“I have known for some time, years.”
Julianna stared at him, horrified. She didn’t think Phillip could get any more hopeless. “You have known for years thatyour motherwas in the pit? Did you have her taken out?”
“Not until I met Bamburgh and he told me that he would never serve a man who mistreated his servants. I had to let her out then. Make her comfortable.”
Julianna felt ill again, as if she might fall faint. Hemade her comfortablefor the viscount’s sake, not for his mother’s. “So you hated me for drinking from your mother when I could not eat on my own? How very like you that is, Phillip. I’m sure you hated William for being the son she always wanted.”
“I’m going to strip you of whatever power you have and—”
The sound of horses suddenly coming upon them stopped whatever Phillip meant to say next.
“What is the meaning of this?” Phillip demanded as if the men cared about his query.
“We are looking for the Lord of Rothbury,” said their leader, a man with charcoal-colored hair and a fur lined cloak over his wide shoulders. “If you are him, speak up!”
“He is not him!” Julianna shouted. “He is the man who just left Edlingham and Lord Bamburgh for dead!” They were the viscount’s mercenaries and they wouldn’t be getting paid because of this man.
“Who are you?” the leader asked, gazing at her from his horse.
“My wife,” Phillip snarled at him and then at her. “Mrs. Julianna DeAvoy.”
Julianna closed her eyes and cringed in her cloak. She hated the idea of it. She had been such a coward. She swiped at an icy, stubborn tear.
“Take them both,” the leader commanded, riding through them like Moses parting the sea. “Kill the rest.”
Julianna didn’t care about Phillip’s soldiers. They had known the kind of man they served. “I was with Lord Bamburgh when he penned you those letters,” she rode close to the leader and told him. “’Twas my plea that inspired him to offer such a high reward. Tell me, please, have you found any trace that Lord Rothbury lives?”
He stared at her face and into her eyes and then at the hair beneath her hood. “Aye, Bamburgh would do the like for you. Your earl stopped at some inns on the roads from Otterburn. He was with a woman.”
Julianna’s heart and hope soared. He was alive! She wanted to hug the leader for the good news, but she refrained. She did show her joy in her smile though. As for the woman, Julianna hoped it was someone from the castle, or the village. Margaret or Molly.
“This news of him pleases you?” the leader asked with a soft smile that revealed a deep dimple in his cheek.
“Aye, it does. Lord Rothbury is a good man and a father. I would see him receive help from the wiles of men who will never be like him.” She spoke softly so that Phillip didn’t hear but slanted her gaze to him for an instant. Then she was back to smiling. “Lord Bamburgh vowed that you were good men.”
The leader was quite obviously taken with her. He hung on every word she said. She let the wind push down her hood several times so that her hair was free to whip around her face. It seemed to please men to look at it.
“So you are his wife?” the leader asked, referring to Phillip.
“Sadly, aye.”
“And you are in love with Lord Rothbury.”
“I have always been in love with Lord Rothbury,” she confessed.
“But Lord Rothbury,” said Phillip, riding up behind her, “used to be a servant, so she refused to be with him. She married me instead and has been nothing but a disloyal trollop ever since. When last I saw her before this, she was tossing dirt onto me, burying me alive.”
Julianna said nothing. She bit her tongue and closed her eyes. If she’d known he was alive, she would have dug him back up and killed him before continuing.
“She has nothing to say,” Phillip spat.
“You are mad and if I go too far you will strike me,” she accused.
Phillip tossed back his head and laughed. “I have never put an angry hand to her, though ’tis my right if she is my wife and she is a trollop.”
Without another word, Julianna slipped from her horse and removed her cloak. She looked up at the leader. He dismounted and went to her but she turned her back on him and pulled up the back of her léine and her chemise underneath. She bared her back to him and then felt his fingers pushing aside her hair so he could see the scars lashed across her flesh from Phillip’s whip.
When she thought the leader had seen enough, she yanked down her clothes, bent to snatch up her cloak, and swiped a tear off her cheek as she turned to him. “You can believe who you like.”
