White Lion's Lady (35 page)

Griff cut off her cry of startlement with a grim shake of his head. “Utter so much as a whimper and you’ll fare no better than him,” he warned quietly. He reached over to pull a tunic from a peg on the wall and tossed it to her to cover herself. “Go on.”

Felice clutched the tunic to her body like a shield, sliding a worried glance toward the bed where Dom had now begun to shift. When she did not move immediately, Griff subtly advanced toward her. It was all the coaxing she needed. Felice scurried out of the chamber like a field mouse fleeing a hungry barn cat.

With her out of his way, Griffin pulled his dagger from its sheath and stalked over to where Dom yet rested. He swept aside the curtain and stared down at the man who sought to destroy him.

“Felice, close the curtains,” Dom murmured against the
bolster beneath his head. “You’re letting in a draft, my dove.”

Silently, Griff leaned forward. He pressed the flat of his blade against Dom’s face, letting the edge of the cold steel bite into the hollow below the earl’s beard-grizzled cheekbone. “I’m afraid Felice had to rush off suddenly.”

Dom’s eyes flew open. “Jesus Christ!” he gasped, staring up in alarm at the slivered, threatening gaze of his foster brother. He braced his palms beneath his chest on the mattress, but froze when it appeared he was unsure if he could manage an escape without losing half his face in the process. Wincing, he let out his breath on a strangled sounding groan.

Griff took an unhealthy amount of pleasure in seeing Dom too stricken to move, pale and sweating under his blade. “I warrant our meeting like this has been a long time coming, has it not,
brother
?”

“Good God, have you gone mad?” Dominic seethed. “You are a dead man! My guards will kill you for this.”

Griff chuckled. “I’ve already considered that likelihood, yet here I am. Perhaps I am mad after all.”

“Why?” Dom asked. “Why do you do this, Griffin? Do you mean to kill me? For what purpose—money? Revenge? If you think I am holding a grudge for your taking the woman from me, I assure you, I am not! I could bring you no harm—you are as my own brother!”

Griff scoffed, leaning in a little heavier on his dagger. The sharp edge cut into Dom’s flesh, drawing a thin line of blood along the length of the slim blade. How satisfying it would be to turn it toward Dom’s neck and drive it home, he thought with a savage burst of ire.

Dom likely sensed the brutality of Griff’s thinking, for his words began to spill out of him in a desperate rush. “I have been searching for you across all of England to tell you to come back, Griffin. All I wanted was the woman returned. You must believe me!”

“Is that why you and Lackland put such a handsome bounty on my head?”

“Prince John called for the bounties, not me!” Dom wailed. “I swear, I tried to defend you to him—”

“Damn your lies,” Griff growled. “Are you so far estranged from the truth that you forget what it is entirely? I have never asked a thing of you in all the years I lived under this roof,” Griff said tightly, “but tonight you will give me what I demand, Dom. By nails and blood, you will give me what I am due.”

Dominic began to shake, his body’s tremors setting the entire mattress to trembling. “Anything!” he choked. “Gold. Land. Anything I have! It’s yours!”

Griff eased off of him in disgust, taking away the blade as he rocked back on his heels. “Get up.”

At first Dom didn’t move. Slowly, he turned his head to where Griffin stood, his eyes yet wild and frightened, his breath still rushing out of him, rapid and shallow. He pushed his torso up off the mattress, then brought his legs beneath him and sat there staring at Griffin, naked and shaking. Pathetic.

Griff sheathed his dagger. “Get dressed,” he ordered.

Dom crept off the bed, stumbling in the folds of the long curtains as he went to retrieve the braies and hose that lay discarded on the floor of the large chamber. He donned his clothing quickly, if somewhat clumsily, for the continued trembling of his unsteady fingers. Griff kicked a rumpled tunic to him, waiting in stony silence as the earl shrugged into it and turned to face him.

“What is it you demand of me, Griffin?” he asked, looking thin and wan, very much the weakling youth that Griff remembered from his early days at Droghallow. “What will you have?”

Griff walked to where Dom’s broadsword sat propped against the wall in its sheath. “I will have the truth from
you at last,” he said as he threw the weapon to him, “or I will have your death.”

Dom caught his sword in both hands, his palms slapping against the hard leather that encased it. He held the weapon thus for a moment, quaking, his mouth moving mutely as Griff reached down and calmly drew his own blade. Lightning cracked outside the flapping shutters. The polished length of steel Griff held before him shone silver and deadly in the sharp jag of brightness that illuminated the room. In the dark that followed, Dom began to mumble an incoherent prayer.

“Draw your weapon,” Griff instructed him.

“P-please, Griffin. I beg you—”

With a snarl, Griff slashed his sword through the air, bringing it to rest neatly beneath his foster brother’s quivering chin. “Your weapon, sirrah.”

His neck stretched taut, Dom fumbled to free his blade of its scabbard. Griff brought his hand down, striking at his opponent’s wobbly-held sword as he stepped back to give him room to fight. A crash of thunder shook the tower; the rain surged harder, slanting into the room and wetting the rushes beneath Dom’s feet.

“How long have you known about me?” Griff asked, his voice low, cold, even to his own ears. “Did you know I was born of Montborne when you charged me with the kidnap of Sebastian’s bride?”

Dom feigned a measure of surprise. “What? You, a Montborne! I had no idea—”

Griff put his rage into his answering thrust, a violent blow that nearly knocked Dom’s weapon from his grasp. “The truth, damn you, or I’ll slay you where you stand.”

The earl’s throat convulsed. “I might have had my suspicions, but I—”

This time Griffin’s jab bit into the fleshy part of Dominic’s upper arm.

“All right!” he relented, jumping out of Griff’s path as he glanced down to his torn sleeve and the dark stain that seeped into the white linen. “All right … I knew.”

“How long?”

Dom sniffed, tilting his chin at an arrogant angle as he considered. “Since Alys died. She had some … letters. They were written by a highborn cousin of hers—Joanna of Montborne. One of my servants found the box that contained them hidden in Alys’s chamber. I read the letters,” he said quietly, “and then I burned them.”

“Bastard,” Griff growled. He swiped at him, but in his fury, his aim was off. The earl feinted to the side and Griffin missed his mark. “You stole my life, Dom. You denied me the information of my birth and then you sought to use it against me by hiring me to steal my own brother’s bride. Would you ever have told me?”

“Oh, yes,” Dom replied. “Indeed, I had every intention of telling you—”

“After Isabel was delivered to John and you had your payment,” Griffin finished for him. His foster brother’s flat stare was ample confirmation. “Jesus, Dom. Can you hate me so much?”

“The truth is what you crave?” he asked, his teeth bared in a parody of a smile. “Yes. I hate you that much.”

Griff stared at the leering stranger standing before him, the vacant-souled beast he had fought for all these years, protected like his own kin. “You hated me, and so you cared not that your plot against me would have likely sent an innocent woman into a living hell? She nearly died because of your damned orders.”

“The chit was merely a means to an end.” Dominic chuckled. “It was you I meant to send into a living hell,
brother.”
Slyly, he inched his way along the perimeter of the room, his subtle steps carrying him nearer and nearer to the partially open door. “You say I stole your life? Nay. ’Tis you who is the thief—you and Alys both! The two of
you conspired to steal my father’s affection. No doubt you would have stolen Droghallow from me as well, had my weak-hearted fool of a sire not perished before you could wheedle the demesne out of him.”

“I never sought to steal a thing from you,” Griffin said, moving closer to the door himself, anticipating Dom’s likely flight. “I never wanted to replace you in your father’s esteem, nor did I ever have designs on Droghallow.”

“Oh, no?” Dom scoffed. “Then why else would you have stayed all this time?”

“Because I made a promise.” Griff saw the earl’s slight flinch over the statement, the falter in his smug, scornful smile. “Your father asked me to stay here, Dom. He made me swear to him that I would remain at Droghallow in service to you where I could see that you ruled as he would have you do. He didn’t want to go to his grave worrying that his son would pander away everything he had worked so hard to build.”

“Liar!” Dom blurted angrily.

“I failed him,” Griffin said, “but surely no more than you have in your greed and dishonor.”

Dominic’s gaze narrowed to lethal slits that burned a rage so deep it was visible across the distance of the darkened room. His glance slid beside him to where a water ewer sat atop a sideboard near the door. Griff lunged forward just as Dom hurled the pottery vessel at his head. He ducked, and the ewer shattered against the wall where he had been standing.

The momentary diversion was all the opportunity Dom needed. He bolted out the chamber door and into the corridor, the soles of his bare, wet feet smacking on the stone floor with each hasty step, his untucked tunic flapping around his knees. He slipped and skidded around a bend in the passageway, bellowing for his guards from the top of the spiraling stairwell.

Griff fell in behind and gave chase, ignoring the instinct
that told him to turn instead for the other set of stairs, where he might manage to escape to save his own skin. But his issue with Dom was not yet satisfied. Until it was, he fully intended to play out this confrontation to its end—even if it meant charging headlong into a sea of armed Droghallow guards.

Dom was only a few steps ahead on the winding stairwell. Still screaming for assistance, he half stumbled down the stairs, his sword sparking off the curving stone wall as he fought to keep his balance. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and saw Griffin behind him, gaining on him.

At the base of the stairs were two tall iron candelabras; Dom deliberately knocked them both over as he passed, throwing the obstacles into Griffin’s path. Griff leaped off the last couple of steps with a snarl. Having cleared the flaming mess, his spurs bit into the floor of the landing as he set off down another passageway, fast on Dom’s heels.

He kept waiting for a retinue of knights to step into his line of sight, kept waiting to feel the bite of steel in his back, or the sudden jarring impact of a crossbow’s bolt. But no interference came from Droghallow’s garrison, and in the next moment they would be too late, for Dom was within his reach.

Griff seized him by the scruff of his tunic, pulling him up short. His footing lost, Dominic began to choke. His weapon slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Clawing at the garroting fabric at his throat, Dom sputtered and cursed. But Griff was too far gone in his rage to care; he only pulled the collar tighter. He jerked Dom off his feet and shoved him face first into the stone wall of the corridor. Coming up close behind him, Griff jammed his blade against the earl’s spine.

Dom gasped, screwing his eyes shut, his lips dry and bloodless. “Kill me and you’ll never get out of here
alive,” he growled. “You must know that, Griffin. Don’t be a fool.”

With Dom’s warning came the confirming sound of heavy, booted footfalls echoing from the head of the corridor. Several dozen knights were making their way into the keep, armor jangling, spurs clacking with each urgent step. Griffin shook off his hesitation and savagely hauled Dom around, forcing his foster brother to face him. He raised the point of his sword, holding it at Dom’s throat. The blade cut in, drawing a bead of blood at the place where his pulse hammered wildly.

The knights were coming closer, nearly to the bend that would deliver them to where Griffin stood, intent and ready to slay their lord. The earl blinked away a trickle of sweat that rolled from his forehead into his eye. One of the guards shouted his name. Dom drew in his breath, then swallowed hard, as if he meant to answer the call, and quickly thought better of it.

Griff brought his arm up, leveling the blade for a lethal thrust. “I warrant you are deserving of a far slower death than the one I give you tonight, Dom.”

His hand flexed around the sword’s leather grip. Dominic averted his gaze, turning his head so as not to watch the blow that would seal his doom. The guards, meanwhile, had rounded the final corner of the passageway. They were nearly upon them now.

Griff’s nostrils flared with the deep breath he took in preparation for what he was about to do.

At his back, he heard the soldiers draw to a halt. There followed a deep, rational voice he had come to recognize in the course of the past few days. “Griffin. He’s not worth it, my brother. You are better than this.”

“Am I?” he muttered, wanting to spill Dom’s blood even though he knew the satisfaction of seeing him dead would be fleeting. Still, he did not back off so much as a fraction,
and Dominic’s eyes, now open, grew wide with the realization that he might yet die. “I should kill him for what he would have done to Isabel, for what he did to me, and you … for everything he’s done.”

“You no doubt have a thousand good reasons to slay him,” Sebastian reasoned calmly as he placed his hand on Griff’s shoulder. “But it is not your place to do so, nor is it mine. Surely you do not mean to deny King Richard the pleasure of dealing with this treasonous rabble as he sees fit.”

Griffin considered his brother’s words, and slowly, he relaxed his hold on Dom. The earl sagged against the wall once Griff brought down his weapon and started to move away from him. A nod from Sebastian sent two of his guards forth to seize the earl bodily, taking hold of him by the arms, while another man bearing an official’s scroll stepped forward to address him.