The Bride Gift (18 page)

She looked down at her riding dress. Seams tore as she ripped it from her body and tossed it into the hearth where it lay, crumpled and stained amongst the cinders. Flora’s dress had been torn and befouled, too. The image of the child rose fresh in her mind.

Her blood still pounded, the vein in her neck throbbing as she dragged a clean linen chainse over her nakedness. She pushed the image of Flora away, but Geoffrey, lying wounded and terrified, swiftly replaced it.
Stop thinking, stop thinking!

Desperate to empty her mind, Helena attacked her hair. Carefully and methodically she worked the braid free. The comb dragged across her scalp, the pain a welcome relief from the images crowding into her brain.

Flora became Bess, with dead, flat eyes and marks on her lovely face. She could have saved Bess. Roger had forbidden her to interfere. She had sworn to avenge her sister and in this, too, she had failed. Ranulf had struck again. She was certain he was behind this atrocity. The savage cruelty had his mark all over it. Flora had been brutalized to death and Geoffrey’s life hung in the balance.

And Guy forbade her to interfere. Guy stood between her and those that she would protect. She braided her hair carefully. Her fingers clenched with the rage building inside her. They had shut her out. They didn’t need her there. They didn’t want her there.

Her anger flared up brighter and sharper. It fed on itself, like a forest fire, consuming new evidence of the wrongs done her as it went.
Damn them all
. They spread like a plague into all the recesses and cracks of Lystanwold, until nothing felt like hers anymore.

She thought of Peter and his terrible grief. She called up the memory of Flora and her broken body. She held them before her eyes to feed her growing fury. Bess had been the same. They had nothing, Flora and Bess. They were as nothing, to be used and abused and then discarded as others saw fit. Her stomach roiled in rejection.

No more
. She would purge them all from her life. Yanking open her solar door, she tugged a heavy chest across the room. It scraped and gouged against the stone, but she persevered. She swore and battled with the accursed thing until she reached the stairs, and then she shoved. It rode the first few steps, gained momentum and clattered and crashed all the way to the bottom. A startled yelp came from below.

Helena returned to the solar. She would not be bent and broken like chattel, a nothing, a possession. She was Helena of Lystanwold. She was first here and she would be so always. A smaller chest went the way of the first. Once more, Helena returned to the solar.

She glared at the contents of the room. Not even her chamber was her own. Flung across her bed were his braies, hanging from her clotheshorse was his surcoat. At the root of it all was Guy, though it hurt too much to think of him.

He’d given his word that he would protect her and her people. She’d begun to trust him and that mistake was as a brand across her heart.

“Nell?” Colin appeared in the door. He leapt aside as she flung a smaller chest toward him. Helena heaved the wooden container the way of the others.

“Have you gone mad?” Colin stepped into her path.

“Be gone.” Helena turned on him with a feral snarl. “You are as much to blame as the rest of them. I have no further use for any of you.”

With that, she slammed the door on his outraged face.

Guy had
left Geoffrey in Rosalind’s hands and gone to find Sir Ewayne. The door to the lord’s solar had been firmly shut as he passed. He’d nearly stopped to talk to Helena, but abandoned the idea. This day had been difficult for her. She needed rest.

Ewayne found exactly what Guy expected him to find. The raiding party had disappeared over the border to Dartmoore land. They made no attempt to disguise their passage. The archer who had felled Geoffrey was spotted dead along the way, his quiver still full of the same arrows as the one he’d helped Rosalind extract.

The evidence had been laid out carefully for them to find. It amounted to a flagrant challenge and for a tiny moment, Guy almost ignored a lifetime of cool thinking, grabbed up the gauntlet and charged forth. Instead he’d stopped his men this side of the boundary between the two demesnes and let his brain rule his hot blood.

An attack of such deliberate provocation meant Ranulf wanted him to come armed to his keep. It wasn’t a particularly imaginative plan, to provoke and then cry foul to the king, but it would work. And once Guy was out of his path, Ranulf would have a clear road to Lystanwold. And Helena.

Guy sat astride his destrier. Pennants rose above the treetops in the distance. Dartmoore Castle. Fierce, hard anger churned in his gut. This was an act of war and it would be paid in kind, but Guy needed to think carefully on how he did that. He hadn’t come this far to lose everything in a rush of blood.

He turned his men toward home. He wanted to see Helena. The tortured expression in her eyes haunted him every step of the way. She truly cared for her people and an attack on one of them struck straight to the heart of her. Ranulf would pay for that as well.

Guards were doubled on the walls, he noted as he rode into the bailey. A mixture of his men and the men of Lystanwold guarded the ramparts. Tension hung thick over the keep. Chains rattled as the portcullis was lowered behind them. Huddles of people milled around uncertainly. They had come behind the walls to seek refuge after word of this morning had spread. They appeared to be aimless. Why had Helena done nothing to see them housed for the night? It wasn’t like her not to succour Lystanwold’s folk.

The rest of the keep slept, other than a few hardy souls, still up and drinking or talking quietly. They stopped as he passed and greeted him. Guy was so tired his bones ached with it. To return to Lystanwold and bide his time abraded within. Vengeance coursed through his blood, but he would think like a lord now and not a warrior. There were more lives at stake than Peter and Flora.

He approached Bridget, seated by the hearth. “There are people.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bailey.

“Aye.” Bridget rose to her feet, weariness in her every movement. “I will see to them.”

“Geoffrey?”

Bridget smiled faintly at him. “The lad is young and strong. The wound is deep, but not fatal. It will need to be kept clear from putrefaction.”

Guy’s relief was tinged by the gut-churning frustration of having to bide his time. “And Peter?”

Bridget made a face. “The man saw his child brutally raped and killed. Do you really need me to answer, Sir Knight?”

He nodded in understanding and strode toward the staircase. Anger burned like acid in his stomach.

Guy sidestepped a chest as he mounted the stairs to the upper level. Helena would be abed, but he could strip off his sweaty clothes and slide into the linens beside her. For a moment, before he fell asleep, he could lose himself in the sweetness of her scent.

He skirted another vaguely familiar chest. Rounding the corner, he drew up in shock.

The keep had been attacked. Then he looked closer, and his heartbeat settled somewhat.

There were clothes and belongings everywhere and they covered almost all the available floor space. He picked up a surcoat. It was his. So were the braies, the hauberk, the chausses and the boots.

“Be damned.” He retrieved his best velvet tunic, crumpled and soaked in the spilled contents of a flagon of wine.
Ruined.
He dropped it in disgust.

The door to the solar was shut. He tried the latch and found it barred. The door was a solid block of oak, thick enough to withstand a marauding army. Guy took a slow, steady breath. It would be easier to go back downstairs and find a space in the hall to sleep. It had been a hard day for all. He turned to leave.

Nay
.

All through this long, dreadful day he’d kept his formidable temper in check. Kept his mind working over his emotions. Stayed calm, remained in command of the bloodlust.

The bellow rose from deep within him, an inarticulate cry of all the pent-up, impotent fury of his day.

He threw back his head and roared. The edges of his vision went dark. He would go through that door with nothing to stop him. People cowered around him in the passageway, curious to know what the furore was about.

Guy charged forward and they scattered like geese, retreating to the shadows. Curse them as well. It took but a moment to find the weapon he needed. It was in the largest chest, almost at the foot of the stairs.

Gasps greeted his reappearance. A woman stifled a scream.

The door splintered on the first swing of the axe. Three mightier heaves and the door gave in. Guy kicked at the splintered edges. Shrieking like a crazed lunatic, he charged into the room.

His eyes locked on Helena and he slid to a halt. The haze of red receded from his vision.

She knelt in the centre of the bed, her eyes huge in her pale face with the bed linens tightly clasped around her chin.

The only sound was the dull thrum of his blood in his ears. The axe was heavy in his hand and he lowered it to his side.

She looked like a little girl in her white chainse with her hair neatly braided on either side of her head.

“Guy?” Her voice held the thickness of sleep.

The axe fell to the floor with a loud clatter. His chest heaving like bellows, he dropped his head and concentrated on taking calming air into his lungs.

“I thought we were under attack,” she finally said.

He nodded. Disgust sneaked in like a thief around the fading edges of his temper. He was no better than his father, thundering about the keep, spreading fear and destruction with each meaty fist.

Guy battled the demon within. He wouldn’t be his father.

Helena motioned to the door. “I did not think that possible.”

Curious faces peered through the splinters of oak. “You can all go back to your beds,” he ordered. A vein pulsed in the side of his head. He strode over to the doorway and glared out. The courageous few still standing there scurried away like rats.

“Are you harmed?” he b
elatedly asked, his eyes studying her carefully.

Slowly she whispered, “I am all right, Guy.”

As her husband turned to survey the damage he had caused, Helena couldn’t help but wonder at his thoughts. What would he do now? Beat her? Berate her?
Nay, surely not
.

She’d meant to take the bar from the door and have Guy’s belongings brought back to the solar. She must have fallen asleep after her rampage through the chamber. The first she’d known was that unearthly bellow, rousing her from sleep. It sounded as if the Infidel was attacking Lystanwold.

Obeying an instinct that, even now, assured her she wouldn’t be hurt, Helena padded across the chamber toward him. He shook his head as he bent to pick up a piece of splintered wood.

“Guy?” Helena touched his shoulder.

“I lost my temper.” A frown marred his brow. “I have not lost my temper since . . . in a very long time,” he amended. “I do not lose my temper.” He bent to pick up another piece of wood.

Suddenly, her actions this day shamed her. “I lose my temper all the time.” He appeared not to hear her as he attempted to fit the two pieces of the shattered door into each other. He gave up with a shrug and the wood clattered to the floor.

“I should not have done this,” she admitted, toeing aside a piece of wood and drawing closer to him. It had been a childish reaction to the terrible events of the day and she had regretted it as soon as her anger cooled. She’d been exhausted and lain down for a moment to collect herself before she cleaned away the evidence of her fit. If only she could start this day anew.
A pointless wish
.

“I was so angry.” She placed her forehead in the swell of his shoulder. “I meant to unbar the door.”

He grunted deep in his throat, yet didn’t move away. His face was drawn and closed, the muscle in his jaw working furiously.

Helena needed to touch him. She looped her arms about his neck. His shoulders were bunched tight with emotion beneath her touch.

“I tossed all your things out of the solar,” she confessed.

He grunted again and looked through the gaping maw of the doorway as if the news were a surprise.

“It all became jumbled in my head. Flora, Peter, Geoffrey,” she added. “And then you chose Rosalind to tend to Geoffrey and I . . .” Helena swept her hand over the solar, now empty of all traces of Guy.

He shifted out of her hold, a tiny frown creasing the skin between his brows. “Rosalind is a good healer,” he stated.

“I know that.” She brought her hand to his brow and smoothed the furrow of skin with a finger. “Can we begin this night anew?”

“Aye.”

Helena let out a relieved breath. “What did you discover?”

“It was Ranulf.” A muscle tensed in the side of his jaw.

Fresh anger surged within Helena. “Did you kill him?”

“Nay.” He turned from her abruptly. “He is hiding in his keep.”

“What will you do?”

“A siege would take weeks.”

“And the king could arrive any day.” She understood, though she’d have like to remain stubborn. It was for this reason Roger had never openly attacked Ranulf. Stephen wouldn’t tolerate unrest on his northern border, not with the Scots poised to take advantage of any opportunity.

“What news of Geoffrey?” She’d meant to see Geoffrey after she’d finished clearing the debris.
Dear God
. Her awful temper was her downfall again.

“Bridget says he will heal, if the wound stays clean.” Lines of worry marred his strong features. She longed to soothe them away.

“Ranulf will pay for this, Helena.” His eyes were deadly earnest. “I swear to you.”

He didn’t give his word lightly, this knight of hers. When he did, it was as solid as the walls about her. He’d given his word to Rosalind and kept it, when it would have been much easier to renege. “I know he will.”

His eyes flared with warmth. Reaching out, he brought her closer to him. “You have a wicked temper.”

“Yes.” Helena burrowed closer to his warmth. With his arms about her, the horror of the day seemed to recede. “I, however, did not chop down the door.”