LadyOfConquest:SaxonBride (15 page)

“And hungry.” Maxen smiled wryly. “Been brawling?”

Sir Guy rubbed the bruise yet visible along his jaw. “With you. It seems you do not care to be moved once you are abed.”

Understanding transformed Maxen’s face, then he grimaced and glanced at Rhiannyn before setting himself at the food.

She clenched her hands. Would he have her this night? Or would he wait until he was fully recovered?

Pray, not until he recovers
, she silently pleaded, then considered it might be better to have it over with.

“Rhiannyn?”

She peered up at Lucilla who surprised her with a small smile. “Aye?”

“I’ve food for ye. Where would you have me set it?”

“I am not hungry.”

“I will put it on the clothes chest for later.” The woman turned away.

Drawing her knees to her chest, Rhiannyn winced at the noise made by the links. How she hated it—more, these past two years that had brought her to this cruel conquering.

Pressing her teeth into her lower lip, she trained her gaze on the floor and blocked out Maxen’s and Sir Guy’s voices, and all those who came after.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Blood.

Staring at the dagger, Rhiannyn wondered why she was only now beginning to feel pain. When she had scooped up the napkin, she had not known a blade was hidden beneath it and had felt only mild discomfort as it sliced through her grasping fingers. But now there was pain that paralleled the brilliant red soaking through the napkin’s weave.

She opened her fingers and swept her gaze down the blade nestled in the napkin, the edges of which shone more red than silver, then lifted the weapon from her injured hand and fisted her bloody fingers in the napkin to stem the flow down her palm and wrist.

Not since her return to Etcheverry had she been given a meat knife with her meals, let alone a dagger of deadly intent. Who had placed it on her tray? And for what?

Her first thought was Lucilla. Had there been a message in the woman’s smile? If so, what was it? That she kill Maxen? Herself? Might Sir Ancel be responsible? He had also come into the chamber and was more likely to have slipped the dagger beneath the napkin when he thought none were looking. In fact, she had seen him nibbling at the foodstuffs on her tray while conversing with his lord.

There had been others during the two hours Maxen had received them, but most were a blur, and none so likely to have left the dagger as Sir Ancel. Still, there was the question of who it was intended for. Was she being given the mercy of taking her own life before another did? Or was the hunger for power so great the lord of Etcheverry was the quarry?

“Almighty!” Maxen’s bellow broke through her speculation.

She startled and looked to where he sat up, having arisen from the sleep he had fallen into an hour ago.

Imagining the picture she presented standing at the foot of his bed, a dagger in one hand, the other red from knuckles to wrist, she said, “It was not… I did not…”

As if he had never been ill, he sprang off the mattress and gained her side. “Why?” he demanded, something like concern grooving his face and turning his eyes a deeper blue.

She shook her head. “Why?”

He grabbed her arm, snatched the balled napkin from her hand, and began winding it around her wrist. “Naught is so bad you must take your life!”

He thought she had cut her wrist? To escape from this world into another she was not sure would receive her?

“I was not trying to kill myself,” she said and opened her hand to show her slashed fingers.

The color in his face ebbed, and he unwound the napkin and peered at her wrist. “Then you mistakenly cut yourself ere you could use the dagger on me.”

Rhiannyn gasped. “How can you believe that if you do not believe I put a dagger through Thomas?”

Maxen shifted his gaze to the bloody weapon. “Do you intend to do something with that?”

As if burnt, she released it to the floor. “You have not answered me,” she said. “You refuse to believe I killed Thomas, but think me capable of killing you?”

“You could not have hated him as much as you do me,” he said and began wrapping her hand in the bloodied linen.

But she did not hate him as a Saxon ought to, nor could she now that she knew what drove him to revenge—that he was not the devil, but a man with years of hurt and regret behind him that had seeped into his present. He was touchable. How, she did not know, but she would not give up hope.

“I do not hate you,” she said.

He released her bandaged hand. “You should.”

“Why? Because of anger that is your due? Another brother dead, your calling stolen from you, your prayers unanswered?”

“You dare go where you ought not, Rhiannyn,” he warned.

“I know.”

“Then know this as well. I do not need nor welcome your understanding. Try as you might, no bearing will it have on the fate of the Saxon rebels. I will do with them what I will.”

“You will not kill them,” she said, praying she was right. “This I know.”

A muscle in his jaw spasmed. “You know nothing.” He pressed her down onto the wooden chest, strode to the screen, and with the chain taut between them, called for Christophe.

“Where did you get it?” he asked when he returned to where she sat cradling her hand.

She followed his gaze to the dagger at her feet. Something about the weapon was peculiar. Nay, not peculiar. Familiar. The hilt with its intricately carved leaves…

“Answer me, Rhiannyn.”

She nearly told the truth, but fear for what he might do to Lucilla if he believed she had delivered the dagger birthed a lie. “I found it on the floor. One of your knights must have lost it.”

“How did you cut yourself?”

“I saw its glint among the rushes, but did not know what it was until I picked it up—by its blade.”

His eyebrows rose. “I thought the dagger might have come to you on your meal tray.”

Trying to keep her face impassive, she wondered how he had he known. Because she had been standing over the tray when he awakened? Or might he be responsible for the dagger? Was this a test?

“I found it on the floor,” she repeated.

 
He lowered to his haunches and lifted the dagger covered in blood and rushes. “For one who lies as often as you do”—he turned the weapon over—“I would expect you to be much better at it.”

Her gaze also drawn to the dagger—specifically, its unusual hilt—Rhiannyn reflected it was true she lied, and often, but she did it to protect her people. Of course, what good was a lie not believed?

Of a sudden, she placed where she had seen the dagger before. “Thomas,” she said.

Maxen’s gaze landed hard upon her. “What about him?”

The urgency in his eyes propelled her past caution. Heart beating hard, she said, “The dagger. It is the one.”

“That killed him?”

She nodded.

“How do you know this?”

She saw it again the day of Thomas’s death, his blood in the recesses of the carved hilt when she had retrieved the dagger from the muddy ground to prove she had done the deed.

“I remember it,” she whispered. “Too well.”

Maxen felt her fear in the air between them, and found himself drawn to offer comfort. But he would not, for it would show heart he did not have—rather, could not afford to have.

He returned his attention to the instrument of death. Although he knew his brother had been murdered with a dagger, he had not learned what had become of it, nor thought to ask. Now he had it, though not in the way whoever had passed it to Rhiannyn wished.

“Was it Sir Ancel who pulled it from Thomas’s body?” he asked, thinking the aggrieved knight likely responsible for its appearance this day.

Rhiannyn lowered her head into her hands. “It was Thomas,” she said, her voice muffled.

Meaning he had not died immediately. There were other questions Maxen wished to ask, but he determined to stay the present course. “Sir Ancel picked it up?”

She shook her head. “I did, but he knocked it from my hand.”

Patience thinning, Maxen lifted her chin and peered into her moist eyes. “
Then
he picked it up?”

“Nay, it was Sir Guy.”

Maxen could not have been more surprised, but he refused to believe his friend sought his death. This must be another lie Rhiannyn told, an attempt to take from his side the only one among his men whom he trusted.

“You do not believe me,” she said softly.

Refusing to be pulled into her eyes, he stood and called for Guy.

Christophe arrived first, disheveled from whatever task he had been pulled from. Fear widening his eyes, he looked from the dagger his brother held to the bloody napkin Rhiannyn grasped, and hurried forward.

Kneeling before her, he uncurled her fingers. “How did this happen?”

“An accident. I turned my hand around the blade ere I knew what it was.”

He looked over his shoulder at his brother as if seeking confirmation it had, indeed, been a mishap.

“It is the truth,” Rhiannyn assured him. “Will it require the needle?”

He gently probed the injury. “Bandages only.”

While he tended her, Guy entered. “My lord?”

Maxen raised the dagger. “This was left for Rhiannyn—by you, she would have me believe.”

“I did not say it was he!” she protested.

Maxen gave her a silencing look. “She claims she does not know who left it for her, but she says it was you who last possessed it.”

The knight’s face incredulous, he said, “As God is my witness, Maxen, I did not give her the dagger.”

“Did you take it from the place Thomas died?”

“I did, but—”

“Then it was last in your keeping.”

“It was, but obviously no longer.”

At least Rhiannyn had told the truth, Maxen reflected. “You say it was stolen from you and given her by another.”

“There can be no other explanation but that it was taken from my belongings.” Guy’s eyes implored Maxen to believe him. “Never would I betray you. Have I not proven my fealty many times over?”

After a lengthy pause, Maxen said, “You have, but I must know who seeks my death.”

“Not I, my lord.”

Maxen cast his thoughts back to each of those who had come and gone this morn and settled on two—the serving woman, Lucilla, and Sir Ancel. Though it could be the servant, he thought it more likely the knight was responsible.

“Have you the key, Guy?” Maxen asked. “I would be free of this chain.”

With uncertain relief, his friend drew it from his pouch and fit it in the iron. “It could have been one of the Saxons,” he said as the iron clattered to the floor.

“I have thought of that, and of another—a Norman.”

Guy nodded. “
Oui
, him.”

“Regardless, the punishment will be the same.”

“And the punishment of Harwolfson’s rebels? Does the sentence you pronounced on them hold?”

Maxen met Rhiannyn’s pleading eyes. “It holds. And will be done on the morrow.”

She stared, unable to believe he would execute the Saxons. Or was it that she did not wish to believe it?

Christophe rose and faced Maxen. “You are not my brother,” he punctuated each word and limped past him and out of the chamber.

Something resembling pain crossed Maxen’s face, but it was too fleeting to be certain.

Shortly, Rhiannyn found herself no longer chained to a man, but to the frame of the bed and left to herself as Maxen joined his men in the hall for the evening meal. Her own meal pushed aside, she curled up in the chair with a blanket and waited for what the night would bring.

It brought hours of tortured thought, and nearing the middle of night, it returned Maxen to her.

He strode across the rushes to her.

When he did not speak, nor touch her, she asked, “Did you discover who left the dagger?”

“I did not, but I shall.”

She nodded, then the question she had tossed around her mind these last hours burst from her. “What will it take to free the Saxons from your vengeance?”

Eyes glimmering in the muted light, he said, “Start telling the truth, and I will start showing mercy.”

Knowing he referred to not only the one who had provided the dagger, but who had murdered Thomas, she said, “I do not know. I give you my word.”

“I almost believe you.”

She gasped. “You do?”

“Almost.”

It was more than she’d had. “Maxen,” she said, belatedly remembering she was forbidden to call him by his given name, “show your mercy.”

As if he did not notice her impropriety, he said, “The decision has been made,” and turned toward the bed.

His callousness was like casting oil on the fire burning in her—a fire Thomas had been singed by many times, but which had not vented from her with such intensity since his death. She threw off the blanket, shot to her feet, and amid the chain’s clatter, followed him.

At the bed, he came back around. “I warn you, Rhiannyn. I have had too much drink and too little food with which to soak it up. Take your misplaced anger back to your chair.”

She halted before him. “Misplaced?” she said, uncaring that she might awaken those who slept in the hall. “You can be angry and I cannot? You lost two brothers and your life of repentance for the atrocities you committed, and for that I am to feel owing to you?”

She scoffed. “Still you have your parents, a brother, a sister, even a country that does not belong to you. What have I? All dear to me is gone—two brothers, a father, a mother, and my country. I have less than naught since I have not even myself now that I am your prisoner.”

Ignoring the darkness moving across his face, she continued, “What vengeance mine? Should I have used the dagger as intended? Taken your life as you shall take the lives of innocents on the morrow?”

“I will hear no more!”

“I am not finished.”

“Aye, you are.” He took her arm, propelled her to the chair, and pushed her into it. “Do not rise or speak another word.”

She started to stand, but he gripped her shoulder and pressed her down. “Think on it, Rhiannyn,” he warned, his face so near hers their noses nearly touched.

Teeth clenched to hold back words she longed to loose, she held his gaze. For what seemed minutes, they remained thus. Then, as if the wind that fanned the flames of her anger had stilled, she slumped.