“I had hoped that you would expose Eduard for the brutal wretch he is, my lady,” he said softly. He gazed into her eyes, reaching to her very soul, it seemed. The way he looked at her was making her breathless, and she struggled to find some answer for him. Something that wouldn’t sound as awful and insincere as she felt. But before she could muster a sound, he looked away. “I’ll expect your return to the feast shortly.” Then he walked away down the corridor, disappearing into the great hall as Eduard had done a few moments earlier.
She sagged against the wall after he left, bitter emptiness engulfing her. Her chest tightened as she remembered what he’d asked of her during the confrontation.Just tell me the truth.By the Saints of heaven, she knew the value of that practice, now more than ever. If only she could follow through with it. She’d prided herself on her honesty all of her life. She’d taught her children to revere it as one of the best Christian virtues. But that had been before Eduard had trampled over her and threatened everything she held dearest with destruction.
Nay, there was no help for her deceptions. Not now at least. Though it galled her to her soul, though it went against every fiber of her nature to continue it, she’d have to maintain this enormous lie that had become her life. Two other far more precious lives depended on it.
She shook her head and turned to begin walking back to the great hall herself, but a tingling up her spine made her pause in her steps. Someone was watching her.
Slowing, she reached out to the wall to steady herself and hazarded a glance over her shoulder. The tingling intensified to a rush of fear. A shadowy figure lurked in the doorway at the opposite end of the hall, back toward the kitchens. The person crouched in the portal to the castle spice chamber, not moving in muscle or breath, it seemed. Only watching.
It was a man, or at least she thought it was. Her heart pounded, and her hands felt icy. ’Twas difficult to tell, he was stooped so low and swathed in so much dark fabric. He looked to be lame, perhaps. Or afflicted with a humped back. Only his eyes showed, glittering dark and intense through the space in his head covering. Her heart leapt into her throat again.
Merciful heavens, he was staring right at her…
Gasping, Catherine turned and fled the rest of the way to the great hall. Gripping the heavy door, she pulled it open and then shut it firmly behind her, leaning against it for a moment to regain her composure before forcing herself to reenter the din of feasting still underway in the hall.
She didn’t dare, even once, to look back.
Gray watched his wife reenter the hall, making her way timidly around the clusters of people who feasted, drank, and sang with the minstrel who played a rollicking song near the hearth. The king had already retired to his chamber, as had Eduard directly after the incident in the corridor. But many others remained awake, and the revelry still went strong.
Gray knew that he couldn’t sleep. Not if his life depended on it. He’d been reliving what had happened in the corridor, shifting between condemning himself for not beating Eduard to a pulp, sanctions be damned, to reassuring himself that he’d done what was right by giving Elise the final say. But as she approached him now, he almost wished he’d gone with his urge to throttle Eduard. She seemed more upset then ever. Apparently allowing her to stay his hand hadn’t been the right choice.
When she rounded the end of the hall, one member of the Royal Caravan, a squire to a lesser knight, leapt from the table near her, shouting with laughter at one of his friends. The young man was well into his cups, oblivious to much around him, and Elise shrank away from his abrupt movement and noise. Her skittish reaction might have gone unheeded by anyone at the feast.
Anyone but Gray.
“My lady,” he said, his voice even as she regained her seat next to him on the dais.
“My lord.”
She was still pale. Her hands trembled when she raised her cup, and he watched with displeasure as her gaze strayed immediately to Eduard’s place at table.
When she noted her brother’s absence, she seemed to calm a little, but anger spiked within Gray nonetheless. Damn Eduard. Damn every man who ruled those in their care with their fists. He, too, knew what it felt like to be so thoroughly dominated. He’d lived his childhood in fear, always watching and trying to read each expression, each word from his master’s mouth. Yet even at the tender age of fourteen, he’d had his masculine strength and size to bolster him against Thornby’s threats.
Elise was tall, but she was most definitely female and therefore more vulnerable to abuse.Just like Gillian had been.
The thought raked him with claws of steel, and he tried to push aside the images that never failed to lurk close to the surface of his thoughts. He tried to repress the vision of Gillian, gasping his name as he held her. She’d been beaten and broken. Defenseless. And Gray had been unable to stop it. Unable to save his own sister.
But he could help his wife. He’d already vowed to protect her with his body and blood, both as knight of the realm and as her husband. True, the king’s command forbid him from killing Eduard, as deserving as the bastard might be. Yet there was something else that he could do to safeguard Elise. Something he would have done for Gillian, if he’d only known how, then.
“My lady?” he murmured. Considering the din of the feasting around them, he’d spoken softly, and yet she startled at the sound of his voice. When she looked at him, the timidity and caution in her gaze sent an aching stab through his heart.
“Aye, my lord?”
“Have you ever held a sword?”
Surprise widened her eyes, their soft hue reminding him again of the blue flowers sprinkled across Ravenslock’s meadows.
“Nay, my lord. Never in my life.”
Gray paused to weigh what he was about to say, knowing that it would sound daft. He wanted to be logical, but intellect wasn’t part of what he was feeling. This sprang from some deep, primal place in him that urged him to protect and shield this woman from anything that might harm her.
He clenched his jaw and forged ahead. “Do you dislike the thought of wielding a weapon, lady?”
“Aye…I mean, nay…I—” She stumbled over her answer as her face suddenly bloomed with color. “I cannot say that I ever considered the possibility.”
“Yet you seem strong, and you have your height to aid you. Do you think it possible? If not, we could begin with daggers and work our way up.”
“My lord?”
