“We always sleigh on Christmas.”
“I know. But... I’ve an emergency.”
He seized her hand. “This isn’t about my letter?”
Oh, that. “We’ll discuss it when I can think straight.”
He squeezed her hand tighter.
Better to be honest. Oh… he was very dear to her. “I love you Rusty, I do, but I’m not certain... I love you like a wife loves her husband. Could you see us married? Truly see us? Coexisting peacefully? Because I see us ripping one another’s hair out.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration, Sophie…”
“We don’t laugh at each other’s jokes. We misunderstand and we get mad. You don’t think my impatience and curiosity are adorable, and you certainly never satisfy my curiosity with detail enough. You rub me the wrong way, with the way you say things. And...” She grasped for explanation, to force him to see what she was seeing. “You hate quail eggs! And when I was changing on that trip to HillSlope you peeked at me!”
“You’re bringing that up?”
“And he didn’t,” she whispered. “He could have looked at me, and he didn’t.”
“What? Who?”
Her mind was darting in a million ridiculous directions. But they all fled to him. She could think of nothing else by now.
His time was running out.
She couldn’t waste it here. “I am so sorry. But I have to go.”
He seized her. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the prisoner that was making eyes at you last night? The one who butchered a man in RoseMeadow?”
She wanted to snarl a defense, but there wasn’t one to give. What was done was done.
“Your gift was lovely, Rusty, and I will always cherish it as a gift from a very dear friend. And now, I have to go.”
She ran, though he called her name fiercely after her. Still she ran, only pausing in the kitchen to scoop up a handful of quail eggs and steal several slices of bacon. Of course, with knights and guards to consider, there was bacon. It may very well have been the knighthood mascot.
The cook raised a less-than-thrilled eyebrow at her.
“Sorry, Hannah. It’s an emergency.”
She dodged past Grave, the grumbling guard in the dungeon doorway. He took the opportunity to step out for a smoke, thank heaven.
He was still there, blue eyes peering out of the rancid darkness. She didn’t know where else she supposed he might be, but it was a thrill nonetheless.
The lamps from the night before were no longer lit, and it was too dark. But his eyes lit upon seeing her.
“I have quail eggs!” she chirped her greeting. “And bacon!”
He wrinkled his nose playfully. “I never was one for bacon. Fatty, gritty, sliver of salt.”
She nearly dropped the armful of food. “You know. For about five minutes, I thought we might be soul mates. But never mind. What sort of a man are you?”
He laughed.
And she laughed.
And for a few minutes, there was just gripping hands through bars, and laughing, like the world outside could never reach them.
But... she was nonetheless vaguely rattled. She didn’t really know him.
She swiftly lit all the lamps, and brought him the handkerchief of breaded eggs. “They have dried cranberries in the bread. They’re the best thing ever.”
“You could take that title,” he laughed, “in my book.” Death looming, he seemed not too concerned about stifling his true thoughts.
“So glad I outdo breaded eggs.” She near forgot he was a condemned man, and that they were in a dungeon.
Nearly.
“You know something funny?” she whispered.
“What would that be?” He numbly unwrapped the eggs, while never taking his eyes from her.
She wondered if he admired her favorite rich coral sweater, worn over her grey day dress.
Stupid thing to wonder.
“It hasn’t yet even entered my mind that you may be charming me in order to escape.”
His gaze blackened. “Because you know that I would never.”
“I know that I think you wouldn’t. But the you I know wouldn’t brutally murder a man, either.”
“That is the me I used to know. The me I hope you remember, when I’m gone.”
She was leaning against the bars. They’d only a few minutes more before Grave returned.
“I understand.” She teared-up before she could stop it. “Why you did it,” she whispered.
He placed the eggs atop his box of memories, and took her hand, letting her tears fall. He didn’t reprimand her, as Rusty would, for the discomfiting display of weakness. He only let her cry.
“I am so sorry,” she wept. “For... everything.”
There was a blur in his own gaze. “Don’t be. Don’t ever be. I won’t ever regret that my path crossed yours, lady knight.”
“What...” She brushed her last tears aside, and the vulnerable moment with it. “What did your sister say? In her letter?”
But he saw the ploy at defense, and wouldn’t have it. He slowly, cautiously, reached his arms through the bars, and she stepped willingly, thoughtlessly, into them.
It struck her, afresh. She barely knew him, and yet, she knew him very well. The men she’d known and lived daily beside had spoken to her as much in two years as he had in one night.
The scent of him was nervous sweat and too long sitting in the dank dirt, but she would not trade this moment in time for anything.
“She said what I feared. That she will not forgive herself.” His right hand played with strands of her hair. “That she will not relinquish her heartbreak, anger. I fear that it will only fester, only mar her life more. That it will only consume her. But she understands that I have made my choice.” He continued to toy with one of her honey gold curls.
Made... made his choice?
Why didn’t that make sense to her? At least, not in that moment.
As she stood there, in his arms – or sort of in his arms – her thoughts ran. And suddenly they all fled to the same conclusion. “Blast you.”
He pulled slightly back to stare at her.
Rusty said moments ago that he’d killed a man in RoseMeadow. But he’d said his sister and her husband lived in RamblingRose. And there were no rivers in close proximity to RoseMeadow to be throwing murder weapons into.
“You...” She pulled away from him. “Have been lying to me.”
His face was pained. “Sophia…” The voice was partly a plea, partly like a warning.
“You did not kill Missy’s husband. She cannot forgive herself because she killed him. Didn’t she?” She searched his face for any denial, or any confirmation.
All he could do was brokenly stare.
“Because her anger... can only mar her life more if it has already done so.”
“Sophia—”
“She did it. Didn’t she?”
“Sophie, I—”
“Didn’t she?”
“Hush, Sophia, please!” He looked for the door. And then he whispered it, barely. “Yes. My sister killed her husband, cooked him, and fed him to his dogs. That is what I arrived to discover, when my letters were no longer returned. Sophia... she had been sitting in a rocking chair for a week, hands covered in his dried blood. Just rocking. Sophia, if you only knew the Missy I knew. If you only knew... that nothing but a monster could make her into what he made her.”
“So you dragged his body to RoseMeadow, and away from her.”
“What was left of it. Yes. Made it up to look as though he had come, dogs and all, to pick a fight with me. Missy’s potential guilt could not enter their minds. She would betray herself. She was not well.”
“And so she is sitting in RamblingRose right now, rocking away in her accursed rocking chair as you are about to die! Didn’t they ever question her?”
“Eventually, yes. She went with my story only because I begged it. I wanted her to have the chance that I’d already had, Sophia. T
he chance to live.”
She remembered how his voice had trembled last night, especially as he spoke of the murder weapon.
“Didn’t they search the property? Didn’t they find the weapon? Or signs of struggle? Surely there was something left behind? If she hacked him up she’d have a knife that showed signs of cutting bone! If you were in a hurry to drag him to RoseMeadow and then turned yourself in right away, you would not have had time to clean everything up. You might have missed something! David, where did she murder him? Was there any blood or anything left in her house?”
He gripped her hand. “I cannot have her incriminated, Sophia!”
She thought, frantic. “They did not find anything because... there was one room they didn’t search. The secret room, where you used to play. The key from your box last night – it was the key to the secret room. You put any evidence there, didn’t you? Perhaps the murder weapon they never found?”
Nothing. His eyes were all the evidence she needed.
She stepped away. How could his sister? How could he? “You, David, are not going to die tomorrow. I am going to find the weapon in her house. And there is no way you would drag his body all the way to RoseMeadow unless you were covering something up. It’ll be plenty enough to convince a judge. And if it isn’t, I am going to drag a confession out of your Missy if I must rip her hair out to get it.”
“Sophia, no! I am begging you not to do this.”
She swept for the door.
“If you care for me even a little you will listen to me!”
She faltered on the steps.
“Please. I swore to my mother that I would protect her with my life. I swore it. Come back to me, please.”
She hesitated.
The world felt as though it were breaking beneath her trembling feet. But slowly, she turned.
Oh, those brave, beautiful and selfless blue eyes.
She slowly stepped back to the cell, halting just before him.
“I love her. If you love me—” he paused, for the words had obviously slipped out apart from his intent.
Love him...
“Please. Don’t let the sacrifices I have made be in vain.” His voice trembled. “In this handful of hours you... have become my dearest friend. Please, just... stay with me.”
Chapter 8
“Rosalind,” came Shaz’s harsh voice, and she froze in her steps, dread seeping into her insides. Not now. It was the tone that he used when he was about to ask her to do something degrading. All she wanted was time. Time to think. Time to weigh her options and their consequences. First, she had to find Grave and beg him to give her his guard shift tonight. She knew he would not like the idea of being the one liable for letting a girl take his place, but she would beg him if she had to.
And then, if she by some fray of chance managed to convince him, she would go home and sob for an hour before her shift while David made his last wish – and she would conspire.
Because she couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t.
But Shaz snapped, “My presence is required at a final request. A criminal apparently too demented for our friendly neighborhood captain of the guard to handle it. You and Rusty are coming with me.”
“What did this criminal do?” she asked, praying they thought of the same person.
She was familiar with that look they got when they thought they could scare her. “Cut a man into pieces like a prime cut of beef, cooked him up, and fed him to the man’s own dogs.” He meant to frighten her, to drag them away from their Christmas merriments along with him.
So he stiffened in barely-masked astonishment as she threw her arms about him in an embrace and said, “Oh yes, of course! Thank you Shaz.”
He watched her blankly as she hurried off to find Rusty.
Once she found him, she staggered to a halt. She had nearly forgotten the state she had left him in. He didn’t look as though he’d passed a very pleasant afternoon. “Rusty,” she whispered, half afraid of him for the first time in her life.
But once he saw her, he took her hands, accepting her as always. “Sophie. Can we talk about earlier?”
She squeezed his hand. “Please, not now Rusty. Now… I just have some very painful things on my mind.”
She needed all the space possible to think, if she was going to think up some way, any way, to get him out of this. Thoughts of Rusty constricted that space. “You have to attend me to a last wish. Shaz’s orders.”
His expression darkened. “The RoseMeadow butcher?”
Again, she bit back an angry retort. “Yes.”
“Gladly,” he said, and it was a dire struggle to keep the pain from her expression.
* * *
This was going to happen.
But it couldn’t. She couldn’t let it.
She would see to it that this horseback ride was not his last. She would let him escape. And Shazrad would find a way to torture her, likely in the way she most deeply dreaded, perhaps even sever her from the knighthood.
But she would do it, for him.
Two guards and a reverend were present, in addition to Rusty, herself, and Shaz. Shazrad was of course less than thrilled to be present. And now he occupied himself with eyeing her in the way that he knew unnerved any woman.
They all stood around David, whose hands were tightly bound, and the reverend was giving his spiel about the wretched life he had led.
Rusty was present as well, watching her intently.
The two brooding guards present were most unhappy to be pulled away from their Christmas night merriments, and eager to be back. As knights, she and Rusty didn’t normally attend these sort of going-ons, and if she understood Shaz’s prior ranting, they were only present because most of the guards who should be doing this were drunk out of their heads already.
She held David’s eyes as unobtrusively as she could, hoping it might lend him courage.
She wasn’t about to complain.
“Now,” grunted Grave, “Your final request, Mr. Gates.”
The other guard, she didn’t know his name, chuckled, “Bacon? Or a woman?”
There was a small chuckle from Grave, who rarely chuckled.
“A woman, yes,” said David.
Her downcast head lifted.
“Or... something like that,” he went on, tremblingly. “I... would like to spend my last night in the company of Sophia. On a horseback ride, if we could.”
“You’d make off with her pretty hide in an instant!” Grave laughed.
“Then if we could just have a chamber. With guards posted at the doors and the windows, of course.” He swallowed. “I would only like to spend my last night in the company of a friend.”
She had never in her life felt so overwhelmed with ache.
The men were laughing.
“What do you think Sophia?” Grave’s eyes were teasing. “Will you grace the delusional butcher with your presence? He has apparently concluded you to be his only friend in the world.”
“No windows,” said Sophia.
The merriment was swept from all faces. Confusion, perhaps horror, etched every expression, especially Rusty’s.
“Of course I consent,” she said, more to him than anyone. Their eyes were fastened, and she momentarily forgot the guards, the prison walls. “And of course I can fathom your attempt at showing good taste by way of scruples – but even you, David Gates, couldn’t ask to spend your last night in the company of a woman and want windows.”
His eyes were a blend of bland humor and broken ache.
“Sophia!” Rusty barked. “Are you insane?”
“He won’t hurt me,” she said simply.
“Very... well then,” muttered Grave, aghast. “I will arrange for... the chamber?”
Suddenly, she was ripped to the present by a cold grip on her wrist. Rusty was dragging her for the other room. “Give it a moment, Grave,” he snarled, voice ragged.
Once out of sight, he pinned her against the wall with far more force than w
as at all necessary. “Are you absolutely, spitting, blathering insane?”
“Do not push me around!” She shoved him back. “Listen to me for once in your life, Rusty—”
“No, you listen to me! If you think for a moment I’m going to let you alone with that butchering, murdering—”
“He is my friend. My very dear friend.”
“I am your very dear friend! And you aren’t signing up to be locked into chambers with me! What is going on, Sophia?”
She stared, achingly, back to the cell. “Last night, we… became friends. He only wants to spend time with me.”
He laughed a strangled laugh. “Time! Time doing you have no idea what! Are you so naive?”
“I’ve made my decision.”
“I won’t let it happen.” His grip was desperate, his eyes desperate.
“He won’t touch me, Rusty,” she whispered. “I have a feeling that even if I wanted him to, he wouldn’t touch me.”
“Why do you sound almost disappointed?”
“I care about him, Rusty. Very much.”
His face was pain. “You don’t even know him! You are speaking nonsense!”
“My mind is made up. There’s nothing you can do. It’s his death wish, and I am determined to grant it.”
“I can pound the audacious notion right out of your head.”
Her stomach constricted, but she said, though her lack of confidence was portrayed in her trembling, “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh I wouldn’t! Like hell I wouldn’t!”
In one terrifying movement he sat on the table and tugged her abruptly across his knees. “Sophia. If you don’t want to see a side of me you have never seen, you will listen to me.”
Every threat, every hint at this, came suddenly flooding back to her. Though terror at her prone position overwhelmed her, she barked, “Listen to me! You will let go of me this instant! I am not and have never been yours to keep! Do you not understand, Rusty? You will never have me!”
Perhaps he might not have acted on his threat if she had not said those lethal words.
She released a gasp of terrified astonishment as he cast aside the skirt of her grey dress, exposing her underthings and, before she even had time to register the shock, his hand came down on her bottom in a piercing sting.
The Lady Knight And The Dungeon (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 10) Page 5
