon’s fussing as an excuse to slip away. While she was grateful for Ethelred’s swift recovery, which enabled him to deliver inspiring words before the breaking of the bread, Christian’s absence at Mass had plagued her with worry. If he did not begin attending services regularly, the servants would continue to think him a godless man.

  Nonetheless, she ought not to deliver her admonition whilst the warrior’s stomach was empty. She would stop by the kitchens on the way to his solar to pick up a few morsels for him to break his fast. The swiftest means of arriving at the kitchens was to cut through the servant’s quarters, where she had ventured only once before. With the servants all up and about their duties, the long hall with its honeycomb of chambers stood quiet and empty. Simon had ceased his fussing the instant she’d started moving. He bobbed along in his sling watching where they went.

  Just as Clarisse neared Doris’s bedchamber, the curtain twitched and Harold stepped out, still adjusting his chausses. With typical lack of awareness, he took no notice of her coming to a sudden standstill mere steps away. He cleared his throat, muttered something unintelligible, and plodded up the corridor ahead of her, headed the same way she was.

  Clarisse directed her startled gaze at the heavy curtain. She heard someone roll off the straw pallet and move around. Would Dame Maeve have agreed to meet her husband in someone else’s room?

  Heavy footfalls approached the other side of the curtain. It gave a swish, and there stood Doris peeking out at her and gasping in alarm to see her. “M'lady!”

  Astonishment rooted Clarisse to the floor. Harold and Doris were lovers. Was that his baby, which had been born so woefully early?

  It looks just like ’im, Sarah had whispered to her companion.

  Clearly, the other servants were aware of his and Doris’s relationship. What about Dame Maeve? Did she know?

  “Doris,” Clarisse replied on a reproving note. “Is there something you would like to tell me?”

  The cook’s plump face creased as she bowed her head in shame. But she admitted to nothing.

  “How long has this been going on?” Clarisse demanded. While it wasn’t her place to chastise the servants, if all went as indicated, she would soon be their lady.

  “Twenty-two years,” Doris whispered.

  It was Clarisse’s turn to gape. “That long!”

  “I have loved Harry since we was kids growin’ up at Helmsley. But bein’ as he was a nobleman and all, he was expected to marry better ’n me. Except the best the Evynwoods could find was a merchant’s daughter. Maeve. He don’t love her,” she insisted, her many chins wobbling. “’Tis me he loves and always has.” Tears pooled in the woman’s deep-set eyes.

  Clarisse tried to digest all the cook had said. Harold, a nobleman? How could he be? She stepped closer and laid a consoling hand on Doris’s shoulder. “Does Maeve know that you and …?” she trailed off, leaving her indelicate question unfinished.

  “Oh, aye. She pretends not to, but it was she who put the brakefern in my ale so that me babe would be born early.”

  An icy chill gripped Clarisse’s nape. “That’s murder,” she exclaimed.

  “Oh, aye,” Doris agreed. “An’ he weren’t the only babe she’s tried to kill,” she added in a voice that shook.

  Clarisse wasn’t sure she’d heard her right. “What are you saying?”

  Doris shook her iron curls. “I’ve said too much.” She gripped Clarisse’s hand and clung to it. “Please don’t tell the master,” she pleaded. “Maeve has vowed to expose us if we reveal what we know. I’ll be sent away, never to see my Harold again.”

  Clarisse wanted to shake her for keeping secrets. Instead, she patted her hand. “Firstly and most importantly, you must confess your adultery to Ethelred.”

  “Nay!”

  “He won’t judge you harshly, I swear it.”

  “Nay.” Dropping Clarisse’s hand, Doris hurried away, wiping her tears as she went.

  Clarisse heaved a sigh of empathy for the poor woman. Imagine having to watch your sweetheart join in wedlock to another woman! Yet apparently, Maeve had tolerated the affair until Doris got with child.

  An’ he weren’t the only babe she has tried to kill.

  Clarisse had a sickening suspicion though it made no sense to her. Continuing more slowly toward the kitchen, she found herself replaying their conversation. The cook had said that Harold was a nobleman. She would never have guessed that, yet it explained why his Norman French was in no way blunted by the Anglo tongue. If Doris had been at Helmsley for more than twenty years, then so had Harold.

  Something hovered on the brink of Clarisse’s consciousness, just out of rea
ch. She thought of her conversation with the steward two weeks past.

  Doris is well, she remembered comforting him shortly after Doris’s miscarriage. ’Twas her baby who died.

  He’d seemed to confuse the death of his baby with the plight of his niece. She was a babe once, my Rose. I rocked her on my knee. Here’s your horsey.

  You must have been a wonderful uncle, she remembered telling him, while wondering who his niece was.

  Harold, he’d said. Brother of John.

  John. John who? she had wondered though she hadn’t asked. John of Evynwood, Baron of Helmsley?

  Her heart beat faster. If Harold was the brother of the Baron of Helmsley, then he was also uncle to Genrose, the baron’s only daughter.

  Rose, that’s a pretty name.

  Aye, the names all aligned! Yet why didn’t anyone acknowledge Harold as the old baron’s brother, second-in-line to the baronetcy? Could it be that his family, ashamed of his mental infirmity and thinking him incapable of ever ruling Helmsley, had given him the title of a steward, found him a wife, and left it at that?

  The other nagging suspicion returned swiftly. Dear God, was it possible that the other babe Dame Maeve had tried to kill was Simon? Could Maeve have slipped an infusion of brakefern bark into Genrose’s drink in the hopes of murdering the next heir? That would put her husband back in place as lord of Helmsley and Maeve in the seat of power.

  Our pretty Rose has wilted.

  Clarisse’s knees trembled with sudden certainty. Harold had said those words in the lyrical voice he used when repeating people. They’d sounded so poetic, but thinking of them as words that someone else had said gave them a sinister sound. Who would have said those words besides Maeve, since Genrose’s parents, Lord John and his wife, were dead before their daughter?

  “God’s wounds,” she breathed. Forgetting her intent to bring Christian his breakfast, she hurried to the tower, taking the stairs as quickly as she could with the added weight of Simon strapped to her chest. She arrived at the closed solar door out of breath and gave it a hearty rap.