Maggie Mine (24 page)

With a sigh of resignation, he backed out of the chamber and carefully closed the door. He would go to his solar and write new missives to be sent out seeking a husband for Lady Stanhope. He would talk to Maggie after she’d rested a bit longer.

A few minutes later, Nicholas frowned as he looked down at the message he’d just written to a baron he believed still looking for a new wife. His thoughts turned to the missives he
ha
d sent previously and to the ones returned that he’d discovered Mary had intercepted. The ones she
ha
d tossed into the fireplace, telling him she
ha
d been hurt by their rejections. Had there been others she’d intercepted? What was she up to? He was married now and her foolish dream of marrying him could be no more. Unless…
.

No!
The thought was ridiculous. She might be a spiteful woman and something of a harpie, but she would never harm Maggie. But suddenly he felt it even more important to find her a husband and get her far away from Middleham.

He
ha
d no sooner returned to writing another message than he sensed he wasn’t alone. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with unease. Then he heard the faint whisper of a sound behind him. A soft footstep.

An instant later a hand shoved his head hard to the surface of his desk.

A knife sliced into his back.

When he tried to get to his attacker, whoever it was banged his head again to the desktop. This time he didn’t try to fight back. This time he was lost first to pain and then to darkness.

*
*
*

“Seize her!” Gerald shouted as he sped into the solar with six armed soldiers.

He grabbed the bloody sgian-dubh from Maggie’s shaking hand. “You murderous witch.”

Maggie felt numb all over, barely aware of Gerald or the two men roughly grabbing her arms. She
ha
d come to speak with Nicholas and found him bent over his desk, her dagger in his shoulder. Shocked, all she could think about was pulling the dagger free. She hadn’t been able to see the horrid
knife
hurting her husband any longer.

Gerald leaned over his lord, felt a vein in his neck. “He lives, but barely.” He glowered at Maggie. “If Lady Stanhope hadn’t come running to me
—”

“Mary?” Maggie questioned in confusion. She couldn’t seem to think straight. “Help him. Oh please, help him.”

She wriggled to get free, desperate to go to Nicholas. The guards held her tight.

“I need to
—”

“You’ve done enough! Lady Stanhope saw you stab him.” Gerald looked at her as if
he
would like to kill her himself. “Get her out of my sight. Put her in the dungeon.”

Mary stepped into the room, crying as she looked at Nicholas slumped over the desk. Then she focused on Maggie. “She must hang for her actions.”

Maggie’s knees buckled and she would have collapsed to the floor if the guards hadn’t held her up. They jerked her stiffly between them and she would have bruises from their rough treatment. “I dinna stab m
y
husband,” she protested, sobbing, struggling to get free. “She lies.”

For just a second
,
Gerald looked uncertain.

Nicholas moaned, started to raise his head, and then seemed to collapse. Too still. Too silent.

“We must get him to his chamber at once! Fetch the cook. She is a healer and can tend to his wound.” He glared at Maggie. “If it isn’t too late.”

Once more she struggled as hard as she could to get free. “Let me go! I can tend to his wound,” she begged. She needed to touch Nicholas, to take care of him. “Oh, God, please.”

Gerald pressed a hand to Nicholas’s back to stop the flow of blood coming from the wound. He leveled a look at her that would have brought most people to their knees. “You stab him in a fit of anger and now want to tend to him?
Think me a fool
?”

He motioned his men toward the door. “Take her to the dungeon. Throw her in a cell.”

“But I
didn’t
attack him! I swear it!” She drug her feet and refused to go meekly away. “You have to believe me.”

“It was
your
dagger that pierced his back.
You
were holding it when we came into the room.” He refused to listen any longer and turned his complete focus
to
Nicholas.

*
*
*

Long hours later, Maggie heard footsteps coming down the stone steps on the far side of the dungeon. The vast cavernous space dimly lit during the day had turned black as tar with the fall of night. Cool, musty air and the stink of things she didn’t want to think about had surrounded her, sickened her. Rats skittered all around the many cells and made her shiver in fright each time they moved. Her space was so small, barely four feet by four feet. She’d paced it often enough to know every inch. She didn’t even have an old cot to sit upon. But she was more frightened of her husband’s state than her conditions.

The footsteps grew closer and she could make out Richard’s hardened face from the torch he carried. He also carried a blanket over one arm and a trencher of bread. “Back away,” he ordered gruffly and put a key in the lock of her cell.

Maggie plastered herself nearly to the moldy wall as he tossed the blanket in her direction. “Nicholas?” she asked her voice husky with strain.

“He lives, although he hasn’t regained consciousness.” He dropped the trencher carelessly to the stone floor and one of the two small pieces of bread bounced out. “You best pray he doesn’t die.”

“I did
no’
stab him. I swear I did
no’.
” She knew that whether her husband lived or died she could still hang for having tried to kill him. She desperately needed him conscious, needed him to confirm her innocence.

Richard moved back out of the cell, pulled the door shut, and turned the key in the rusty lock. “It
i
s your word against Lady Stanhope’s at the moment. And it was
you
found with the dagger in your hands, with his blood on your hands. Not her.”

He walked away, taking the only light with him.

Maggie trembled and sank to the floor, curling her arms around her. The rats scrambled over the floor and snagged the bread before scurrying away. She didn’t care. She couldn’t have eaten anyway.
Oh Nicholas! Oh my beloved Nicholas.
I pray ye awaken. I pray ye live.

A tiny sliver of light crept in through a crack in the dungeon wall at least fifty feet away from Maggie, although it could be fewer feet or more. It was impossible to judge anything in such nearly complete darkness. But it was enough to tell her that yet another new day had arrived. Good or bad, only time would tell. How many days had she been here? Two? No. This was the third new day. She’d been locked here in the darkness, in the cold, musty cavernous space, in the near silence for three horribly long days and nights. All that broke the monotony of time was when a guard came once a day to empty her chamber pot, bring her a cup of water and a scrap of bread. The guard had barely spoken to her. She’d pleaded every time to be allowed to see Nicholas, only to have the man growl, “Still unconscious.”

Her stomach knotted with pain, no longer even rumbling from hunger. She hadn’t eaten anything in nearly four days. The rats always managed to get to the puny piece of bread dropped into the trencher before her. And her throat was parched. A small cup of water each day wasn’t nearly enough. But she refused to beg for more bread or more water. If the guard didn’t listen to her pleading to see her husband, she was certain he wouldn’t oblige her in any other matter. She considered herself lucky that he even bothered to empty her chamber pot.

Wrinkling her nose from the mixture of disgusting smells that hung heavily in the air at all times, she rubbed at her weary eyes. She hadn’t slept, couldn’t sleep with the uncertainty over her husband’s situation, or with the constant need to push rats away from her. Even now she was forced to spend what little energy she had to kick at another rat eager to dine on the tip of her slipper.

She’d gone from horrified about what had happened to Nicholas, to furious for the way she’d been tossed down here and all but forgotten, to unable to stop crying. She had no more tears at the moment. And hope was fading fast as well. It was hard to believe the way she was being treated. Mary must really have convinced everyone of her guilt. The vile bitch!

A shiver went through her. She started to curl her arms around her knees as she sat in the middle of the cold stone floor, but her right arm made her flinch in pain. Last night she’d tripped over the trencher and landed hard against the rusty metal cell bars. She’d slammed her cheek so hard that her whole face hurt now and no doubt she had a nice bruise. In addition, she’d scraped her arm on a piece of metal, tearing her sleeve, and cutting her forearm. She’d managed to tear off a piece of her chemise to wrap around the wound but that was all she could do for it. Now the wound throbbed and she knew it needed some kind of salve soon to ward off infection…if it wasn’t already too late.

Cradling her injured arm against her stomach, she knew that being slowly starved and suffering an infection from her cut arm could be the least of her problems. If Nicholas didn’t awaken, she would most likely be taken to King Edward. Even if he lived, that could still happen. She’d be tried for having attempted to kill her husband, found guilty probably just because she was a Scot, and hung. If he awakened…
.
She simply didn’t know what would happen then, although she prayed he did wake up. She prayed he’d recover from the knife wound as well.

Not for the first time, she wondered how this had happened. Who could be responsible for having stabbed her husband? Of course he had enemies from the battles he’d fought in, from those men jealous of his substantial holdings. But she didn’t think anyone who lived within the castle grounds felt that way. She couldn’t remember seeing any signs of dislike or unhappiness from his men or any of the staff. Only two people seemed to harbor any ill feelings toward him at different times: Lady Stanhope and her. Anyone who’d been in the great hall recently had been aware of the strain between she and Nicholas. Many had even heard her vicious words thrown at him about Brodie, but she hadn’t meant them. And it greatly hurt her to think the people she’d worked with and begun to care for had clearly thought so little of her as to believe her guilty of attacking her husband. They must believe that or surely someone would have tried to visit her or tried to defend her. Although, she didn’t truly know whether or not anyone had stepped forth on her behalf. She just didn’t have much faith in anyone or anything at the moment.

She rubbed at her aching forehead.
Lady Stanhope
. The woman had been a thorn in Maggie’s side since the moment they’d first met in the bailey on her arrival here. She’d seen the flash of jealousy in the older woman’s eyes. She’d felt the disgust, the hatred even, whenever they were near one another. Maggie didn’t think Mary actually lusted after Nicholas, although she didn’t understand why not since he was such a handsome, virile man. No, she was certain Mary lusted after the power of his status with King Edward, after the status she, too, would have at Edward’s court as his wife, which was where she longed to go. But did Mary want all of that enough to have attacked Nicholas and named Maggie as the guilty party? Was she really that vicious a woman? Or was there someone else within the walls of Middleham that wished Nicholas dead? Someone else who had hidden their dislike of her? What could anyone killing both of them have to gain? Middleham would fall back under Edward’s control. None here had anywhere near the power and earned honor to hold the castle for the crown.

Somehow she had to prove her innocence…assuming Nicholas didn’t awaken…didn’t live.

A shudder passed over her at the thought of him dying. She really had thought they were finally making progress in their marriage. Sure they’d argued about Brodie, but she never would have wished Nicholas dead just because he was too stubborn to let her go to Urquhart now.

The distant sound of a heavy door creaking open somewhere in the darkness captured her attention. Footsteps started down the stone stairs, at least a couple sets of them. Angry words reached her ears in the vast oppressive silence. Fia raging at Gerald. And then the light of a torch took away some of the darkness, making her blink to adjust even to that small amount of change.

“Ye’ll never get in me bed again, ye sorry sot,” Fia snarled, hurrying closer. Her footsteps sounded quick, determined. Her long skirt brushed over the stone floor in a ruffling whisper.

“I had no other choice,” Gerald grumbled back as he strode next to her, carrying the torch. “I’ve told you over and over that Lady Stanhope said
—”

“Ye big, beetle-headed clod, how can ye believe the likes of her? She has nay love fer yer lady. Ye ken it. Everyone with half a mind kens it.” Fia headed straight for Maggie’s cell.