Her One Desire (29 page)

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The threat of rain left the air damp on Lizzy’s face and emphasized the sugary smell of the purple heliotrope she layered in John’s arms. The fragrance eased through her, calming her, while the spittle of rain reminded her of Broc. The combination lifted her spirit along with her lips.

Bending over beside a silver birch tree, she broke off another sprig and set it in the cradle of John’s arms. She happened to glance at him and caught his crooked grin. “Celeste has been fashing over ye. Twill be good to tell her ye are happy.” John bent at the knees to catch her eye. “What makes you think I’m happy?” Using her blade, she cut a bundle of foliage.

“Your smile. Tis contagious.” John gestured toward the other men with a nod, sending a trickle of dew rolling off his bald head. “I dinnae know Duffy even had teeth.” She knew John, and Beth’s husband, Reynold, but was uncertain which of the remaining four was Duffy. She peeked up at the five Maxwell warriors now grinning at her like shy boys. They stood as thick and strong as the old tree trunks surrounding them in the woodland. With an assortment of flowers piled to the middle of their chests, they looked odd and out of place—swords attached to their backs and hips, black hilts poking from their laced boots, and muscles rippling behind the masses of colored petals. She returned their amused looks, thinking they were as much misplaced in this setting as she was playing the role of Lady Maxwell inside Skonoir Castle. She would never be worthy of Muira’s title. The woman had held the position for more than thirty years. She carried herself like a queen holding a scepter among the womenfolk and a warrior brandishing the sword among her kinsmen. She’d gone to war for her clan. Lizzy was everything Muira was not—gentle, timid, English.

Refusing to let the woman ruin her moment, she brushed her hands on her trews and gave her attention to John. “The flowers make me happy and the rain reminds me of a dance.”

“A dance mayhap ye shared with your husband?” John winked.

“He told you?” Heat crawled up her neck.

“Nay.” John’s trickery caused a heavy frown to pull her face downward. “’Twas a good guess, I suspect.” His eyes narrowed and scanned the woodland. “We should head back to the bailey.”

John had nagged her since they entered the glen to make haste and get back inside walls Lizzy had no desire to be behind. “I fear I do not belong here.”

A frustrated sound vibrated in John’s throat, and he shot air out of his nose. “Agreed. Ye dinnae belong here. The laird’s wife belongs in there.” John glanced back toward Skonoir Castle.

“Nay. I mean here in Scotland. Muira does not like me.” “The woman has not trained anyone in years. She let ye win, lass. Trust me, ye have gained her approval.” Lizzy brushed her fingers over the hilt of her sword. “She did not let me win. I drew blood. I won on my own.” “Aunt Muira let her guard down, but I can assure ye, she would not have let ye win had she known ye intended to leave the stronghold.”

Lizzy scoffed at him. “We are on Maxwell soil. The drawbridge entering Skonoir Castle is just beyond the hill. Are your borders so ill-protected you feel we are in danger?”
“We
are not in danger.
Ye
are. Ye are a valuable commodity to our clan. The moment Maxwell took ye to wife, ye became a mark for reivers. They run the borders, stealing livestock and anything else that might bring them coin. Lord Maxwell would pay nicely for your return should ye be captured.” “Why did Muira not tell me this?”

“She is trying to appease ye.”

“Appease me? Is that what she is doing? Tis more like humiliating me.” Lizzy started back toward the stronghold. “I do not wager, but if I did, I would bet Lady Maxwell purposely let me go, hoping I might not return. Someone should have told me about these reiver men. I do not wish for my odd fancies to cost Lord Maxwell coin or men. Forgive my lack of regard toward the title I now bear. I am not accustomed to being of such worth.”

John’s steps quickened beside her, as did the footfalls snapping twigs behind her. “One would think a woman bearing the executioner’s name would be familiar with threats against her person.”

‘”Tis like a disease. Most people fear me, as they do my father.” Lizzy pushed her hair back so she could see John’s face, curious about his opinion of her. “Do I look like the kind of person who would chop your head off while buying a silk ribbon on Watling Street?”

“Nay.” He laughed at her, making her think the Scots were not half as judgmental as the English.

A gurgling noise behind her made her turn.

One of the Maxwell men fell to his knees. The buttercup poppies he’d been holding speckled the ground in front of him. His shocked light eyes stared at nothingness while blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Lizzy heard her own inhale interrupted by the whisper of falling blossoms. A flurry of color dabbled the area surrounding the Maxwell warriors’ boots, where they had spilled her flowers to unsheathe their weapons. The woodland came alive. Arms and legs formed out of the tree trunks. Debris fell away from rising bodies. Then from within the shadows of foliage came bold splashes of scarlet and gold.

“Get her back to Skonoir.” Reynold pointed his sword at John.

“Piss V nettles!” John grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her off her feet. Her legs didn’t move as quickly as John’s. “Reivers?”

“Nay. They wear the colors of York.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. “Gloucester’s men?” She glanced back over her shoulder. For every Maxwell ensued in battle, there were three scarlet surcoats. Lizzy stumbled, but John clutched her arm in a bruising grip and kept the pace. Survival accelerated her sprint up the knoll. Her throat burned as her boots kicked through the grasses. The bridge over the moat appeared, but the pummel of hoofbeats escalated behind her.

John jerked and disappeared beside her.

Her own scream cried out to the frightened woman inside her as John scrambled on hands and knees with a dagger buried to the hilt in his shoulder. “Run!”

She drew her sword as her vision filled with color. Gloucester’s man leapt off his moving steed in a swirl of scarlet and purple. He landed on top of her with a knee in her gut and flicked her weapon from her grip as easily as a child. His weight was suffocating. Her ribs pressed against her lungs, making breathing impossible. She struggled beneath him with the determination of a seasoned warrior. Bucking and squirming, she pushed hard against his shoulders, his neck, his chin, digging her nails into his pasty flesh, but her efforts presented no match for his strength. The English bastard captured her wrists in a viselike hold and dragged her down the knoll on her back. At an angle on the side of the knoll, John lay facedown, unmoving. “Nay!” she screamed and lashed out, kicking her legs and digging her nails into the hand binding them, while every muscle within her pulsed with rage. “Let me go!” she bellowed uselessly, desperate to help John. Her heels scraped across the damp earth until the contrasting mixture of blood and flowers singed her nostrils. She craned her neck awkwardly. Amid a garden of wildflowers lay all five Maxwell warriors. Crimson blood painted multicolored petals in a rendering that would stain her eternal memory.

Saliva thickened in her mouth. The coppery taste of bile burned her throat. They were sons and husbands and fathers. Lizzy thought of Celeste and her unborn child and wanted to weep, but six of Gloucester’s men appeared all around her and pinned her to the ground, two men on each of her legs and one on each arm. Her eyes fixed on a bright gold thread outlining a cloud. That thread was broken when the darkest demon of her past emerged above her—Lord Hollister. Black hair framed his thin face in waves, and the evil look in his dark eyes sent a shudder of dread up her spine. Her limbs shook within their binds. She turned away, not wanting to see the tilt of his jaw or the lift of his arrogant smile. Broc’s attempts to make her brave failed, for fear froze her. Lord Hollister traced the tip of his sword from her chin, down her throat, between her breasts, and stopped at the apex of her rib cage. The sharp point punctured her tunic and threatened to pierce her skin.

“You always liked to count, Lizbeth. How many men do you think I had to kill to find you?” He pulled the half piece of parchment from his surcoat and threw it at her. “I want the other half.”

“Do you think I’m such a fool to carry it on my person? Lord Maxwell promised he would bring it to you in exchange for my nephews.”

“I trust no Scotsman’s word, nor the word of his whore.” “I am not his whore. I am his wife, and you are trespassing on Maxwell soil.” Empowered by Broc’s image, Lizzy snarled at him, baring her teeth.

“You dare to threaten me?” He dropped to the ground, jamming one bony knee between her trew-covered thighs.

“Your guards have been gutted, and your husband is not here to protect you. You of all people should know death is a blessing compared to the deeds others might thrust upon you. Tell me, Lizbeth, would your husband still want you if you’d been soiled by thirty Englishmen?”

One finger traced the scar beside her ear. His touch was more repulsive than all the evils of Hades. She spit at him in reply to his threat. “He’s going to kill you.”

His lips twitched at the corners, favoring her with an ugly grin. “He’ll need all of Scotland to defeat me,” he boasted and wiped the spittle from his black beard. “I ride with Gloucester’s men. An army of nigh three hundred en route to Northampton to collect the sovereign king.” How could that be? Her insides fell in denial. “But you are conspiring against the very kingdom Gloucester has sworn to protect.”

“Mayhap I act on behalf of Gloucester’s orders. Who do you think is in line to hold the crown after King Edward?” “Prince Edward,” Lizzy replied without a moment’s thought.

“Not if Gloucester names the king’s son a bastard. Twould be Gloucester himself.”

“Nay. Tis a lie.” Lizzy searched for a truth she would not find in Lord Hollister’s words.

“If you were conspiring alongside Gloucester, then you wouldn’t have followed me to York. I exposed you and Buckingham as England’s traitor.” Lord Hollister snarled “But you didn’t give Gloucester the document. You provided him no proof. He was easily swayed to disregard your accusation against myself and Buckingham when I informed him you aided the escape of a Scottish spy. Gloucester hates the Scots and now assumes you are conspiring with them.”

“Then Gloucester is a fool, for his enemies are right beneath his nose.”

“His error is my gain.”

“If you already convinced him you are not his enemy, then why are you here?”

“Buckingham sent me for the rest of the document, and I intend to thoroughly enjoy making you pay for stealing it from me.”

Lizzy had no doubt he would contrive a wicked punishment. The gory images of every execution she’d ever witnessed whirled through her head and caused her mind to weaken. Kamden died with one swift blow. She would not be so fortunate. “Why do you hate me so much?” The ridiculous question left her lips before she even had time to discern it.

“Because you share blood with the bastard who stole my wife and my sons.”

“They were never your sons.” With the comment barely off her tongue, he raised his hand high, then slapped her. The stinging in her cheek vibrated in time with her accelerating pulse.

“Tie her to a steed.”

Chapter 19

“Go to the Great Hall and announce my arrival,” Broc ordered his seneschal. “I wish to speak with my wife before I’m attacked by the brethren.”

“Very well, m’lord.” His seneschal dismounted, gathered the reins of both steeds, and turned them over to an awaiting squire.

Eager to locate his wife, Broc quickly climbed the steps to the keep. With any luck, his kinsmen would still be lingering in the Great Hall after sup and the womenfolk too busy with their duties and their bairns to notice him sneaking up the tower stairwell. He slipped into the corridor and found it blessedly quiet.

Confident he could make it to the north tower, he took the stairs two at a time. His travels to Edinburgh had been fruitful, and Lizbeth would be pleased to hear King James already sent correspondence to ambassadors in France and even considered making peace with the English. His time away from her made him realize she was more than an infatuation, more than a body to ease his needs. She had become part of him. He could not rule Clan Maxwell without her support. She made him strong, fearless. All of which he intended to tell her, after he made love to her—twice, mayhap three times before he set out for London. Anticipating her taste, he licked his lips and swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth.

He opened the door to his solar and found it cold and empty. Damn! ‘Twas wishful thinking. Her absence, however, meant she’d settled in nicely and was most likely prattling about with his kinswomen.

He glided down the stairwell and entered the Great Hall. The trestle tables should be filled with his brethren, but the only people present were Mam and a few dawdling maids. Something was amiss. “Where is Lizbeth?” Mam turned, her skin sickly pale with dark shadows beneath red, swollen eyes. “She is gone.”

“What do ye mean she’s gone?” Broc strode through soured floor rushes.

“Yester eve your wife went outside the bailey to collect flowers. She dinnae return.”

Mam’s eyes diverted to the empty hearth, no doubt to hide her guilt. His breathing became uncontrolled along with his fury. His palm slid over the hilt of his sword, itching to draw. “I gave orders for her to remain inside the stronghold. Who disobeyed those orders?”

Mam closed her eyes. “I gave her permission to go.” “What?” he yelled. The maids dropped their cleaning pails and scurried away like frightened hens. He didn’t want to believe Mam capable of such malice, but she’d never given him a reason to think otherwise. “Did ye raise the bridge after she left?”

“Nay. ‘Tis not at all what ye imply.” Mam lifted her skirts and took a step toward him. Her hazel eyes, more gray than green now, were dull, sad, pleading. Broc sidestepped her, trying to keep a distance. His emotions were far too raw, and his control slipped deeper inside him. His hands curled into iron fists. She was his mother, yet the anger thickening his blood made him want to fight. Why wasn’t she wearing her sword? “Tis nay point in hiding your dislike of her. Ye blame her for Aiden’s death.”