Margaret Moore - [Warrior 13] Read online

  Worse and worse, puzzling and confusing and frightening.

  Her resolution wavered for a moment, but only a moment. She lifted her chin and entered the room. Sir Urien went to sit behind his table, as stern as a judge in the king’s eyre. Reece let go of Benedict and stood on the opposite side of the table facing them. Anne searched for some hopeful sign, and saw it in his eyes.

  Whatever was going on, he was not against her. And yet…and yet his intense gaze scrutinized her cautiously, as if he doubted.

  Dear God, how could he doubt her after last night?

  “As you see, we have an unexpected visitor,” Sir Urien began.

  She glanced at Benedict, who was trembling and as cowed as a half-drowned dog. He smelled of ale and mud, his clothes mute witness that he had not come willingly, and his whole attitude proclaiming him for the coward he was. Here at Castle Gervais, he did not have mercenaries or Damon to support him. Here he was all alone, to stand or fall on his own merits.

  “My lord,” she said, looking at her father-in-law, “he was not unexpected to me, and I deeply regret that I did not inform you of my other half brother’s plan before this.”

  Benedict sucked in his breath. “You’d betray us all, would you?” he snarled under his breath. “You did just what you were told. Everything you were told to get him to keep you. You got him to—”

  “Be quiet,” Anne snapped, her words like the crack of a whip. She had loved her husband because it was her desire, and only that; she would not have Benedict say otherwise, even if he believed it otherwise. “Reece, don’t listen to him. You know the kind of man he is.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  But what kind of woman are you? What do I really know of you, after all? The questions tore through Reece’s heart, for there could be no mistaking what Benedict was implying to one who knew what had transpired last night. She had been told to do anything to get him to keep her. She had been ordered to…

  Surely it couldn’t be. Please God, her desire and her affection could not have been feigned, even if they had known one another for such a short time. His feelings were sincere enough, and he had known her just as briefly.

  Who do you think you are, boy? Blaidd Morgan?

  He had feared what being tied to her half brothers would mean to his future; he had not stopped to think that Anne herself might be cause for worry. But the memory of Anne’s impassioned, heated kisses—the way her kisses had been from the very start—shattered him now.

  Suddenly, every moment he had shared with Anne twisted and took a different, terrible shape. What if everything he had done, from the first moment he had spoken to Anne in the corridor, had played into Damon’s hands?

  Anne had claimed to find his attention in the corridor unwelcome and impertinent, but she had not left. If she truly had not welcomed his company, why had she not told him so in no uncertain terms and gone on her way?

  Damon and Benedict had attacked him with far more violence than his actions warranted, then spread the word of attempted rape. He had thought that was only to justify their attack, but perhaps they had fore-seen that marriage might be the result, a necessary end to preserve their sister’s honor.

  All Anne’s questions on the journey took on a sinister cast. God save him, was it possible she herself had given him a clue to her deceptive abilities when she feigned swooning in the king’s hall? Had he been blinded by temptation and desire and the demands of his flesh?

  The pieces of his shattered heart gathered and reassembled into something wounded and broken, hard and sharp as the ends of quarried stone. He faced his wife resolute, inexorable. “Anne, is there any truth to anything this man says?”

  Anne’s impassioned eyes shone with sincerity as she fervently clasped her hands—a sincerity that might be feigned by a clever woman, and Anne was no fool.

  “Damon did want me to be a spy here,” she said, “to tell him what I could learn of your allies and your fortress. Benedict followed us here because I was to give the information to him, and he was to take it to Damon at court. At first, I was willing to go along with Damon’s demand because of his threats, but then I refused.”

  “When did you refuse?” Reece asked, his deep voice as dead as his trust.

  “Today.”

  After they had made love.

  Again the shattered pieces of his heart shivered and regrouped, stirred by the faint hope that he was wrong to doubt her.

  And yet, what did he really know of her?

  At first he had believed himself a fool to follow her and start the boulder of disaster rolling down the slope, threatening to ruin the plans he had for his future. Had he been a greater fool to make love with her, joining them forever as man and wife?

  “What happened to change your mind?” Sir Urien asked.

  Anne glanced at Reece and saw the doubt in his eyes, his very stance.

  He believed Benedict and not her?

  If he loved her, would he not trust her? She had erred by not revealing Damon’s plan sooner, but otherwise she was innocent.

  Yet if all he felt for her was but lust, the sort of earthy passion that could be destroyed with a rumor or a hint of impropriety…if all he wanted was to share her bed because she was beautiful…

  A wail of despair began within her, until her pride forced it back.

  “I ask you again, my lady,” Sir Urien said, his voice firm. “What happened to change your mind?”

  “Ask your son.”

  “I am asking you.”

  She tossed her head. If Reece would not intervene, if he would not put a stop to this interrogation, or confess what they had done—for clearly his father and brother were ignorant of that—she would stand alone, as she had always done. “I decided I would rather live in Castle Gervais than Montbleu. Nor did I wish to marry another man of Damon’s choosing. Your son, my lord, is young and handsome, and I could not be certain Damon’s choice would be.”

  She didn’t care if her words wounded Reece. His mistrust had been like a stake through her body.

  “A very convenient tale, my lady,” Gervais observed, his glare like a knife flaying her flesh. “But if you were unwilling to do as Damon ordered, why did you say nothing to Reece or my father?”

  “Because I thought it was not necessary for you to know. I told Benedict to return to Damon and tell him I would not spy for him.”

  “So you say now,” Gervais noted, while her husband still said nothing. He neither spoke nor moved. He might be dead and propped against the table.

  “She did,” Benedict affirmed. “I don’t know anything. I’ve done nothing wrong. It isn’t a crime to talk to your—”

  “Hold your tongue!” Sir Urien ordered, his tone so imperious Benedict cringed and seemed to shrink before them as he fell silent.

  “If you are as innocent as you claim,” Gervais continued, “why did we have to learn of your meeting with Benedict from another?”

  That had to be Piers, Anne thought, her despair increasing. That was why he had been in the solar. He must have been in the village that afternoon and seen them together.

  And then he had gone to Reece instead of coming to her, the woman who had devoted her life to him.

  How could he not come to her first and give her the chance to explain? How could he not give her that opportunity? Did he not trust her, either?

  Were men’s affections so shallow, their love so easily overcome? Was this to be the repayment for her love, her passion and her devotion? That her husband and her brother would both so quickly leap to the conclusion that she was untrustworthy and dishonorable?

  If so, she had wasted her entire life, and her dreams had truly been delusions.

  But who was more at fault? She, because she loved with all her heart?

  No, them, because they did not.

  Anger, resolution and pride stanched the wound in her soul and gave her strength. Thus strengthened—or hardened—she faced them resolutely.

  “As I have already explained,
I decided I did not want to be a spy, and that Damon’s threat to take Piers away and insure I never saw him again was meaningless. Piers was here, and you would help me keep him here. Or so I thought.”

  Reece straightened and his eyes flared with another emotion, but it was too late. She glared at him, her hopes and dreams and love for him like so much ash at her feet.

  “Of course Damon threatened me, through the one person I love. Why else would I ever agree to such a thing? I have my honor, too, Reece, although you thought little of that when you followed me from the king’s hall, or were so quick to accuse me of base deception. But I thought…hoped…deluded myself into believing that you would support me against my half brother. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  He believed her duplicitous; would he prove himself otherwise, and admit that the grounds to destroy their union no longer existed? “How soon can we have our marriage annulled?” she demanded, her words a challenge. Would he admit the grounds no longer existed, or would he grab the chance to be rid of her, even though it meant deceiving his family?

  “We are summoned to court at once,” he replied flatly.

  So, after all his talk of love and honor, he would choose deception and be rid of her. “If you will all excuse me, I believe this discussion is ended.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and marched to the door. Then, her stern resolution faltered, for the one thing that had been the center of her life could not be easily forgotten or denied. She halted at the door and turned back, looking only at Sir Urien. “And Piers?”

  Sir Urien’s expression was as unreadable as his son’s. “If he wishes to stay, he may. But it shall be as you choose.”

  “No, my lord,” she replied as she opened the door. “He will stay because he has already chosen.”

  Numb, Reece stared at the door after Anne slammed it shut. Only this morning, his future had been bright as the sun on a summer’s day; now it was as dark and bleak as midnight in the northern mountains.

  Daggers of self-doubt ripped at him. After Benedict’s words and her own confession, how could he be sure that anything she had ever said or done was true, even to loving him in return?

  Especially loving him.

  The sullen Benedict shifted, drawing Reece’s attention and breaking the tense silence. “You heard her. I never did anything wrong. She never told me anything.”

  “Innocent of helping Damon you may ultimately be,” Gervais said, “but there is the matter of the dead woman found in an inn on the way here.”

  Benedict’s jaw dropped, then his mouth snapped shut. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That will be for the court to decide, Delasaine,” Gervais replied. “Somebody who looked a lot like you was seen riding from the inn before her body was found, and you must know this is not the first time such an accusation has been muttered about you. We shall take you back to that shire, where you can await the king’s justice. Now come.”

  “But I am innocent,” he protested. With a look of panic, he turned to Reece. “We are related by marriage now, Fitzroy. You must help me!”

  Disgust and anger overwhelmed Reece’s dismay. “Yes, I am your brother-in-law, for the present. Because I am, I will see that you have counsel before the court, but if you are guilty, you will have to pay the penalty of law.”

  Benedict stared at him, wide-eyed with disbelief and fear. Then, with a roar, he dove at Gervais, who was closest to the door, knocking him down.

  As his father hurried to Gervais, Reece tackled Benedict before he could get to the door, bringing him down as a hound does a stag. Straddling the struggling man, full of rage over what the Delasaines had done to him and to Anne, knowing that they had robbed him of his chance for true happiness with her, Reece raised his hand, ready to strike.

  Benedict’s eyes filled with tears and, with a cry like a terrified child, he threw his arms over his flushed face to ward off the blow.

  Panting hard, Reece slowly lowered his fist. “I will be content to let the king’s justice deal with you, Benedict Delasaine, and may God have mercy on you despite all that you have done.”

  With that, he climbed off the fallen man and walked to the farthest corner of the solar, as if the man’s very breath could taint him.

  His sword drawn, Gervais went to Benedict and hauled him to his feet. “Come with me, and don’t try anything. Reece might not be willing to hurt you, but I am. In fact, I’d welcome the chance.”

  As Gervais pulled him from the room, Sir Urien went to stand beside his son. “What do you want us to do?” he asked after a moment.

  “Take him to London for judgment.”

  “I meant about Anne.”

  Reece turned to his father, no longer a boy facing his father, but as one man to another. “We return to court, as the king commands.”

  Sir Urien put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Reece. Let me help—”

  “No,” Reece said firmly. “She is my wife, and this is for me to deal with.”

  Unsure what he was going to do, Reece left the solar. He shook his head to clear it as he continued through the hall and out into courtyard, not really caring where he went until he reached the cool, quiet little chapel that would be deserted this time of day. He ducked inside and leaned back against the closed door, inhaling the familiar scent of incense and candle wax.

  He slowly slid down until he was sitting on the frigid flagstones.

  Then he wrapped his arms about his knees and hid his face. Oh, God, he silently cried, the words a cross between a prayer and a plea. What am I going to do?

  The memory of making love with Anne arose. Had she been lying to him when she gave herself to him in that wondrous intimacy?

  Although he had felt not an inkling of a doubt of the sincerity of her emotions last night, all his past insecurities made him wonder if he had seen merely his own love mirrored back, because he wished it so.

  Yet as he sat, alone and despairing, hope and love refused to die. Deep in the core of his heart, his love for her still lived and urged him to believe her version of events.

  He remembered her as she faced them in the solar just a short time ago—determined, resolute, alone.

  Alone. Aye, alone, one woman bravely facing three knights who stood accusing her of a terrible crime. She was as alone as she had been when Damon had threatened her back at court and ordered her to do his bidding. What else could she do but agree, or lose her brother? Then she did not love her husband, or he her. Then it was different.

  She had always been alone, in many ways. And if he had been alone all his life, making decisions with no help, no succor, might he not be loath to ask for assistance, or tell anyone his troubles? Might he not come to believe he must and would deal with those troubles on his own?

  Oh, sweet Jesu, what had he done?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Suddenly certain of what he must do, Reece rose and threw open the door to the chapel. He ran across the courtyard and tore through the hall, ignoring his mother, his father, Gervais, Lisette, Donald, Seldon and everyone else assembled there once a quick survey told him Anne was not.

  He took the steps to their chamber two at a time and grabbed the latch. When he pushed down, he discovered the door was locked.

  He pounded on the oaken door so hard it rattled. “Anne! Anne! I must speak with you! Anne, please!”

  For a long moment, as he held his breath and listened, he feared she wasn’t going to answer.

  Then the door flew open. Anne stood there, as still and cold and hard as a granite statue in the dead of winter. “Go away, Reece,” she said, her voice even colder. “You have nothing to say that I wish to hear.”

  “But Anne—”

  “No!” she cried, glaring at him, all the cold suddenly turned to heat, her whole body quivering with the rage of years of being treated as if she were unimportant or unworthy heating her blood. “You have already shown me what you think of me! There is nothing you can say to make me f
orget that as I tried to explain what I had done, you would not believe me.”

  “Anne, please, I love you—”

  “Love!” she cried, stepping back as if the word had been a blow. “Is it love that is so quick to render harsh judgment? Is it love that makes you listen to a man you know to be a liar before your own wife? I thought that you were different, that you saw me as more than a body to take to your bed. I thought there was something better, stronger, truer, between us. But I know now I was wrong. I was a fool to think you loved me.”

  “But I did! I do! I was shocked and—”

  “And so, despite this love you profess, in spite of what we shared last night, you leapt to the conclusion that I would still betray you.” Her eyes seemed to fairly shoot with flames of indignation and anger. “If that is your idea of love, I do not want it! I do not want to be your wife!”

  With that, she grabbed the door and threw it shut.

  Anne would not speak to Reece during the whole of the journey back to court, either. Even Esmerelda seemed to feel the tension, barely lifting her feet as they traveled along the muddy road, for the fine autumn weather had given way to a gray winter’s chilling rain.

  But Anne had meant what she said, and she believed it still: if Reece truly loved her, he would not have been so quick to assume the worst of her. He was no different from any other man, and she had been a fool to believe otherwise.

  She tried not to remember taking solemn leave of Piers. What she had always feared had come to pass. Piers was being taken from her, and while he would be better off with Sir Urien, her heart had been more broken all the same.

  It had been difficult to leave Lisette, too. When she had bluntly told her maid that the marriage to Sir Reece was to be annulled, Lisette had stared in shock at first, then burst into tears and begged to stay in Bridgeford Wells. She loved Donald and wanted to be with him. He had even asked her to be his wife.

  Anne had been surprised, for Donald was a knight and Lisette but a serving maid, but Lisette’s impassioned words quickly told her that she had heard aright. Donald was going to marry a maidservant because, Lisette explained, he didn’t care what people thought of him. He never had—unlike Reece.