“And then there was my brother’s consort. She was angry with him for a certain dalliance on the side. I envied his ease with women. She made me an offer. I accepted. It was... disappointing.”
“How so?” she prodded, in earnest.
He seemed about to sweep the matter aside, but saw her earnestness. He softened, “Well, it was simply awkward. Lying with a woman whom your brother has taken first… Well, you can imagine.”
He straightened. “And then it was a few moments of thrill – unfathomable thrill mind you – but for an endless tangle of turmoil. My brother hated me, Jasmine thought she may be with child, I had to drop all my dreams and consider supporting this new life all in one sudden, and then when it happened she wasn’t with child – it was an awkward severance of a relationship when moments before we’d been planning to marry. I rather lost my taste for women, apart from love.
“When I met Glenda I vowed that I wouldn’t touch her until we were wed – a shockingly successful enterprise. I can keep a resolve once I make it, and she made it to her richer taker a suitably pure bride.”
He searched her face. “So you see, I have made terrible mistakes in every avenue of life.”
But why would he admit it? Everything about this was so wrong. She was chatting conversationally with a prisoner, and he wasn’t even trying to beguile her into favor with a guise of charming perfection. He was a frightened wreck who had made mistakes and killed his brother-in-law, and who didn’t try to hide it. But he was also humorous and thoughtful and… and what was happening?
He sat back. “So in the end, I find that adventure and travel are worthier pastimes than women. And the grand thing about adventure is that you might find a love along the way. So it was for my brother.”
“You did mention a wife. Though from what I can gather so far, your brother’s the rakish type.”
“He gave up his wild ways with women when one at long last got close enough to his heart to break it. A milkmaid, of course. He’d a thing for milkmaids. Easier squeezed and used up than their spotted charges.”
She snorted a laugh before she could stop herself.
“May I say that I love it that you think I’m funny?” he smirked. “In any case, he was all for sluts and milk maids.” She giggled again. “Until one got close to him in order to weasel her way into the company of his best friend, whom she promptly married. He gave up on women, and turned his focus to the open road and sea. And then, while we were hunting a barbarian clan that terrorized a town, an ill small-town woman crossed our path. She was crippled. Could never do anything for his reputation. Never give him mind-blowing romps of pleasure. But he did love her.”
He lifted his sketchbook, flipped to a page, and then lifted it into her view. It was a sketch of a gentleman that was no doubt his brother, and a slight little lady in a wooden wheelchair, grinning up at him like he was the world.
Sophia was sitting very close to the bars. How easily he could reach through those bars and yank her against the wall of metal, knocking her unconscious. How easily slip the keys from her belt. Escape.
But apparently, he gave the prospect not a thought.
She hissed it with suspicion, “You never killed anybody.”
Why did she ache to think the best of him?
“Well, back to that,” he whispered.
No. She didn’t want to get back to it.
She wanted to divert his attention again and talk of something, anything.
She wanted to beg him to just stop the story there, and tie it up neatly in a happily-ever-after-bow.
He reached into his box again and picked up... a key. All of the other objects, he had stared at as though they unlocked pleasant memories. But he turned the key absently in his hands, and stared at nothing in particular. “After Derek’s death, and my mother’s, and while I was living in RoseMeadow... I was grieving Swift and my mother; I continued to send lavender and other flowers to my sister. Eventually, Missy’s letters came scarcer, and scarcer, and then not at all. And then one day...” He swallowed with some difficulty. “One day I received a letter from the RamblingRose post pleading that I stop sending pressed flowers because they were just piling up in the office, and activating Miss Cale’s allergies. I knew straightaway that something was dreadfully wrong, and galloped my horse all the way to town.”
He paused for a long, long while.
“When I arrived, he was afield playing fetch with his hounds, cuddling them, kissing them, treating them like his godforsaken children. I hurried into the house before he spotted me – and found Missy.”
The distress growing on his face frightened her. She wanted to beg him to stop. Now. She moved as though to put a hand on his shoulder – and thought better of it.
“I didn’t recognize her, Sophia. A skeleton of a human. She was so... frail, and thin, and... Sophia, he’d hurt her. Really hurt her. Her pretty face was missing an eye. He took her eye out, Sophia. She was bruised. And scarred. Burned, even. She’d had bones broken. Sophia... can you see why he had to die?”
“Oh, David—”
“I begged her to run away with me. But she was afraid of him. And angry. Angry with me, for not coming sooner.”
Those eyes that she had seen the world in were then fraught with all the ache in the world.
“Sophia, he loved those flea-infested dogs more than her. So I carved him up. And fed him to them.” He dropped the key into the box.
Chapter 6
Her heart was beating at an inconsolable speed by now, and it fluttered to her throat. She could only stare, awed.
Feeling like she might be sick.
“I...” he went numbly on, “don’t know how I could have done it either. But then, you don’t know what he did to her.”
He momentarily covered his eyes with his sleeve, as though to stop tears, or to clear his vision of the horrid memory, or both at once.
Then he returned with a shuddering sigh, unable to look at her as he had before. “And so tomorrow, I face my punishment. Will you tell me more of your story, Sophia? The real stories in it?”
How could she speak? She cleared the tears from her throat. She had to say something. Anything. “Well...”
How to follow up an admission like that?
“I am only nineteen.” His blue gaze fastened to her, pleading with her to go on, to smother his words with her own. “It hasn’t been a vast tale. You know about my papa. Mama couldn’t force me to like tea, or floral arrangements, or dancing. Or... not refined dancing.” Her voice cracked.
“More for a country reel than a waltz?” he teased, forcing a frail thing like a grin.
She smiled tenderly, through the still-brewing tears. “Sir, I’d think you knew me.”
And that frightened her. How this man with so many dark places inside could already see the inside of her so, so well.
“I’ve a feeling you and your mother didn’t get along?” he prodded.
“I think every whipping I ever got was for sassing her.”
He nodded, numbly spinning a piece of charcoal in his box. “You couldn’t see the value in her simple way.”
A few hours had elapsed between them, but how familiar they felt. How she felt she knew him. Already she had gathered his knack for jumping to correct conclusions, his tendency to taunt her… but not in a way that injured her, like Rusty’s chiding reprimands.
And already, she knew that he saw the world differently. He saw life and love as the truest of treasures. He saw the weak as worth protecting. He valued the things that made him who he was – whether wonderful or terrible.
She couldn’t speak anymore.
For a moment, her crazed imagination got the better of her, and it danced to wildly unattainable things. She imagined the prisoner. He was living a life after prison.
He was living it beside her.
She could imagine him in evening attire, could see him laughing at her pathetic dancing. He would make an affectionate father, would make a marvelous partner
in crime. But his patience and levelheadedness would temper her headlong way.
He was the embodiment of the man she’d had dancing with in her dreams since girlhood.
Except for one thing.
“No,” she choked on the word. “I couldn’t see any value in her at all.”
“It took me ten years to see Missy as special.”
She grinned through the developing tears. “A story?” she whispered, glad of it.
He laughed. “A short one – I’d think you knew me. We had a strict teacher one year who would stand us up in the corner for an hour if we forgot our writing utensils, as it was a ‘distraction.’ I was always caught without mine, and every time Miss was ready with one before Teacher knew. That’s when we started to spend more time together.”
This man had never carved up anyone.
“It took me fifteen years,” she whispered, “To see the value in Ma. When Pa died about then, she held us together.”
“What happened after your pa died? I mean, how did you end up here?”
“I gave the next three years to studying, practicing my knightly skills, and striving for entrance into the knighthood. My best friend Rusty was ever at my side, and we worked, and played and... That was really all. We eventually got where we are. This last year has been spent fighting to prove myself.”
“What have you got to prove?”
She shrugged. “Maybe that my father didn’t need to have sons. He had me.”
He searched her intense eyes. “It sounds like your father loved you, very much.”
“He did.”
“Then I’m certain he didn’t want you to be a knight if you didn’t want to be.”
There was a long, quiet moment.
“What do you want out of life?” he asked. “Your father took you fencing and fishing because you liked it, or because it was what he knew how to do, but I doubt it was because he wished you were a boy.”
“This is my dream,” she murmured.
“Or... your father’s dream? He isn’t listening. And even if he were here... he’d be proud.”
She went absent, as she dared to numbly admit it. “I like the helping-folks part. But I think I’d like to travel. Meet new people and help people without being trounced on by men like Shaz. Maybe become a healer, or a guard for merchants, or a guard for pilgrims who serve in the temple, when they go on healing journeys. I met someone who did that once.”
He was listening with rapt attention. No buts or what-ifs, only listening.
At that moment, there was the sound of fluttering feathers outside the window. She ran to it, and opened it up to Pepper.
Poor thing, all snow dusted.
And yet, in the cold, he looked quite happy. He ruffled his fraying feathers with content. He was a bird from Frigid, meaning that they flew south to Brisken for the winter, and Brisken was still plenty cold.
He probably was going to die soon.
What would a bird’s last wish be?
She plucked the return letter from his leg, and lifted the old bird back to the sill, whispering, “Live a life, little bird.”
Of course he did not know the command, and looked at her curiously.
She whispered, “Go anywhere. Anywhere in the world.” She prodded with a gentle nudge.
He took the hint, and took to the sky.
She turned back to David. She didn’t think he had heard her, but he watched her with a sort of fascination.
She passed him the letter from his sister, and watched him read. His expression, however, was unreadable, though his hands began trembling about the page.
He folded the letter and tucked it into his sketchbook. “I would read it to you Sophie, but... I don’t know that I could. Read it aloud. I don’t feel like any more tears tonight.”
“No, I understand. But... David? I have a question.”
“Anything for you.”
“If you killed a man in such a grisly fashion – why have you been imprisoned for so long? It’s just that normally… after a confession…” He’d be executed in a moment.
“I turned myself in straightaway, the morning after, but a good friend of mine is a lawyer, and insisted I was only suicidal for having endured a life of constant loss. He demanded a fair investigation. He argued hard that they hadn’t even found a murder weapon. I’d tossed it into the river when I was done, so of course they haven’t found it. He’s finally given up on me, seeing my resolve.”
“Resolve?”
“To pay. For what I have done.”
She realized that the night was turning a pale powder blue. She went to the window once more and threw it open. It was a gorgeous, Christmas morning of perfectly pure snow.
“It’s almost dawn,” she whispered. Meaning it was the last day David would walk this earth. Tomorrow morning, he would breathe his final breath.
She looked to him. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Sophia.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you... all right? Today being...” What would she say? Your last? My, she was brilliant.
His face was paler now.
“Are you afraid?”
Blast her.
“I’m not afraid to die. I’ve pled my forgiveness, and I trust that it’s given. But... I’m rather wary of public humiliation, yes.”
What if...
What if she let him go?
Shazrad would destroy her. He’d find some excuse to call having his way with her appropriate punishment.
Bells sang out from the chapel, beautiful bells. Their song seemed so mournful, now.
Heavens above, if I’d met you as a free man… If she had met David outside of this dungeon, she wondered if perhaps those bells would have sung out over their marriage one day.
“I am on parameter duty for the chapel service. And then I’ve a family breakfast, and more duties, and then a dinner with the men, and Rusty and I had plans to go sleighing, but I’ll get out of some of it – dinner and sleighing for certain. I’ll hurry back when I can.”
He gently took her hand through the bars, sending sparks through her. “Please do.”
Chapter 7
She was just… living another day of her life, when he was going to die. She thought of him and little else. How was she going to enjoy a family breakfast while he was sitting in the dark too anxious to eat?
How was she supposed to grin over gifts when he had already lost the most basic gift of freedom – when he was about to lose the ultimate gift of life?
Mother watched her like a hawk as she stumbled through the door.
In spite of a chilly hour spent guarding the chapel, her cheeks began to burn, and she was certain it was visible.
Mother, of course, hadn’t the faintest idea of anything. She had always had such strict oversight over her life… and now here she was, oblivious that her daughter had lost her heart in the most impudent way fathomable.
“How are you this fine Christmas morning, Sophie?” she asked, her eyes practically dancing.
For a minute, Sophia could only stare and in her muddled mind wonder whatever Mum could look so happy about when her heart would be crushed on the morrow. “I’m fine,” was all she could say, numbly.
Mum raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Did anything interesting happen during your guard shift, last night?”
Her stomach dropped. “Like what?” she almost snapped. How could anyone know anything?
“I don’t know. Something romantic?”
“Mum, what are you talking about?”
But at that moment the twins came scurrying down the stairs with squeals of glee, and her sister came stumbling after them, only half awake.
She numbly followed the chattering clan into the kitchen, and didn’t take the children’s side when Mum and Sarah insisted they wait until after breakfast to open presents. Nor did she dart over to the stockings and begin passing them out with her usual rapidity. She was the stocking stuffer of the family. Stockings were her domain.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes.” She passed them to everyone with a lack of enthusiasm that caused the entire family to watch her in befuddlement.
“Well then,” said Sarah. “Breakfast.”
As the sounds of the family eating a hearty breakfast clattered around her, she thought of him. She thought of him as she accepted a bar of lavender lotion from her mother, thought of him as Sarah gave her a necklace from which dangled a wooden bird and a brand new ink pen. She thought of him even as the twins presented her with coral-colored scarf and socks they had apparently put great thought into picking out.
“Sophia, you are beyond out of your head,” Mum said finally. “I wish you hadn’t taken that guard shift.”
Apparently, good old Rusty hadn’t told her the reason for that shift.
Rusty. Him.
She abruptly dropped the dainty dish she had been holding, and the chocolate-covered strawberries she’d carried into the room tumbled across the hardwood.
She suddenly wondered how much Mother knew about his silly half-baked plans. She hadn’t thought as much of him and his proposition as she should have…
Oh… that would explain her strange words and ways over the entirety of the morning.
Mother eyed her suspiciously. “I insist you rest. Even if you nap only an hour.”
“Mother, a nap. Really? I don’t think I’ve napped a day since I was six years old.”
“It’s Christmas. And you can scarce enjoy it.”
‘Twas truth.
So nap she did, and fitfully dream she did. Of blue eyes peering at her from a prison cell.
She went about her duties guarding a Christmas celebration at the castle in all numbness, and hardly fathomed that Rusty was staring at her, intently, waiting for her response to his letter.
“I’ve got to bail out of tonight, Rusty,” she said, when the silent shift was up. Already her heart was rampant for thinking of seeing him again. “The dinner and the sleighing.”
The Lady Knight And The Dungeon (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 10) Page 4
