He went down on his knees, snaking a big arm underneath the bed and grabbing her by the ankle. She kicked at him, barely missing his face.
“If you strike me in the face, know that my punishment against you shall be swift and painful,” he said menacingly. “Try to kick me again and I will throw you to the men and let them take you to sport. Is that what you want? You can fight off hundreds of them instead of only one. With God as my witness, I will throw you to them and ignore your screams. Are you listening?”
He was pulling her by the ankle but she had hold of one of the bed legs. She knew it was her last hope to hold out against him. If she let go of the leg, her anchor would be gone and he would yank her out from underneath the bed and probably have his way with her right on the floor. Therefore, she held on for dear life.
“You are a barbarian!” she grunted, holding on to the bed fiercely. “That you could do this to a woman! That you could be so callous! So – so brutal! What if someone was doing this to your daughter? How would you feel if someone brutalized your daughter? Pretend I am your child and then think about what you are doing! You are wicked and heartless and you have no feelings whatsoever!”
He yanked for a split second longer before suddenly letting her go. Panting, and startled by the swiftness of his release, Emera scampered back underneath the bed, tucking her legs up to keep them away from his long arms. She could see his boots, simply standing next to the bed. Oddly enough, he didn’t say anything. The boots simply remained stationery for several long moments. Then, they began to walk around the side of the bed.
“Get out of here,” he told her. “Get out from beneath the bed and go. I do not want to see your face again.”
He said it in a tone that didn’t sound like him at all. Emera had never heard that voice come from his lips. Something deep and dark and… dull. Definitely dull, as if there was something unspeakable behind it. When she didn’t move fast enough, he kicked the bed and she yelped.
“Get out!” he boomed. “I said leave!”
Strangely enough, Emera was more frightened now than she’d ever been. There was something incredibly sharp in his voice, like daggers being thrown at her. But she wormed her way out from underneath the bed, afraid of what would happen if she didn’t. All the while, however, she was wondering why his manner had changed so abruptly. What had she said to him other than the usual?
I will not let you…
Have you only bedded whores…
What if someone was doing this to your daughter…
… daughter?
Emera came out from beneath the bed, her eyes searching warily for Juston only to find him over by the hearth, pulling his tunics back on. He was getting dressed, pulling tunics over his head, his movements sharp and jerky. They were the movements of a man with a great deal on his mind and the more she watched, the more concerned and curious she became.
It was true that Emera had a good deal of compassion and that she was inquisitive about people in general. She was a woman of deep feeling. Something told her that Juston was a man of deep feeling as well. A powerful warlord, a man who commanded thousands, and a man with arrogance greater than any she had ever seen, but as he threw on the heavy woolen tunic, something told her that all of that posturing was to cover up something soft and damaged deep inside him.
She was willing to take that chance.
“I apologize if I insulted you, my lord,” she said softly.
“I told you to get out.”
She stood up but she didn’t leave. He was just reaching for his big leather robe when she spoke again.
“What happened to your daughter?”
It was a soft question, like a gentle breeze across his ears. But for as soft and gentle as it was, somehow, it was the most painful question he’d ever heard. He couldn’t even answer her. Jaw ticking, he quit the chamber and disappeared down the stairs.
Emera stood there a moment, thinking this situation was much like the situation earlier in the day when he’d left after telling her she was beautiful. But this moment was so much different; that moment had been shame because she’d sensed it. But this moment…
… it was pain.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two days later
The pointed pikes had been shaped and planted all around the outer walls of Bowes, holes dug in the frozen ground by weary soldiers who were fed by the anticipation of half of England bearing down upon them in Henry’s name.
The patrols sent out two days before had yet to return and there was anticipation in the air, a kind of brittleness that had the men on the battlements watching the horizon every second of the day, waiting and watching for the little specks that represented their patrols to appear.
Men who, quite possibly, could come bearing life-altering news.
Meanwhile, the weary soldiers under de Royans’ command continued to work like Trojans, digging holes, planting sharp-edged logs cut down from the local groves, and filling the moat with the bodies of the dead that hadn’t yet been burned. Even in the cold, the smell of greasy human rot was heavy in the air, made worse when the smoke from the cooking fires would mingle with it and turn it into a slick layer that settled on both man and beast. The rains had not returned and the skies had remained clear, but still, the mood and the stench of Bowes were increasingly foul.
The damaged wall of the castle had seen some progress due to the shift in weather. The sun, although weak, nonetheless provided some manner of faint warmth to the stones so that the mortar was beginning to set somewhat. Maxton, Achilles, and Kress had been overseeing the repairs, driving the exhausted men with a heavy hand. As the morning dawned on the third day of the conquest of Bowes, the three knights and hundreds of men were already at work on the dusty, destroyed wall.
“I think we might actually be able to repair this wall,” Maxton said to Kress as he gazed up at the work going on. “Perhaps the weather gods will favor us with sun for the next few days so the mortar can finally set. It would be a blessing.”
Kress was looking up at the busy workers as well. “But let us hope that any attending army does not try to batter the wall. I am not entirely sure how well it will hold against bombardment.”
“They will not be able to get past de Lohr’s ring of pikes all around the perimeter of the moat.”
Kress nodded. “Most impressive,” he said. “The de Lohr brothers packed them in close together and are now stringing them with rope, which will make it cumbersome to try and penetrate.”
Maxton lifted his eyebrows. “Far be it from me to give Christopher a compliment, but he did a fine job.”
Kress looked at him, his eyes twinkling. “We are all on the same side, Max. I have told you that before.”
Maxton grunted. “Tell de Lohr that,” he said. “The man vexes me at every turn.”
Kress held up a hand, not wanting to hear the same argument again. They’d had it many times in the past. “And he has been doing it for years, so I would think you would simply accept things the way they are,” he said. “Moreover, he does not vex you. He simply has a different way of doing things.”
Maxton shrugged. “Mayhap,” he said. The conflict between him and Christopher was an old story. “In any case, the wall should be completed by the time the de Lohr brothers and Burton finish the perimeter barriers. We shall be ready for any army that comes to attack us.”
Up above, they were distracted by Achilles yelling to the men who were using a pulley system to haul up the stones. The men had been working like mad to repair the wall. For three days and nights, the work had gone on uninterrupted for the most part. Maxton and Kress watched Achilles instruct the men on some particular portion of the wall before using a rope to slide down to the ground. Brushing off his hands, he made his way over to Maxton and Kress.
“Some of the sentries think they see a patrol returning from the south,” he told Maxton. “I could see the excitement from my perch on the wall.”
That bit of news brought interest to
Maxton and Kress. “Could you see what had their attention?” Kress asked.
Achilles shook his head. “Nay,” he replied. “But it has been two days. I was becoming nervous that our patrols might have been captured.”
Achilles was the voice of doom in all things, something that Maxton and Kress had learned to brush off for the most part. Maxton began to walk, motioning his colleagues with him.
“Then let us see to them,” he said.
The three of them headed towards the gatehouse, moving through the outer bailey that was busy with men going about their duties. Beneath the weak sunlight, men built and hammered, cleaned up and mended. The gatehouse loomed ahead, a big structure of pale granite, and they could see Gart, Erik, and Gillem milling about at the mouth of it. As the keep came into view off to the left, Maxton’s gaze trailed off towards it.
“Has anyone seen Juston today?” he asked.
Kress shook his head. “Nay,” he said quietly. “I asked Gart about him earlier today and Gart said that he is down with another sick headache.”
“He has had the headache for two days,” Achilles muttered.
No one said much about the headache after that, mostly because there wasn’t much to say on the matter. Juston was known to have frequent and terrible headaches that could, at times, keep him down for days. It was unfortunate with the threat of Henry’s armies on the horizon to have their commanding officer down, but such was the way of things at times. They had learned to adjust.
“His headache came on rather suddenly,” Kress commented. “Right after he told us what the sister of Lady de la Roarke had said about de Puiset wintering to the south. It seemed that he gave us the news and then took to his chamber and we’ve not seen him since. Gart said he will not even open the chamber door.”
They were nearing the gatehouse, drawing close to Gart and Erik, who had seen them coming and were turning to greet them. Maxton spoke quietly.
“Am I the only one who has noticed Juston has spent an inordinate amount of time with Lady de la Roarke’s sister?” he asked. “She is a beautiful thing, no doubt, but with his history with women, it is mayhap not the safest thing for him to do.”
“Do not say anything to Gart about it,” Kress muttered. “He is fiercely protective over Juston. You do not want to unleash that squire’s sword hand.”
Maxton gave him a half-grin. “It was merely an observation.”
“Let it only be an observation.”
Maxton chuckled, holding up a hand to indicate he would keep his mouth shut where Juston was concerned, at least in front of Gart. They were all colleagues and comrades, fighting for one another and killing for one another, but that didn’t mean they all got on like a tight-knit brotherhood. They had their differences as well as their common ground. But one thing they all knew was to tread carefully around Gart when it came to Juston.
“Forbes,” Maxton greeted evenly. “It seems there may be a patrol returning.”
Gart nodded. “One of the men on the wall told me,” he said. “I suppose we shall soon find out if your repaired wall is about to get knocked down again.”
Maxton cast him a wry glance. “Let us hope not,” he said. Then, he looked at de Russe, standing next to Gart. “And you. Why are you still here? Even if we are about to be sieged, that does not mean you must stay and die alongside us. We do not expect you to be a martyr. In fact, it might take the glory away from the rest of us.”
Erik grinned. “Richard disagrees with you,” he said. “I have been ordered to remain until such time as Juston grows weary of seeing my handsome face and sends me away.”
“Handsome face?” Achilles snorted. “I’ve seen better asses on a dog.”
Erik cocked an eyebrow at the man as the others snorted at his expense. “You will be sorry for saying that to me when we are in the heat of combat and I am the only one available to save your miserable hide,” he warned, although he was clearly jesting. “Be kind to those you may need, de Dere. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
Achilles waved him off as the commotion in the gatehouse distracted the knights. The soldiers on duty were growing increasingly excited as the patrol drew close. Now, their fate might be determined by men who had seen the countryside and had, perhaps, assessed the threats.
No one was more aware of that than the knights as they entered the gatehouse as a group, coming out of the other side and watching the road as a party of four scouts thundered towards them. They could only pray that the news was in their favor, for surely, there was much against them at the moment. They could taste anticipation, perhaps even nervousness, on their tongues as the patrol drew close to the gatehouse and slowed their pace. Now, the moment was upon them.
Soon they would know what they were potentially facing.
His head was killing him.
Literally, or so he thought. Surely death would be less painless than the headache he was currently experiencing. It had started two days before and hadn’t eased up no matter what he’d done. The physic had given him a potion of white willow to drink and he’d spent two days with a pack of lavender and sage on his head, trying to draw out the pain. But nothing was working, made worse by the fact that his mind had been wandering at times.
More accurately, people were wandering through it. Little girls, ages four and three, who would have been young women by now. Lady Blossom, his eldest, and Lady Cedrica, his youngest. They’d had his hair, his eyes, and he wondered if they would have continued to look like him into adulthood. He’d always wondered that. He’d spent years avoiding thinking of his girls who had been denied the chance to grow into young women but Emera’s words the other night had opened the door to those thoughts, thoughts he’d tried so hard to avoid.
What if someone was doing this to your daughter?
He knew that Emera had no idea what kind of question she had been asking him. She’d been frightened because he had been terrorizing her. The problem was not in the question but in the answer – someone had brutalized his daughters and his wife, as well. They’d nailed shut the doors to Annepont’s manse and sealed tight the shutters. Then, they’d launched great urns of burning oil onto the roof, which quickly caught fire. When Lord Annepont tried to help his family escape through a rear door, men with arrows were waiting and cut Annepont down. Somehow, Lizette and the girls, and several servants, had been corralled back inside the house to die.
And he’d been unable to protect them.
He hadn’t tasted that guilt in years but now it was back, more bitter than he’d ever known it to be. With it, his headache had returned and his sense of failure with it. For two days, he’d had visions of Blossom and Cedrica as they might have been in adulthood. What would he have done to a man who had tried to do to them what he tried to do to Emera? It was that answer, above all, that sent daggers into his heart.
He would have killed them.
So Lady Emera did not find him attractive. She did not want to kiss him and she certainly didn’t want to bed the man. That was no great crime. But it was a blow to his ego and to the attraction he was feeling towards her, attraction towards a woman he’d not felt since Lizette. He’d loved his wife and he knew what it was to love a woman. He was certain he could never feel that way again. In fact, he didn’t want to feel that way again because those emotions had nearly killed him when he had lost her. But the event of Lady Emera had stirred something within him that he couldn’t seem to fight off.
Hence, the headache.
A soft knock at the chamber door jolted him from his thoughts. Lying flat on his back with the lavender-sage poultice across his eyes to block out the light, he grunted.
“Go away!”
A soft voice came from the other side. “My lord, a patrol has returned. I thought you would want to know.”
It was Gart. Frustrated and in pain, Juston threw off the compress and struggled to his feet, his vision blurred from the pain. He staggered to the door, throwing it open.
“What?” he barked.
Gart had a cup of wine in his hand. “Here,” he said, thrusting the cup at Juston. “You have not ingested anything in two days. The physic says you should drink the wine.”
Juston snatched it from him and downed the contents. He made a face, smacking his lips. “He put white willow in there, didn’t he?”
Gart took the cup back. “I do not know,” he said. “I have come to tell you that a patrol has returned from the south. They went as far south as Richmond and have reported that there are no signs from Richmond that an army is amassing. That patrol stated that the castle appeared to be business as usual.”
Juston leaned against the doorjamb, rubbing at his eyes as he pondered the information. “How many patrols did we send south?”
“Two, my lord.”
“And the second one has not returned?”
“Nay.”
Juston sighed heavily and stopped rubbing his eyes. “Let us see what the second patrol has to say before we assume anything,” he said. “Men were sent to Brough Castle, were they not?”
“Aye,” Gart replied. “We have not yet heard back from them.”
So the patrols and messengers were still out, but Juston was relieved to hear that there wasn’t an army nearly to their doorstep. He moved away from the doorjamb, staggering back into the chamber as Gart hesitantly followed.
“Keep me informed,” Juston said as he picked up his lavender compress and threw himself back onto the bed. “And you should probably send me something to eat or it shall be a contest as to what will kill me first – my aching head or starvation.”
“Aye, my lord,” Gart said. “Do you require anything else?”
Flat on his back, Juston put the compress over his eyes. “Nay,” he said. Then, quickly: “Wait – there is something you can do. There is a store of turnips down in the vault that needs to be taken to market. I have been asked to provide wagons and men to do so. The ladies of the keep wished to take the produce to market tomorrow, so will you please see to it?”
Fearsome Brides Page 17
