By Grace Possessed (14 page)

He could make an assignation with Lady Catherine over their evening meal, but that required the rather chancy assumption that she would be willing to risk
coming to him again. He could walk with her after they ate, and entice her into his chamber, but such a ploy would expose her to censure if they were seen. He could prowl the palace in search of some corner where they could be private, rather than expect her to be closeted with him, though any place he could think of would be subject to discovery. Or he could simply appear at her small nun’s cell of a chamber and hope that Marguerite would be both complaisant and discreet enough to allow them privacy.

Somehow, the drawbacks of these possibilities loomed larger than they had as he lay trying to sleep while the king’s men snored around him. None of the ploys suited him, yet the alternative pleased him even less. Abstinence was no doubt suitable for a bridegroom on the eve of his wedding, but Ross could see no benefit in it.

A soft sound, like the creak of a hinge, scattered his musings. With it came a draft that gently wafted the canopy above him and brought the rise of goose bumps across the tops of his shoulders. No one spoke, however, and no footsteps sounded.

This was not the entry of another hunter bent on cleanliness, nor was it a serving woman with towels, more water to replenish the cauldrons or a more personal offer. Ross lay perfectly still, barely breathing as he listened to the whisper of fabric against fabric caused by a stealthy advance. Man or woman, he could not tell. Not until he caught the acrid whiff of male sweat and belched ale.

Above him, on the canvas tent that enclosed the tub, a shadow crept forward, cast by the light of a bowllike lamp on its corner stand. The silhouette moved higher,
wider, turned into the shape of a man with something short and pointed clutched in his raised fist. The intruder eased forward, lifted his arm higher.

Linen ripped with a dull scream. Ross thrust up a hand to catch the thick hairy wrist that appeared above him. He twisted with such force that the knife the intruder held dropped, splattering into the tub between Ross’s spread knees. Surging upward with hard power and a sluicing cascade of sudsy water, he brought the arm down across his bent knee with a hard crack.

The man screamed, jerking, flailing backward so he dragged the split bath canopy half off its supports. Ross gave him a hard push to send him farther. The attacker landed so hard he rolled, halting just short of the fireplace. Eyes wild, he scrambled to his feet.

Ross leaped from the tub to plunge after him, but his foot caught in the dragging canopy, skidded in the soap scum spreading over the floor. He staggered, lunging enough that his hand closed on a filthy doublet, but the man grunted and tore free.

Thrown off balance, Ross hit the stone floor full length, sprawling in dirty suds, jarring his half healed knife wound to a vicious ache. As his attacker lurched toward the open doorway and fled through, Ross leaped up again, swearing in blistering phrases as he sprinted after him.

Naked, wet and raging, he halted in the antechamber outside, holding his side. A door stood open along the way. He sprinted toward it, emerging in the palace’s laundry yard. The space was a maze of wooden troughs and
sagging drying lines, deserted at this time of evening, made hazardous by gathering darkness.

He could go floundering after the bastard, but the chances of running him down were not good. The fellow seemed to know the palace, and had the additional advantage of being clothed. With a curse at every step, Ross turned and retraced the path made by his wet footprints, closed himself back into the bathing chamber.

He was dirty again, his skin coated with grit. Stepping back into the lukewarm tub, he splashed mightily to clear it away. As he scooped deep, he knocked against the knife dropped by his assailant. Ross groped for it, curled his fingers around the hilt to bring it up into the light.

His breath left him in a soundless grunt.

The blade in his hand was a dainty thing, a ladies’ knife of the kind that usually nestled in a scabbard swinging from a chatelaine. Lethally sharp, it was a poniard with a chased silver blade and a hilt of ebony worked with silver filigree. It was the knife used at meals by Lady Catherine Milton of Graydon.

Ross felt a sharp pain in his chest, as if the thing had struck his vitals, after all. The wedding was nigh, and he had not yet died the convenient death that would leave the lady free. He had survived whatever accidents and disease usually carried off the suitors of the Three Graces.

The lady had no wish to be his wife. What was she to do if she was not to be wed on the morrow?

Why, take matters into her own hands, of course.

Cate had meant to see that she was spared. She had,
so it appeared, decided to invoke the curse herself with the aid of a paid assassin.

It had not worked, as she would soon discover. What would she do now, with the wedding almost upon them? Might she attempt the job herself?

His hand closed slowly around hilt and blade, tightening until he felt the sting of a cut and seep of warm blood winding down his wrist. The Cate he had come to know was willful, determined and fearless, yes; she did not bow meekly to her fate as was expected of a lady in her position. Still, he had not judged her to be a murderess.

What if she wasn’t? What if the point had been a mere reminder of his vow not to be wed? If he withdrew as a bridegroom, might the curse not be nullified?

But no, that would not serve. She must know he was not so craven. Ross had signed the contracts, which meant he was her husband even if their union was never blessed by the church. The only way to be rid of him was to see him dead.

Well, then, let her try. Let her, though he would not provide his future bride with so convenient an opportunity as his bed this night.

Closing his eyes, he whispered a curse more virulent than all the rest.

Cate’s heartbeat raced as she entered the great hall. Though it was thronged with people, she saw no one except Ross, in his seat against one wall. He lounged in his chair with a wine cup in his hand and brooding intensity in his eyes. His saffron linen shirt stretched across his wide shoulders, with the end of his plaid thrown over
his left, but the new jerkin he wore was of blue-dyed leather that made his eyes appear as dark as a northern storm. His hair was furrowed, as if he’d combed it with his fingers before it dried, yet glinted with health and cleanliness in the torch light. He was every inch the Scots nobleman, easily the most handsome man present, and he was hers.

She paused, aghast at that instant of possessive pride. Of course, it might have been occasioned by the two ladies who sat at a table not far away, whispering as they batted their lashes in Ross’s direction. How dare they ogle him when tomorrow he would be wed to Cate?

Skimming forward with the long back hem of her gown sweeping the rushes, she headed toward her bridegroom. Halfway there, she saw him turn his head in her direction.

He gave no sign of welcome. His features were calm, his gaze as appraising as if she had been a stranger.

Tightness seized her throat. She had expected a smile, or at least some small acknowledgment of the intimacy they had shared. The lack seemed damning in some way she could not grasp. She did not falter, however, but lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with all the boldness at her command.

He rose to his feet, inclined his upper body in a bow. It was shallow and far from deferential. Still, he waved her to a seat at his side and pulled out the bench for her convenience.

“Good day, my lady,” he said, his voice even. “I pray I see you well.”

“Full well.” She swept her skirt aside and seated her
self, though dismay crowded her chest, making it hard to breathe. Such a formal greeting, as if he barely knew her, as if they had not strained together skin to skin, or tangled tongues and breaths. The insult was almost as hurtful as the injury of it.

He regained his seat, leaned toward her so her view of the room was blotted out. “I rejoice to see you. I had thought I must wait until after midnight.”

“Why, when you could have sought me out?”

“Did you expect it, fair Cate? Were you waiting for it?”

Alarm shifted inside her, though more from the look in his eyes than anything he was saying. “It would have been natural, surely.”

“Because of what we did together, you mean to say.”

His voice was deep and layered with suggestion. He searched her face, gazing into her eyes as if he weighed her every expression, every word. She could feel the heat of a flush rise from her breasts to her neck and sweep upward into her face, not all of it from embarrassment. She opened her lips to speak, but could find only a single curt word in reply. “Yes.”

“You were not expecting me to return your property?”

“I…don’t know what you mean.” Had she left something behind in his chamber? She could not think what it might be.

“This, mayhap.” He reached into his sporran and drew something out, placing it carefully on the table in front of her. With a single finger, he gave it a spin. It whirled,
catching the light again and again, until he stopped it suddenly, with its sharp tip pointing directly at her heart.

A poniard. Her poniard.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, reaching for the hilt, “where did you find it? I’ve been looking everywhere.”

He caught her wrist, gripping hard. “When did you last see it?”

She blinked at that stern demand, but answered readily enough. “Two evenings ago. I thought I must have lost it beneath the trestle while I ate, though the servants who break them down had not seen it. How did you come by it?” Her fingers were growing numb, but she refused to acknowledge it, just as she refused to give him the satisfaction of struggling in his grip.

“Why, I found it in my bath.”

“Your bath,” she repeated in blank incomprehension.

“After it was dropped there by the assassin who tried to bury it in my back.”

She inhaled with a sharp gasp. “And you think that I…”

“It would be one way of making certain you need not marry. These deaths that left you and your sisters free so long have been opportune. Could it be that doing away with unwanted suitors is a family habit?”

Anger and alarm flickered like lightning in her brain. He was her husband, in all but the final vow. If he accused her of trying to murder him, the knife might be enough to prove her guilt. The penalty would be hanging, though some wives who did away with their husbands were burned at the stake.

She moistened lips gone suddenly dry. “You can’t be
lieve I would be stupid enough to hand an assassin my personal knife?”

“You might, had he no weapon of his own. It would have a certain justice about it, I will admit.”

“Never would I have parted with it!”

He tipped his head. “You value it more than most then.”

“It was a gift,” she answered through stiff lips.

“From?”

Her fingers were turning bluish-purple. He glanced at them but did not release her.

“A friend met at court.”

“A friend you see no longer, else we would have met. Allow me to guess then. The Frenchman, Henry’s master of revels?”

She stared at him, surprised out of her hauteur. “How did you know?”

“The design, for one thing. Though in the Italian style, the workmanship is French. For the rest, I’ve heard of how familiar he was with you and your sisters, and even with Elizabeth of York.”

“Leon was never familiar, not in the way you suggest,” Cate corrected, her voice not quite steady. “His manner was always most respectful.”

“What, even in the throes of passion?”

She met Ross’s dark gaze while anguish rose inside her. “There was nothing like that. You know that, know I had never—”

Abruptly he released her, closing his fist on the knife’s hilt instead. He kept his gaze on it as he answered. “You were a virgin. That much I’ll give you.”

“How kind of you,” she said in trembling scorn as she rubbed her wrist and hand, which tingled with a thousand pinpricks as the feeling returned. “You might also give me my knife.”

“And have its blade rammed between my ribs? I think not.” He spun the poniard again, his gaze on the glittering show it made. “What was this Leon to you, then?”

“I hardly see that it matters if there is to be no wedding.”

Ross looked up, his pupils so wide his eyes looked black. “Who said not?”

“You can hardly wish to marry a woman you think tried to kill you. But no doubt that was Trilborn’s intention. If his man did his job, then well and good. If not, it would be all the same.”

“Trilborn is no longer with us,” Ross said evenly.

Her smile was bleak. “But he is not long gone, and he did say, before he left, that he would see you dead.”

“Though you failed to warn me of it.”

“What need, when his family and yours have been threatening each other for years? I might have mentioned it, however, if I’d known you would be hunting again. I did fear that something might befall you there.”

“Because of this threat?”

“And the curse, though whether it was that or Trilborn’s doing, the end would have been the same,” she said impatiently. “You would have been gone.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again, so tightly his lips made a straight line. Spinning the knife in an idle gesture, he asked finally, “This Frenchman, tell me about him.”

“He befriended us, my sisters and I, when we came to court,” she said with a resigned shrug. “Our reputation for broken betrothals preceded us, as you may imagine, and Leon was unusual enough, elegant enough, powerful enough in his way, that others followed his lead.” She looked up briefly. “That was secondary to the lead and the fashion set by the king, of course.”

“Of course,” Ross said dryly.

“That Leon accepted us meant the rest did the same. Afterward, there was a matter of treason, also a threat against Henry and his queen. He was forced to leave England.”

“You loved him.” The words were quiet, but had not an iota of softness in them. They demanded an answer, though she could imagine only one reason for it. While unlikely to be jealous, Ross might be inclined to guard against any threat to his property. A wife was chattel, after all.