Defiant (5 page)

“’elp me wipe up the blood trail an’ we’ll be going.”

Gwyneth found she had no will to resist. The temptation of a friend, of a life that promised more than being a pawn in her father’s game, gave her hope. The least she could do was discover the possibilities this strange girl offered.

Curious, disconcerted by the day’s events, she followed.

Three years later

Water dripped.

Moonlight shone.

Rats scattered.

Three years. Three bloody years, and still no hope of release. Jared St. John slumped against the damp wall of the hellhole of a prison, forgotten and forsaken. Thick calluses and red bumpy scars surrounded his ankles and wrists where the iron manacles rubbed against his skin. Dirt caked his hands and feet.

Inside him, rage burned like an inferno. He was innocent, by God—had been on his way to a monastery—and was not responsible for the murder of his brother, Rafe. He thrust a finger through a threadbare place in his monk’s robe.

They had no proof.

They had no reason to suspect him.

They had nothing.

Yet, here he was. Sleeping in rat piss with only moonlight for company.

His mind drifted to the facts he knew: his brother, the woman they had shared, his brother’s death.

He growled. This was his own doing. If he had not been sucked into Colette’s spell, he would never have been suspect to the murder. Colette was proof of the wicked entanglements of women—of the agony they caused, of how they snared a man’s mind and soul by ensnaring his body. In his experience, women used their power—displaying a luscious shoulder here, a slim ankle there—to sway a man’s mind, to think illogical thoughts until all his life was destroyed. Colette’s glossy black hair, husky voice, and feathery fingers had been intoxicating. He had loved her passionately—until she had betrayed him.

Gwyneth’s beautiful face with her slanted eyes and sharp chin floated into his mind. In sharp contrast to Colette’s darkness, Gwyneth had been an angel of light. He shook his head, trying to shove aside the memory before the inevitable stab of pain came into his chest. She had been an innocent when he’d last seen her—picking up children and hating the low-cut gowns that her father had forced her to wear. A beacon of female goodness.

Forcing down his impotent fury, he reached into his threadbare and filthy monk’s robe and pulled out a lock of white-gold hair. The strand he had deftly stolen from Gwyneth while she was distracted by the book he had given to her.

The ritual was the same: He brought the braided tendril to his nose—it had long since lost its lavender aroma—but he inhaled anyway and imagined his beautiful Gwyneth, unsullied by the world, living a life of happy contentment, then, carefully, he un-braided it, smoothed out the strands, and rebraided it with deft fingers. Even in the dim glow of the prison cell, it glistened.

The meticulously crafted ritual focused his mind, soothed him. Her memory had kept him alive, kept him sane. He saw her in his mind, holding a child on her hip. Had she learned to read?

A flutter sounded.

Aeliana the hawk pushed through the bars of the small window at the top of the cell. Her black-and-white feathers gleamed in the moonlight and her yellow eyes, always keen and knowing, observed him.

His heart swelled. ‘Twas both odd and comforting that she had not deserted him. He had released her from her tether when he had first been taken, because he could not bear to see her harmed. Most hawks would have flown from their trainers at the first hint of trouble.

But not his Aeliana.

Wings beat the air as she flew into the cell. A pigeon was encased in her talons, and she dropped it at his feet.

“My dear friend,” he murmured. Her loyalty warmed him, thrilled him. ‘Twas her care that had kept his muscles from wasting to nothing on the thin gruel the guards gave him. Ripping the feathers and skin from the dead pigeon, he sank his teeth into the raw meat in rapt appreciation.

Keys jangled. The door to the cell creaked open with a weary rasp. The guard carrying the day’s bowl of watery stew entered. He was a medium-size man with a broad, flat nose and stocky legs.

“Wot’s this ‘ere?”

Spooked—the guard had never entered while she was there before—Aeliana fluttered, lifted, and, talons extended, flew at the man as he rumbled into the cell.

“Aeliana!”

The guard screamed, startled.

The bowl lurched and was hurled into the air. Brown liquid splattered across the stone floor. The man’s arms flew around like medusa’s hair to defend his face and eyes as the hawk attacked. He staggered one direction, then another. His boots caught on the gruel. He careened backward. A loud
thunk
sounded as his head hit the stone.

Jared cringed in empathy.

Then, the man lay perfectly still, his keys beside his legs.

“Guard?” Jared ventured.

No movement.

“Guard?”

Had good fortune at last looked his direction?

Taking a breath of the tainted prison air, Jared stretched out his manacle-clad leg and reached for the ring of keys. His toe caught them. With a grunt, he forced himself to stretch farther. And farther. Until he was able to move the keys a hairbreath toward him.

Hope shot through his body. Three years, but no longer. Soon he would be free. Nay, not truly free until he had found his brother’s murderer and cleared his own name.

A few moments later, Jared crept from the jail. Aeliana flew overheard.

Dogs barked in the background. Likely, a search party had been formed. He raced through the streets and alleyways, taking great gulps of freedom into his lungs and looking for a place to hide. The saltwater and fish from the nearby docks smelled like heaven.

He pumped his fists and sweat poured down his back. The scars on his legs pulled and twisted.

Rage melded into determination. They would not capture him. He would find his brother’s murderer and make him pay.

Lady Gwyneth covered her nose with a lavender-scented kerchief and swore under her breath as she gazed around at the wretches who moldered on the mildewed hay of the women’s prison. The stench of rat dung and piss choked the air, making her lungs nearly burst.

She shuddered as she always did when she came to this place and forced herself to survey the women in the cells. Forced herself into numbness. Forced herself to focus on her mission of rescuing two of them rather than give in to the deep aching feelings of helpless rage that weighed on her chest over the hundreds who remained.

The baker’s wife, Blythe, here because of her husband’s drinking debts, lay against the damp stone wall, a thin shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She had been lying in nearly that same position for the last three months, eyes closed, face turned upward.

Elfreda, originally a stocky woman, grew thinner each time Lady Gwyneth returned. She had been taken here for her brother’s treason on the trumped-up charges of “comforting the king’s enemies,” but it was clear she was simply being held against his return.

And then there was Elizabeth, a dark-haired child who had been brought last week. No one knew for certain where she had come from or even how old she was. A peasant couple found her on the steps of a church wearing naught but a small smock. It was possible that she had been at an orphanage, but there was no way to tell because she could not, or did not, speak. She had an aristocratic nose—likely the bastard daughter of a nobleman. To communicate, she made grunting noises and waved her hands around. She had been imprisoned because she had cut the strings of a man’s purse.

Intense heat flowed from the base of her spine all the way up to her neck as anger coursed through Gwyneth in waves. She kept her facial features and posture as neutral as possible. All the women in this hellhole were here because of the misdeeds of irresponsible men!

Tucked inside her bodice was the small book that the handsome monk had given her three years ago. He had been different. He had wanted her to read, to use her intellect. She had never learned to read—these past years had been filled with late night after late night of embroidering sleeves and trim to earn enough money to release women. She had never seen him again, but all the same, the book with its carved dragon on the cover represented hope to her. Hope for women to learn and grow and make something of themselves—to fly like dragons in the clouds. She had sold all her jewels except for the sapphire ring, which had belonged to her mother.

A few months ago the storm that had surrounded her father’s acts against the king had occurred—what a maze he had led their family into! Blasted man! Since he had been exiled she had been busier than ever. It was only by sheer luck that she and her sisters were not living at the brothel themselves. In any event, she had not even had a chance to see about her own dower lands.

The jailor, a bull-sized man with a large nose and one earlobe significantly larger than the other, gave her an uneasy glance. He must have been a new guard, because she had never seen him before. Still, she knew his type well: big, dunderheaded, and easily charmed with the slightest bit of female attention. Unused to noblewomen who paid him any heed.

“I’ve come for the two women who are to be shipped today.” She smiled her best smile and blinked a few times.

His eyes widened and he looked slightly taken aback. It was a reaction she had come to count on with men and she tossed her head, allowing her mass of white-blond hair to fall over one eye and across her bosom. The ends curled past her hips.

He watched her; his mouth fell open as he drank in the way her locks framed her curves.

The fool!

She’d cut her hair to her nape if men weren’t so bedazzled by it.

While he still seemed slightly smitten, she reached beneath her silken surcoat, pulled coins from the pouch dangling from her girdle, and handed them to him. A bribe. Not much, but if his eyes raking across her form were any indication, it would be enough.

“Well,” she said, not shrinking from his indecent perusal. This was the most dangerous part of the transaction—the part where he decided if he would take the bribe or not.

“The magistrate—”

“—has given me leave to take them.” She laid a hand on his forearm, silently willing him to give over to her.

He reached up and pulled on the short earlobe in obvious discomfiture.

“Prithee, Master Jailor,” she pressed, not wanting to give him too much time to think through what she was asking. Likely he’d never been addressed as “master” before. Men seemed to respond well to little niceties of respect. Especially peasants who were clearly beneath her station.

He puffed his chest out a fraction.

She smiled at him, waiting.

It did not take long.

He slid the coins into his purse and nodded.

Victory! Inwardly she smiled. It was the combination of charm and imperiousness that the men responded to most of all. She smiled at them sweetly, then commanded them while showing a margin of respect and they simply did her bidding. It had worked time and time again and she wondered if all men were so shallow that they were taken in so easily by flattery and a comely face.

Your beauty is a gift from God,
Irma had instructed.
Put it to good use. Learn to charm them.
It had seemed almost sacrilegious to think such at first, but the women she had rescued had erased her initial guilt.

“Up there, my lady,” the jailor grunted. He pointed ominously down the dank hallway toward two shivering women who huddled, waiting to be taken onto the slave ship. The authorities didn’t call them slave ships, of course, but that was what they were all the same.

A life of misery, backbreaking work, and a joyless existence would be their future. They would go to workhouses or brothels or (if they were pretty enough) a harem.

Turning numbly from the women in the cells, she moved toward the two she could rescue today. Tamsin, a harlot, and Norma, a nobleman’s bastard, she had been told.

Two more. She had saved two more. But how many others would be gone, taken away, before she was able to stop the trade of human souls?

If only she had control of her dower lands in her own right, then perhaps she could set up a place to teach the women a trade of some sort!

She let out a breath of frustration. She had managed to stave off marriage to a slew of unsuitable men but had not been able to talk her father into allowing her to manage the properties herself.

So much had happened, her father had been exiled to Italy and her sister’s husband, Montgomery, set up as overlord. More frustration! Montgomery disliked her, so there was no possibility of him giving her leave for her own properties and she had overheard talk of yet another marriage plan.

Elizabeth’s large green eyes haunted Gwyneth as she walked out into the cold, foggy morning and headed down the cobbled streets of the city with the two women following her.

She should feel good for those she had saved, but a sickness settled in her stomach. For certes, the child would be next on the ship unless she could come up with the means to release her.

Of all things, she needed to solve the dilemma of her dower lands and gain control of them in her own right. She could not leave the child here alone with no hope of a future.

“Getting married tomorrow is unthinkable!” Gwyneth yelled at her sister Brenna later that night as they sat across from each other at the chess table. Fire burned in the hearth, but a chill hung in the air.

“'Tis a noblewoman’s duty to marry.”

Gwyneth threw the white rook across the board, knocking over a pawn. “What has happened to you since meeting Montgomery?” Their relationship, which had gotten better for a time, had soured again.

“I have come to understand the importance of the duty of marriage,” Brenna said.

Gwyneth snatched another pawn from the chessboard. She definitely had no time for silliness such as marriage. Not when women were daily being raped and killed in the prisons.

A husband would take her away. Far away from her work here and the wrongly imprisoned ladies who needed her.