Hielda appeared at the entrance, a steaming bucket in her hand. “Somebody wants hot water?” she demanded, her cavalier tone setting Alexander’s teeth on edge. As he took the handle of the bucket, his expression full of disdain, he wondered how cheerful Hielda would be after some time in that dungeon.
Hielda apparently didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “Osburn says you’re to report to him at once.”
“I’ll report to him when I’m ready,” Alexander said, closing the door in her face.
“He says now!” she shouted.
“Perhaps you should go, Alexander,” Denis said nervously. “He is ugly when he’s drunk.”
“Which would be all the time,” Alexander muttered.
Kiera looked about to burst into tears. How much she was like his mother, slavishly devoted to a man who did not deserve it.
“My sister—did you see her?” the lady asked, taking his attention from Kiera. “How was she?”
“She is well. Worried about you, of course, but I assured both her and your husband that you will be returned unharmed once I have the money.”
Closing her eyes as in prayer, she fervently murmured, “Thank God.”
“Your husband is also well,” he said, watching her reaction carefully.
“He is a strong man.”
She smiled, but there was something—or rather, there was not something—in her eyes that he expected to see when she spoke of the man she supposedly loved. Before he had seen Sir Connor with the lady’s sister, he might not have noticed, but now…
“Your sister did not strike me as weak, either.”
“No, she isn’t.” He neither saw nor heard any rancor as she responded.
Maybe he was wrong, seeing trouble where there was none. Or maybe she herself was ignorant.
Again he reminded himself that the state of the lady’s marriage was none of his concern. “Stay in bed and rest, lest you swoon again.”
“I won’t now that you … now that you have given me the news.”
“Good. Denis, I am going to our quarters.”
Before I betray my feelings or my suspicions about your husband and your sister.
Frowning, his friend hurried to him and, taking his arm, steered him out of the chamber. “Listen to me, Alexander. You must go to Osburn before he orders the Brabancons to do something else—against all three of us. He’s been drunk ever since Heinrich was killed and muttering more and more about how he was not born to be a jailer. He’s been saying terrible things to Kiera about women. I think he’s been hitting her, too, although she never complains. A message came for him yesterday, and he’s been even worse since.”
“What message?”
“He has not said, to anyone, not even Kiera. Whatever it is, I tell you, you must do something to rein him in, even appease him if you must, or who can say what he will do?”
“He’s a useless sot.”
“Who the Brabancon will obey.” Denis looked at his friend with grave and pleading eyes. “Is it not in his favor that he did not kill the lady when Heinrich died? And you say her husband will pay, so we will not have to endure him long. Nor will she. Although it goes against your nature, Alexander, you must do this. In the meantime, we will take care of her.”
There was nothing more he could do here anyway, and Denis was no fool. If he thought it wise to mollify Osburn, he would—a little. “Very well.”
Leaving his friend, Alexander marched down the steps and entered the hall.
Ignoring the Brabancons and slovenly serving wenches, Alexander walked up to Osburn and planted his feet, his arms akimbo. He glared into the man’s bleary, bloodshot eyes. “What the devil did you think you were doing?”
The Brabancons took a collective step forward, but Alexander paid no heed.
“Punishing her,” Osburn replied, whining like a child. “She killed Heinrich.”
“He deserved it.”
As the Brabancons began to mutter, Alexander whirled around. He would give them a reason for Heinrich’s death that they would understand. “He was touching my property that I stole, so he deserved to die, whether at my hand or my friend’s. Is there a man among you who would not do otherwise? Or do you all share what each of you plunder?”
Alexander’s point hit home, and he pressed on. “If Heinrich could be killed by a mere woman, however it came about, he was not fit to lead you. Who has taken his place?”
A man dressed in a patched gambeson and leather breeches stepped forward. “I, Rawdon.”
“Well, then, Rawdon, if any Brabancon touches the lady for any reason other than at my express command, I’ll kill him. Do you understand?”
“Aye,” Rawdon muttered.
“I command here!” Osburn protested, staggering to his feet. “A fact you seem to be forgetting, you arrogant bastard. I say what happens to her, until my father comes. And he won’t be pleased to learn that Heinrich’s dead at her hand. He didn’t come cheap—a thousand marks, in addition to what he charged us for his men. All for nothing now, because of her.”
Alexander didn’t have to be looking at the Brabancons to feel their shock and their ire. No doubt they were each earning considerably less for this guard duty. The news of Heinrich’s fee would spread to the rest of them, too, and when Lord Oswald arrived, he might well discover that his mercenaries, a band of men never known for their loyalty, were even less loyal to him than before.
Osburn was either too drunk or too stupid to realize his blunder. “She couldn’t be allowed to get away with killing him, any more than Connor should be allowed to get away with stealing your birthright.”
“My birthright has nothing to do with this. She is a woman and of noble birth. You should have locked her in her chamber, if you felt imprisonment necessary.”
Osburn’s eyes flared with a dim spark of protest. “You’d have me treat this woman like a delicate, innocent maiden? Good God, man, I’ve never met a woman less delicate or innocent! How many times has she tried to escape?” His brow furrowed as if he were trying to count, but he gave up in the next instant. “Anyway, she’s no more delicate than Ingar, and as for innocent, you seem to be forgetting she was as responsible for your father’s fate as Sir Connor. Isn’t that also why she was taken?” The gleam in Osburn’s eye grew malicious. “Or is it that she holds just as much of an attraction for you as she did for your father?”
Alexander ran his fingers through his hair. It was so easy to forget her culpability in his father’s destruction. Seeing her in that state, he had also forgotten how she had used her own attractiveness to try to win him to her side with that incredibly passionate kiss.
“She is nothing to me but something to be ransomed,” he lied, determined not to give Osburn pleasure or power by revealing his confused feelings. “If she fell ill, or died, she would be worth nothing. Sir Connor has said he will pay.”
The feral gleam grew in Osburn’s bloodshot eyes. “Perhaps Sir Connor need never know what’s happened to his beloved wife. Wouldn’t that torment be an even more fitting recompense for what you have lost?”
Alexander silently cursed the day he had met Lord Oswald, and his even more despicable son. “I made a bargain with the man, and I will keep it.”
Osburn shrugged his shoulders. “As you wish—as long as you don’t get any ideas about stealing her away.” His gaze flicked over Alexander. “Don’t think I don’t see which way the wind is blowing, DeFrouchette. You may be a handsome enough fellow, bastard though you are and in a rough, uncouth sort of way, but she’ll never—”
“Do you intend to keep her locked in her chamber?”
Osburn blinked, taken aback by the abrupt interruption. “I suppose she’s learned her lesson, and besides, now you’re here to watch over her, as I’m sure you will do with great attention.” He smirked as he held up his wineskin. “Let’s salute the lady and our plan, as well as my dear father, who’s informed me that he plans to be here soon.”
That must have been the message Denis
had spoken of. It struck Alexander that he should not be surprised that Lord Oswald was coming after the danger was over and the risk nearly nil.
Otherwise, Alexander had no wish to see the man who had kept so much secret about this plan. If he must, he must, however; then he would take his money and head for Europe, away from England and the lady’s husband. And away from the lady, too.
Osburn took a long pull at the wineskin and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “He wants to see Lady Allis one last time, he says. Can’t say I blame him. She is a beauty, even if she looks a little like a shorn sheep. Still, he won’t be happy to hear about Heinrich.”
Alexander had had enough of this man and this conversation. He turned on his heel.
“I give you leave to go, DeFrouchette,” Osburn said as if Alexander were leaving by his command.
Barely resisting the urge to pummel the man until he screamed for mercy, Alexander strode out of the hall.
Lying in bed wearing a clean shift, warm and relatively safe now that DeFrouchette had returned, Isabelle watched Kiera gather up what had once been her best woolen gown. “I’m sorry that it’s ruined.”
Looking down at the filthy bundle in her hand, Kiera softly replied, “It’ll wash.”
Isabelle doubted washing could repair what three days in that hellhole had done to it, but she had no other compensation to offer except her apologies.
Kiera’s cuffs had fallen back to reveal bruises on her right forearm, as if someone had held the girl in a hard grip.
“Did Osburn do that?” she demanded, aghast.
Kiera quickly shoved down her cuff. “It was an accident.”
Isabelle was quite certain it was not. The way the bruising encircled the entire forearm was proof of that.
Stronger now after the bread and wine that Alexander DeFrouchette had gotten for her, she sat up and regarded the young woman not with pity but with compassion. “Perhaps it was,” she conceded, “or perhaps it was not. Perhaps it only happens when Osburn is nearly insensible with drink.”
“It was an accident,” Kiera repeated, heading for the door.
“Was he so angry for what I had done that he took out his ire on you?”
Clutching the gown to her breasts, her lower lip trembling, Kiera faced her again. “He was very angry about Heinrich.”
“If that anger caused you to be hurt, that would be the only reason I would be sorry for killing him.”
Tears filled Kiera’s eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. “I-I wish you’d never come here,” she stammered as she wiped them away with the gown. “W-we were happy before you come.”
Isabelle got out of the bed. The stone floor was cold on her feet, and her legs were still weak, but she wanted to get closer to Kiera so that she could speak softly, in case there was a guard outside the door. “I would escape, if I could. All I need is someone to help me to get out of this castle.”
The gown fell to the floor unheeded as Kiera held out her hands as if warding her off. “Oh, no!” she said, her voice trembling. “I won’t!”
Isabelle reached out and took the girl’s hands in hers, pleading with her. “Kiera, you could come with me. We could both get away from this place, and these men.”
Kiera pulled her hands free. “I don’t want to go. I-I love Osburn. You don’t understand. He saved me.”
“Kiera, he is a drunkard, and a mean one. He delights in my anguish, and I suspect he enjoyed your pain.”
The truth flashed across the girl’s face as she backed away, staring at Isabelle as if she were Satan sent to tempt her from the true path. “You don’t know what it was like for me before Osburn took me away. You’re a noble lady born into riches and rank.”
Isabelle tried again. “Kiera, I know a servant’s life can be difficult—”
Kiera’s back hit the door, and the collision seemed to awaken something in her—an energy of resolve that Isabelle had not suspected she possessed. “I have heard about you, my lady, from Osburn,” she said, her hands splayed against the door as if she were trying to hold it shut, or keep something out. “You don’t know nothing about the miserable life I led. You never had a lustful master who thought you were there for his pleasure. Aye, or his sons, like we were there for them to learn on. Osburn took me away from that, and I’d die for him for doing it!”
“Or let him kill you?” Isabelle asked gently. She knew that some households were hell for the women who served there, yet she could not believe that Kiera was much better off with Osburn. He might have been good to her at first, but clearly those days were coming to an end.
Kiera’s gaze faltered, and seeing her chance, Isabelle rushed on. “My life has not been without trouble. I daresay Osburn did not tell you of the anguish Rennick DeFrouchette put my family through. And do you think being taken from my home and held for ransom is pleasant? Or being imprisoned in a stinking dungeon? I have suffered, too, Kiera. Not as you have, but in other ways.”
“At least you weren’t raped as I was—more than once!”
Even as pity filled her, Isabelle continued to regard Kiera steadily. “I have not been raped yet, but that is the fate I face at your lover’s hands, or those other men below, if I don’t escape from here.”
Kiera shook her head. “No, Osburn won’t touch you. He has me to love him.”
“You, of all women, should know that if he takes me against my will, there will be nothing of love about it. It will be to conquer and subdue me. He would do it to hurt me, and Connor. You must see that. Please, help me!”
Kiera slowly shook her head. “You’re not to be harmed. And you’ve got DeFrouchette and Denis to protect you. You’ll be safe enough, and soon the ransom will be paid, and you’ll be gone. I had no one until Osburn and I won’t leave him or betray him, neither!”
“Then one day, in a drunken rage, he will kill you.”
With a cry that was both gasp and denial, Kiera opened the door and went out, slamming it behind her.
As exhaustion and disappointment overcame her, Isabelle made her way back to the bed and climbed in. Kiera might never see Osburn as anything but her savior, no matter what he did to her. In trying to enlist Kiera’s aid, she might have made a terrible mistake—just as kissing DeFrouchette had been. Yet he had rescued her from that terrible place. She had been so glad to see him that she had almost told him as much before he’d left the chamber.
He had even washed her, as she had realized when she’d seen the basin cradled against his muscular leg. It had been his gentle ministrations that had awakened her.
For one blissful moment, she had believed she was home, safe at last, until she had felt his lips against her fingertips.
Nobody at home kissed her like that. No man at Bellevoire had ever roused such exquisite sensations with the touch of his lips. No other man had ever made her feel a need that awakened her from slumber and made her want to reach out and wrap her arms about him to draw him close to kiss. None of the men who sought her hand had created anything like the forbidden desire Alexander DeFrouchette inspired.
She shuddered, and not with a chill—with an excitement that she desperately tried to vanquish. He was, after all, still her enemy, even if the sight of his concerned face had stirred her far more than she wanted to admit to herself. He had looked down at her with an expression of such distress that it had seemed there was more to it than mere worry over an object to be traded.
And then his cheeks had reddened as if he were blushing.
Was that possible? Was it possible that he could be capable of any tender emotion? Or was it only from bending over the basin?
Whatever he felt, the relief of knowing he was back to protect her had been even more overwhelming than hearing that Connor and Allis had not betrayed her identity. Surely that wasn’t right.
She drew the covers up to her chin and stared at the worm-eaten rafters in the water-stained ceiling as she tried to focus on her family. How had they discovered the mistake? Or had they guessed, as she
had? If DeFrouchette had met Connor first and spoken of his wife, that would tell Connor of the man’s error. Like her, Connor must have realized that her safety depended on maintaining the ruse, and somehow he had managed to communicate that to Allis, too.
Isabelle rolled on her side, worry for her sister and her condition gnawing at her. At least now, though, Allis would know she lived.
That was good, and so was Connor’s agreement to pay the ransom.
She turned onto her back. It was so much money, much more than he had.
Would Osburn and the Brabancons return her, even then? They might decide to keep the money and sell her, too. DeFrouchette might object—indeed, she could believe that his warped sense of chivalry would insist that she be returned to her husband—but the Brabancons could overpower him. So could Ingar and his crew, if the Norseman wanted to buy her.
At that thought, she shuddered again. There was only one person here she could truly rely on for her freedom. Herself.
Alexander marched across the courtyard and, with a guttural curse, kicked open the rickety door to the quarters he shared with Denis. It was a room at the bottom of a ruined tower lacking most of its roof. Some planks from an upper floor remained and Denis had found a piece of canvas somewhere to put across them.
Alexander snatched up the leather pouch that contained the few pieces of extra clothing he and Denis possessed. He dumped out their clothes, then shoved straw from the pile that was their bedding into it.
The door opened and Denis entered, halting in surprise when he saw Alexander crouched on the floor.
Alexander looked up, then continued his task. “What are you doing here?”
“Kiera is staying with her,” Denis said. “I came to find you and see how you are faring.”
“Me? I am well enough.”
Assuming a casual air, Denis leaned back against the wall. “What are you doing?”
Alexander glanced up at his friend, then returned to his task. “Making a pillow. I will not be sleeping here tonight, or any night until the lady is on her way back to her husband.”
“You will sleep in the stables? Me, too! They’ve got a new roof.” Bending down, Denis gathered up the extra tunic they each possessed, and the second pair of breeches. “Why did you not say so?”
Margaret Moore - [Maiden & Her Knight 03] Page 14
