The Ghost

by Monica McCarty

  Joan froze. Licorice and brandy. Even as her stomach rolled, the sound of Sir Phillip’s voice conjured up the darkest memories of her worst nightmare—one that had been real—and filled her with an icy, mind-numbing terror.

  Taking advantage of her shock, he pulled her into the storage room where he must have been waiting for her to pass by.

  In one move, he closed the door, spun her around, and pinned her to it with his body.

  “That’s better,” he said, wedging himself between her legs. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?”

  The crude mockery in his drink-laden voice was enough to rouse her from her momentary terror-ridden trance. Fire replaced ice, and anger replaced fear. Instinct and training returned as well, causing her knee to lift forcefully against the offending bulge between his legs and come down just as forcefully on his instep.

  He cursed in pain, bending over as if she’d folded him in two. “How does that feel, Sir Phillip? That is what new times feels like. I’m not a helpless young girl anymore who you can pin down and rape and who won’t fight back. Touch me again, and I’ll kill you.”

  She meant it, too. She was shaking with the force of her hatred. It would be so easy to slip her blade from its scabbard . . .

  Too easy.

  She had to go. She turned to open the door, and that’s when Phillip made his move. “Never turn your back . . . not even for a minute.” Too late, Lachlan’s warning came back to her.

  “You fucking slut! You’ll pay for this.” He barreled his head into her like a charging bull, slamming her into the door. Her head took the brunt of it, snapping back with the force and filling with disorienting stars.

  She’d been right to assume that Phillip wouldn’t be able to recover enough to stand and stop her, but she’d underestimated his skill—or been overconfident in her own. She’d practiced many times, but this was the first time she’d ever had to fight back with force. It was different. Faster. Scarier. And Sir Phillip wasn’t a young squire anymore, he was a full-fledged knight. A hardened warrior who’d trained for years, fought in countless battles, and knew how to fight dirty.

  She wobbled, feeling for the door or wall to steady herself.

  He took advantage of her dizziness with a sweep of his ankle behind her leg, causing her to fall back on the ground.

  In her normal state she might have been able to roll away and fight back, but dazed and disorientated like this she was helpless.

  Helpless. Oh God, no . . .

  If she thought he’d been rough before, she was wrong. He backhanded her with a blow to the side of her face that made her cry out in fresh pain, kicked her in the ribs, and then knelt down on top of her to hold her in place. He was so heavy she couldn’t breathe.

  Writhing in pain from the blows, she was only half- conscious of his efforts to lift his long surcoat and untie the breeches he had on beneath.

  “Maybe I’ll make you suck it to make it feel better,” he said, grabbing himself. “Would you like that, you fucking whore?” He reached down and squeezed her breast hard, pinching her nipple until she gave another cry of pain. He laughed. “Shall we see what my cock looks like with that pretty mouth wrapped around it?”

  Revulsion surged up the back of her throat. She’d heard mention of such intimacies before, but it still shocked—and repulsed—her. He repulsed her. Her head throbbed with pain, but she managed, “You will sooner feel the bite of my teeth.”

  Her threat only amused him. “I see you have more spirit than you used to. I’ve always liked a lass with a little spirit, makes breaking them more exciting.”

  Joan’s head felt like it was splitting apart. She could barely think beyond the pain, but she knew she had to do something. She shifted to try to roll him off her, but her movements were awkward and slow, and he had no problem stopping her.

  She was rewarded for her efforts with another blow to the side of the head that made the lights start to flash again.

  She tried to scream, but her crushed lungs couldn’t find the air, and he only laughed at her efforts.

  She could barely hear his taunts now; his voice sounded so far away with the ringing in her head. “I doubt you’d be much good with your mouth the way you are right now. Nay, this time, I’ll have to settle for that tight glove between your legs.” He laughed. “Although maybe it’s not so tight anymore? Shame that I didn’t get a chance to break you in a little more before I left.”

  Joan was going to be sick. Do something, a voice cried. But the voice was small and weak.

  She felt air on her legs, and then a rough, callused hand tried to spread her legs.

  “No!” she cried. A moment of clarity permeated the haze of confusion.

  He was too occupied with trying to shove himself between her legs to hit her again.

  Her head cleared a little more as the realization of what was happening caused her primitive instincts to flare.

  Fight! You have to fight back. You have to try. Think . . .

  But instinct was stronger than thought. He loosened his hold on her hands pinned above her head to try to fit himself between her legs, giving her an opening, and she reacted.

  Her hand found the hilt of the eating knife at her side and a moment later the blade plunged up into the exposed skin of his groin. His eyes widened with shock. He said something, but the sounds in her head were blaring too loud to make it out.

  It was as if time were passing at half-speed as her head fought to clear. He swayed for a long moment, and then toppled over.

  She was sobbing as she struggled to get up, as near hysterical as she ever wanted to be. She looked at him, but the image was a jagged montage with the pieces scattered: pool of blood . . . his pants half-down . . . her knife lying next to him.

  She’d killed him. Oh my God, she’d killed him.

  What am I going to do? I have to get out of here.

  She opened the door and ran to the only person she could think of who could help.

  Alex had dismissed his squire after the lad had finished removing his weapons and armor. It had been another long and frustrating day. Pembroke and the king’s reaction to the plight of Alex’s tenants had been exactly as he’d feared—unsympathetic—and something was still troubling him from the night before. He’d taken the unusual step of ordering a hot bath to be brought up, rather than just relying on the river, in the hopes that it would help him sort his thoughts. He’d wanted to be alone so he would dry and dress himself as need be.

  The lad didn’t argue. Though after the ride to Wark and back, and the long day of ensuring that the soldiers were ready to march, the boy should be as exhausted as Alex; apparently some of the other squires were heading into the village to one of the alehouses, and he was going to join them.

  Alex was just thirty, but there was nothing like a seventeen-year-old to make him feel very old and weary.

  A few minutes after the lad left, Alex heard a knock on the door. Two men entered carrying the tub, and then for the next ten minutes or so they returned with buckets of hot water until it was full enough, and he sent them away.

  He was just about to remove his shirt when he heard another knock. Assuming it was more water, he opened the door to repeat that he had enough, but the words died in his mouth.

  “Joan?” He took one look at her and felt his insides twist in a coil of fear, horror, panic, and rage. The latter fueled by the nasty-looking bruise forming on the side of her pale, tear-stained cheek. Her face was bloodless, her hair half escaped from its pins, and her eyes glassy. He’d seen enough men in shock after a battle to recognize the signs.

  When their eyes met, something inside her seemed to break. She sobbed and collapsed against his chest in tears. He’d never seen her so vulnerable; it was so disorienting that he didn’t know what to do. He caught her and held her tight, soothing her as best he could, but from what he didn’t know.

  Easing her into his room, he closed the door behind her, and then held her back to look at her again.
/>   “God, what happened? Who did this to you, sweetheart?”

  She mumbled something unintelligible between sobs. It was then that he looked down.

  It was his turn to pale. It felt as if every drop of blood suddenly rushed out of his body. Her gown was covered in blood.

  “My God, you’re bleeding!”

  He immediately reached for her, searching for signs of trauma, but she shook him off. “N-not mine.”

  He relaxed—infinitesimally. Leading her to the edge of his bed, he forced her to sit and went to the sideboard to pour her a drink of whisky to calm her. A memory jarred in his head, but he pushed it aside for later.

  “Here,” he said, holding the cup out to her.

  She accepted it without argument and took a big gulp before putting it aside with the choking cough of someone not accustomed to the harsh drink.

  The next few minutes while he waited patiently for her to tell him what had happened were some of the hardest of his life. And when the story did emerge, in choked sobs and heaving sighs, he felt a rage unlike anything he’d ever known take hold.

  That bastard had tried to hurt her. If Phillip Gifford wasn’t dead already, he was about to be.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she said finally.

  “You did the right thing. I want you to stay here. I will take care of everything.”

  “But—”

  He stopped her. “Let me handle this, Joan. I need to handle it.”

  “Please, Alex. No one can find out. I don’t want anyone to know!”

  He could see her rising panic and understood, but if that bastard was still alive, Alex was going to see him pay. “He needs to be punished, sweetheart,” he said gently, trying to calm her down. “The king will have his ball—” He stopped. “The king will see justice served.”

  “Will he?” she demanded frantically. “Or will there just be more questions? Even if he is alive . . .” It was clear she didn’t think that the case. She turned to him earnestly. “Please, Alex, I can’t talk about it. Don’t make me talk about it. I’m begging you.”

  Alex’s mouth fell in a flat line. He couldn’t deny her anything when she was like this, but he wasn’t happy about it. He nodded. “I will do as you ask, but in return you are going to tell me everything that you just left out.”

  If possible, her face paled even more. Their eyes held. She didn’t try to feign ignorance—they both knew she’d been holding something back in her retelling.

  After a long pause, she nodded.

  “I will be back as soon as I am able. Lock the door and wait for me here.” He noticed her glance at the tub of water. “You can use it if you wish. You’ll find soap and a drying cloth and whatever else you might need in the trunk.”

  She nodded, her lip trembling again. “You are being so sweet . . . thank you.”

  He shook his head, drew her into his arms, and dropped a soft kiss on her mouth. “I love you, sweetheart. Never forget it.”

  She gave him the first smile—if a bit tremulous—since she’d entered the room. “I won’t.”

  He left her—reluctantly—and paused to hear the door lock behind him before heading down the tower stairwell and out into the yard. He had just entered the corridor outside the Great Hall when he saw a door open and Sir Phillip Gifford straggling out, holding his hand over his hip.

  Not dead, then.

  At least not yet.

  Rage unlike any Alex had ever experienced flashed through him like a lightning bolt. It didn’t build or grow, it didn’t give him time to think or rationalize, it was just there. Dominating. Permeating. Clouding his vision in a red haze.

  Gifford barely made it out of the room before Alex’s fist to his jaw sent him soaring back into it. Foolishly, he tried to get up. Alex hit him again. And again. Gifford tried to say something, but Alex wasn’t hearing it. All he could see was the man who’d tried to rape the woman he loved.

  He struck blow after blow, pummeling him to the ground until he didn’t get up. And still it wasn’t enough.

  Alex drew out his dagger, lifted the “knight” up by his surcoat, and held the blade to his throat. For the first time in Alex’s life he knew the kind of raw hatred and murderous rage that could make a man forget honor, chivalry, and whatever other tethers of humanity kept him fit for a society. Brigand. The old accusations he’d hurled at Boyd came back to him. Maybe he had more of it in him than he realized.

  Gifford must have read the murder in his gaze through his swollen, half-lidded, and bloody gaze. “P-please . . .”

  “Mercy?” Alex seethed. “Shall I give you as much mercy as you were going to show my betrothed? How does it feel, Gifford, to be at the mercy of someone stronger and more powerful than you?”

  “I didn’t do anyth—”

  A fresh wave of rage surged through him. “Don’t,” Alex warned. “Deny it or say one word against her, and it will be the last lie you ever speak.”

  If Gifford’s eyes could have widened, they would have. They flashed with fear. “S-sorr-ry.”

  Alex tossed him back with disgust. The man was nothing but a coward. He stood over him. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

  For once Gifford showed a spark of intelligence and didn’t respond.

  Alex looked down at him in disgust. He wasn’t worth it.

  Aside from the damage done by Alex’s fists, he could see the stain of blood from where Joan’s knife had penetrated near his hip. The same knife that was now at Gifford’s waist. Reaching down, Alex pulled it from the belt and slid it in his.

  “You will say nothing about what happened here to anyone. If someone asks, you were set upon by thieves on the way back to the castle from the village. Consider yourself fortunate that I do not take you to the king right now and have you thrown in the pit prison. But my betrothed wants to forget this ever happened, and I am very reluctantly honoring her wishes.” Alex leaned down and lifted the other man up from his slump against the wall to meet his gaze. “If I hear you have even mentioned Lady Joan’s name, I will kill you.”

  His tone left no doubt that he would like nothing more.

  Alex let him go and stood back up. He looked down at the beaten man like the excrement that he was. Gifford had started to recover and, realizing Alex wasn’t going to kill him, his fear had been replaced by a look of burning hatred as he struggled to his feet. Some of his pride had returned as well. “You could try.”

  Alex just looked at him and smiled, knowing it wouldn’t even be a contest. Gifford hadn’t had half the training Alex had had—nor had he fought alongside the best warriors in Christendom for seven years.

  Gifford seemed to read his thoughts—or the substance of them anyway—and his battered face flushed with anger.

  But Alex had wasted enough time on him already. Joan needed him.

  When he turned to leave, Sir Phillip Gifford made his last—fatal—mistake. He pulled a dagger from its sheath at his waist and was halfway to throwing it at Alex’s back when Alex’s blade struck him in the throat.

  Alex was out of practice, but his aim was still true—and just as deadly. He was still the best.

  20

  IT WAS A testament to her deep distress and shock that Joan didn’t even hesitate to take Alex up on his offer to let her use his bath. She didn’t care about the propriety of taking her clothes off in the room of a man who was not yet her husband—or anything else for that matter. All she wanted to do was sink into that clean, warm water and wash the feel of Sir Phillip’s touch off her skin and the blood from her hands.

  She scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was pink and not a trace of blood remained. If only the memories were so easily washed away.

  She couldn’t bear to put back on her ruined gown, so after drying herself with one of the linen cloths in Alex’s trunk, she donned her chemise and borrowed a plaid she’d found in the same trunk to wrap around her shoulders. Then she sat and waited.

  What was taking him so lon
g? She grew increasingly worried as the minutes passed. What if Phillip wasn’t dead? What if he and Alex had gotten into a fight and Alex had been hurt? Or what if Alex had been caught trying to clean up her mess, and someone thought it was he who had killed Phillip? She shouldn’t have asked him to cover for her. She couldn’t let him take the blame even if she had to tell everyone the truth.

  The door opened, and she jumped from the seat she’d taken on the edge of the bed. One look at Alex’s face was enough to ease her panic. He looked grim, but he wasn’t hurt.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Your blade did not kill him.” She didn’t have time to figure out whether she was disappointed or not, before he added, “But mine did.”

  In short, concise, soldierly fashion, he explained how he’d found Phillip leaving the room—her blade had struck him in the hip, not the deadly groin area—and they’d fought. How Alex had beaten him to within an inch of his foul life, but had given him a chance to leave while still breathing. Phillip, however, hadn’t taken the gift. He’d attempted to throw his dagger into Alex’s back. He wasn’t quick enough, however, and instead Alex’s blade found him.

  It was Phillip’s misfortune that his cowardly act had come against the most skilled man with a dagger on either side of the border. Although Phillip wouldn’t have known that—and she wasn’t supposed to either, for that matter.

  “I debated tossing him down the garderobe where he belongs,” Alex finished. “But decided there would be fewer questions about his disappearance if I informed Pembroke, Sir Hugh, and King Edward of the truth.” Anticipating her reaction, he said quickly, “Most of it anyway. I left out your part, telling them merely that Gifford and I had a disagreement, that it had led to a fight, and that he’d attempted to end it with a dagger in my back.”

  Joan would not falsely mourn the death of Phillip, and she was relieved that Alex had not killed him on her behalf, but she was horrified at the mess in which she’d embroiled him. It was a risk going to the king and Pembroke. It was Alex’s word against a dead man’s. That he’d taken the risk, however, didn’t surprise her. Hiding, lies, and covering things up weren’t his way. He would do the right thing no matter the personal risk or sacrifice.