“The Mother Abbess and her attendants.”
Maxton couldn’t help his reaction; he slid out of the chair and onto the floor beside her, reaching out to pull her towards him. His big hands trapped her as his dark eyes drilled into her with white-hot intensity.
“You will tell me everything,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “From the beginning, please. How do you know this?”
Andressa felt as if she wanted to vomit as he asked that question. She’d been wanting to vomit since the moment the Mother Abbess clued her in on a plot as dark and deadly as anything she was capable of comprehending.
She’d come to Maxton because she didn’t know where else to turn and as Andressa looked at the man, she realized one thing– there was something immensely comforting about him. He was so close to her that she could feel the heat from his body, and the hands gripping her arms were the size of a man’s head. He was big, and he was powerful, and it occurred to her that never in her life had she known such safety or comfort.
Amidst all of the terror she was experiencing, the man made her feel as if nothing in the world could touch her, not even the darkness of the Mother Abbess. It was something she’d never experienced before and, in that realization, some of her terror fled. She could think more clearly now.
She had come this far. He needed to know everything.
“After you left today, I was brought before the Mother Abbess,” she said.
He grunted. “I thought so,” he said, sighing with regret. “I heard the fight. I am very sorry to have caused you trouble, Andressa. That was never my intent.”
She shook her head, calmer now. “I thought you had caused me trouble, too,” she said, a weak glimmer of mirth in her eye. “But in truth, you did not. When I was brought before the Mother Abbess, I was certain she was going to punish me for speaking to you but, instead, she said some very strange things.”
“Like what?”
Andressa thought back to the conversation, organizing her thoughts against the fear that the very subject provoked. “She told me that she had been watching me,” she said. “She told me that she wanted me to take the veil and become her personal attendant. She spoke of things I did not understand at first; she said that she and her attendants, nuns she has known since childhood, have been called upon to do the bidding of our Holy Father. She said that he had entrusted them with missions, many times. I did not know what she meant until she startedspeaking of men who were dead. One man, in particular, was the Bishop of Leeds. He died at St. Blitha following a feast the year after I came to the order. The Mother Abbess said that our Holy Father asked her to kill him and she did. Now, she says that our Holy Father has asked her to do the same thing with King John and she wants me to participate in it so that I can learn her ways.”
Now, it was Maxton’s turn to feel sick to his stomach. He had experienced many things in life. He’d seen more than his share of sorrow, and death, and betrayal, but never in his life had he heard about nuns who killed on command. Even though he and the others had been speculating about a deadly Mother Abbess only minutes earlier, he wasn’t sure he really believed that. His money had been on Douglas, the double agent. But at the moment, a baby could have knocked him over, so stunned was he. One good push and down he’d go.
He was still trying to drink it all in.
“You are sure of this?” he managed to ask. “She told you that the Holy Father wishes for her to assassinate the king?”
Andressa nodded. “That is what she said,” she assured him. “A messenger from the Holy Father came to tell her of this command. In fact, I saw the messenger. He was at St. Blitha two days ago. I remember because he bellowed to me, wanting to know if the woman he was speaking to was, indeed, the Mother Abbess. I was afraid to answer because I could hardly understand him. I did not wish to give him the wrong answer.”
“Why was it difficult to understand him?”
“Because he was Scottish.”
Another revelation. Now, he knew what Alasdair Baird Douglas had been doing at St. Blitha– he hadn’t been praying about an assassination or asking the Mother Abbess’ advice on it. He’d been there to tell the woman it was her duty to kill the King of England, straight from the mouth of the Holy Father.
Maxton was deeply astonished with what he was hearing. It was confirmation and clarification of the great mystery they’d all been dealing with. The Holy Father had, indeed, sent more assassins to fulfill the mission that he and his Unholy brethren had refused, only the assassins were something Maxton would have never considered–
Nuns.
He never saw that coming.
As he became increasingly lost to his own thoughts, he could see Andressa looking at him anxiously. He loosened his grip on her arms and began to caress her slender limbs, comfortingly. He could see how utterly terrified she was.
In truth, he didn’t blame her in the least.
“She wants you to assist her, does she?” he asked calmly. “What did you tell her?”
Andressa drew in a long breath. She was calming a great deal, but the mere mention of the Mother Abbess made her tense up again.
“I agreed,” she said. “I did not know what else to do. She told me if I spoke to anyone about this, then I would end up in The Chaos.”
Now, it was all coming together and Maxton was starting to understand why she was so terrified. She’d been burdened with a huge weight, knowledge that would create stress and havoc with even the most seasoned man, and then her life was threatened if she spoke about it. This poor woman had been forced to endure hell over the past four years, cast off by a greedy aunt and left to the mercy of the soulless sisters of St. Blitha.
“You will not end up in The Chaos,” he said quietly, rubbing her arms in a soothing gesture without really realizing he was doing it. “I would not let them do that to you.”
Andressa was looking at his face as he spoke. In fact, the moment he started caressing her arms, discreetly butunmistakably, she found herself looking at him with increasing interest. The way he made her feel– safe and warm and comforted– was pushing aside the abject terror she’d been suffering since leaving St. Blitha, taking her back to the days at Okehampton when she was safe and warm and comfortable, living the life of a respected ward for Lady de Courtney.
