His expression didn’t flicker—not once. Her desperate pleas bounced off him like pebbles on steel. “I believe you’ve made your faith in me perfectly clear. But if you have concerns, they should be for your betrothed.”
He started to walk away, but she reached for his arm to stop him. “Wait, Thom, please. You have to listen to me. I made a mistake.”
He went completely still. The look he gave her was so scathing it made her wish for the hard and impenetrable expression back. “You what?”
“I made a mistake. You were right. I never should have agreed to marry Randolph. I love you. I’m so sorry.”
He stared at her for a moment as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She felt like a maggot that had had the gall to crawl across his trencher.
“You are unbelievable. Take your apologies, and whatever else you have to say, somewhere else. I don’t want to hear them.”
“But—”
The icy composure snapped. He took her by the arm and forced her gaze to his. His voice teemed with animosity and raw fury. “I don’t want to fucking hear it, Elizabeth. Whatever you have to say, it’s too late. You made your choice, you will have to live with it.”
He pushed her away with a sharp shove—as if she were an old poppet he’d grown tired of—and walked away. Had he turned around, he would have seen her crumple to the ground.
But he didn’t.
Oh God, what had she done? Whatever they’d once shared, whatever he’d once felt for her, it was gone. And nothing she would say was going to make him listen to her. He wouldn’t give her an opportunity.
Worse, she didn’t blame him.
All she could do was pray.
24
THE SPIKES HELD.
Thom dug his fingers into the crevice with his foot balanced on a spike and pulled himself up the last sheer section of rock. Once in position on a narrow plateau, he was able to find a place to secure the rope ladder that he’d slung over his shoulder to drop down to the men below. The sounds of the boards clattering against the rock made him wince, but when he glanced up at the wall, he didn’t see any movement in the shadows.
The diversionary attack that the king and the rest of the army were creating at the south gate was working. No one had heard the ping of a spike being forced into a crack in the rock earlier, and now the ladder was down without drawing attention.
Christ, he’d done it.
Thom took a moment to savor the satisfaction of knowing that he’d done something no man had done before. He’d climbed Castle Rock. Well, most of it. There was still another twenty feet or so to go, but the dangerous part of the climb was behind him.
That thought was barely formed before disaster struck—literally.
Randolph, who’d insisted on being the first man up the ladder, had just appeared out of the darkness below when a stone was tossed down from one of the soldiers patrolling the wall above. Had he heard something or seen a movement and was trying to figure out what it was, or was he just passing time? Whatever the cause, the rock slammed into Randolph’s blackened helm, and the force and shock of it made him lose his balance. He lost his footing and hold of the ladder and started to fall.
Thom didn’t think. If he had, he wasn’t sure he would have done what he did. It was pure instinct.
He leapt off the small ledge of grass toward the sheer rock face that he’d just scaled. It was a leap without a landing. Only one small piece of steel would keep him from plummeting into the darkness behind Randolph. With one hand Thom reached for the spike, and with the other the falling man.
“I made a mistake.”
Why the hell was he thinking of Elizabeth’s too-late plea now? And he certainly shouldn’t be thinking about it as he was careening through the air toward a collision with...
His body slammed into the rock face, and the edge of the steel from the head of the spike bit into his hand as he held on with everything he had, while the fingers of his other hand snagged just enough of the neck of Randolph’s thick leathercotunto stop him from falling to his death. Randolph was fortunate that he’d decided to put aside his shiny mail for the lighter armor—a hauberk might not have been as easy to catch.
Thom felt as if his body was being ripped apart. His muscles strained as he fought not to let go of either the spike or the man hanging by his fingertips.
He wasn’t even sure Randolph was alive until he muffled a curse.
“Are you all right?” Thom whispered tightly, still not sure whether there was a soldier up there listening for them and his teeth clenched against the strain of the other man’s weight.
“My head is ringing but I think so.”
