“Lady de Ferrers,” Kevin said, speaking softly in her ear. “Come with me, please. Let me take you away from this.”
Annavieve was wallowing in grief. Hearing Kevin’s voice, she suddenly looked up at him as if surprised by his presence. Her eyes were red and her face was wet with tears. As her gaze fell upon him, her sobs renewed.
“He killed her,” she wept. “That… that man killed her. She was trying to protect me.”
Kevin put his hands under her arms and moved to pick her up off the floor. “I know,” he said softly. “Come along, now. Let us move you someplace safe.”
As he suspected, Annavieve wasn’t so eager to be separated from Magda’s body. “Nay, please,” she begged. “I must stay with her. I do not want to leave her.”
She was holding on to the woman’s bloody body even as Gorsedd, Adonis, and Thomas were trying to remove it. Adonis had to reach out and peel Annavieve’s fingers off of the woman.
“She will be taken someplace where she will be tended,” Kevin told Annavieve, quietly, but firmly. “Let go, now. You must let her go.”
Annavieve’s sobbing increased as Kevin broke her hold on Magda and Salisbury’s men whisked her away. She tried to follow but Kevin scooped her up into his arms and took her back into the chamber she had shared with Magda. As the soldiers carried the old woman away and the innkeeper’s wife began to wash away the blood at the top of the stairs, they could all hear Annavieve howling with sorrow at being separated from her nurse. When Kevin slammed the chamber door and bolted it, they could still hear the woman crying, even through the closed panel.
Oddly enough, the chamber wasn’t in disarray, which would have been expected after a robbery and assault. It was still rather neat and Kevin placed Annavieve directly onto the bed.
“Anna, calm yourself, sweetheart,” he said, looking around to see if there was wine in the room. There wasn’t, so he went back over to the chamber door as she struggled to sit up on the bed, threw it open, and demanded wine from the woman who was washing the blood off of the landing. Closing the door again, he went over to Annavieve about the time she was trying to stand up. “Nay, sweetheart, lay down. You must lie down and rest. All will be well, I swear it.”
He gently pushed her back down on the bed, forcing her to lay down by swinging her legs up over the side of the bed. He had to put his hands on her arms to keep her pinned so she wouldn’t try to rise again.
“Annavieve,” he said softly but firmly, trying to catch her attention. “I know you are upset but you must try to calm yourself. Please tell me what happened. Who did this?”
Annavieve’s mind was still with Magda as the woman was being taken to the barber-surgeon, but Kevin’s softly-utteredquestion broke through her haze of grief. Looking up at the man, the tears spilled down her temple and into her hair.
“He killed her,” she wept softly.
Kevin kissed her forehead gently, trying to comfort her. “I know,” he agreed. “But you must help me find the man who did it. I will punish him, I promise. Can you tell me what happened? Who was this man?”
Annavieve struggled to compose herself. She was shaken to the bone and exhausted. This day had seen two horrible events in her life and her mind was still trying to process it all. First the attack that morning and now Magda’s death… it was more than she could take but she was trying very hard to overcome it all. She tried to keep her focus on Kevin.
“I… I do not know who he was,” she said, gazing up at him as he hovered over her. “But he asked for you. He said he wanted you. And when he tried to grab me, Magda fought him off and he killed her.”
Stunned, Kevin tried not to let his confusion and concern show. “He said he wantedme?”
“Aye.”
“He said it in just those words?”
She sniffed, trying to think back to what, exactly, the murderer had said. “He asked what I was to you,” she said. “He spoke only in French. He said that he believed I could provide him with what he wanted and that was you. Those were his words.”
Kevin’s expression was grim as he mulled over what she had told him.He believed I could provide him with what he wanted– you,he thought.He spoke only in French.
French…French!
More concern gripped him. It began to occur to him that, those months ago when he was ambushed in Tripoli that it had purely been the French after him, the family and allies of deClemont.He spoke only in French and he is looking for me, Kevin thought again. Of course, French was a commonly spoken language in England, but he was suspicious and for good reason. Although he didn’t think he’d been followed all the way from the Levant, there was also the very real possibility that he had been. Was it possible that they had tracked him back to England? That they had actually found him? He couldn’t discount that possibility and he tried not to panic about it.
“Salisbury’s man said he jumped from your window,” he said, glancing up at the long, poorly constructed window that faced north. “Did you see which way he went?”
Annavieve shook her head. “I did not see him at all,” she said, her eyes welling with more tears. “I had already fled the room, thinking Magda was behind me, but she was not. By the time he jumped, I was already out of the room, I suppose. He did not jump while I was here.”
He could see the tears flowing again and he leaned forward once more, kissing her on the forehead. He kissed her cheek, her chin, in a soothing gesture.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered, resting his forehead against hers. “I know Magda was your family. I am so sorry that had to happen.”
Annavieve lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck, weeping softly. Kevin wrapped her up in his big arms and held her close, comforting her as she wept away her sorrows.
“Who was that man?” she sniffled. “Why does he want you?”
