Ivo admired her more than he could say. She was beautiful and brave, and she deserved to be held close and dear, to live a long and happy life.
She deserved to be cherished, to have her children about her. But Ivo also knew, with an impotent sense of rage and frustration, that if Miles got hold of her, he would kill her. Kill her despite all her courage and fiery temper. Aye, Miles would kill her and enjoy doing it, and he had come so close to doing it today.
Today, when Ivo had finally accepted that he was no longer able to protect her without help. As much as he wanted to do this alone, he could not afford his pride. It was a risk too great.
Miles almost took her from me.
The rage was deep inside him, a core of molten fury, but he held it back, kept it in check, surrounded it with ice. There would be time enough to let it free when he came face-to-face with Miles. This time, he swore to himself, Miles would not win. This time he would be ready for all his tricks.
But for now Ivo needed to bind Briar more tightly to him, and right soon. And he needed someone to stand behind him. Someone with a great deal of power, someone who was not afraid of anything or anyone.
Lord Radulf was that man.
Radulf would watch over her, if Ivo should perish—and the doubt was there, that little niggling voice, no matter how hard he tried to shout it down. For every other time they had met, Miles had won. Aye, it was possible he might die, and if he did, then Radulf would make sure that Briar did not wander starving in the hedgerows as she had done these two years past. The thought of leaving her worse off than he had found her was far more painful than the thought of Miles ending his life.
Radulf glanced up from his conversation. When he saw Ivo and Briar, his gaze sharpened, and then he simply waited for them to reach him.
Briar saw a man with dark hair and eyes similar to Ivo’s, but other than that they were not at all the same. Whereas Ivo’s face was angular and fierce, Radulf’s was battered and brutal.
This was the great Lord Radulf, the King’s Sword. She swallowed in her dry throat. Aye, here was a man to scare children up and down the countryside. Mayhap the legends were true...
Ivo spoke. “My lord, this is Briar, once Lady Briar, daughter of Lord Richard Kenton.”
Radulf nodded to Ivo, but he watched her. And while he watched, he stroked his chin with one long finger. There was a ring upon his hand, a heavy red and black ring.
“Lady, I knew your father,” he said at last, in a voice low and husky, and she waited, heart thumping, for the accusations to begin. “I deeply regret what happened to him.”
Surprised, Briar faced him in silence. She had been ready to retaliate, to accuse him in turn of destroying her father and her family. Now he had made her think again.
For so long she had believed one thing, but gradually Ivo had turned her mind to other possibilities, and clouded her certainties with doubts. Nothing was as simple as she had believed it. Just as the fairytale love affair she had thought existed between her father and Anna wasn’t real. Anna had never loved him, she had used him, and he had dung to her despite all.
“You knew my stepmother,” she said, and the words were harsh and uncompromising. Ivo’s fingers tightened a warning, and she added, “My lord,” with a reluctance that made Radulf’s lips twitch.
“Anna was my stepmother, too, lady. Did you know that?”
Briar had not. She stared, startled by the revelation, and not quite sure what to make of it.
“She married my father and destroyed him, although I take some blame for that. Do not mistake, I was not innocent in the matter. She cast her lure, but I was quick to take the bait. My father never forgave me. He was blind with love for her, and did not want his face pushed into the reeking truth. Aye, lady, my life was a ragged thing, until I met Lily.”
He smiled, and it was a smile at once sweet and sad, and suddenly he did not look so much brutal as tired.
“ ‘Twas Lily who gave me the strength once and for all to break with Anna, for even though I had not seen her for many years, she had remained a part of my mind. Hatred for her, and myself, had worked on me, eating into me.” He leaned closer, as if confiding in her. “I know what hatred is, Lady Briar.”
Briar tried to meet his eyes and could not. He knew. He had looked into her heart and read it so well, as if she had told him exactly how she had spent the last two years of her life. Radulf knew.
And it was a terrifying thought... but it was also a relief.
Her own voice came out a little hoarse, but still strong. The loss of that final strand of her dark plot had not diminished her, if anything it had strengthened her and set her free.
“I have learned there were many who had reason to hate Anna, or wish her out of their way. She played with the emotions, my lord, and sometimes that is a dangerous thing to do.”
“Aye, Anna enjoyed danger,” he said, thoughtful, frowning a little. “Some men are more vulnerable inside than others, and because of that they are more likely to strike, to kill rather than to wound. But I did not hurt her, lady. I did not need to. I had Lily, and I had put Anna’s evil behind me. You must look elsewhere for your murderer.”
Ivo shuffled his feet, and Radulf glanced at him questioningly.
“You have someone in mind, de Vessey?”
“Miles, Lord Radulf.”
