Page 82 of An Earl for the Archeress

“He lies, Lady Mariel. Robert was taken alive as Nottingham’s prisoner. Even Nottingham knows he’ll be in too deep a pit with their king if he kills the earl. Have faith.”

She whipped her head around to beg more answers from him, but his head was back upright, facing forward, and he gave her a stern frown. “I said quiet, Lady.”

Harold turned back around. “Is she still arguing? Does she need more than a slap?”

“Nay, my laird. She was sniveling overmuch about her husband’s death. ’Twas annoying, ’tis all,” Teàrlach said. “She’s done well to silence her hateful speech.”

Harold nodded and returned to the front of his men again.

Mariel’s mind swirled. Was Teàrlach telling the truth? Robert had been taken alive? The relief that poured through her was euphoric, followed by the disbelief that her father could inflict such pain. It never failed to shock her that the man cared so little for her. Still, she could live in Crawford’s prison, knowing Robert was not dead. At least, not dead yet. And more the question, why was Teàrlach helping her? Why had he helped Robert before? What was it that drove him to do what he could to ease a bad situation?

Mayhap he truly cared for Madeline. She had seen it in his eyes. The heartbroken Madeline’s sister… She could only hope. And the only bright light of returning to Ayrshire was that she might see her wee sister again. Guilt for abandoning Madeline sliced through her once more. She had been an imperfect sister, always impatient that Madeline was so timid. And Madeline had begged the opposite of her, that she quit rolling her eyes and tame her behavior so their father might spare her his anger. She prayed as their horses lumbered onward over the English countryside that she would find Madeline in one piece.

…

Nottingham Castle Dungeons

One month later, December

Robert sat in his dungeon cell, the dank walls threatening to madden him. Feeble torchlight held steady upon one wall. A barred window down the corridor was his only indication as to whether or not it was day or night. Upon waking now, it was light, and therefore day.

He looked back at the walls enclosing him, at his feet shackled to the floor so that he only had a few feet of movement. His body ached less and less from the beating he had withstood at the hands of Nottingham’s men, but the soreness on his face and chest told him he had been badly bruised, and a gouge on his forehead indicated that either Nottingham or Crawford’s rings had sliced him during a punch.

Everything had been stripped from him, short of his trousers and undergarments. His tunic had been removed to examine for hidden weapons, his codpiece removed and no doubt the contents added to Nottingham’s personal coffers, leaving him fairly exposed, if not for the thin shield of his undergarments, which were now dingy and gray. His boots, too, had been stripped, his stockings removed, no doubt in search of more weapons that could be used to pick the locks of his bondage. He took immature pleasure in knowing the finely-crafted codpiece would never fit Nottingham and his pea-sized bollocks, for only a man with an inadequate appendage lorded so heavily over others.

His title had also been stripped. His castle and staff had been commandeered. But his woman…wife…Mariel. That loss stung the most, plaguing his restless mind. He had utterly failed her. And now she was gone.

He knew the days came and went, but it was growing harder to keep track of them. His stomach hungered, though he was given water, bread, and a slimy slop of old vegetables once a day. He also knew when someone entered the dungeon, even if they never came to his cell, because the torchlight upon the corridor wall would give a telltale waver.

I love him!

He heard Mariel’s plea as Crawford had threatened to murder him right before her. The words rang through his brain like bells tolling the matins, constantly, without mercy, without pause so he could collect his thoughts. Dammit, but couldn’t King Richard abandon Jerusalem and take over the care of his people? They needed him more than the infidels in the Holy Land. Why could he not leave war-mongering be and return to his kingdom and right Nottingham’s atrocious wrongs?

God, but there had to be a way out of this entire mess. He yanked against his chains. His thoughts were driving him mad. He loved Mariel. What he wouldn’t give for the chance to tell her. He had wanted to marry her, and he had wasted too much time pretending otherwise. He hadn’t married her to protect her. He had married her because he couldn’t imagine life without her. He had been too blinded by his aversion to the institution of marriage to see what a treasure it could be.

Protection. He shook his head. How laughable was that? Protect her, indeed. He had protected her right back into her father’s angry custody. God, what he would give to know if she suffered or not, what he would give to grow old together and never miss another day of telling her how much he loved her.

He thought of their wedding night. He thought of her in his bed made of furs, on the ground, in a hut, in his arms, and how content she had been, how much she had given to him. No lady he had ever met would have been happy to lie in an abandoned hut, deep in a forest, on the ground. No woman had accommodated the whole of him with such force as he used that night, so lost in his want of her, her nails scoring his skin that all sense of control, all sense of time, had fled. She had laid herself bare to him as he’d made love to her through the night. She had entrusted her heart to him and hadn’t shied away from the animal he’d become as he joined himself to her and made them one.

He should feel ashamed for his primal rutting, and yet he knew she would have been offended had he denied them both his full fervor. It would have seemed dishonest. She had always been his equal. She had always loved a challenge. She had never settled for less when she felt there was more.

I love him!

He shook his head violently to clear away her anguished plea.

He should have said it, should have said the words, I marry you because I want you, and want you always. It would have reaffirmed so much for her if she had only heard him say it, for she had asked him many times. Yet those simple words had been harder to say than any jest ready on his lips.

He pulled against the shackles fruitlessly, frustrated, restless, the ability to steal her away from her father’s wrath looming so far out of reach, and he racked his brain for the thousandth time as to who within his walls had betrayed him. His thoughts kept settling on John. John was close to him. John had disappeared after David had returned with news of Crawford’s pending arrival. Though, in spite of Jonathan’s anger, he couldn’t reconcile that his favored man and good friend would betray him over Mariel.

Yet the clues stacked up. Crawford had said he trusted those closest to him overmuch, and John was his closest friend, apart from Will. It was John who had been charged with posting soldiers in the woods that afternoon as Crawford and Nottingham were slated to arrive. And he’d never seen John again after that.

It had bothered Robert then and it made sense now. John had gone to inform Crawford that he harbored Mariel. Nottingham had likely promised to reinstate John’s castle and lands in exchange for information on Mariel or on the band of thieves. John had been angry when he discovered Robert was going to marry Mariel. John had made a fatal decision to help the enemy in a moment of anger.

There was no one else he could think of…Yes. There was. Wesley.

The pompous bookkeeper he had done so well to continue to employ had hated Mariel from the beginning. And he had hated being punished for cheating at the tourney. Yet he, too, had remained loyal, probably because he loved his position. Huntington was the wealthiest estate in England, aside from the House of Plantagenet, and Robert paid his officials accordingly. Wesley would never receive such a generous salary elsewhere. And though he had remained loyal to Huntington, he had favored Robert’s father, not Robert. The accountant might very well have taken a gamble to get rid of Mariel and Robert while hoping to maintain his position at Huntington.

John or Wesley?