The Pleasures of Sin (24 page)

Nathan hustled her up the ramp of the ship and called the captain.

Wind stung her cheeks and ripped tears from her eyes as the ship pulled slowly out of the dock. The smell of sea salt cut into her senses.

Italy lay ahead.

Italy.

Her dream.

Her chance at a new life. Her chance to be captain of her own destiny, a woman of independence.

’Twas what she had always wanted.

With a sob, she laid her head on the ship’s rail and wept.

James coughed from the lingering smoke as he made his way toward the blackened tower to rescue anything of value from the charred remains. Rain dripped off of him in sheets. Heaviness of heart settled in his chest as he saw the extent of destruction, of the burned thatching and scorched windows. Likely there would be naught left of Brenna’s artwork.

“A woman—Lady Brenna! Master Montgomery, come!” Ogier the woodcutter called to James from the burned-out entrance of the tower.

Fear stung his underarms, colder even than the rain. He lurched into a dead run, racing into the tower and up the narrow steps that were slick with rain and soot. Had Brenna gone inside the tower after all?

Two other workers were already in Brenna’s chamber, huddled over the bed. Her canvases and boards were little more than ashes and charred remains and sickness over the destruction rumbled in his stomach. Part of the floor had collapsed and charred boards stuck up in the way. He picked his way around the ashen remains.

“Master,” one of the servants said and stepped away from what had been the bed, a look of distress clouding his face.

A woman’s body, charred as black as the paintings lay crumpled on the bed. Her features were unrecognizable as was the color of her dress.

“’Tis Lady Brenna, my lord.”

Bile rose in his throat and tears stung his eyes. Not Brenna. Not his Brenna.

“Nay, ’tis not possible,” he rasped. He’d seen her just outside, had he not?

Her hand, a burned stump, clutched a scrap of parchment. His chest felt as though it would burst with pain.

With a shudder, he fell to his knees before her. It had been years since he had truly prayed. His life had been about seeking retribution for the sins of others, his own sins he had ignored. But, at this moment, he wanted to pray in a deep mournful soul groaning.
Please let it not be her.

He’d known the depth of her pain, of how she wanted to rescue her artwork. He should have chained her.

With a moan, he wrenched her hand open to see what the dead woman was clutching.

A painting: an erotic miniature of a naked man mounting a bed to couple with a woman.

He stared at it, blinking to clear his eyes.

A crescent-shaped scar was painted on the man’s arm exactly like the one on his own bicep leaving no doubt that the painting was of himself.

Zwounds. Brenna was dead.

Why had he not stayed with her? Why had he not re-chained her so she would have been unable to go for her paintings?

Feeling sick, he crumpled the painting in his fist. The pain in his heart was briefly eclipsed by the realization that Brenna was the painter of
The King’s Mistresses.

He’d suspected. In his heart he’d known. She’d been too passionate in bed, too open to her own body and senses for a virgin. Tears fell from his eyes and dripped off his chin.

He sank his forehead against the blacked charred body of his wife, angry and hurt and disconcerted. His shoulders quaked as waves of pain banded around his body. He clenched and unclenched his fists around the crumpled painting, unsure what he would have done if he would have discovered it while she yet lived. It would have been his duty to take her to the king, but her absence made a hollow space in his heart.

“There is your man! There is the painter of
The King’s Mistresses
! The very man who was sent to find the artist.” Brother Giffard entered the chamber, followed by a host of ruffians. His finger shook as he pointed it at James.

“Grab him, men!” A man with a short, dark beard called, “In the name of Edward the king.”

James leapt to his feet. “Wha—”

The men closed in around him before he had time to collect himself. One ripped the miniature from his fist.

Ogier shrank away as did the other peasants, suspicious always of the dealing of nobles.

“Here’s proof, Captain,” the man said, unfolding the miniature and handing the naked portrait over to the leader.

“I did not paint that.” James stared from one man to the next in astonishment. They were scarcely more than a band of thugs, likely not even soldiers from the king’s army but rogue mercenaries sent on a secret mission. What they were accusing him of was ridiculous. “I cannot paint.”

Giffard shrank backward out of the room as the men closed in around James. The monk’s robe swept along the ashy floor and his bare soles were black with soot.

“Giffard! You dog! Tell them I’m not the painter!” James called, remembering Brenna’s affiliation with the monk. No doubt that had been her true purpose in going to the cathedral that day.

The monk did not turn around and the king’s group of ruffians blocked James from following him.

Betrayal ripped through him.

“We are to escort you to London,” the captain explained as his men drew a myriad of swords, knives, and other weapons. The sharp points gleamed.

James glowered at them, fury rising inside his chest. He indicated the corpse and took a deep breath. There were too many to fight them all at once. The lingering smoke burned his lungs. “My wife has just died and I must bury her.”

The men exchanged a look, but did not lower their weapons.

Dark beard bristling, the leader pulled himself up to full height. “There is no time.”

“But—”

With a hand signal, the men closed in around James.

James’s skin itched from the abundance of lice that crawled in the hay of the small prison cell the king had thrown him into. He had not been taken to London to explain anything. Instead, he was here, held in this secluded catacomb, under the charge of painting the
The King’s Mistresses.

Of all the bedlamite things.

He was paying penance for Brenna’s deeds—something he would tell the king if he could gain audience, but Edward had not given him a trial when he’d sent his band of thugs and had him thrown into this dungeon.

Festered sores puckered on his skin. The fetid stench of mold, rat piss, and decay hung heavy in his nostrils. He winced as even the kiss of air burned the many scratches and bruises his torturers had given him. But none of them hurt as much as the ache inside his chest.

He’d let Brenna off her chain for one day. One damn day.

Anger ripped through him in agonizing waves, tearing at his heart. He had begun to care for her. Began to love her. Her passion. Her stubbornness. Her sense of being alive. He had begun to think they could make a future together. A real future.

She had denied that she had painted those miniatures, and like a lovesick fool, he had believed her.

For certes, Godric and Gabriel searched for him, but the place he’d been taken was so isolated, so secluded, the chances of finding him were slim.

James ran his finger along the worn iron bars, searching again for chinks or some softness in the metal so that he might free himself. Rust flaked off in chunks, its metallic smell irritating his nostrils.

He was forgotten. Left to rot. Thirst burned in his throat with a deep, aching need. It hurt to swallow. Hurt to breathe.

For an instant he was seven years old again and his father had locked him in the cupboard beneath the stairs because of his incompetence. Because he had been dallying with the idea of adventure instead of taking care of important matters.

He gritted his teeth. Brenna had given him a reason to believe in adventure again. In passion. He had longed to take her to Italy.

He sat back on the rotted hay, holding his head in his hands as memories of their time together whirled through his mind. She’d touched a part of his soul that he’d thought dead—that part of him that longed for the open ocean, for laughter and for the pleasure of a woman’s thighs around his hips.

He wanted to hate her. Truly, he did. But he could not. Not even knowing that their passion had been a one-sided ruse to find a way to escape.

Mayhap he could hate her if she was still alive. But, she was dead.

His last memory of her was of a body that had been charred beyond recognition. Its blackened face had gaped up at him with soulless eyes. Even as he raged against her betrayal, his heart ached with loss. Against his command, she’d gone into the tower to rescue her paintings.

How could one hate a dead woman?

Pain ripped through him, and he wanted to tear at his ragged tunic, allow the coldness of the cell to seep into his heart and shut off the hot passion she had planted inside him.

Brenna.

His Brenna.

His beautiful, impossible, passionate, rebellious Brenna.

She’d clung to him, crying over her paintings, over her artwork—he should have stayed with her longer, snapped chains on her to keep her from going back into the tower. Instead, he’d sent her to the bucket line, believing that her fiery soul needed labor and activity to keep from collapsing.

And—she’d obeyed him.

She’d obeyed him! For the first time ever without argument, it had seemed. He’d seen the sweet surrender in her eyes to trust his leadership.

She’d gone. He’d seen her passing buckets. While other noblewomen might stand aside as passive observers of circumstance, she had fought for the survival of her tower. For hours, as he passed this way and that, he had seen her, sweating, grunting, hauling bucket after bucket the same as the other workers. He’d been called here and there to direct men, but she was always in the line each time he returned.

The corpse had been thoroughly consumed. Black. Unrecognizable.

An impossibility unless she’d been inside the tower at the height of the blaze.

She had not gone inside the tower.

She was not dead.

The thought streaked through his brain so hard, James unfurled his body and nearly knocked his head on the hard iron bars imprisoning him. Agony shot through his legs at the movement.

She’d betrayed him. She’d planted that corpse in the tower, its fingers curled around the miniature of him and her, and had Brother Giffard accuse him of the paintings. It was the only explanation. And then she’d left. Likely for her beloved Italy.

Fury caused a red haze to form in front of his eyes.

Betrayed.

Again.

He forced himself to focus on the discovery of Brenna being alive. New strength flowed through his limbs—fueled by the strength of hatred and revenge.

The storm of his emotions struck him like a stinging splash of saltwater into the wounds on his soul. He was used to holding himself in control so his own passions would not overwhelm him, but this seemed overpowering. Somehow, she had masterminded the tower burning in a ruse to escape. She’d faked her death and turned over the paintings to the king to see him taken and imprisoned. And then thumbed her nose at him by curling the corpse’s fingers around an erotic painting of the two of them.

How?

Had she been in contact with her father all along?

Ignoring his body’s pain, he rose and began an exploration of the cell again. Somewhere out in the world,
she
was there. Still alive. He would find her.

He would take her to the king and force her to confess all. Gain his tattered honor back. And his lands.

Toward the edge of the cell, where the bars touched the crumbling wall, his fingers touched wetness. Tiny drops of moisture flowed down one corner of the prison, dripping from a crack in the ceiling.

Raw need for vengeance forced him to his knees, to stick out his tongue and lap the moisture from the bars. He nearly choked on the taste of thick iron and decay. But, the water cooled his throat and gave him strength.

He worked his fingers along the rough edges. The bar he had licked was worn from the water, a tiny bit softer than the others. More pliable.

Wrapping his hand around it, he pulled. It creaked, groaning in its socket like an old man.

Taking a step back, James sucked in a deep breath and gathered every ounce of strength he could fathom. On his best days, a bar such as this would be nigh impossible. He was exhausted, thirsty and weak from eating only the thin gruel his torturers gave him and whatever rats he could catch.

He focused his mind on Brenna. On her betrayal. On the passion they shared. Agony and fatigue subsided as his heart beat a steady rhythm like a war drum.

He wrapped his palm around the metal again and braced his foot against one of the other bars and yanked. His muscles burned, cramped, pulled. The bar began to bend. He gritted his teeth, encouraged by the slight curve, and doubled his efforts. Sweat beaded on his temples and ran down his cheek, stinging the scrapes and bruises.

His heart thumped with exertion as every fiber of his being worked, strained, against the ancient metal. He could not let go now. Muscle against iron.

She’d made him into a fool one too many times. That thought pierced his brain, lending more strength to his effort.

With a groan, the bar bent loose and popped from its socket. A loud crack rent the air.

Panting, he pulled the iron aside and, thoroughly spent, fell to the dungeon floor. His muscles quivered and jerked as they recovered from the exertion.

Blackness tinged the edge of his vision and light sparkled against his eyelids. Through sheer strength of will, he rose, determined to find Brenna.

He would have his revenge.

Brenna mindlessly painted another halo on some damned forgotten saint. She sat in a stiff-backed chair in the midst of her stark studio at the convent of La Signora del Lago located in a sleepy village off the coast of Italy. Her eyes felt glassy and, despite the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, her fingers were frozen and stiff. Still, she moved the brush across canvas, trying to numb the raw ache in her chest.

This morning she’d had a novice to help her mix the colors. This afternoon, she’d had tutors. The abbess had excused her from prayers so she could finish the portrait in time for the archbishop’s visit at the end of next week. Mother Isabella had been more than kind to her, she’d accepted her into the bosom of the abbey as if she were an indulged daughter. She had brushes galore and expensive canvas instead of boards and parchment.

Everything she’d ever wanted: Time. Tutors. Paint. Brushes. Helpers. Canvas.