By His Majesty's Grace (29 page)

“Nay, don’t rise, Sir Rand,” Viscount Henley said, his voice mounting to a hoarse shout of triumph. “Kneel and meet the end you deserve!”

20

T
he blow aimed at Rand’s bent neck should have severed his head from his shoulders. He was not there.

With fierce power, he plunged aside, catching Isabel so she was flung, crying out, beyond the danger area. She heard the whistle of the blade, felt the hot whiff of its passing as it sliced air near her shoulder. She saw in shivering horror the instant when it seemed to slice into Rand’s arm, but caught instead in the knotted rag of white silk he wore around it. In that brief moment of entanglement, he snatched free and leaped erect.

Then she was scrambling farther out of Rand’s way while behind her the nursemaid screamed, the queen rose to her feet with a shaky cry and the king, earthy in his rage, bellowed curses like a Breton sailor.

Rand snatched his knife from his belt even as he ducked away from another two-handed sword slash, swirled like blown smoke from where a third singed the air. The table blade was his only weapon as he had surrendered his sword before entering the queen’s presence. He seemed not to recognize its inadequacy as he steadied his gaze on the man intent on killing him.

“Sir!”

The shout came from David, most faithful of squires, who had followed after them. Beyond him lay the bodies of the yeoman guards, still in bloody death, the guards that should have stopped the armed invasion of the queen’s private chamber. In the lad’s hard right hand was Rand’s own trusted sword David must have taken from them. In his other was a second blade taken from a fallen guardsman.

Hard upon his forewarning, he sent the first great, long weapon in a glittering arc, straight toward his knightly master.

Rand tossed his knife to his left hand, caught the sword from the air with his right. In the same movement, he whirled to face his attacker as David eased deeper into the solar, his young gaze fiercely alert as he waited to see if his further aid was required.

Isabel drew a sobbing breath so deep it tore at her throat. The sound was drowned out by the harsh clang of metal on metal, like the first toll of a funeral bell, as Rand blocked a hammering blow on a cross of steel made by knife and raised sword. He threw Henley stumbling back.

Immediately, he skipped aside to allow a wider field of play. He dropped into a swordsman’s crouch, his face set in grim lines as he faced a new threat.

His opponents had multiplied.

Surging through the door, they spread to either side of Henley, forming a semicircle around their target. They numbered only two more, though they seemed in the first onslaught to be twice as many. And Rand faced them with hard purpose and not a tremor in his sword hand.

Undaunted indeed,
Isabel thought in aching remorse for the jibe about his motto she had thrown at him in his Tower chamber. Her heart shuddered in her chest and she blinked away burning tears of despair as she stared at the dangerous tableau. She should have told Rand of Henley’s attempt, along with Graydon, to take Madeleine from her. Their clumsy effort had almost slipped her mind, in truth, swept away by the loss of the baby to Henry. With the distraction of Rand’s perfect punishment of her the night before, she had not recalled it.

The newcomers stalked their prey, their creeping forms casting grotesque shadows that shrank and grew like beasts of legend. Their features were brutally clear as they faced the lamplight. With no great surprise, she recognized Graydon and William McConnell.

The trio had joined forces, the three men who had reason to want Rand dead. Or had they been confederates from the first, each with his part to play in bringing him down, and his king with him? They must have followed from Westminster, she thought, recalling the ghostly sound of horsemen in the distance and Rand’s listening attitude. Had they claimed to be with their party that they had gained entrance to the queen’s apartments?

Her stepbrother and McConnell must have thought Henley to be in control while Rand was unarmed. They had hung back to watch the slaughter. Now, all three moved around him with the caution of weasels facing their prey, watching for any sign of weakness, depending on their numbers to overpower the quarry. Rand moved in counterpoint, his gaze vigilant as he waited for their move.

In that moment, the king’s majesty vanished and he became the knight he had surely trained to be in his exile. He stepped forward, placing himself between the struggle and his queen with the cradle beside her. Gems gleamed on his short velvet cloak as he whipped it aside to free the pommel of a ceremonial sword. The fine blade sang as he unsheathed it from its swinging, jeweled scabbard.

The three were traitors. It was not just Rand’s death they sought, but that of the king, as well. The die had been cast. They could not withdraw now, could do nothing except play it out.

A brief glance of communication passed between the intruders. Faces set, they leaped to the assault.

At the same moment, Henry stepped into the fight with a ringing clash of steel. He deflected a hard thrust from Viscount Henley, engaging him, drawing the wild-eyed peer away from Rand. His jeweled sword hilt shone with red, green and blue fire between his two hands as he parried in tierce, in prime, his tall form moving with strength and grace. Driving his opponent before him with skill as well as power, he forced him back step by step, back away from the cradle and the queen. And it was easy for Isabel to think, watching him with wide eyes and breathless disbelief, that he had come armed to the confrontation with Rand because he did not trust his friend after holding him prisoner, might not trust him even now.

Moving in concert on the far side, David challenged Graydon with a shout. Isabel, trying frantically to follow this action, saw her stepbrother turn with a guttural oath, saw his eyes light with confidence in his ability to squelch this lesser threat. Her heart doubled its crazed beat as fear he was right scalded her chest. David had been wounded in the clash with Graydon and Henley over Madeleine. It had been his left arm that was slashed, yet how fit was he for this terrible contest?

Rand was left facing his half brother. They circled each other, watching for an opening, two men almost perfectly matched in size and strength. The only difference Isabel could see was that McConnell appeared a trifle more burly in the upper body while Rand had the longer reach. The concentration on their features was the same, and the determination.

McConnell lunged into a lethal advance with every ounce of his strength behind it. Rand met and matched it, his sword catching the lamplight with the flash of a beacon. They settled then into a fury of beating, clanging attacks and parries, slashing at each other with whistling blades and grunts of effort. Sweat shone on their brows, made them blink as it ran into their eyes. McConnell tried a desperate stratagem, plunging into an assault of such power it seemed he thought to beat Rand down with it, to take advantage of his old injuries from the tourney and the weakening affect of prison. But Rand executed a parry that sent his half brother’s sword point sliding harmlessly past his shoulder, then whirled into a riposte that tangled his blade, nearly springing it from his hand. McConnell leaped back, disengaging, while his chest heaved with his hard breathing.

“Unfinished affairs, William?” Rand inquired holding his guard position. “You overreach yourself, it appears, trying to remove not only a pesky half brother who stands between you and what you consider yours, but a duly crowned king. Ah, no, allow me a correction. You meant also to dispose of the newborn heir and his mother so as to eliminate all threat. Otherwise, you accomplish nothing.”

“It can yet be done,” McConnell answered, leaning into another advance.

“Without losing your head for it?” Rand parried with swift grace and a bell-like chime of blades. “I’d have said differently. To take the blame for your crimes, yet again, is no part of my plans.”

McConnell gave a breathless laugh. “Why not, when you make such a perfect whipping boy?”

At that snide reminder of past pain, Rand sprang forward to drive his half brother back. His words were as sharp-edged as his sword. “My part in this game is paltry. If Henry did not send the men-at-arms—or mercenaries, rather—to Braesford for Mademoiselle Juliette, then it had to be you. Naturally, you could not afford to come yourself, but the thing was easily arranged. Who else had the authority to use the king’s livery? Who had access to such directives as could be forged for your purpose, or to mercenaries who cared nothing for how they earned their pay?”

“The advantages of rank are many,” McConnell answered, with arrogance layering every word of that platitude.

“It was always you from the first, hanging about when Juliette’s baby was born, making trouble by suggesting to the dull-witted midwife that the small mite had burned to death, taking the rumor of it to Westminster so Henry’s hand was forced and he had to recall me to the palace. You even pushed your men like a devil’s spawn so they reached Braesford on Isabel’s heels, in time to stop the wedding.”

“Are you just now seeing it? I thought you sharper than that.”

“Or less trusting, mayhap? Would that I had been! Poor Juliette. Was she frightened when she realized your men were not taking her to a retreat arranged by the king? Did you visit her in her prison? Was she trying to escape when you threw her down the stairs, then cut her throat?”

“Why should I do that? The little whore was quite accommodating, as you may imagine.” McConnell snorted. “She thought to gain her freedom with a bedding or two, expected to be released when I tired of her.”

“Because you told her so, I don’t doubt, and she expected a nobleman to stand by his word.”

“More fool she, when it was given to one so worthless. But it was Henley who ended her life. He was annoyed, you see, as she refused to accommodate him.”

It was said so easily. Isabel put a hand to her mouth to hold back a cry of disgust laced with sick rage. Behind her, she heard the king’s growl of fury, the queen’s strained breathing, the nursemaid’s moans. Above all these rose the crying of the babies in their shared cradle, a frantic rasping brought on by the tension in the chamber, the raised voices and the clamor of blades.

Rand seemed beyond it all as he narrowed his gaze on the man before him. “You allowed Henley to kill her,” he said in grim accusation.

McConnell twitched a shoulder. “You were to have the blame, after all. All was in order—the message to you written as I stood over the French strumpet, the men-at-arms led at a fair distance behind as you rode gallantly to her rescue, her death at the appointed hour so you might be caught with a warm corpse. But you came early, so outdistanced us. You found her before we arrived, must have seen us coming.”

“Thus slipped through your careful trap. Such a disappointment for you.”

“These things depend on dame fortune. Your escape was temporary, however. Dear Henry signed the order for your arrest almost before I could present the story of Mademoiselle’s death. You should thank him, as the Tower can be a refuge as well as a prison. My next move, had you been available, would have been to stir up the common folk so they hanged you out of hand.”

The words were shortened by McConnell’s labored breathing. Rand, his features grim and hair wet with sweat in the gold-and-orange glazing of lamplight, gave him no time to recover but bore in with another advance. The snick and slide of the blades was like an accompaniment to the harsh clash of their voices. Beneath both, like an obbligato, was the clang and clatter of the other matches and nerve-shattering screams of the babies. The smells of sweat, hot metal and lamp oil hung heavy in the thick air.

“Enterprising,” Rand commented. “Still, the effect of your plotting was failure, as with the tampering with Leon’s firebox.”

“Graydon’s stupidity, that. It was to have been a fiery death for Henry, Elizabeth and the heir she carried. And you, too, had He not ordained otherwise.”

“To what end? A Yorkist king on the throne again? Did you expect Braesford as your reward for bringing it about?”

“Why not, as you were so disobliging as to avoid death twice on your wedding day. Did you actually believe I was coming to your aid at the tourney? No, no. It was for the coup de grâce.”

“After I was unhorsed by Graydon and Henley, of course.”

“So simple a thing in the dust and confusion, yet the clumsy idiots could not manage it.”

Grim acceptance was Rand’s only response that Isabel could see. “And the courtier who thought to entice me into a dawn meeting?”

“Another unworthy instrument too easily vanquished. But I still had hope then of seeing you hanged for the death of the French whore’s bastard.”

“But the baby lived,” Rand said, constantly harrying his adversary.

“Henley misplaced her in the dark. You had the luck of the devil, laying hands on her so quickly. No doubt it was borrowed from your accursed wife. I expect to enjoy the like myself one day.”

“You intend to have her along with Braesford Hall.”

McConnell grunted. “Oh, aye, her above all.”

“Above all, indeed, as she is and always will be forbidden to you,” Rand returned in accents like the breaking of thickest glass. “As the widow of your half brother, she would fall within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity.”

“Who said aught of marriage? The curse of the Graces should be avoided if I merely bed her. But you, as her duly wedded husband, must die for daring to be wed in defiance of it.”

“No!” Isabel cried out in half-mad anguish. “No, he need not! There is no curse, never was a curse.”

McConnell gave a harsh laugh, his gaze raking her before he snapped his attention back to Rand. “She lies for you, is that not fascinating? She ignored my whispered persuasion, my enticements to turn false for our purpose. She would not agree, even under threat, to perjure herself at what should have been your appearance before the King’s Court. Did you know?”