Fairest Of Them All (22 page)

Holly slowly straightened, bracing herself for Austyn’s reaction. When it finally came, it was far worse than anything her feeble imagination could have conjured. He threw back his head and laughed. Twas a black sound that rolled through the courtyard in mirthless waves even as he set Holly firmly behind him and pried Carey’s sword from his hand.

Nathanael’s courage faltered as Austyn stalked toward him, broadsword in hand. The bell of his voice tolled with a smidgen less zeal. “I’m not afraid of you, so you needn’t think I am.” He took two steps backward to match each of Austyn’s, but Austyn just kept coming. He fumbled for an appropriate scripture. “ ‘F-f-fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy soul and body in hell.’”

Holly winced as he stumbled over his own robes and sat down abruptly on the cobblestones. Austyn’s shadow fell over him like a messenger of death. Holly knew what she had to do. Knew even as she flung herself forward that it was both the worst thing she could do and the only thing she could do. She had no choice but to reward Nathanael’s foolish gallantry by striving to save both men’s souls.

Austyn was already drawing back the sword when she fell across Nathanael’s body, still clutching her bodice, but spreading her free arm in a protective gesture as old as Eve. Nathanael poked at her, but she refused to budge.

She glared up at her husband, allowing him to witness the birth of the first spark of defiance in her eyes. “Need I remind you that I saved your life once, sir? I ask in return the life of this humble priest”

For a chilling moment as the gleaming blade hung poised above them, she thought he would drive it home through her breast, bidding them both a gleeful fare thee well.

Then his lips quirked in a crooked grin more sneer than smile. “Humble indeed. How touching! Would that I could ever hope to inspire such devotion in a woman’s heart!”

He reached down, grabbed her wrist, and hurled her aside with one hand. She stumbled to her knees as his fist struck Nathanael’s jaw with a resounding crack. The priest melted into a limp puddle on the cobblestones.

Through a haze of shock and relief, Holly became aware that Carey knelt beside her, his deft hands gently assessing her for injury. She might have told him that only her heart was bruised had Austyn’s voice not cracked like a whip in their ears.

“Move away from her.”

Her husband stood over them, every trace of grim humor stripped from his face. The crowd was deathly silent, the tension so hot and thick even a broadsword could not slice it

“She fell,” Carey said. “I was simply seeking to—”

‘Take your hands away from her.”

Carey gazed up at him disbelievingly.

“Now,” Austyn said, touching the tip of Carey’s own sword to his friend’s throat. Holly’s agony multiplied a thousand fold to be the cause of such.

His mouth taut with resentment, Carey rose to his feet, surrendering her to her husband’s mercy.

When Austyn withdrew his gaze from her in that moment, Holly somehow sensed that he had done so for the last time. Twas far worse than when he had recoiled from her in the garden at Tewksbury or avoided glancing at her homely visage during the tournament. Worse even than enduring his icy loathing at her betrayal. This was a dissolution of every bond, both holy and earthly, a separation more absolute than death. Grief pierced her heart, loosing a fresh flow of tears.

“Whore! Jezebel!” The triumphant cry rose from the sky, borne on the wings of insanity. “May God punish the harlot who dares to tempt the righteous man!” Rhys of Gavenmore stood on the parapet with arms outstretched, calling the wrath of God down upon her poor, damp, rumpled head.

Holly had had enough. This time when Austyn reached for her, she resisted. His grip was no longer tinged with violence, but was as implacable as an iron manacle clamped around her wrist Ignoring her spirited struggles, he marched her into the castle, past a sobbing Elspeth, and up the first set of winding stairs to a landing drenched in sunshine.

When Holly saw where he meant to take her, she began to fight in earnest, hammering at his broad back with her fists, clawing at the sun-bronzed skin of his arms. He remained as impervious to her blows as a stone golem. Her curses rose to frantic screams as panic seized her, so dark and consuming it verged on madness. By the time they’d reached the ancient oak door, she was begging, despising herself, but begging all the same, promising anything if he would not lock her away in that terrible place.

He shoved open the door and dragged her inside. Shadows masked his expression. Where before she had struggled to escape him, now she clung to him, pleading with him not to go, not to leave her alone. Tearing her arms from his neck, he thrust her away from him.

Holly stumbled and fell, but was already lurching back to the door when it slammed in her face. A bolt fell into place with the finality of a death knell. Bracing herself with splayed hands, Holly slid down the door, no longer able to summon the will to hammer and scream and plead. All she could do was hug her knees to her chest and pray that if she curled herself into a small enough ball, she would disappear altogether.

And, like another Helen,

fir’d another Troy ...

Could swell the soul to rage,

or kindle soft desire.

John Dryden

None but the brave deserves the fair.

John Dryden

Twas a dark eternity before Holly emerged from that shadowy netherworld between madness and stupor. She knew a vague surprise to find herself still alive. Twas inconceivable to her that her battered heart could go on beating as if nothing had happened. As if Austyn still loved her.

She uncurled her stiff limbs. Dried tearstains had hardened the tender skin of her face. She did not mind, preferring its expressionless mask to any vain twitch of sorrow or hope. She found the numbness a blissful relief, especially when she realized it had crept all the way to her bones.

She rose to face the chamber. She would not have been surprised had Austyn abandoned her to total darkness, but freshets of moonlight streamed through the cracks in the wooden shutters hanging askew from their hinges.

The circular tower defied her expectations. She found no horde of rats nibbling on a fresh carcass. No bleached bones rising to dance a clattering jig. Not even a chorus of Gavenmore brides wailing their mockery at her for failing to heed their warnings. She had anticipated the spartan horrors of a dungeon, but instead found herself in the most luxuriously appointed chamber in the entire castle.

Decades of neglect had left their stain of decay, yet the room still possessed the faded elegance of an elderly woman who clung to her velvets and silks to maintain her fragile illusion of beauty. The thick fall of cobwebs only added to its unearthly air, billowing from the rafters of the vaulted ceiling like veils of ermine.

Holly drifted farther into the chamber, her footsteps muffled by the heavy tapestries surrounding the walls. A massive four-poster bed crowned a gilded pedestal in the center of the room. Not even the moth-eaten condition of its hangings could disguise their brocaded splendor. Tattered velvet ribbons hung from each of the thick, carved bedposts. Holly reached to caress one absently, wondering at its purpose. A magnificent chest resting on four carved claws perched at the foot of the bed.

She ran a finger over its dust-furred surface. A pot of dry, crumbled rouge lay beside a silver comb and an empty scent bottle, reminding Holly with stark clarity that another woman had once occupied this opulent prison. A woman accused of infidelity by her husband, then cut off from his company with ruthless finality, leaving her only these mocking mementos of his former affections.

She lifted the lid of a squat silver box, half expecting to find a severed finger or some other such horror. Her breath caught as the grudging moonlight sparkled over a king’s ransom of gold and gems. She buried her fingers in the tangled treasure, sifting through an emerald-studded fillet, a diamond brooch, a ruby-encrusted pendant on a gold chain thicker than her smallest finger. Why in God’s name hadn’t Austyn sold them to sate Edward’s greedy tax collectors? she wondered. Surely it wasn’t out of respect for his poor dead grandmother.

Dropping the jewels as if they were a nest of snakes, she went to the window and tore open the shutters. No stingy arrow loop here, but a generous rectangular window framed by stone window seats. Twould have to be a large window, she thought bitterly, large enough for a woman to hurl herself out of.

Wind battered Holly, scorching the barren dryness of her eyes. The dizzying height offered her a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside bathed in a silvery quilt of moonlight, but little more than a slice of the solitary courtyard below. She gazed down at the cobblestones, wondering if any trace of blood remained to stain their pitted surface.

A sigh grazed her nape, faint yet audible enough to make the fine fleece there stand erect. She closed her eyes, fearful the ghostly echo would awaken her from her benumbed state. The sigh escalated into a bereft moan that mirrored her suppressed grief so exactly she feared the sound had come from her own throat

The shutters began to flap wildly on their hinges. Holly backed away from the window, stricken by terror. The moan rose to a piercing wail, a keening protestation of wronged innocence. Her heel caught the edge of the hooded hearth and she fell hard on her backside. She clapped her hands over her ears, but the lamentation swelled until it vibrated the very marrow of her bones to aching life.

Tearing her hands away from her ears, she screamed, “Stop it, damn you! Stop it, I say!”

The shutters slammed shut. The howling ceased as abruptly as it had began, leaving her in silence. Quaking like a dormouse, she searched the shadows, fearing an even more dire visitation.

The shutters swung open with a creak. A dank gust of breath stirred her hair. She swiveled to stare into the fireplace, finding nothing but cold ashes and the tiny skeleton of some unfortunate rodent.

A shrill whistle assailed her ears, escalating to a tormented shriek as a musty draft poured from the gaping jaws of the fireplace.

“The wind,” Holly whispered in dull astonishment. “ Tis only the wind whistling down the chimney flue.”

An abashed giggle escaped her, then another. She cupped a hand over her mouth, but the torrent of mirth refused to subside. Soon she was laughing aloud, laughing until her sides ached and tears streamed down her cheeks.

She was utterly alone now. Without Austyn. Without even the ghost of his grandmother to share her exile. Holly doubled over, gasping for breath, never even realizing when her laughter deepened into broken sobs.

Carey found Austyn standing atop the battlements on a completed section of curtain wall, gazing over the molten pewter of the river by moonlight. The balmy wind whipped the dark veil of his hair from his face, revealing features as soulless and foreign as an infidel’s. He bore little resemblance to the man Carey had called friend through sunny days and stormy battles and none at all to the bright-eyed boy with the ready smile and rollicking laugh he remembered from childhood.

“The priest is secured,” Carey said softly, folding himself into a sitting position between two merlons, “but I cannot coax her nurse to stop weeping. I fear the woman’s tears will flood the hall before she’s done.”

“Let them,” Austyn replied, his face betraying not even a flicker of pity. “My father?”

“Sleeping at last. He was quite excited. It took several spoonfuls of mead to calm him.”

They were both silent for several moments before Carey dared to ask, “Did she tell you why?”

Austyn gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Shouldn’t the question be ‘Did I bother to ask?’”

Carey already knew the answer to that. “What will you do with her?”

“Why? Do you want her?” At first, Carey feared his friend did not speak in jest, then a humorless smile quirked Austyn’s lips. “What are my choices? Had he not gone to such pains to be rid of her, I could send her back to her father. Given her talent for mummery, I could sell her to a band of passing troubadours. Or I could just keep her locked in the north tower until her hair grays and her pearly little teeth fall out one by one.”

“And if she chooses to escape captivity as your grandmother did?”

Austyn shrugged. “Then I shall once again be without a wife. Twould be almost a pity though.” His voice softened to a musing purr, his eyes taking on a speculative gleam Carey did not recognize. “Do you know that she promised me anything if I would not lock her away? Pleaded quite prettily for her freedom, she did. Fires the imagination, does it not? The temptation of having a beauty like that on her knees before you, eager to do your bidding . . .”

“Stop it!” Carey jumped to his feet, no longer able to bear Austyn’s taunting. “She’s still your wife, man, not some Londontown whore. Have you no shame?”

Austyn’s icy indifference shattered with a roar. “Aye, I have shame! I burn with it. Shame for being such a fool! Shame for being so blinded by her charms that I couldn’t see through her ridiculous disguise! Shame that I was ready to offer the deceitful little creature my love.” Austyn turned away, gripping a stone merlon until his knuckles whitened.

Carey reached for his friend’s shoulder, then let his hand fall back to his side, sensing his comfort would be neither welcomed nor accepted. “You were no more fool than the rest of us,” he said.

When Carey’s soft footfalls had faded, Austyn threw back his head, savoring the roar of the wind in his ears. He had hoped its savage clamor might drown out the haunting echoes of Holly’s pleas, her pathetic screams as she begged him not to leave her, to stay by her side even if he would extract a terrible price for doing so. He could still feel the weight of her fragile arms clinging to his neck, the plush softness of her breasts pressed to his chest.

He gritted his teeth against the primal urge to howl with loss. He wanted to go to her. To batter down the door that stood between them with his bare fists. To draw her beneath him and rut her like a ravening beast, as if to prove to them both that that was all he ever would be. All any Gavenmore man could be.