by Julia Latham
Again, he asked, “What do you see?”
She looked below and grimaced, then called softly, “Nothing but a border of flowers below. This will not work, Adam.”
To her surprise, he was already standing on his horse, and with a leap, he caught the wall and with powerful muscles pulled himself up to sit on the top. She gaped at him.
He grinned. “I was learning these skills when I had but eight years.”
“Such training does have its benefits. But the horses…?” She looked down into the alley below.
“They’ll wait.”
The animals lowered their heads and looked for something on the ground to nibble. She prayed they wouldn’t be stolen.
“And us?” she continued, looking to the garden side. “If I break my leg, I will be useless to you.”
“I’ll lower you down, so the drop will not be too far. Take my hands quickly.”
She didn’t have time to feel frightened. It was far more dangerous to be so exposed on the wall. She took both his hands, let her legs slip over the side, and then she was hanging freely. She watched the narrowing of his eyes, but that was the only strain he showed as he bent over the wall, lowering her as much as he could.
She looked down past her feet to see the flowers not too far below. “Let go!” she called softly. He did, and she hit the soft flowerbed, falling backward onto her rump. She smiled up at him.
Holding on to the wall, Adam lowered himself as far as he could, then released the edge. He landed beside her. He pulled her behind a nearby bench so they could crouch out of sight.
“We do not have much time,” Adam said. “Bladesmen might have been watching the alley.”
“I saw no one.”
He only arched a brow.
“Oh, well, of course, they wouldn’t allow me to see them.”
“To be truthful, I saw no sign of them either, which surprised me, after Timothy’s warning. Regardless, we cannot go through the front door, so we’ll walk in through the servant’s entrance as if we belong there.”
“Then I should go first,” she said with confidence. “You can follow meekly behind me, as if you’re a servant working for me. ’Tis a good thing my sister gave me a new gown. And ’tis only a little damp,” she insisted.
He grinned and shook his head. “Much as I do not like the vulnerability of it, it sounds like a decent plan.”
She beamed at him. “I am ready.”
His eyes, once focused so intently on the mansion, now turned their intensity on her. “Florrie, this will be dangerous.”
“’Tis my father’s house. Should anyone confront us, I will resort to that truth. You will still be my servant.”
“I am always your servant,” he said.
She saw the softening in his eyes, heard it in his voice, and knew the time was coming when at last she would be able to explore his feelings for her without the fear of coming battle. And she wanted that badly. Asking him no questions, she leaned in and kissed him.
Then she stood up and began to limp across the gravel paths of the garden like the master’s daughter, knowing Adam would fall into place behind her. She opened the rear door of the mansion and entered a long corridor. As she passed various doors, she could smell a wide variety of odors from the kitchen and its pantries and the dairy. More than one person passed them in the corridor, and although she received several curious looks, she only nodded regally, as if she belonged—and she did. This was her home, much as she might never have seen it before.
They were almost to the end of the corridor when a man wearing a black doublet emblazoned with the Martindale coat of arms stepped out of a room before them. His expression of surprise was brief. Florrie tried to walk right by him, as she had the others, but he did not move out of her way. He was of middling years, his blond hair lightened with white, and he bore an unmistakable air of authority. Her heart, already pounding with nervousness, threatened to beat out of her chest. She reminded herself that no one could dismiss her; she was a daughter of the household.
“I am Hewet, Lord Martindale’s butler. Do you have cause to be here?”
“I am Lady Florence, Lord Martindale’s daughter. I have just arrived from the north.”
Hewet blinked at her, betraying his surprise. “Lady Florence? Although I have met his lordship’s other daughters, I have never met you.”
“If you noticed my limp, then you can see that it is difficult for me to travel.”
Suddenly, his manner eased, and she was glad he had seen her walking down the corridor.
“I had heard of your infirmity, my lady. Forgive me for questioning you.”
“Is my father available?” As if she’d take no for an answer.
“Allow me to lead you to him, my lady. He will be quite pleased.”
Her smile felt frozen on her face. Nay, her father would not be pleased at all, but he had brought this on himself. She felt Adam close behind her, could sense his impatience and expectation. He was about to meet the man who’d altered his entire life, caused his family hardship yet allowed Adam to be trained by the most elite of military societies. It was as if her father had helped to create the man who wanted to defeat him.
The corridor led into the great hall, which was nothing like the stone-walled hall of their castle. Wainscoting paneled the walls into intricately carved squares. In the center of those squares were the marquess’s coat of arms—rearing dragon on a shield—crossed swords and other displays of armory. Suits of armor were interspersed by elaborate cupboards displaying gold and silver plate. Two guards stood at the double doors against the far wall.
And there was her father, alone but for the soldiers, with his feet propped on a stool before the fire, surrounded by the heraldry of a title he did not deserve—that he had killed for. He seemed to be muttering to himself.
Adam felt a shock of thwarted retribution. Martindale was a frail old man, sunken in his cushioned chair. Time had taken everything away from the warrior, and Adam wished he himself could take the rest.
But there was Florrie standing so proudly before him, her shoulders back, her chin lifted. This was her family’s home, and she’d never been allowed to be here before. Though Adam had no parents, he’d never felt an outcast, and had his brothers for companions. Florrie had been alone through her whole life. How could he feel that he’d suffered in comparison to her?
He put his hands on her shoulders in a brief gesture of support, then went to move past her. She put up an arm to stop him.
Hewet, the butler, looked between them in surprise, but then Florrie nodded to him. He cleared his throat and said, “Lord Martindale, may I present your daughter, Lady Florence.”
Martindale’s head slowly came up. His white hair was thinning over his red scalp. Deep lines marred his face, and his shoulders looked bony rather than strong.
He didn’t bother to stand up. “Florence?” he said in a cracked voice. “Impossible. You are mistaken, Hewet. Send the woman away.”
He took another sip from his tankard, betraying the shaking of his hand. It seemed strange to Adam that that hand had ever been strong enough to hold a sword. The muttering continued, as if he didn’t care who saw.
“Good day, Father,” Florrie said calmly.
Martindale’s gaze locked onto her, and he seemed to squint. “Come closer.”
She did so, and Adam stayed with her, wondering if Martindale would recognize something of his father in him. Timothy had told him there was a resemblance, which Adam had always taken pride in.
But Martindale was looking at Florrie, and his face grew red. “But you were supposed to be…”
“Kidnapped?” she countered sweetly. “Aye, and at the beginning I feared for my life. ’Twas truly harrowing. But you did not care about that, or about what kind of man held me. You abandoned me.”
“There was nothing I could do,” he blustered angrily. “I was taking the chance that if the kidnapper thought you meant nothing to me, he might let you go safely.”
Adam cocked his head. For Florrie’s sake, he hoped that was the truth.
“Or he might have killed me,” Florrie countered coldly.
Adam realized that Florrie saw through Martindale’s attempts to make his actions sound desperate but reasonable.
“He would not have killed you,” Martindale said. “I counted on the fact that he was Keswick’s son.”
Adam saw the brief confusion on Florrie’s face. He’d never told her of his lineage, not even his surname. He’d been so used to hiding it from the world, that he’d even hidden it from the woman he loved.
“Nay, he did not kill me,” Florrie said. “So I brought him to you.”
For the first time, Martindale’s gaze went past Florrie, as if he’d only thought Adam a servant. Adam wasn’t sure if he expected to see hate there, but instead he caught a glimpse of fear and furtiveness, quickly banished. There were old, ugly secrets buried inside the man, and they’d rotted him from within.
After another moment of muttering, almost as if he were talking to himself, Martindale demanded, “Keswick, or one of the brothers?”
“’Tis I, Keswick, who wrote to you,” Adam said, standing at Florrie’s shoulder.
“You grew into a coward, hurting a woman.”
Florrie opened her mouth, but Adam shook his head. “I never deliberately hurt her. But I knew that with an untrustworthy opponent, one needs leverage. I had meant to come here to challenge you over what you did to my parents, but I had already decided that you weren’t worth it. And now I see that it would have been pointless. Time and your guilt have damaged you.”
Martindale rose to his feet, hands braced on the chair. Then he quickly stood unassisted, as if he didn’t want them to see he needed support. “What was done to your parents? I did not understand your missive.”
“You know all about the murders,” Adam said, pulling the pendant from his neck and holding it up to the torchlight. “I found this near my parents’ bodies the night you slew them.”
Those old eyes fixed on the emblem of the Martindale crest, and he couldn’t seem to look away. “Where did you get that?”
“Where you dropped it in blood.”
“You are lying.”
“You thought by killing them you would protect your ugly secret, but ’tis a secret no longer.”
Martindale’s eyes widened in sudden horror. “You cannot speak the words—”
“You are not the legitimate heir of the marquessate. You are a bastard, and somehow my parents discovered it and confronted you. And you killed them.”
Rage burned in Martindale’s eyes. “You lie!”
A sudden pounding of feet echoed through the hall, and Adam turned to see Claudius Drake, Martindale’s heir, running down the grand staircase from the next floor. He brandished a dagger, and he was closer to Martindale than the guards were.
“Bastard!” Drake shouted at Martindale, the dagger upraised.
Adam found himself catching Drake’s arm and bending it backward until he dropped the dagger. How could he be defending the one man he’d spent years hating?
Chapter 24
Adam kept himself between Drake and the old man, fighting to hold him still.
“How can you not be the heir?” Drake shouted at Martindale, spittle forming in the corners of his mouth. “I spent my life doing your bidding! I thought I was protecting my inheritance by protecting you! When I read the missive about Florence’s kidnapping, I sent men to intercept them in Huntingdonshire, and more men to intercept them in London.”
Martindale staggered back against the chair and sank into it. Adam exchanged a glance with Florrie, who looked shocked that her sister’s husband—her own cousin—could deliberately put her in danger.
“And instead my father and, now, I were the real heirs all along?” Drake demanded.
Martindale shook his head, eyes wide and darting back and forth, as if he saw more than the people in front of him.
“My father was the poor cousin to nobility,” Drake continued, “having to fight as a mercenary to survive, when his life—and mine!—should have been full of wealth and power and ease.”
As the words poured out of Drake, the violence seemed to as well, for he’d stopped fighting Adam, who was able to release him. Martindale’s mouth opened and shut, as if he should speak, but didn’t know what to say.
“Can you control yourself?” Adam asked Drake coolly.
For the first time, Drake seemed to really study him. “I have seen you before. You were the wounded man in Christina’s care.” And then he looked at Florrie. “Were you there, too?”
“Aye, we were both there,” Adam said angrily. “Recovering from what your men did to us.”
Drake put his hands on his hips. “You’d kidnapped her. What was I supposed to think?”
“You should have thought to tell your men not to harm your cousin. I was wounded saving Florrie from certain death.”
Drake paled. “I did not instruct them in that.”
“Perhaps not, but you did not hire trustworthy men.”
“I did not have the money,” he said, his hate-filled glare turning back on Martindale.
“Make no more mistakes like that, Drake. Because your luck is about to change. You’ll have your inheritance soon enough, but not if you’re in the Tower for murder.”
Suddenly, three armed men appeared from the servant’s corridor, and Hewet boldly stepped before them.
“And who are you?” he demanded.
The first man met Adam’s gaze over the butler’s head and Adam recognized him as a Bladesman.
“We are with Sir Adam,” the man said. “We are here to observe.”
They went to stand beside Martindale’s two guards, leaving Adam to realize that those two men were also Bladesmen. And they’d allowed Adam to speak with Martindale. The League not only wanted to observe, they wanted to judge the truth for themselves.
Yet they hadn’t interfered with Adam’s intentions. Did they trust him after all?
Through all of this, Martindale never moved from his chair, continuing to mutter to himself. Was he trying to come up with denials or motivations for the things he’d done? Florrie only watched her father. Adam wondered if she was seeing her past—and her future—in a totally new light.
Someone pounded on the front double doors, and the Bladesmen opened them, but stood before them threateningly—and then stepped aside. To Adam’s relief, Robert and Michael had found each other, and now rejoined them.
“Did I miss everything?” Robert asked, looking beyond Adam to Martindale. “He doesn’t look as if he were ever a great warrior.”
“We all age,” Adam said softly. “He has not confessed, but he has been accused, and not just by us.” He explained what had already happened, including Drake’s actions.
Drake stood apart from Florrie, but he kept glancing at her as if he wished to speak, but didn’t know what to say. An apology would be a good place for him to start, but Adam didn’t know if she would accept it.
“But Martindale didn’t confess?” Robert continued.
“We no longer need a confession,” said another voice loudly.
Timothy Sheldon and several other men came down the carved staircase from the upper floor. Adam stared at his foster father, not exactly surprised by the intrusion of even more Bladesmen. When the League took an interest, they saw it through until it was finished.
Florrie felt very distant and unreal. She was standing in a home she’d never been allowed to see, watching the disintegration of her father beneath the collapse of a mountain of his terrible lies. So many people had been hurt while he’d helped himself—and his family, she admitted to herself.
And now here was Sir Timothy, already within the mansion, though she hadn’t seen him. She turned to Adam, who watched his foster father. There was no triumph in Adam’s expression, only solemnity and sadness, for he understood how many people had been hurt—and would be hurt.
“W
hy is no confession needed?” Adam asked, when Sir Timothy reached them.
“No confession because I did nothing!” her father said shrilly.
The sound of his voice, so out of control, made her shudder with horror and pity. Sir Timothy held up a torn piece of parchment that Florrie recognized too well.
“’Twas hidden in a coffer in his bedchamber.”
As I told Adam, Florrie thought, surprised that she didn’t feel more guilty that he’d passed the location on to his foster father.
“Nay,” her father cried. “You cannot touch that! He will not like it.”
Florrie remembered the way he’d raved when he was ill, talking about the priest as if he were still alive. Was that who he meant?
Claudius looked between her father and Sir Timothy. “What is that?”
“Proof that the late marchioness was already two months dead when Martindale was born.”
“And he kept it?” Claudius asked in disbelief.
Watching her father, Florrie couldn’t be surprised. He was staring at the parchment in fascinated horror, muttering, gesturing, eyes wild. She may have suffered beneath his treatment for many years, and knew that he’d killed people for his own selfish ends, but seeing him reduced to this sickened her.
“We may never know why he kept it,” Sir Timothy was saying, “but it will allow me to go to King Henry for permission to grant you the title of marquess of Martindale immediately.”
There was no greater punishment for her father, she knew. He might have preferred a quick death to watching everything he’d assumed about his life be destroyed. But Adam’s parents were still dead, and nothing could bring them back.
“’Tis cursed,” her father suddenly said, watching Sir Timothy, who was perusing the document. “He never let me destroy it.”
“Who?” Sir Timothy asked.
“The priest, the one who wrote it.”
Sir Timothy cocked his head. “It was written months before your birth. The priest must be long dead.”
