Authors: Julia Keaton
Chapter Three
“Was
it bad news from the King, then, Lady?”
Bronwyn
blinked, dragging her gaze from the window to stare blankly at Zella for
several moments before the question finally penetrated her abstraction.
Frowning, she turned her attention to the needlework forgotten in her lap.
“Not as bad as I had feared. Not as good as I had hoped,” she murmured
finally.
She
couldn’t prevent a faint smile from curling her lips when she glanced at her
companion again for she could see Zella was struggling mightily with
curiosity. “He is allowing me six months of mourning, no more. In the
meanwhile, he will appoint someone to oversee Raventhorne. ‘Tis not of
tremendous strategic importance, but far too important to allow it only to
remain in the hands of a widow … especially one as young as I.”
Several
emotions flickered across Zella’s face. “Mayhap the next husband will be
better than the last.”
Bronwyn’s
belly clenched. Instead of commenting, however, she merely returned her
attention to the needlework.
“He
could hardly be worse,” old Marta snorted.
“’Tis
bad luck to speak ill of the dead … and tempting Fate besides. Nothing is ever
so bad that it cannot be made worse,” Bronwyn chided her old nurse.
“Mayhap,
but the man was a brute. I’ve nae notion why he decided to take a flyin’ leap
from the top of the castle, but I, fer one, am glad he did.”
“They’re
sayin’ downstairs it’s this place. Its cursed,” Zella put in, shivering and
crossing herself.
Bronwyn
stabbed her needle into her finger and sucked in a sharp hiss of pain. She was
glad for the distraction, however. “That’s absurd,” she said testily, dabbing
at the drop of blood on her fingertip with her handkerchief. “Most likely
William was drunk and fell to his death.”
The
lie stuck in her throat. She had tried to convince herself since the day, almost
two weeks before, that she had finally woken fully lucid that the images
swirling about in her mind were nothing more than the product of her fever.
She had found it difficult to do so when she had been informed of William’s
death, and the manner of it. Her bruises and cuts had begun to fade already,
but the scrapes on her feet, legs, elbows and palms were hard to attribute to
the beating.
Truthfully,
she couldn’t recall much in the way of details about that incident. She’d been
shocked and frightened when he’d begun to roar at her threateningly and then
too stunned after the first blow to register much besides the pain.
But
the scrapes and scratches did not seem consistent with the beating. They
seemed far more in keeping with the ‘nightmare’ she had been trying to convince
herself was not real--of William trying to throw her off of the castle tower.
Zella
shrugged, obviously reluctant to give up on the notion of a curse. “Say what
ye like, the place has always give me the creeps. And there’s no denyin’ it’s
been plagued with bad luck.”
Bronwyn
stared at her hands in her lap. She knew that was what was being whispered
among the servants, but it had not been ‘bad luck’ that William had lost his
heir little more than a week before he lost his own life. Her memories might
be hazy on a great many things in the time that she had been so ill, but she
was certain she had not simply ‘lost’ William’s heir. The babe had been
flourishing before William’s attack and he had beaten her unmercifully shortly
before she miscarried. She was certain, if no one else was, that that was the
reason she’d lost the child.
Bronwyn
sensed Marta’s assessing gaze on her. For a moment their gazes met and Bronwyn
realized that Marta knew very well that the ‘tragedy’ was no accident.
“Gaelzeroth was an evil man--practiced the black arts, he did. Mayhap the
place is cursed and mayhap nae. But he was a powerful sorcerer and I can nae
think it likely there was anyone about in those dark days capable of placing a curse
upon Raventhorne with him about. Most likely it is only his evil that lingers
in these old walls.”
Bronwyn
shivered at that. “He has been dead more than a hundred years,” she said
uneasily. “Surely not?”
“Aye,”
Marta agreed. “But he wrested this place from its rightful heirs with his
black arts--slew every last man, woman, and child--I feel the souls of the
innocents still crying out against the evil done to them. They are trapped
here, can nae find peace so long as these lands lie in the hands of their
murderer.”
Trying
to tamp the uneasiness Marta’s words stirred inside her, Bronwyn considered
what Marta had said and found a flaw. “William
was
the last of his
line,” she pointed out, and by his own machinations since he had been directly
responsible for the death of his heir. “Gaelzeroth had no issue, and slew his
own brother before he produced an heir. It was his cousin who came into the
place after his death. William was not even in direct line, himself--In
inheritance, yes, but not the bloodline.”
“Just
as I said,” Zella pointed out with satisfaction. “The place has been plagued
with misfortune.”
Bronwyn
glanced at the young woman wryly. “Misfortune of their own making--which is
not truly misfortune at all. In any case, if what Marta says is true, then the
innocent should be at peace, the evil dispelled, the curse, if there ever was
one, lifted. Gaelzeroth and all his get are no more.”
“Then
I will be sure to tell them that the next time they cry out for justice,” Marta
said caustically.
Bronwyn
reddened. “What do you suggest, then?”
“Ye
should petition the king to seek a husband fer ye descended from the old lord’s
line,” Marta said promptly.
Bronwyn
gaped at her old nurse, but frowned as she thought it over and finally shook her
head. “I am not unwilling. If I must take a husband, then one would be as
welcome to me as another, but Gaelzeroth slew the Raventhornes--even to the
babes. He wanted none to challenge his right to these lands. How am I to find
that which no longer exists?”
Marta
looked nonplussed for a moment, but she recovered quickly. “Not in this
kingdom, but it is said that the old lord, the first lord of Raventhorne, came
to Beaufontaine from Verde Isle. Mayhap there are those of his bloodline there
still? That is the only way that I see that this could be made right--if
Raventhorne came back into the hands of those to whom it rightfully
belongs--those who won it by means honorable and just, not with evil, deceit,
and murder as Gaelzeroth did.”
Bronwyn
stared at her old nurse dubiously. Marta obviously believed she had some say
in her fate when, in truth, she did not. She could ask the king if he would
find a husband for her that hailed from the old lord’s bloodlines, but it
seemed unlikely that he would consider it--especially if that entailed offering
her to a lord of Verde Isle. He would want to reward some of his own men by
gifting them with the estate.
Running her temples to soothe the beginnings of a headache, she set her needle
work aside and moved restlessly to the window to stare out blindly at the world
beyond wishing she had not been born a woman. Women were chattel, passed from
man to man, father to husband. They rarely had any say at all in who was
chosen for them.
She
certainly had not. The king had arranged her first marriage when her father
had died, leaving her his only heir. She had not been displeased. William was
personable enough when he put himself out to please and he had behaved with the
exquisite manners of a gentleman. How was she to guess that it was no more
than a façade? In truth she had seen common men that were less brutish.
She
had not even
said
anything to set him off. She had simply ignored him
when he had come in raging about whatever it was that had displeased him,
because she had already learned that saying anything at all was liable to make
him turn on her.
Would
the next be as bad? Or worse?
Possibly,
and yet there was no escape. She must marry. A widow alone was fair game for
any who might decide to prey upon her.
It
might have been different if the babe had lived. Then the king would certainly
have appointed a guardian, but she need not have wed again.
Distress
threaded through her at that thought. She had despised William. And yet she
could not help but grieve for the babe she’d lost.
Swallowing
against the painful knot that rose in her throat, she turned away from the
window, gathered her cloak and left the room.
The
wind caught her cloak as she let herself of the stout oak door that fronted the
castle proper sending it whipping around her. Ignoring it and the chill bumps
that formed on her arms, she headed purposefully for the family chapel. It was
empty at this time of day, and although she did not find comfort in prayer, she
wanted to be alone--completely alone.
From
force of habit, she performed the ritual of humility and worshipfulness
required by the gods, and then moved to a bench to stare as blindly at the
crypt that held her son as she had stared from the window before.
She
felt--empty, lost, and she wasn’t entirely certain why. There was an aching
sadness inside of her that might have been because she had not truly grieved
for the child, but she did not think that that was truly the reason. She felt
sad about the babe. It had been an innocent and she hadn’t hated it as she had
the child’s father, but she had barely begun to accept that he was nestled
within her womb when he was gone.
It
felt
like something else.
Unbidden,
images rose in her mind, disjointed as they had been since she’d first awakened
from her illness.
She
knew it had not been entirely dreams, which she had to accept that some of it
was memory, not dream, but there were aspects that she found equally difficult
to accept as reality.
William
had tried to kill her. She was absolutely certain of that. The ‘dreams’, the
marks upon her--even the fact that William had fallen from the tower made it
impossible not to accept that much.
But
she had not saved herself.
And
she still found it difficult to accept that the ‘man’ who’d saved her life was
no man. An image of his face teased at her mind. She had found she could not
mold it into a solid form, but she remembered his eyes. They were the color of
ice. She remembered the well-defined bones of his face; the high cheekbones,
the strong, square jaw, the forceful chin, the sharply defined nose. She
remembered his finely etched lips and his chilling blue eyes best, but she also
remembered that she had found his harsh face appealing.
Because
he had shown compassion for a stranger, a woman who meant nothing to him … and
he had sacrificed something vitally important to him to help her.
She
realized abruptly why he seemed familiar to her.
Rising
from the bench, she left the chapel, halting again when she reached the
courtyard and tilting her head back to look up at the gargoyle that guarded
Raventhorne Keep.
“Nightshade,”
she whispered.
Chapter Four
Nightshade
knew when she looked up at him that she was beginning to remember. A flood of
turbulent emotions filled him. Dread vied for dominance with pure animal lust.
Shame came in a close third.
He
had not really known what had inspired him to speak to her the way he had, as
if she was some light skirt, to demand payment for services when he had no intention
of doing such a thing--when no man of honor would expect, let alone demand, her
favors.
But
he was not a man of honor anymore--not a man at all. He’d shredded the last
remnants of his honor when he had demanded the use of her body for saving her life.
Lust
had inspired it. Being so near her, touching her, had banished what little
doubt remained as to why he was so fascinated with her. He had been as near
out of control as he could ever recall being, struggling against the mindless
need urging him to simply pounce upon her and take what he wanted. He was a
beast, not a man to whom honor held any meaning.
He
might have acted upon it if not for the fear that he would finish what that
bastard Smytheson had started. Like as not she was too frail for a monstrous
brute like himself if she had been hale and hearty. Hurt and ill as she was
then, in shock from the terror her husband had put her through, it would not
have taken much to finish crushing the life from her.
Why
then had he tried to frighten her more by speaking so crudely of his needs?
Demanding what he knew damned well she would die before she gave him.
He
had wanted to disgust her, frighten her.
It
had been sheer torment to have her look at him as if he were some valiant
knight who’d ridden to her aid--to have her look at him as if he was not a
monster, but a man. She could not have seen him well. He knew she couldn’t or
she would not have curled so trustingly against him when he had picked her up
to carry her to her sickbed. She would have screamed, fought him, fainted--any
or all.
The
devil of it was he had been determined to dismiss the entire incident from his
mind. He knew she had not been in her right mind when she had told him she
would give herself to him. And she had not seemed to remember much of anything
from that night.
She
remembered now, though, and that knowledge was like acid in his veins. Despite
all reason, he could not put it from his mind and it added to the torment that
he had endured day after day for longer than he could remember until he’d
become so accustomed to it he hardly noticed anymore.
Until
now. She had destroyed the modicum of peace that he’d been able to find. He
had convinced himself he had come to accept, and now he knew he did not accept
his fate at all, that he never would.
And
as the sun slowly made its trek across the sky, he waged an inner battle.
She
had looked directly at his face and she hadn’t screamed or fainted.
She
had called his name.
She
had meant the vow she had made to him.
It
had been the fever talking. She would not have referred to him as a knight if
she had truly been able to see him.
She
had looked at him in revulsion when he had demanded she give herself to him.
He
didn’t care. He hurt for what had been denied to him so long. He ached for
her! Why not take something for himself for a change? What difference would
it make to her? He would be gentle. He would not hurt her as Smytheson had.
She
owed
him a taste of peace from his torment! She should not have offered
if she had not meant it! She had caressed his face, looked at him with open
honesty when she had said that she would gladly have him. She should not have
said that if she hadn’t meant it! She should not have touched him if she did
not welcome his touch!
He
had destroyed all hope of ever breaking the curse that held him because of her,
killed the last of Gaelzeroth’s blood to protect her!
* * * *
The
dread that had never been far away even after she learned of William’s death
tautened within Bronwyn as she paced the floor of her solar, accepting at last
that everything that she had dismissed as the bizarre dreams of fever was
real.
Nightshade
had saved her life and in return he had asked for her … and she had agreed.
She had
wanted
to give herself to him. She had been so grateful to be
alive, so relieved that she need never fear William again, she had thought the
‘reward’ he had asked a small token for what he had done.
She
still could not remember everything clearly, but she remembered well enough to
know that much. She remembered that she had fallen, and no man, nothing but a
creature of the dark could have saved her from plummeting to her death.
She
had
been out of her mind with fever for it to seem even vaguely
reasonable to lay with a creature such as Nightshade! He was … She didn’t know
what he was beyond a creature of black magic. A demon, perhaps? A monster
certainly.
He
had caught her mid-air as she had fallen, flown with her up to the top of the
castle.
He
had flown from the window of her room, for that matter, on the night that he
had sought his reward.
She
frowned at thought.
No,
that wasn’t right. She had awakened to find him watching her. She had seen
the hunger in his eyes, his face, in the tension of every line of his body.
But it was not until she had spoken of reward that he had demanded her body.
She
had thought at the time that he had only done that to push her away, to
frighten and disgust her, because he had looked at her with far more anger then
than desire. And she had said that she would gladly give herself because
she
had wanted to soothe him.
She
could not now deny him when she had freely given her word.
The
thought terrified her, more, she thought, because she had dreaded every moment
that she had spent doing her ‘wifely’ duty with William. The first few times
had been a nightmare of pain, humiliation, and disgust. After a time it had
ceased to be painful unless he was bent upon hurting her, but it had still
filled her with revulsion and dread.
She
could not imagine that there would be a hair’s worth of difference from one man
to another--which was at least part of the reason she had already nigh made
herself ill with dread--knowing she had no choice but to marry again.
Nightshade
was no man, though. He was a beast man, and a monstrous brute at that. He had
carried her as effortlessly as if she were no more than a child.
He
had ceased William and tossed him from the wall as if
he
were no more
than a child.
Realizing
that her train of thought was scaring her worse, she thrust them from her mind,
trying to calm herself.
She
could not refuse him. She was honor bound to keep her word.
She
had endured months of William. Surely, she could endure the beast’s touch
once?
Would
once appease him, though, she wondered in sudden fear? Or would he, once she
allowed it, demand again and again? She could not stop him. She was not
certain the king’s army could stop such as one as he.
He
seemed to have some sense of honor, though, she reminded herself, some small
thread of humanity.
If
he came …
when
he came, she would have his word of honor that he would
not trouble her further. She would make him give his word that he would demand
no more of her.
She
did not know what she would do if he refused to grant her that, but the king’s
man would come soon and he would be honor bound to protect her for his king.
She
strove for calm acceptance, but as they day waned the little she had managed to
gather to herself seeped away with the light. She was tempted, oh so tempted,
to gather her women close for protection, because she thought he might not come
if the room was filled with women, but she did not know that that would deter
him. And in the end, partly because she did not want witnesses to her shame,
and partly to protect them, she sent them away.
For
hours, it seemed, she lay wakeful, listening to every slightest sound and
growing more and more tense, certain with each creaking timber that Nightshade
had come. She was not aware that she had dozed, but apparently she had. For,
one moment she was alone in her chamber and the next he stood before the
hearth, watching her as he had before when she had been so ill.
Everything
in her froze when she saw him, limned in the flickering light of the fire and
the golden glow of the single candle that had been left burning. She had not
been able to remember him clearly, she realized, because she had not really
seen him. She had been cocooned by her pain, illness, and shock before. She
had not suspected that it was a creature of dark magic that had helped her.
She had believed he was a man and that was all she had seen.
He
was naked. For many moments that was all that she perceived--naked flesh, long
ropy muscles, and hard bulging muscle--bare skin. Her mind virtually shut down
for several moments, unable to process what her eyes beheld. After what seemed
an eon, he blinked, and turned his head away and it broke the spell that held
her frozen.
He
had not been clothed before, she realized abruptly. What she did remember of
that night was being held against warm flesh.
He
had reached the window before it dawned upon her that he was leaving.
Instantly, relief flooded her. He was leaving. He would not demand what he
had before.
Without
understanding the impulse that drove her, she sat up, staring at his muscular
back and flanks and the wicked demon wings that sprouted from his shoulder
blades. “I know why you came,” she said in a voice that she hardly recognized
as her own.
He
stopped, turning his head to look at her. Slowly, his face contorted in a
savage glare. “Do you?”
Bronwyn
licked her lips. “I offered to reward you for your kindness to me.”
“I
did not do it in expectation of a ‘reward’,” he growled, his voice the deep
rumble she remembered.
It sent a shiver through her that was not
unpleasant, in fact just the opposite. She wondered at it, wondered why it did
not fill her with fear and loathing.
Because he had saved her, she realized after a
moment. Because she remembered that voice meant safety, protection--not
threat. “Why did you do it, then?” she asked, curious now.
He looked disconcerted for a moment, then the
scowl returned. “I did not think you could fly,” he ground out.
She stared at him blankly for a moment and felt
the tug of a smile at her lips. “You don’t want to tell me.”
His gaze skated over her and finally returned
to her face and abruptly, despite the harshness of his scowl and the angry
glitter in his eyes, she knew why. She mattered to him. For some reason he had
not counted the cost to himself because he cared what happened to her.
The thought sent a curious flutter through
her. Doubt warred with certainty, compassion with horror, and denial with
curiosity. Why would a creature such as he was care what happened to any
mortal, let alone her? She searched her mind for anything that she might have
done to deserve his regard and found, without surprise, that she could recall
nothing at all.
Still, she was certain that he had lied. He
had said that he had thrown away his only hope of redemption for a woman that
meant nothing to him. He would not have done that if she had meant nothing to
him.