Adelaide nodded. “Be quick. And not too deep.”
Hilde didn’t reply. Instead, she swung into action. Taking the dagger, she sliced the blade across both of Adelaide’s tender wrists, so deep that it was like she was carving into a side of beef. Adelaide screamed as Hilde cut so deeply that she nearly cut off Adelaide’s right hand. Blood spurted, gushing all over Adelaide’s green silk dress, all over her neck, and down her arms.
There was blood everywhere.
Adelaide lowered her damaged arms as Hilde moved away from the bed, rushing over to the door, still holding on to that bloodied dagger. Adelaide’s extreme blood loss was so much, so quickly, that by the time Adelaide put her feet on the floor in an attempt to rise from the bed, she immediately fell to the floor,bleeding all over the stone. Her pale face turned to her old nurse, her eyes wide with accusation.
“What did you do?” she cried. “What did you do to me?”
Hilde was surprisingly unemotional. For a woman who had lived in fear her entire life, the sight of her charge bleeding to death didn’t upset her in the least. In fact, there was something quite cathartic about it but she maintained a grip on the dagger in case Adelaide suddenly stood up and charged her.
She would defend herself.
“I did what needed to be done, my lady,” she said in her heavy Germanic accent. Then, she shook her head in a gesture of sorrow and disgust. “You were going to kill Sir Thomas just as you killed those other young men. Fine young men that you threw away like rubbish. And me… you see me as rubbish, too. I will not let you throw me away, not when I have spent a lifetime being abused by you. What I did needed to be done.”
Adelaide collapsed onto the floor as the puddle underneath her widened. It was clear that she wasn’t long for this world.
“You… old bitch,” she hissed. “What have you… done?”
With that, she made an odd noise that sounded like choking, but there was no more breath going into her lungs. She twitched a couple of times, her body going through death throes, before finally falling still with her sightless eyes wide open.
Hilde stood there a moment, holding that razor-sharp dagger, until she was sure Adelaide would rise no more. Then, she calmly walked over to her and put the dagger in her hand, making it look as if Adelaide had cut herself again, only this time, she had succeeded in cutting too deeply.
And that was how Thomas found her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Northwood Castle
It was dawn.
The mists were rising above the fields into a clear sky, signaling the start of a bright new day. But for Maitland, it was the first day of the rest of her life with a man who was married to someone else.
She hadn’t slept all night, knowing that Thomas was touching Adelaide in the most intimate way. Even if he hated every second of it, he was still touching her as a husband touches a wife because it was required of him. Touches that were meant for Maitland were given over to a woman Thomas hated.
In truth, she wasn’t sure who she was more upset for– herself or Thomas. And perhaps she was feeling just a little bit weak because when they’d spoken of their love for each other three days ago, she’d felt strong and fortified by it. But time and distance had caused her to doubt her resolve to love a man who could never give her his name. That name belonged to another.
It would never be hers.
She struggled to come to terms with it, not to linger on what could have been. At least she still had her children to keep her occupied, and their love was unconditional.
It brought her small comfort.
In the large bower at Northwood that Lady de Wolfe had put her in, Maitland looked around to her sleeping charges and to one who wasn’t her charge at all. Caria was very attached to little Dyana, so the two of them slept in one small bed together while the other children slept in several other small beds that had been brought in for them.
Nice, comfortable beds with mattresses stuffed with feathers. Artus actually had his own bed and, even now, he was sprawled out over the top of it because he wasn’t used to sleeping with a coverlet. He normally slept with nothing at all over him, so comfort like this was foreign to him.
Maitland smiled at Artus and his resistance to a coverlet as she stood by a big lancet window, watching the sun rise. She missed Thomas; she missed everything about him. Even though she knew this was the life, and love, she agreed to, as he’d never kept anything from her, still, it was a very lonely existence.
She was going to have to get used to it.
A breeze was picking up as the sun began to rise, rippling the silver-green grass of the fields beyond Northwood Castle, a truly massive bastion that literally sat right on the border between England and Scotland. Since Lady de Wolfe didn’t want Maitland or the children returning to Edenside until it could be fortified, for now, this was to be their home. Maitland had met Lady Teviot, a very nice older woman who was most kind to the children, and she’d met Lady Ellsrod, too, a very tall woman with blonde hair and a somewhat stern manner about her.
But everyone seemed to be very pleasant, and the children were even visited by William and Paris yesterday as Williambegan to take a few slow and short walks around the upper floor. William seemed to be healing very quickly from his injury, which put all of Northwood at ease. It was clear that William de Wolfe was important to Northwood, and Northwood to him. They were all intertwined from decades of service and alliances. Maitland envied that. She’d always hoped to be part of something strong and honorable like the House of de Wolfe, but it simply wasn’t meant to be.
She was to be part of Edenside and that would have to be enough.
Maitland was just turning away from the window when she heard the sentries on the wall give up the cry. It was a call that moved along the wall, from man to man, until it reached the gatehouse. Curious, she peered from the window and could see men moving around the gatehouse, quickly, and the man-gate in the portcullis opening. It was clear that someone was approaching, though she couldn’t see anything from her angle. But soon enough, the man-gate closed and the portcullis began to lift. And she saw, very clearly, when Thomas and several other men charged through the gatehouse.
