“Heartless bitch,” muttered the burly halberdier seated to Gavin’s right.
“What has Lady Bonville done to you?”
“Refused to pay our quarterly stipend. Says there is no money at all. None to pay her servants. None to attract husbands for Bonville’s three youngest daughters. There’s talk she means to send them to be brides of Christ at Holystone Priory.”
Gavin had a hard time believing Lord Bonville had died penniless. There must be some gold left. Some of his gold. He had sent enough of it here over the years, he thought bitterly.
“There is the child to be dowried, too,” the halberdier said.
Gavin dipped his venison in pepper sauce. “What child is that?”
“The half-Scots wench. The old lord’s granddaughter. Just seven years old is Mistress Isabella, but they do say she’s been ill, nigh unto death, mayhap.” He crossed himself piously before draining another mazer of ale.
Gavin scarce noticed if the taste of the sauce on his tongue was fierce or merely pungent. He felt his heart contract. His breathing became labored. His daughter was still alive? What trick was this?
“From what illness does she suffer?” he asked cautiously.
“No one knows.”
“How long has she been ill?”
After a moment’s computation, something which seemed to tax the fellow’s inebriated brain, he answered. “Nearly a month now. ”Twas shortly after Lord Bonville’s death. To keep any possible contagion from spreading, the widow had her moved to the north tower.“
Gavin scowled at the dais. Beatrice Bonville had exiled a sick child. Left her to die alone. He drank deeply of his own ale and tried to make sense of what he’d just heard.
Two days earlier, after he’d sent word to Bonville Keep that he intended to reclaim Isabella, he’d received a missive, signed by Lord Bonville, telling him that his daughter, his only child, had died in infancy.
But it was Bonville who was dead. That meant Lady Bonville must have dispatched the messenger. Gavin frowned. Even if she’d expected Isabella to die before he arrived, he could not imagine why she’d lie about the matter.
Far from keeping him away, the widow’s callous message had spurred Gavin into action. He’d jumped to the conclusion that Lord Bonville had robbed him, taking under false pretenses the generous sums Gavin had sent to England to defray the cost of Isabella’s upbringing.
His daughter had been a newborn when Gavin had last seen her. He’d left England the same day he’d buried Mariotta Bonville, his beautiful young English wife. Since then, he’d gained fame and fortune fighting in tournaments on the Continent and hiring out as a mercenary. He’d given little thought to Isabella. Indeed, when he’d heard the child was dead, and had been all along, he’d felt more anger than grief. Enraged at what he’d seen as Bonville’s duplicity, Gavin had vowed to reive Bonville Keep and take back all that hard-earned gold from the man who’d dared deceive him.
He should have known, Gavin thought, that Beatrice would be the real villain in this. She was the one who had objected, eight years earlier, when he’d asked Lord Bonville for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Beatrice had told her husband that Gavin was not worthy to wed Mariotta. She’d denounced him for being a Scot and called undue attention to his poverty. At the same time, behind her husband’s back, she’d tried to get Gavin into her bed.
When he’d declined this dubious honor and threatened to expose her wanton ways if she did not withdraw her objections, Beatrice had been furious. They’d avoided each other throughout his brief marriage to Mariotta. Afterward, blinded by his grief for the wife who’d died in childbirth, Gavin had accepted Beatrice’s show of sympathy at face value.
What a fool he’d been to leave his daughter here! A belated sense of guilt fanned the flames of Gavin’s resentment toward Beatrice, even though he knew he’d had little choice. In truth, he’d have been no fit caretaker for an infant.
Lord Bonville, on the other hand, had seemed an ideal person to look after the child. Mariotta’s father had possessed more experience than any man in England when it came to raising up young gentlewomen. In hope of a son to inherit after him, he’d married four times. The first three wives had been fertile but had produced only girls. Twelve in all. The last Lady Bonville, Beatrice, had been barren.
Staring at the woman on the dais, Gavin felt his anger at her intensify until a red haze seemed to form in front of his eyes. He blinked hard to regain control of his emotions, but his desire for revenge did not dissipate. The monk whose robes he’d borrowed would have advised him to forgive Beatrice. Gavin was more inclined to make the wicked woman pay for her sins.
Supper and the revelry that followed continued deep into the night. During those long hours, Gavin bided his time, listening and learning as much as he could from the conversations around him. It seemed to be the popular belief that Lord Bonville had spent all his money marrying off the first nine of his daughters.
Most people also knew that the steward, Michael Barlow, was Beatrice Bonville’s lover. So was James Maplett, her stepdaughter Marion’s husband, the dark-haired man on the dais. No one said much about the other Bonville sisters, or about Isabella.
Gavin waited until Beatrice retired for the night, then slipped quietly out of the great hall. He started toward the north tower, then stopped. He had time, he realized, to carry out part of his original plan. He could still assuage his desire for revenge.
Afterward, he would reclaim Isabella.
Exhaustion dulled Alison Bonville’s usually sharp reflexes. Despite her best efforts to stay awake, she’d fallen into a fitful doze and was slow to realize the significance of a rush of cooler air into the tower chamber.
A faint shuffling sound—leather-shod feet on the rush-covered floor—had her eyes popping open in alarm. At the same time, she caught a whiff of spilled ale and damp wool. Almost too late, a sense of imminent danger engulfed her.
Alison sat bolt upright on the window seat, reaching for the knife that hung from her belt as she searched the dimly lit room for an intruder. Rage and fear in equal parts filled her heart, when she saw a dark shape bending over her niece’s bed. Her only thought to protect the defenseless child, she launched herself at this threatening figure.
She attacked just as he started to lift Isabella into his arms, but some small, inadvertent sound on her part was enough to warn him of another presence in the chamber. At the last possible moment, he released his burden and started to turn. Instead of finding its target in his back, where Alison had hoped to damage some vital organ, her blade struck his shoulder and stuck there as he turned to face her fully.
Heedless of the danger of reaching across the breadth of his massive chest to grasp at the hilt of the knife, she tried to retrieve her weapon. Her fingers barely grazed it before he seized her wrist in a crushing grip. To cut off any outcry, his free arm clamped down with bruising force across her back, pressing her face into the muffling folds of his robe.
Instinctively, she struggled, but it was impossible to break free. Even breathing became difficult once her nose and mouth were tight against his chest. She dimly realized, too late for it to matter, that even had her aim been true, she’d have done little damage. She could feel the thick padding of a quilted gambeson beneath an outer covering of wool. Her small, sharp blade was imbedded in naught but cloth.
A child’s whimper penetrated the haze of Alison’s desperation when her captor’s soft-spoken command to be still could not. The moment she stopped fighting, he loosened his grip sufficiently to allow her to gulp in much-needed air.
“Isabella,” she whispered in a hoarse croak she scarce recognized as her own voice.
His hesitation lasted no more than an instant. As soon as his hold on her eased, Alison dashed to the girl’s side, all thought of calling for help banished by her need to assure herself that Isabella was no worse.
The forehead beneath her palm was cool and dry. Isabella responded to the familiar touch with a li
ttle sigh and sank once more into drugged sleep. With loving fingers, Alison brushed a wisp of hair away from her niece’s face. Only then did she realize that the intruder had moved silently to the other side of the bed. Belatedly, she recognized his outer garb as that of a monk.
Confusion held her motionless as he knelt, his attention fixed on the child’s pale face. The man was no Benedictine, no matter how he was dressed. Only moments earlier, she had been certain that he was a murderer bent on killing Isabella, but watching him now, Alison experienced an odd sense of familiarity. Inexplicably, she no longer feared him.
Without looking at her, he spoke in a soft, deadly voice. “If you cry out, I will kill you.”
“At this hour of the night, the servants are all asleep and what guards may have been posted are most likely deep in their cups, their wits addled.” Even sober, they’d have been loath to bestir themselves. None of them felt much loyalty to the Bonvilles these days. Why should they when they had not been paid for months?
As if surprised by her comment, the man lifted his head. For the first time, Alison saw the face of the man she’d tried to kill.
Recognition sent her reeling.
She had been right. This was no monk. Nor was he a brigand or a border reiver, as she had supposed. He was no stranger, either. The man kneeling opposite her was Isabella’s father. It might have been years since she’d last seen him, but she’d never forgotten his eyes. They were the color of a stormy sea at dusk.
“What is wrong with her?” He indicated his daughter.
“Lady Bonville tried to kill her.”
The moment the words were out, her hands flew to her lips. Even if this was Isabella’s father, it had been passing foolish of her to make such a claim.
He stared at her without speaking, the angry flare of his nostrils the only indication of his feelings. Then he reached again for the sleeping child, lifting her into his arms as he stood. “She will never hurt Isabella again.” He started toward the door.
“Wait.”
“Silence, woman, or I’ll bind and gag you.”
His tone made Alison realize that he had taken her for a servant. It was an understandable error. To nurse Isabella, she had put off the trappings of a noblewoman. The cote-hardie she wore over her linen chemise, its full skirt short enough to clear the ground but long enough to hide her flat, leather slippers, was made of plain russet-colored wool, bereft of decoration save for the belt that held the now empty sheath for her knife and an undecorated leather bag.
Gavin Dunnett had no reason to think her one of his wife’s little sisters. She’d been a child of eleven when he’d last seen her. Moreover, Alison’s distinctive Bonville hair, of the pale blonde color some poets called “silver-gilt,” was covered by a simple linen coif.
“Isabella is my daughter,” he said.
Alison had no wish to challenge his rights. The girl would be far better off with him.
So would she.
“She needs warm clothing,” Alison told him. “And someone to look after her. Give me but a moment, and I will pack her belongings and mine, too.”
It was the perfect solution, Alison thought. She could not bear the idea of being separated from Isabella, to whom she had long been more mother than aunt. And after what had happened earlier tonight in Beatrice’s chamber, escaping across the border into Scotland had undeniable appeal.
She had been dreading the new day, but until Gavin Dunnett appeared, she’d given no consideration to flight. She’d had no place to go. Now, in spite of all the unknown danger that might lie ahead, she felt like a condemned prisoner who’d just been offered a pardon.
“Make haste,” he said.
Within minutes, Alison had Isabella bundled into layers of wool and camlet and had retrieved her own warm outerwear. The child was stirring when Gavin once again lifted her.
“Who are you?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
“I am your father.”
Isabella looked around for Alison.
“He is your father, Isabella. We are going to go with him now. We must be very quiet.”
Her eyes wide and solemn, Isabella nodded.
Alison followed Gavin Dunnett down the narrow, winding steps cut into the thickness of the wall and along the passageway that led to the cavernous, vaulted kitchen that occupied the ground floor of the north tower. They passed through, mere shadows, unseen by any of the servants sleeping there, and exited by way of a heavy wooden door. Gavin paused just outside, at the top of a flight of worn stone stairs. Below them was the inner bailey, an open space they’d have to cross in order to reach the postern gate.
Nothing seemed to be stirring. No one challenged their progress as they went past the kitchen garden and the fish pond stocked with trout and pike. They made it safely across a small wooden bridge and reached the high stone wall without mishap.
“I’ve a currach hidden a short way downstream,” Gavin whispered as he unbarred and opened the oaken gate. Just on the other side, a path descended to the riverbank.
Alison turned to take one last look at her home. To her horror, she saw armed men streaming toward her across the little bridge.
“Stop her!” one shouted. “Do not let her escape!”
Alison pushed hard at the door in the wall, slamming the postern gate closed before the rapidly approaching guards could catch sight of Gavin or Isabella. She turned back toward the castle, calling out, “I have no intention of going anywhere. Can a lady not enjoy a moonlit walk in her own garden without causing such a to-do?”
Rough hands seized her. Alison recognized Michael Barlow, the steward. The others were men-at-arms under his command.
“Release me, sirrah! What have I done to warrant such treatment?”
“Murder,” Barlow said.
“Who has been murdered?”
“You know the answer to that question, Mistress Alison, else why would you try to run away? Your stepmother is dead. Stabbed through the heart.”
He shoved her into the arms of one of his men.
“Lock her up for the crowner to question! No one is to talk to her until he arrives.”
Mistress Alison?
FROM HIS PLACE of concealment on the other side of the postern gate, Gavin Dunnett absorbed the shock of this revelation. The young woman who’d fought him to protect Isabella was no mere nursemaid. She was Alison Bonville. One of Mariotta’s sisters. Isabella’s aunt.
She could not have killed Beatrice.
In spite of the fury with which she had attacked him, he did not believe her capable of murder, but his opinion, Gavin realized, would not save her. She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that she’d been taken into custody while trying to escape, no one at Bonville Keep would trouble to look elsewhere for a killer.
She’d gone quietly so he and Isabella could get away.
There could be no other explanation for her silence.
When the tramp of boots had receded and it was safe to move, he set Isabella on her feet and hunkered down until their eyes were level. “Who cares for you, Isabella? Who looks after your needs.”
“Mine Aunt Alison.”
He was not surprised by the answer. “Not some servant?”
Isabella shook her head. “Is it true you are my father?”
“Aye.”
“Mine Aunt Alison has told me stories about you. She said you are a brave and honorable knight.”
Gavin had men and horses waiting at an encampment only a short distance downstream. He could take Isabella there and set out for Scotland at first light. Once she was certain Isabella had time to get safely away, Alison could accuse him of the murder, thus regaining her own freedom.
But would she? And would they believe her if she did? Gavin frowned.
With Beatrice dead, he supposed there was no need to kidnap his daughter. As long as no one learned of this visit to the castle, he could return in daylight and claim her openly. If he did so, he would also be able to help Alison, who out
of love for his child had sacrificed herself.
He sighed.
A brave and honorable knight, she’d called him.
She had been listening to too many ballads, tales of knights with pure hearts and noble intentions. What she’d seen here on the Border should have given the lie to such fancies. Real knights served whatever man paid for their services. They cared little for honor and less about those who got in their way. No matter who won any of the wars between England and Scotland, the folk who lived in the Debatable Land were the worse for it. Man, beast, and crops, all were trampled under the hooves of knights’ horses and the bootheels of foot soldiers.
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