And then she was lost in a nightmare of violence and torment from which she knew there’d be no escape.
She hurt. Sweet Jesu, everything hurt so badly.
Struggling to open her eyes, Catherine tried to get her bearings. She was on the floor of the chamber, her cheek pressed into the cool, hard wood. Pushing herself to a sitting position, she gasped and cried out, sucking in her breath. Tasting blood, she spit it out, swiping the back of her hand across her lips.
He’d beaten her badly this time. Worse than ever before. He’d wanted to kill her. And he’d have succeeded, too, she knew, if something hadn’t stopped him. If something hadn’t happened, forcing him to cease kicking her after she’d curled herself into a ball on the floor.
The messenger…
Wincing, she sat up a little more and closed her eyes, trying to remember what the man had said. Her mind felt enveloped in a fog, paralyzed by the throbbing ache in her skull. She had to think.
It had been one of Eduard’s knights. He’d come to the door, interrupting the beating. She remembered the man’s brown eyes, thick with sympathy when he’d seen her lying on the floor. But then he’d looked away, clearing his throat and announcing that Lord Camville’s forces had been spotted surging over the hill east of Faegerliegh. He’d arrived several hours earlier than expected, and the men needed Eduard to lead them against him in the battle to come.
Lord Camville’s forces had been spotted…
Gray had come! The realization sent a joyful shock through her numbed brain. He’d led his army to Faegerliegh Keep to help her and the twins. She struggled to her feet, ignoring the pain as she stumbled to the door. She had to find her children. Had to try to lead them outside the keep’s walls. Outside to Gray.
The solar. Eduard had ordered his men to bring Ian and Isabel to the solar for safekeeping. She tried the door, her heart leaping when she realized that it was unlocked. Eduard hadn’t even posted a guard in the corridor. Most likely he’d thought her too weakened to stir from the floor. ’Twas his mistake, and she planned to use it to full advantage.
Murmuring a prayer of thanksgiving, Catherine limped down the corridor, willing better clarity to her muddled brain and bursts of strength into her weakened legs. With each step, she focused on her purpose, gaining power and resolve. And anger. She felt the welcome burn of it, recalling Gray’s advice to her during their training, to focus her passions and rage into something useful. To work them to her benefit.
She grimaced, which only made her lip bleed again. Dabbing it gently with her fingers, she stumbled on. Aye, she’d use her anger well. She’d wield every ounce of it against Eduard. She’d been given a second chance to save her children, and she’d get them away from here if it took her last breath.
Catherine ducked behind a thick curtain as one of the keep’s maidservants came running down the hall. The woman was pale and obviously frightened by the sounds of battle echoing outside the walls. After she passed, Catherine came out of hiding and continued toward the solar.
She concentrated on the hate she felt for Eduard, and it helped her to keep going, to push through her suffering. Her loathsome brother by marriage had made a great tactical error this day, an error for which he’d pay dearly. He’d underestimated the force of her will to survive and fight his brutality and evil…
And that, she vowed, jaw clenched as she trudged down the seemingly endless corridor, was going to prove his most deadly mistake of all.
Isabel squeezed her eyes shut, clasping her hands tight around Lily as she struggled to pray. She felt her own breath misting warm on her chilled fingers, but ’twas difficult to concentrate on talking to God with all of the banging and shouting going on beyond the keep’s walls. There were no windows to see outside the solar. No way to tell what was happening.
“It sounds like a big fight,” Ian yelled, his breath hanging in white puffs in the air. He hopped from the tabletop to a trunk ten paces beyond it, finally leaping to the massive mantel, where he dangled for a moment like a monkey before dropping to the stone hearth. He clambered up onto the unlit logs inside, standing up so that his head disappeared from view as he peered up the chimney, hoping for a glimpse of the action.
“Get out of there,” Isabel yelled, getting up from her prayers to yank him from the fireplace.
Ian coughed and scrubbed his sooty arm across his eyes, leaving black smudges all over his cheeks. “You didn’t have to grab me like that! I was just scouting.” He coughed again and scowled at her. “Now I can’t see, and you made me breathe in a pile of cinders!”
“Well, look at you!” Isabel scolded, brushing flakes of ash from his blond hair and using her sleeve to wipe his eyes. “What would Mummy say if she saw you, Ian?”
“Mummy isn’t here.” His lower lip wobbled a little and Isabel sighed, putting her hands on her hips.
“Well she will be, just as soon as she talks with Uncle Eduard.”
“Uncle Eduard doesn’t talk, he hits,” Ian muttered, kicking his toe against the hearth.
Isabel felt the sick feeling in her stomach too, but she couldn’t show that to her brother. He might get scared again, and if she’d learned anything in the year that they’d fostered away from home, it was that you could pretend yourself into feeling any way you wanted. It worked most of the time, anyway.
“We need to do something,” she said, pursing her lips and tapping her toe.
“Like what?”
“Like getting out of here to find Mummy.”
“But we can’t! Uncle Eduard told those two men to stay outside our door. If we try to leave they’ll just throw us back in here.”
“Not if we trick them, they won’t.” Isabel paced slowly to the fireplace again, sticking her head in to look up at the square of blue sky she could see at the top of the chimney.
“Hey, I thought you told me not to do that!”
