“If that is the case, then you are supplying him men for the cause. That makes you just as guilty as he is.”
Deston’s jaw ticked furiously. He averted his gaze, wondering how this entire situation had veered so out of control. He couldn’t surrender now, not when he had come so far.
“Do you not understand that I want something better for you?” he finally hissed, his hesitant gaze lifting to Ellowyn’s beseeching face. “You are meant for far better things in this world than a man who lives and breathes battle for a selfish young man. I know that vocation all too well, for I was involved in something like it years ago. You may be de Russe’s wife, but war will always be his mistress. You will have to share him. Evennow, he prepares to leave you for France. You are not the most important thing to him, Wynny, Edward is. You will always be second. I wanted something better for you than that.”
It was an extraordinarily valid point. Brandt heard it like hammer blows to his heart. He didn’t dare look at Ellowyn, mostly because they both knew it was true. He had never heard his life put into those terms before, but Deston was entirely correct. It was a sickening realization.
“I understand your words,” Ellowyn replied, more subdued than she had been during the entire conversation, “but this is a choice I made. You must let me make my own decision and, if necessary, live with the consequences of my choice. I am a woman grown, Da. You must accept that.”
Deston drew in a long, deep breath. “I want you to come home with me, Wynny. De Russe is going to France as it is and you will more than likely never see him again. I want you to come home with me now.”
Ellowyn frowned. “He is going to France and I am going with him,” she told him frankly. “Edward may hold his fealty but I hold his heart and he holds mine. The only way that will change is if he is dead.”
“Hewilldie,” Deston was growing heated again. “It is only a matter of time before he is dead and when that happens, I will take you home.”
Because he was growing angry again, so was Ellowyn. “I willnotgo home,” she said hotly. “Guildford is my home now. If Brandt is dead, I will administer his dukedom in a manner that will honor him. I will not run home to my father who only seeks to shame and demean me.”
Deston’s mouth fell open. “I do nothing of the sort,” he fired back. “You are a stubborn, willful wench, Ellowyn de Nerra. You disrespected and shamed your family when you ran off with de Russe. You are fortunate that I forgive you for that.”
They were back on the same old subject and Ellowyn would not be sucked into it. She pulled free of Brandt’s grasp and took a few steps towards her father, shaking a finger at him.
“I do not care if you forgive me or not,” she told him sternly. “Go home. I do not want to see you here ever again. You are hateful and nasty, Da. Go home and never return.”
Deston was starting to turn shades of red. “You cannot order me about, you little fool.”
Ellowyn put her hands on her hips. “I just did,” she snapped. “Go home. I do not want to see you anymore. Everything I ever believed in, my father whom I loved so dearly, has all been a lie. The father I knew and loved would have never hurt me this way. If you do not go home this second, I swear that any love I ever felt for you will be forever turned to hatred.”
Deston was struck with the devastating impact of her words. He sensed the conversation was at an end and he was furious, shattered, and all things in between. He had never heard Ellowyn speak to him like that, not ever. It was de Russe’s doing, he was sure. The man had turned his loving, sweet daughter against him. He could hardly believe it. Rational thought gave way to irrational thought. He had to eliminate what stood between him and Ellowyn. Only then would things be right between them again. De Russe had caused all of this and the man would pay.
With a growl, he brought his sword up again. He was aiming for Brandt but Ellowyn heard the noise, saw what he was intending, and all she could think of was preventing it. She was deeply protective of Brandt, in any situation, and this was no different. With a scream, she threw up her hands and charged at her father, putting herself between Deston and Brandt.
Unfortunately, there was a sword between her and Deston, and it was the beloved and powerful sword of Braxton de Nerrathat accidentally carved a searing path into the right side of Ellowyn’s torso.
It all happened so fast. Brandt saw Ellowyn rushing towards her armed father but he was unable to get to her in time. When he saw the blade pierce her torso, he shouted something. He wasn’t even sure what it was. All he knew was that it was a cry of pure anguish. As he shouted his agony, a nervous St. Hèver archer thought it was a command to fire and let loose an arrow that hit Deston in the throat. As Ellowyn went down with a sword wound, Deston slammed onto his back with a spiny arrow in his throat.
Chaos ensued.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Brandt stood atthe lancet window in the master’s bower, his gaze moving out over the bailey of Guildford. It was dawn and the eastern sky was turning shades of pink and purple as gray ribbons of clouds lingered on the horizon. He thought he could smell rain but he wasn’t sure.
Behind him on the big bed, Ellowyn was sleeping heavily. She had been sleeping for nearly two days. The physic from Guildford, a thin wiry man by the name of Seever, had given her a poppy potion for the pain on the day of her injury that had knocked her out cold. He continued to give it to her every time she woke up, sending her back down into the black abyss of slumber where she would heal and forget the turmoil of her last lucid memories. Brandt was grateful for the merciful unconsciousness.
So much had happened since that fateful accident. Deston’s lingering and gurgling death as his daughter lay in the dirt several feet away and witnessed the horror, the painful hysteria of transporting his wife from the gatehouse to their second floor chamber, Ellowyn’s grief at her father’s passing, his own stunned grief at her injury… God, it had all passed in a blur. As Ellowyn had lain wounded and sleeping, Brandt had tried not to drink too much simply to help him cope but that plan had seen multiple failures. He wasn’t a weak man by nature, nor did he drink much, but seeing his wife gored with a broadsword had taken something out of him.
Seever had been summoned from the village because Brandt didn’t want his surgeon, a burly bear of a man, touching his wife.The old surgeon had a penchant for molesting young women and Brandt didn’t want to have to worry that the man was lusting over his wife. So he had sent Stefan into town to retrieve the best physic he could find and the knight had returned with the lanky physic recommended by the priests and the man’s wife. The pair had sat with Ellowyn, tending her carefully under the duke’s watchful eye.
As Brandt’s focus was on his wife, a knight by the name of le Mon had bundled up Deston’s corpse and made haste for Erith. Brandt probably should have paid more attention to the care of Deston, but he couldn’t manage it. Not with Ellowyn so badly injured. Therefore, he consigned Deston’s fate to God and trusted le Mon to take him home… and that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t invest any more time and emotion in it than that.
Now, at dawn of the third day, Brandt was emotionally and physically exhausted. He never left Ellowyn, not for a minute– not even when Alex de Lara returned the day after the incident with twenty-five hundred men from the Duke of Carlisle and another eight hundred from his father’s ally, the Earl of Richmond. Now, here were almost five thousand men swelling the bailey of Guildford and even at sunrise Brandt could smell the stench of too many men. He knew his time was drawing short before he had to return to France because he had what he’d come for– men and support. But he also had a wife he didn’t want to leave.
“Brandt?”
He heard the softly uttered question, turning with a start to see that Ellowyn was awake. She was watching him from her stew of pillows and blankets, and he quickly left his post by the window and went to her.
“Why are you awake?” he asked, concerned, as he sat on the bed and put a hand on her forehead to see if she was with fever. “You should be sleeping.”
She gazed up at him, groggy. “If the physic sees that I am awake, he will give me some of that damnable potion again and put me back to sleep,” she muttered. “Where is he?”
