“I cannot answer that,” he said quietly. “All I know is that I do not want to command you to comply, yet I want it so badly that I can taste it. I cannot think of anything in my life that I have ever wanted more than you.”
She was stunned by the statement; he had not said it lightly and she did not take it lightly. She could therefore only think of one thing to say.
“Why?”
He snorted ironically, turning to look at her. “As I said, I cannot answer that question. All I know is that you have been something different to me since the day I met you. I see such beauty and peace and courage in you, things that are not a part my world. You are a corner of heaven that I never knew existed.”
Without meaning to, he had said something innately sweet. Kellington felt her heart soften just the slightest, but not entirely. The fact remained that Jax was a violent man. There was much blood on his hands.
“And I come from a world where all I have known is peace and tranquility,” she said softly. “What you did to Pelinom… Jax, you destroyed my heaven. You murdered my friends, my father’s vassals… you destroyed everything. How can I spend my life with a man who destroyed everything that was dear and wonderful to me?”
He came away from the window, emitting a heavy sigh. Crossing his enormous arms, he paced the floor thoughtfully. “It has always been this way with me. There is nothing else.”
“But there is in my world. If we marry, and I am not saying that I agree, then you will become a part of my world. I do not want to be a part of yours. It is bloody and horrifying and deadly. I do not want to live like that.”
He looked at her, then. “But this is who I am. You will have to accept it.”
“I will not. I cannot live in Hell as you do.”
He fell silent. Somehow his pacing ended up at the desk and he reached out, taking her hands within his massive mitts. He studied her small fingers, inspected the nails, running his calloused fingers over her skin simply to feel the texture. Then he held them tightly.
“I have ambitions,” he told her, his voice soft and hoarse. “I know of one way to achieve them. I will not give up my goals, even for you.”
“I never asked you to.”
She was right, but he still looked at her as if her statement had startled him. Hurt him, even. After a moment, he brought her hands to his lips.
“Is there nothing I can say to gain your agreement?”
She felt his lips against her flesh like firebrands. The man had a way of making her forget everything, of sucking her thoughts from her brain until she was limp and irrational. Impulsively, she put a hand on his cheek, the first time she had ever voluntarily touched him. He closed his eyes tightly at the warm, soft sensation against his flesh.
“I have heard that you are a man without mercy and it would be easy to believe that were I to give credit to the rumors of your cruelty,” she repeated the words she had said to him those weeks ago and his eyes opened, looking at her with surprise. She smiled at his wonder. “But I believe there is mercy in every man, my lord, even you. I believe there is good in you, too. It is to that good man I would agree to marriage. But to the other man, I would have to refuse.”
His oddly-colored eyes glimmered. “What does that mean?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. All I know is that your proposal has me torn.”
He sighed yet again, unsure what more to say. He kissed her hands, her wrists, before pulling her into a crushing embrace and slanting a fiery kiss over her soft lips. This time, Kellington did not resist. She welcomed it.
When he pulled back, it was to look her in the eye. “Would it truly change your mind if I returned your father to Pelinom?”
She studied his face, deeply acquainting herself with the human side of Jax de Velt. Until the past few moments, she hadn’t truly known that it existed. He was a war machine, a murderer, the most feared knight in the land. But she saw the vulnerability, the gentle qualities that all men possessed but that he kept tightly bottled up. It was an extraordinary show of unbridled weakness and she knew it.
“Return him home and bury our men,” she whispered. “But it is more than just that. You must ask my father’s permission.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “He will never give it.”
“If you attempt to right your wrongs, he might. He is not an unreasonable man.”
“I am not accustomed to asking forgiveness, lady.”
“It is not asking forgiveness. It is making amends.”
He let her go, gently, his mind sorting through the alien thoughts he was considering. Kellington stood next to her father’s old desk, watching Jax mull over their conversation. She went to him, wrapping her small, warm hands around his massive fist. Surprised that she should make a move to touch him, he looked down into her lovely face, feeling himself go weak all over again. God, what he wouldn’t do when that woman looked at him.
“Please, Jax,” she whispered. “Bury our men and return my father home. It would be a good start.”
He was folding. He could feel it. “If that is your wish.”
“It is.”
She smiled, a lovely gesture that came from the heart. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Because of the depleted stores, the meal was nothing fanciful but it was plentiful. Great loaves of bread, cheese, some remnants of dried fruit and half of a sheep littered the table. The men at the table ate and talked, mostly between themselves as they plowed through the food. Jax was part of their conversations but they wholly ignored Kellington, for which she was grateful.
She felt rather like she was sitting at the Devil’s supper table. She could feel the evil cloaking the hall like a fog, invading her senses, causing her to shrink away when one of the men laughed loudly or spoke in tones with too much volume. She was coming to wish that Jax had never asked her to sit at the table. These men wanted nothing to do with her, and she with them. They were de Velt’s generals, a special breed of warrior.
Kellington sat between Jax and Amadeo. The blond knight was involved in a conversation with a couple of Jax’s generals and she caught bits of conversation about the shape of Welsh longbows and how the garrisons in the Marches were having them modified to fly further. Kellington picked at her mutton, not particularly hungry, her mind moving to the orchards to the south where the apricots were. It was a big orchard, planted many years before she was born. She thought of her mother and how the woman loved to make apricot compote with apricots and sugar and nutmeg. She hadn’t thought of her mother in quite some time; the woman had succumbed to a cancer when she had been eight years of age. Her father had never quite gotten over the death.
Someone was attempting to gain her attention. Startled from her rambling thoughts, she looked up to see that Amadeo was focused on her.
“I was saying that Pelinom is perhaps one of the most organized fortresses we have come across,” he said with a surprising amount of pleasantness in his voice. “We’ve seen such places as you cannot imagine. Unkempt and failing although there was no excuse for such a thing because they were well placed and well supplied.”
He was attempting to make conversation. The knight sitting next to him was looking at her as well; he was one of the generals from Wales, a big man with very dark curly hair and onyx-colored eyes. Kellington’s nerves were on edge.
“I am honored that you think so highly of Pelinom’s abilities,” she replied politely.
Amadeo watched her in an appraising manner, perhaps a closer look than he would have normally taken given the fact that he liege was planning on marrying the woman. He was very curious indeed.
“I am told it is all your doing,” he said. “Cleric duties are an unusual skill for a woman.”
She shrugged lightly. “As an only child, I fear my father sought to pass on all of his knowledge regardless of what it was. I can read, write and do mathematics. And I can also wield a sword, although most of the time it hurts my wrist just to lift it.”
&nb
sp; She was smiling slightly, attempting to interject some lightness into the conversation. She suspected these men knew little humor and she wondered inwardly if such attempts were a mistake. To her surprise, Amadeo smiled but it was the knight on the other side of him that spoke.
“You have battle skills, then?” the man said; he had a deep, unexpectedly gentle voice. “Did your father expect you to defend the keep in his stead?”
She wriggled her eyebrows. “I doubt my sword skills would have been an asset in that case. I would have done better kicking men in the shins or gouging their eyes out.”
That drew a laugh from Amadeo and the knight, which in turn garnered Jax’s attention. A few of the other men turned their attention to Kellington and before she knew it, the entire table was looking at her. Her smile faded when she saw their focus and her heart began to pound.
“Why do you laugh?” Jax very nearly demanded.
Amadeo shook his head. “The lady was merely explaining the extent of her warring skills.”
“I see,” Jax’s two-colored gaze lingered on Amadeo a moment before focusing on Kellington. “I was not aware that you had warring skills.”
He was in pure de Velt mode; deep, dark, menacing. This was the man she had met the first day he had conquered Pelinom, the man she was terrified of. She had no idea why he seemed to bleed destruction and evil at her like a sieve.
“I do not,” she said, coughing slightly because her throat was dry from nerves. “I believe that is the point. The best I could do against an enemy is tickle them to death.”
Amadeo snorted again; her comment actually brought smiles to a few faces. Jax was not oblivious to the fact that she was humorous nor was he oblivious to the male attention on her; he was only aware of his raging jealousy. He knew these men, had fought with them and died with them. Some were as close as brothers. But their smiles upon Kellington had his killer instincts raging to defend what was his. It was the strangest thing he had ever experienced.
“As I recall,” he said, no humor whatsoever in his voice, “you did not tickle, you tried to bite. Caelen nearly lost fingers.”
Kellington’s smile faded and her cheeks flushed a dull red. She lowered her gaze to her lap, unsure what more to say. She felt ill to her stomach, wishing she could sink through the floor and vanish.
“It was my fault for his less than knightly behavior towards the lady at the time,” Caelen actually spoke up from across the table. “I would not blame her overly.”
Jax glared at Caelen for daring to defend the woman. It was a challenge as he saw it. He was about to return the volley when his attention shifted to the something, or someone, lingering in the shadows near the kitchen stairs. In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet, moving. His actions were so abrupt that Kellington looked up to see what had him moving so quickly. She barely had time to recognize Lavaine before Jax was upon her.
Lavaine had something in her hand. Whatever it was went flying as Jax grabbed her wrist, eliciting a scream of pain. He reached out an enormous hand to grab the woman around the throat, but Kellington was on her feet.
“No!” she screamed. “Do not kill her!”
Lavaine had collapsed, weeping loudly as Jax’s hand lingered on her neck, then slowly came away. His dual-colored eyes stared at Kellington with the look of a wild animal. He was in battle mode, the killer unleashed. But Kellington forced herself past the terror his expression provoked, simply grateful he had not snapped the woman’s neck. She rushed to her friend, gravely concerned.
“Let her go,” she said to Jax. When he did not respond, she looked him in the eye and put her hand on his grip. “Please, Jax. Let her go.”
The battle-intense glimmer in his eyes slowly died. He looked at her for a very long moment before slowly, reluctantly, complying. Kellington threw her arms around the weeping woman as Jax went to retrieve what he had knocked from Lavaine’s hand.
It was a dagger, small and bejeweled. He returned to the women with the weapon in his hand. Kellington looked up from cradling Lavaine against her, realizing what it was. Her heart sank.
“She is mad with grief,” she told him quietly, with desperation. “You must not….”
Jax snapped his fingers and Amadeo moved forward, grabbing Lavaine roughly. But Kellington held on fiercely in a bizarre tug-of-war.
“No,” she shouted. “My lord, you must not do this. She is wrought with bereavement. She does not know what she is doing.”
Lavaine emitted an unearthly howl. “My baby is gone,” she groaned. “My sweet husband is murdered. There must be justice!”
The woman was digging herself deeper and deeper. Amadeo had stopped pulling for the moment, looking to Jax for further instructions. He could have easily yanked her away but he did not want to injure Kellington in the process. It was an odd situation because under normal circumstances, he would not have given a second thought to who he harmed. But this was different. Kellington slapped at Amadeo’s hand, attempting to force him to release Lavaine.
“Let her go,” she snarled, turning to Jax. “Please, my lord. I told you she was wishing death upon herself in her grief. If you kill her, it will have little meaning. Please… please have mercy. Let me take her back to her chamber and comfort her.”
Jax had been watching the scene with mixed emotions. He did not want to deny or upset Kellington, but that did not change the gist of the situation. “She was approaching the table with a dirk, lady,” he said in a deep, deadly tone. “I believe her intentions are obvious.”
Kellington couldn’t argue the point. “But she is beyond rational thought. She is torn with anguish. I told you that she and her husband had waited years for their son to be born. And then you and your men took him in the blink of an eye. You had no reason to murder an infant. If there is anyone to blame for her madness, it is you.”
The table of men sat in stunned silence. No one spoke to Jax de Velt in such a manner and lived to tell the tale. If Henley’s drunken words had any truth, the validity would soon be put to the test in the next few moments and the generals were very interested in the outcome. De Velt dealt with most women at the tip of a sword. In fact, he dealt with most living creatures that way. But Lady Kellington might prove to be the sole exception to that rule. If that was the case, then Jax de Velt was no longer the most powerful being in the realm. Lady Kellington was.
They did not have to wait long for a response. Jax reached out and grabbed Kellington around the waist, giving a hard tug and breaking her grip on Lavaine.
“Take the woman to the vault,” he snapped at Amadeo. “I will deal with her later.”
Lavaine began screaming as Amadeo took her by the hair and hauled her from the hall. In Jax’s arms, Kellington was a kicking, scratching wildcat as he carried her from the room. She managed to twist in his arms, shoving against his massive chest and trying to propel herself from his arms. As Amadeo exited the entry with Lavaine, Jax took Kellington up the stairs and into her chamber on the fourth floor. When the chaos in the hall was abruptly gone, the men around the table sat in silence for several moments before turning to look at each other. No one said a word.
Once inside Kellington’s bower, Jax slammed the door so hard that the entire keep rattled. Kellington was still struggling when he set her down, causing her to lose her balance and tumble to the floor. Hair askew, gown torn, she found her footing and faced him with a stance borne of pure fury.
“You cannot kill her,” she half-demanded, half-pleaded. “You did this to her. You cannot punish her for what you have caused.”
Amazingly, Jax kept his cool. “You will never again address me as you did in the hall. You will never use words of reproach and you will never again behave with such disrespect. Is this in any way unclear?”
“What are you going to do with Lavaine?”
“Answer me. Do you understand?”
Kellington knew she was pushing the limit with him. But she was frightened and furious. Still, there was a great portion of her th
at knew Lavaine was to blame for her actions. But there was so much more to it than that. There was so much more to this man she was becoming increasingly involved with. She struggled to maintain her angry stance, but the tears were too strong. She was terrified.
“You never even apologized,” her features crumpled.
He was not swayed. “Do you understand what I have told you?”
“Aye,” she snapped angrily. “Aye, I understand you. I understand that I am a prisoner, my father is a prisoner, Pelinom is all but destroyed and I must bend to your will at every turn. I understand completely, my lord.”
He watched her rage, the way her little nose wrinkled when she was angry, the way she wiped at her face with her beautiful hands. She had the most magnificent hands. Some of his fury fled as he stood there and watched her grieve.
“I will leave you to your thoughts, then,” he said quietly, turning for the door. “Be prepared to leave at dawn tomorrow.”
“My lord,” she said before he could open the door.
When he turned to look at her, he was struck by the beauty of her face, the emotion in her eyes. A wave of guilt washed over him and his indestructible will was in danger of crumbling.
“Please do not kill her,” she begged softly. “She is distraught. I swear she will never do it again.”
He took his hand from the latch and faced her. He should have continued from the room and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to make himself leave. “She is an assassin,” he said. “And you expect me not to punish her for this?”
Kellington went to him, tears streaming down her temples. “Keep her to the vault if you must, but do not kill her. It would serve no purpose.”
“It would eliminate a threat.”
“You have many threats, my lord. You cannot eliminate them all.”
He stared at her, knowing full well he should not relent. He was noticing with increasing awareness that he was becoming extremely pliable to her will. It should have infuriated him. But in truth, he did not much care. He’d never given regard to another creature other than himself and his own wants; this was the very first time. He found it the most liberating, and terrifying, experience.
Mercenaries and Maidens: A Medieval Romance bundle Page 65
