The Lady Knight And The Dungeon (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 10)

by Sterling Rose

  She was on her feet in an instant, moving for Pepper’s cage. Captain Shaz was attractive aplenty. But he was also a rake, and just about pure evil. She blurted, calmly as she could muster, “I think I’ll send Pepper for Rusty’s company. It is dull down here.”

  Shaz glared. But he accepted the warning with a small shrug. “Suit yourself.” He turned for the door.

  She fought to shake off the anxiety in her voice as she urged him onward, “Have a good night now. Merry Christmas.” She muttered, “Find a more vulnerable form of prey.”

  She heard a small laugh from the prisoner.

  She realized that he had risen to his feet along with her, as though prepared to reach through the bars in a leap to defense.

  What a curious sort of person.

  She stroked Pepper’s feathers, but left him in the cage.

  “You were telling me your story,” the man reminded.

  No, she wasn’t, but... “Not much of one.”

  “But you’ve lived a life. You must have many stories. Tell me how a pretty little slip of a girl like you ended a knight?”

  He’d said they lived for stories on the sea. Was the prisoner a sailor then?

  Why was she so darn curious to know?

  She shrugged, but was glad to speak of something and not worry about Shaz for a moment. He’d become an increasing worry of late. “My papa was a knight and he was the best man I ever knew.” She smiled slightly.

  Once she got past thinking how Father would never be around to make Christmas merry, she couldn’t help but smile for thinking of him.

  “I was no good at catering and making floral arrangements, which was Mama’s work – still is today. So she let me run amuck with Father, to keep me from underfoot. He taught me to ride and fence and fish, and he was stern, but he was kind, and I loved him so. He died in a barbarian battle before having a son. And I wanted nothing, nothing more than to carry on his legacy and become a great knight.”

  Her glow dimmed some. “I certainly didn’t envision a life of dodging my captain’s footsteps and ending up in demeaning posts such as this – far too often. But I have had adventures, and done his name well, I hope.”

  “I am certain you have done him proud. My sister is a gardener and a florist. I had always wished she would come adventuring with me, traveling, and sailing. But she was your mother’s type.”

  “My mother is a wonderful woman, a great woman. But I was never content to be that sort of great, perhaps. The greatness of quiet content, the greatness of motherhood – it’s all great. Particularly since some of us could never do it. But I always wanted to be the sort of great that, that...”

  “Battles pirates and rescues damsels in distress.”

  She laughed nervously. “I know it’s not a greater great. Just a different great. More of a forefront great.” She stood on the chair beneath the miniscule window, and opened it partially. The lawns of the capital were still grassy and well manicured, though the air was frigid. She was more than ready for a good lasting snow. And her niece and nephew were more than hoping for a white Christmas.

  She sighed, and thrust the window shut. She admitted more to herself than to the prisoner, “I do like the forefront.”

  “But Miss Knight, I believe it’s hard work in the background that takes us to the forefront. I never should have traveled if I didn’t work hard where I was.”

  She stared at the prisoner. He couldn’t be more than five years older than her, but his eyes said he’d lived a great deal more life. And he was practically dying to tell about it apparently.

  She could imagine that. If you were going to lose your life you might want at least someone to bear witness to the fact that you had actually lived it. Sophia sighed, and pondered her options. She had a long night ahead of her, and it being his second to last, it was likely that the prisoner did too.

  She had nothing to lose, she supposed. Least of all things, she planned on losing her heart. So, she relented. “Tell me about it then. Since you’re dying to.”

  She’d intentionally made the dying jab, and his smirk said he knew it. But all he said was, “You got the hint,” and scooted closer to the bars. He threw a glance at the prisoner sleeping in the next cell. “I haven’t had anyone to talk to in ages, it feels like.”

  She returned to her stool, but did not return to her book. She dragged the seat before the bars, plopped down upon it, and gave him a nod of consent.

  * * *

  He waited until she looked decently settled and focused to begin. “So. For context. I had to leave home when I was seventeen. I studied hard and worked hard on a farm, until a renowned bounty hunter took notice of me, and asked for my aid. So that’s when I, along with my brother, set off into the wide world.”

  She realized that she was sitting within arm’s length, just as she promised Rusty earlier that she would not. She pulled the stool backwards, and sat upon it again. “And how did all that lead to here, exactly?”

  He just began shaking his head like a child who’s been asked to shut off a lamp and face the dark. “We’re not to that part of the story yet.”

  “Well. I’d like to know what sort of man I’m subjected to listening to for the rest of the night. Was it murder or…”

  He nodded, “Murder.”

  Her stomach soured slightly, as he’d almost said it too casually. “An accidental murder, or an intentional one?”

  “Oh, it was very intentional.”

  His nonchalance chilled her. “Who did you kill?”

  “I’m getting to that part.”

  “There are some parts I’d like to know upfront.”

  He sighed. “Fine.” He sat up a little straighter, and took a moment to speak the words.

  She was glad. Some form of hesitance she could endure. It was something like remorse, and somewhat less unnerving than the indifference.

  “I killed my sister’s husband.”

  She stared. Truly, he did not at all look the killing sort. In fact, he looked the decent farmer boy sort who went to chapel and washed behind his ears and was utterly misplaced in a cell.

  “And whatever led up to that?”

  “A forgotten lunch pail.”

  There was a long silence, him thoughtful, her glaring.

  “You’re going to elaborate on that, aren’t you?” she snapped.

  “Well, I don’t know. Are you going to let me tell my story?”

  She gave him one sour look and crossed her legs to show that she was settling in, amazed, perhaps amused, by the prisoner’s playful ease. Her mama was known to say, watch out for men of honey words, my Sophie. She’d gathered this was one such man, worth watching out for. But... “Yes. I’ve got all night. So tell me how a lunch pail led to murder.”

  “Well, in that case, we’ll begin at the beginning. I adored my sister. I was her protector. When we were small we found a secret room in our house, and it was our fortress. Not even our brother Michael knew of it. Still, Miss and I are the only ones who know, and she still lives in that ivy-and-rose covered stone house – with the old blue porch swing. It was a crumbling old tower before we made it home.”

  He gave a smallest frown, before plowing on. “We would go on long horseback rides, Miss and I, and have all kinds of adventures. Father was a good man, and Mother a good woman. They worked hard at the farm, worked hard at loving each other, and worked hard to bring us up right.

  “I guess the trouble started after visiting my mother’s sister. She lived in an obscure little town tucked away in lavender fields, across the sea. We liked to think our mother’s painting of it was the only evidence it ever existed, that it was a fairy place we might never find again. The painting is still in the house.” His eyes had gone distant.

  And she was growing impatient, waiting for the lunch pail.

  “You’re wearing lavender perfume, aren’t you?” He returned to the present with some difficulty. She felt some patience return. She could fathom that being faraway in the world of memor
y was easier than being here. Waiting to die.

  “Lavender lotion. My favorite.”

  “My sister’s as well. I got my taste for travel on that one trip to the lavender fields of FloralField. You’d have liked it there. Rows and rows of lavender. Never famous to tourists, but their lotions and soaps are world-renowned. Called Purple Cream.”

  “That’s what I’m wearing! Mama gets me a lotion bar from the market every year.”

  He took a bookmark from his box. Upon it was a pressed slip of lavender, and a lilac ribbon. “Do you know what they symbolize?”

  She shrugged, remembering that she really wanted to hear about a certain lunch pail and how it led to a certain crime.

  Remembering that the man before her was convicted and dangerous.

  He smiled, perhaps seeing her fidgetiness. “In some traditions they signify caution and distrust. In others purity, devotion, and the fullness of womanhood.”

  She didn’t know why she wanted to blush for the way he was looking at her.

  He proffered the bookmark. “You should take this one. For your book.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “I have no use for it anymore, dear girl. Call it a Christmas gift.”

  Chapter 3

  A faintly dark look seeped into his eyes, and he gazed absently at his little slat window and the open night beyond it.

  It was awfully cold. She wondered if he might shut it anytime soon.

  “Well. It was upon that trip that the trouble began because it was on that trip that our relative gave us that damned dog. Miss was terrified of that erratic devil. Never could overcome her fear of it. And we teased her something awful for it.”

  A look like guilt tightened his jaw.

  “But back to that day… As I said, we’d a happy childhood and all was well. And then my father forgot his lunch. So Missy ran it out to him, where he was logging. The dog came running after her, barking. She screamed and, well, Pa was startled, and died in the ensuing accident.”

  Well, that was death, but it wasn’t murder, and it had nothing to do with the condemned man before her.

  “A tree didn’t... crush him?”

  “Half sawed his own arm off. The wound was nasty, and took infection.”

  “But what does that have to do with your sister’s husband?” Her voice was more affected than she meant it to be, thoroughly relaying how indignant she was.

  “A lot of stories entwine to make just one. Your eagerness is adorable, by the way,” he smirked at her, and she crossed her arms grumpily. “But give it a minute. Miss never forgave herself for being afraid of that stupid dog and for what happened because of it. It made her more of an insecure girl than she already was. She would carry that into the future, and into her relationships.”

  “Is that why you left home?”

  “It is. I stayed for as long as I could, and tried my hand at logging for as long as I could stand it. Mom needed me. And Missy was still young. She was a gentle soul with a rebellious streak, and known to disobey in her secretive way. Michael and Mother were no good at keeping order, so it fell to me to take her in hand.”

  Sophie swallowed involuntarily. When Pa spoke of taking anyone in hand, he meant applying his hand to their bottom. She thought of Rusty, who took on the spanking of all of his younger siblings, and Shaz, who paddled his girlfriends, and had a minor chill at the thought.

  Undeniably, the phenomenon had always kept her intrigued. And horrified.

  “But the family needed supporting, and there was little to do but work with trees, and I was no good at it. Our town was a forest town at the time, though there’s hardly any trees left now. So we left, found work on a farm, and worked hard. I always was a hard worker. That’s how Swift found us.”

  “The bounty hunter?”

  Maybe she could put off knowing the end of the story a bit longer, now that it was getting interesting. She pulled the basket of Christmas food onto her lap, figuring she ought to enjoy herself as the story played out.

  “Yes, the bounty hunter… you don’t mind hearing this part of the story, do you? It does feed into the rest.”

  Heavens, it was his last Christmas Eve. “You seemed determined to tell it and I have no objection to hearing it.” She bit into a buttery roll. “Why don’t you just start from the top? Tell me about your birth?”

  “I was a spring baby, though you wouldn’t guess it for all the snow we had that year. Born in Brisken. Twenty-four hour labor. Labor was initiated after my mother ate a particularly flavorful slice of pork. Father hurried home—”

  She glared.

  He laughed. “I suppose you don’t want to hear the rest? I wouldn’t resist trying one of those butter rolls.”

  She tossed him one.

  He caught it, and took a long while savoring a bite before sitting back and resuming. “Mom made good butter rolls. So. Swift. The hunter. Derek Swift, was his whole name. He’d a beautiful wife that he loved very dearly. But she had secrets. She strung along and manipulated other men on the side – I was one of them once. She dabbled in black magic in an attempt to heal herself from the depression that plagued her for most of her life. And it destroyed her. He buried her at sea, and threw himself into his work – into procuring the heads of various villains.

  “It was shortly after some of his greatest conquests that he found me, and my brother, on his cousin’s farm, and added us to his faithful band. And shortly after that his wife met with her end. So together, we threw ourselves into bounty hunting. For pirates, mostly. But we also stopped along the way to take on various other thieves and crime lords.”

  “You went pirate hunting?”

  He pulled a small wood carving of a ship out of his box. “Yes. I once might have killed the pirate who became one of GlassGlen’s most-esteemed knights, Sir March. But we let him go. For the sake of his new daughter and most convincing appearances of penitence.”

  “In earnest!” She vaguely thought she should kick herself for being this taken in by the handsome stranger and his stories. Shaz had said it before, and he was right. She was too naive.

  She rubbed her hands together, and wished she’d brought gloves. “Well... if we can quickly disrupt story time, I’m cold. I brought a Shaladan pot of coffee.” Without thinking, she asked, “Will you have some?”

  “I won’t object to that.”

  She removed the cap from the hot pot, which was a tin teacup, as well as the base, which was another teacup. Best creation in the world, in her mind. The strongly scented coffee was still steamy hot. She filled both cups and brought one to the prisoner, putting her hand through the bars to hand it to him.

  In that split second, she realized he could easily seize her, put the sharp tip of that carved ship to her throat.

  He accepted the cup.

  But her heart still fluttered in her throat as she marveled at her own stupidity. “What will your last wish be?” she asked – out of desperate need of something to say to cover her unease, as she flaunted back to her stool.

  His saddened eyes went to the slat of a window in his cell, which revealed the stars and clouds beyond. “I’ll ask for a starlit horseback ride. Just to be free again, even if only for a moment. I’d like that more than anything in the world. I know they’d have to have me tethered to one of their horses, but still.”

  She didn’t tell him that they’d never allow it.

  His eyes lit upon Pepper, who was preening with some difficulty. “That bird is knocking on death’s door.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I wonder what his last wish would be,” he murmured, distantly.

  She stared into the blue eyes of the prisoner for a long moment. They had seen a world. How sad, to be suddenly cut off from it. Facing a bitter death.

  “So...” she shoveled out the gritty silence. But she didn’t know how to ask what she was just then curious to know. Why… wasn’t his last wish to be with a woman? That was the standard. Were there any women in his story? She had ne
ver had a man in hers. He’d mentioned something about Swift’s wife… “What became of hunting with Swift? And so far I hear of pirate battling but no damsel rescuing. Haven’t you ever loved a woman? Or—”

  “Whoa, slow down a minute. I loved one girl, but it was unrequited. She was given to a young lord instead.”

  She watched his face, watched him slowly return to the present.

  “No, I’ve never married, or had a real lover. A traveling bounty hunter is not a profession beneficial to that. Unless you’ve a hankering for venereal disease.”

  She was bubbling up with laughter before she could stop it.

  He shrugged, smiling, “But back to bounty hunting. We arrived on the shores of Brisken on a frigid September day, and made for the seaside caves were a certain lady crime lord was known to reside. And upon our arrival, we stood face to face with Swift’s wife.”

  “The one who… died?”

  “We’d only supposed. She’d faked her death by mysterious means, to be rid of her life before. Of course, we could not slay his dearly beloved bride. He pled with her to return to him, to renounce her dark ways. When she would not, he, of course, could not be the hand to destroy her, in spite of her reign of terror.”

  He flipped to a sketch of Brisken shores. He frowned at it, and began re-sharpening certain edges. The sketch was skillful. The shore looked the very essence of foreboding. “It was a dark night on the beach, in a secluded crag, when he pled with me to be the one to kill her. But she had followed, and she overheard.”

  His breath shuddered. “So she killed him. And I killed her in return. That was my first time, killing out of hatred. Most folks must endure losing one father but I lost two, when Swift died. In a short few years I had run in with drunkenness, lust, and murder – and I was only a boy yet. I was finished with them all. So I gave up the adventuring life for a time and ran back to RamblingRose to give my sister away at her wedding.”

  He began sharpening the edges of his sketch with an increased intensity. “I hated that man. No reason. I just hated him.”