by Starla Kaye
He thought about Maggie still upstairs in their bedchamber. Still upset with him. He’d had many long talks with Douglas in private, needing to discuss matters at Urquhart without Maggie’s presence. She hadn’t liked being left out, but Douglas had been reluctant to talk about the situation in front of her. He and Nicholas were very worried about Brodie ever regaining his memories. In her disappointment about being excluded from the talks, Maggie grew more frustrated every day. She’d started pressing him about exactly when he would take her to Urquhart. His own stubbornness had kicked in and he refused to discuss it, although he had talked to Douglas about leaving for Urquhart in less than a fortnight.
He studied the embers left from a fire last night in the massive fireplace. He hadn’t made love to Maggie since Douglas’s arrival. The embers that had started to flame in their marriage had died and he feared they would ever be ignited again. Tension was high between them. Even yesterday, in her anger with him, she’d snapped out at him in front of Douglas and many of their men in the hall at sup that she wished he had been the one left behind in Tunis. That she wished him as dead on the battlefields there as her father and Fergus. The words had struck at his heart, although he knew they’d only been spoken in her pain. She might not be in love with him now, but she would never wish him true harm. At least he was fairly certain of that.
Lost in his thoughts, Nicholas only half-listened to soft footsteps coming up behind him. A gentle hand touched his shoulder and said quietly, “Nicholas.”
Thinking Maggie was finally trying to make up with him and desperate to hold her again, he turned. At the same time he drew her into his arms, he closed his eyes and thanked the Lord for letting her forgive him. He lowered his lips to hers.
The kiss didn’t feel the same as before. The body in his embrace different, yet she clung to him and deepened the kiss.
“Ye bastard!” Maggie’s snarl of outrage from a distance caught his attention.
From a distance! Horrified, Nicholas thrust the woman out of his arms.
Mary gave him a crafty smile, licking her lips.
In that instant he realized she’d planned the moment. Sickened, he shoved her away from him and strode toward Maggie, standing at the foot of the stairs, her face pinched tight.
“’Tisn’t what you think, wife.”
“Ye think me a fool, husband? I have no’ let ye rut on me these last days and ye turn to her!” She held her body erect, hands fisting at her sides. “”Twas easy to turn to her, let her comfort ye miserable hide. Like ‘twas easy fer ye to abandon Brodie.”
She spun away, hurried back up the stairs, shoulders shaking as she sobbed in heartbreak.
When he started after Maggie, Fia raced by him and glowered at him. She stopped between him and the stairs. “Nay! Leave her be.”
Nicholas grabbed Fia by the waist and set her aside. “Stay out of this!”
Before he could take a step, Mary was at his side, latching onto his arm to stop him. “The maid is right. You need to leave Maggie alone right now. She needs to calm down before she will hear your explanation.”
“You caused this,” he accused. Maggie had been right all along: Mary was trouble.
She gave what appeared to be an apologetic look. “It wasn’t my intention to have you kiss me, Lord Middleham. I merely thought to speak with you. To offer you comfort in some small way.”
He snorted and started around her. He didn’t buy her excuse for a second.
Again, she took hold of his arm. As he glanced at her, she said loud enough for all the people nearby eagerly listening, “She dislikes you right now. Hates you even. Only yesterday many of us heard her say she wished you dead.”
He snorted again. “Maggie didn’t mean the words. She spoke in anger and frustration. Understandable frustration with me.”
Mary continued to look at him in warning. “Maybe so. But it might not be wise to push her at the moment. She’s hurt anew. She’s angry.” She glanced at Fia and others close by, and then back at him. “I fear for your safety, My Lord. She has a small dirk and—”
“Maggie would never hurt me,” Nicholas roared. “At least not with a weapon.”
“Did she not shoot you with an arrow?” Mary nodded toward the leg which still pained him at times.
He blew out a breath to quiet his temper. “She believed she was defending her home.”
Realizing Mary had now caused too many of his people to possibly question Maggie’s intentions toward him now, he spun around and stormed through the hall and out the doors. He needed to get away from Maggie, from Mary, from everyone and everything. He would take a ride, alone.
* * *
Maggie raced into their bedchamber and slammed the door. The loudness of the slam was like a slap to her ears. Like finding Nicholas kissing Mary had been like a slap to her face, to her heart. She could barely see through her tears as she walked to the bed and then flung herself down upon it. She clutched his pillow to her heaving chest. Tears quickly soaked it. He’d kissed Mary. Good Lord, he’d held her within his arms and kissed her.
Then she recalled the words she’d flung at him. “I have no’ let ye rut on me these last days and ye turn to her!” How could she have said such horrible things to him? Even worse, she’d thrown the words at him in front of many of his men and their servants. How could she face them? How could she face him? And she knew that somehow Mary had maneuvered the situation. Yet she’d run away like a coward. She had just hurt so much. One more blow that had caused her a moment’s insanity.
Clutching Nicholas’s pillow, inhaling his scent, she felt the stirrings of arousal. It wasn’t that she hadn’t let him make love—not “rut”—to her, but he’d kept his distance out of respect for how much she’d been hurting. She knew that with all her heart. He was a good and decent man. Yes, she’d accused him of leaving her brother behind, but that was only her pain talking. She’d seen his misery and the guilt in his eyes. He would never have been that cruel. She believed him when he said he hadn’t been able to do anything more to find Brodie. But it was so easy to blame him for whatever had happened to Brodie.
She needed to make peace with her husband before it was too late. Before she finally said too many hurtful things that made him give up on her, on them. But she was so tired, so very, very tired. She closed her eyes for a moment. All she needed was a little rest and then she’d seek out Nicholas and apologize.
* * *
Nicholas had only stayed away a short while. The ride hadn’t calmed him as he’d hoped it would. He needed to talk to Maggie. He ached to hold her in his arms and find the words to make her forgive him. Not for Mary’s entrapping him, because he felt certain once his wife had calmed down she would have realized the truth of what she’d seen. He had told her too many times that he had absolutely no feelings for Lady Stanhope. And he’d shown her too many times with his gentle lovemaking how much Maggie meant to him. At least he hoped he had.
He left his horse with the stable master and walked determinedly toward the keep. He didn’t even stop to talk to either Richard or Gerald who were nearby, talking with a small group of soldiers. The only person he wanted to talk to right now was Maggie.
After stopping in the doorway of the keep for a second to allow his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, he headed for the staircase in the corner. He nodded at a pair of men drinking together who looked up in curiosity as he strode by them. He tipped his head at a worried-looking young maid cleaning a table. But his steps were unwavering. His heart was heavy with dread and hope.
When he pushed open the door to their bedchamber, he found Maggie stretched out on the center of their bed. She clutched his pillow in her deep sleep. His body hardened at the sight of his beautiful wife. He hadn’t touched her, other than to hold her close, since Douglas had arrived. He’d wanted to make love to her, but she’d needed patience from him more than sex. But his patience was thinning. His body had needs that couldn’t be ignored for much longer.
She f
rowned in her sleep and gave a small whimper. It pinched his heart. She’d suffered so much lately. He had leathered her for running away in her determination to go to Urquhart in her need to look for Brodie. They’d argued and said things he felt certain neither had really meant, certainly he hadn’t. Then Douglas had arrived with shocking news of Brodie. And she’d wanted to go to her brother so badly, but he’d had to refuse it for now. They’d argued more after that. Too much arguing. Not enough lovemaking.
With a sigh of resignation, he backed out of the chamber and carefully closed the door. He would go to his solar and write new missives to be sent out seeking a husband for Lady Stanhope. He would talk to Maggie after she’d rested a bit longer.
A few minutes later, Nicholas frowned as he looked down at the message he’d just written to a baron he believed still looking for a new wife. His thoughts turned to the missives he had sent previously and to the ones returned that he’d discovered Mary had intercepted. The ones she had tossed into the fireplace, telling him she had been hurt by their rejections. Had there been others she’d intercepted? What was she up to? He was married now and her foolish dream of marrying him could be no more. Unless….
No! The thought was ridiculous. She might be a spiteful woman and something of a harpie, but she would never harm Maggie. But suddenly he felt it even more important to find her a husband and get her far away from Middleham.
He had no sooner returned to writing another message than he sensed he wasn’t alone. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with unease. Then he heard the faint whisper of a sound behind him. A soft footstep.
An instant later a hand shoved his head hard to the surface of his desk.
A knife sliced into his back.
When he tried to get to his attacker, whoever it was banged his head again to the desktop. This time he didn’t try to fight back. This time he was lost first to pain and then to darkness.
* * *
“Seize her!” Gerald shouted as he sped into the solar with six armed soldiers.
He grabbed the bloody sgian-dubh from Maggie’s shaking hand. “You murderous witch.”
Maggie felt numb all over, barely aware of Gerald or the two men roughly grabbing her arms. She had come to speak with Nicholas and found him bent over his desk, her dagger in his shoulder. Shocked, all she could think about was pulling the dagger free. She hadn’t been able to see the horrid knife hurting her husband any longer.
Gerald leaned over his lord, felt a vein in his neck. “He lives, but barely.” He glowered at Maggie. “If Lady Stanhope hadn’t come running to me—”
“Mary?” Maggie questioned in confusion. She couldn’t seem to think straight. “Help him. Oh please, help him.”
She wriggled to get free, desperate to go to Nicholas. The guards held her tight.
“I need to—”
“You’ve done enough! Lady Stanhope saw you stab him.” Gerald looked at her as if he would like to kill her himself. “Get her out of my sight. Put her in the dungeon.”
Mary stepped into the room, crying as she looked at Nicholas slumped over the desk. Then she focused on Maggie. “She must hang for her actions.”
Maggie’s knees buckled and she would have collapsed to the floor if the guards hadn’t held her up. They jerked her stiffly between them and she would have bruises from their rough treatment. “I dinna stab my husband,” she protested, sobbing, struggling to get free. “She lies.”
For just a second, Gerald looked uncertain.
Nicholas moaned, started to raise his head, and then seemed to collapse. Too still. Too silent.
“We must get him to his chamber at once! Fetch the cook. She is a healer and can tend to his wound.” He glared at Maggie. “If it isn’t too late.”
Once more she struggled as hard as she could to get free. “Let me go! I can tend to his wound,” she begged. She needed to touch Nicholas, to take care of him. “Oh, God, please.”
Gerald pressed a hand to Nicholas’s back to stop the flow of blood coming from the wound. He leveled a look at her that would have brought most people to their knees. “You stab him in a fit of anger and now want to tend to him? Think me a fool?”
He motioned his men toward the door. “Take her to the dungeon. Throw her in a cell.”
“But I didn’t attack him! I swear it!” She drug her feet and refused to go meekly away. “You have to believe me.”
“It was your dagger that pierced his back. You were holding it when we came into the room.” He refused to listen any longer and turned his complete focus to Nicholas.
* * *
Long hours later, Maggie heard footsteps coming down the stone steps on the far side of the dungeon. The vast cavernous space dimly lit during the day had turned black as tar with the fall of night. Cool, musty air and the stink of things she didn’t want to think about had surrounded her, sickened her. Rats skittered all around the many cells and made her shiver in fright each time they moved. Her space was so small, barely four feet by four feet. She’d paced it often enough to know every inch. She didn’t even have an old cot to sit upon. But she was more frightened of her husband’s state than her conditions.
The footsteps grew closer and she could make out Richard’s hardened face from the torch he carried. He also carried a blanket over one arm and a trencher of bread. “Back away,” he ordered gruffly and put a key in the lock of her cell.
Maggie plastered herself nearly to the moldy wall as he tossed the blanket in her direction. “Nicholas?” she asked her voice husky with strain.
“He lives, although he hasn’t regained consciousness.” He dropped the trencher carelessly to the stone floor and one of the two small pieces of bread bounced out. “You best pray he doesn’t die.”
“I did no’ stab him. I swear I did no’.” She knew that whether her husband lived or died she could still hang for having tried to kill him. She desperately needed him conscious, needed him to confirm her innocence.
Richard moved back out of the cell, pulled the door shut, and turned the key in the rusty lock. “It is your word against Lady Stanhope’s at the moment. And it was you found with the dagger in your hands, with his blood on your hands. Not her.”
He walked away, taking the only light with him.
Maggie trembled and sank to the floor, curling her arms around her. The rats scrambled over the floor and snagged the bread before scurrying away. She didn’t care. She couldn’t have eaten anyway. Oh Nicholas! Oh my beloved Nicholas. I pray ye awaken. I pray ye live.
Chapter Ten
A tiny sliver of light crept in through a crack in the dungeon wall at least fifty feet away from Maggie, although it could be fewer feet or more. It was impossible to judge anything in such nearly complete darkness. But it was enough to tell her that yet another new day had arrived. Good or bad, only time would tell. How many days had she been here? Two? No. This was the third new day. She’d been locked here in the darkness, in the cold, musty cavernous space, in the near silence for three horribly long days and nights. All that broke the monotony of time was when a guard came once a day to empty her chamber pot, bring her a cup of water and a scrap of bread. The guard had barely spoken to her. She’d pleaded every time to be allowed to see Nicholas, only to have the man growl, “Still unconscious.”
Her stomach knotted with pain, no longer even rumbling from hunger. She hadn’t eaten anything in nearly four days. The rats always managed to get to the puny piece of bread dropped into the trencher before her. And her throat was parched. A small cup of water each day wasn’t nearly enough. But she refused to beg for more bread or more water. If the guard didn’t listen to her pleading to see her husband, she was certain he wouldn’t oblige her in any other matter. She considered herself lucky that he even bothered to empty her chamber pot.
Wrinkling her nose from the mixture of disgusting smells that hung heavily in the air at all times, she rubbed at her weary eyes. She hadn’t slept, couldn’t sleep with the uncertainty over her husband’s situa
tion, or with the constant need to push rats away from her. Even now she was forced to spend what little energy she had to kick at another rat eager to dine on the tip of her slipper.
She’d gone from horrified about what had happened to Nicholas, to furious for the way she’d been tossed down here and all but forgotten, to unable to stop crying. She had no more tears at the moment. And hope was fading fast as well. It was hard to believe the way she was being treated. Mary must really have convinced everyone of her guilt. The vile bitch!
A shiver went through her. She started to curl her arms around her knees as she sat in the middle of the cold stone floor, but her right arm made her flinch in pain. Last night she’d tripped over the trencher and landed hard against the rusty metal cell bars. She’d slammed her cheek so hard that her whole face hurt now and no doubt she had a nice bruise. In addition, she’d scraped her arm on a piece of metal, tearing her sleeve, and cutting her forearm. She’d managed to tear off a piece of her chemise to wrap around the wound but that was all she could do for it. Now the wound throbbed and she knew it needed some kind of salve soon to ward off infection…if it wasn’t already too late.
Cradling her injured arm against her stomach, she knew that being slowly starved and suffering an infection from her cut arm could be the least of her problems. If Nicholas didn’t awaken, she would most likely be taken to King Edward. Even if he lived, that could still happen. She’d be tried for having attempted to kill her husband, found guilty probably just because she was a Scot, and hung. If he awakened…. She simply didn’t know what would happen then, although she prayed he did wake up. She prayed he’d recover from the knife wound as well.
