By Grace Possessed (24 page)

What if he used it for that purpose, anyway? Could she endure it? Would he really leave her behind afterward? And if he did, would she be dead or alive?

The risk was great, but what was the alternative? Once free of England’s shores, Trilborn would make her his doxy, regardless. He would take his pleasure of her in all
the degrading and painful ways he had described. She would bear the brunt of his rage, be at the mercy of his fists. She might as well be dead.

If she succeeded, and if Ross or the king’s men were indeed somewhere behind them, then it was Trilborn who would die. That possibility was worth the sacrifice.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she put out her hand to clasp his wrist. “Stop, stop now. I need…I am going to be ill.”

“Endure it. We’ve no time.”

She lifted a hand to her mouth, speaking through her fingers. “I promise you, I cannot. If you prefer that I spew all over you…”

Trilborn snorted in anger, but altered his course toward the nearest trees. Reaching their shade, he walked the destrier a little deeper among them. He dismounted, then dragged her down beside him.

Cate stumbled, almost fell, with no play-acting whatsoever. Her legs felt like mop rags, and her stomach heaved. Clamping a hand to her mouth, she pushed away from his hold, took a few wobbling steps. With her back to him, she put one hand on the trunk of a large oak and bent forward, quickly thrusting a finger down her throat.

The effort was almost unnecessary. She was violently sick, gasping and choking, while tears streamed down her face. She heaved again and again, until her stomach was empty. Spent at last, she wiped her mouth with her hand, straightened, and then closed her eyes and leaned back against the tree trunk.

Something swung against her thigh with that move
ment. She was so accustomed to that light weight that it was a moment before she recognized the source.

Her poniard. It was still attached to her girdle, the scabbard hidden among the folds of her gown. Through carelessness, ignorance or similar familiarity, Trilborn had not taken it from her.

“Come, we must make haste,” he commanded. He reached to put a hand on her arm.

She shook him off. Staggering a little, she moved away, walking deeper into the woodland.

“Where are you going?”

“Where do you suppose?” she demanded over her shoulder. She walked on until a screen of shrubbery stood between them.

He allowed that defiance, which seemed miraculous until she realized from the sound that he was availing himself of the opportunity, as well. She caught up her skirts and crouched, watching his shape through a screen of leaves as she did what she must. At the same time, she eased her small knife free of its scabbard. She pushed it into her long sleeve, against the underside of her wrist. With that done, she straightened and moved into the open again.

The urge to run was strong, so strong. Another time, she might have tried it, but not now. Her head felt too large for her body, yet too small to contain the swelling pain inside it. Her vision was so hazy that distant objects wavered, taking on fantastical shapes. A goat on a far hill became a dragon, a rabbit turned into a giant toad and a sapling took on the form of a dark figure on horseback. She blinked, and the sapling wavered, developed two
heads. Looking down, she saw she had two right hands, as well. She was seeing double.

Stepping with slow care, she wandered back toward where the destrier stood, though allowing her footsteps to take her to the open edge of the wood. Trilborn, cursing, strode toward her. He had removed his helm, the better to see to his needs. With it under his arm, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, dragging her along as he turned back toward his mount.

“Wait, wait,” she gasped, covering her eyes with her hand as sickness assailed her again. “Shouldn’t we rest a little longer? Your destrier can’t go on forever, carrying both of us.”

“My worry, not yours.” He shoved her ahead of him. She stumbled and almost fell, would have if he hadn’t dragged her upright, hauling her against him. She could feel the heat of him through her skirts, and the threatening hardness at his groin. He stared down at her mouth, bent his head.

The smell of him surrounded her, sweaty, randy, with his acrid hint of cloves. A dry heave seized her. Moaning with more art than necessity, she let it convulse her body.

His oath was savage as he took a fast step back. It was followed by every scurrilous name for a female he could voice. Snatching her arm again, he shoved her toward the destrier.

She stopped beside the huge stallion, clinging to the saddle leathers with her back to her captor. “I can’t,” she said, hiding her face against the stirrup. “I can’t go on.”

“You can. You will.”

“No.” She moved her head from side to side.

“You prefer to die?” Trilborn demanded. Hard on the words, she heard the slither of metal on metal, the sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.

She slid the poniard from her sleeve. Where to strike? His neck? Too easily defended. Between the cuirass that covered his chest and his lower protection? He was wearing a long hauberk that would deflect all but the sharpest point. To merely prick him would invite a retaliation she might not survive.

Abruptly, she knew. His hand and wrist had been bare when he held her arm just now. In relieving himself, he had removed his glove.

Had she a chance?

Did it matter?

She could never submit to Trilborn. She could never give herself, never be taken by any man other than Ross Dunbar.

Cate lowered her arm and turned slowly to face her abductor. She kept the small, sharp knife hidden against her thigh, and her gaze focused somewhere beyond his shoulder so he would not see the purpose in her eyes.

He was scowling at her, though his face changed when it seemed she would obey him. With satisfaction flaring in his eyes, he seated his sword back in its scabbard with a decisive click.

Cate saw these things on the edge of her vision, but her attention was snagged on something beyond the wood’s edge, across the field. The sapling she had noticed just now was closer, larger. It was moving, shimmering in
the slanting sunlight. A horseman, after all. A mounted knight with a nimbus of light around his armor.

Trilborn must not see, not yet, not yet. She snapped her eyes shut, moistened her lips. Tears blurred her vision as she lifted her lashes again to focus upon the man in front of her.

“Why?” she asked in hoarse demand. “Why me, why now, when I am married to someone else?”

“You were meant to be mine from the first. Fine looking, of rank, an accursed Grace of Graydon whom a suitor must court death to claim? What man could resist such a challenge?”

“Almost any other, I should think.”

His snort was derisive. “Superstitious fools. You were also an heiress and my purse was empty.”

“That I can accept,” she said with a twist of her lips, “though I think your interest grew sharper when I was given to Ross.”

“That was never supposed to happen, damn his eyes. Never!”

“No, he wasn’t supposed to follow me when I fell behind the hunt, was he? You meant to carry me off then, just as you’re doing now.”

“You figured that out, did you? Oh, yes, I was to play the lovesick gallant who must have you by any means, offering marriage after your rape. You’d have been grateful in your humiliation.”

“Ross was caught in the scheme instead, and you hated him for it.”

“A Dunbar, whoreson border reiver that he is? How could I not? Henry was to award you to me, not him!”

“So you attempted to remove him by vicious attack, expecting him to come to my aid when you turned your ire in my direction.”

“Oh, I was ready to lay hands on you, as well, being you were stupid enough to prefer him.”

“But Ross recovered from his wound.”

“So he did, devil’s spawn, just as he survived an assassin’s knife and my attack upon him and the king this day.”
Survived…

She had known it must be so. Still the joy that rose inside her at this confirmation was strengthening beyond anything she’d ever felt. Her heart swelled with it, and the image of a knight on horseback, galloping, galloping, was engraved on her mind’s eye, though she would not, dared not, turn her gaze again to the field behind Trilborn.

“He’s alive,” she whispered.

Trilborn gave a rough laugh. “No doubt his royal majesty will present him with a barony after this day’s work. More spoils for Dunbar, as he was lucky enough to stop me from dispatching Henry. But he’ll not have you to go with it.”

Her captor’s eyes burned in his flushed face. The recital of his grievances had roused him again. He was crowding her, easing closer. He reached to seize her arm.

The poniard was in her hand, its silver metalwork over ebony smooth against her palm. She lashed out without conscious thought, striking across the inside of his wrist.

He howled. Incredulity leaped into his eyes as he looked at her, though it turned rapidly to murderous rage.

His helm dropped from his grasp. He clamped his free hand on the wound while bright scarlet droplets squeezed between his fingers.

Cate did not wait for more. Dodging around him, she staggered into a run. Her head jarred, the pain blinding her more with every pounding step. Her breath came in harsh gasps. Her knees seemed unhinged, and she felt as if she moved through a bowl of custard as she broke from the cover of the trees.

Behind her, she heard Trilborn cursing, grunting as he hauled himself into the saddle, screaming at his destrier. The enormous beast leaped into a run. Its hooves struck the ground with a hollow drumming. She could feel the earth shuddering beneath them.

The dark knight across the field veered toward her. He was coming fast, riding low. He reached to draw the sword that rode at his back, whipping it forward so the sunlight followed it in a glittering arc. He was faceless behind his closed helm, though the red dragon of Henry’s guard marked the tabard he wore over his armor. The thunder of his horse’s hooves blended with those behind her to make a dull roar.

Cate glanced back. Trilborn was gaining on her. His lips were drawn away from his teeth in a snarl. His sword hung from his fist as if dragged down by its weight, and blood made a dark line down the polished steel. As he pounded nearer, he swung it back, swept it up.

She flung herself to the ground. Steel whistled above her, ripping through her flying veil. And above that sound, soaring in rich and deadly threat through the ringing in her ears, came the Scots yell of the Clan Dunbar.

The two men came together with a screeching crash like a metal-clad battering ram against a metal-clad gate. The very earth shook with the power of it. Horses whinnied, stumbling under the impact before recovering. Cate rolled away from the tumult. An instant later, armor clanged and rattled as a body thudded to the ground.

She reared up in time to see Ross leap from his mount to stand above Trilborn, where he lay. Ross put a foot on the downed man’s armored chest, leaned to rest the point of his sword at the hollow of his exposed neck.

“Strike,” Trilborn croaked, his face twisted in a defiant sneer. “Go on, kill me.”

R
oss had not made his mad ride on Cate’s trail alone. Braesford, who had endured it with him, came trotting up at a deliberate pace designed to support but not interfere. Dismounting, he moved to Ross’s side. They stood gazing down at Trilborn.

The bastard was having trouble breathing. Ross made no move to help. He didn’t give a tinker’s damn if the man never drew breath again. In fact, he would prefer it.

For a single instant he had been greatly tempted to accept the dare, driving his blade through Trilborn’s neck, ending his breathing forever. Such satisfaction would have been in it, such justice.

Chivalry and honor could be damned nuisances.

“I have him. See to Cate,” Braesford said.

Ross dreaded going to where she had fallen. His brother-in-law, though concerned, did not seem alarmed, but it was difficult to tell with him; he carried sanguine temperament to unmatched heights. She might be bleeding beyond Ross’s power to stop it, might be maimed, dead. Sword in hand, he turned slowly toward where he had seen his wife fall beneath Trilborn’s sword.

She was sitting up in the waist-deep grass. She watched him approach, her gaze wide, even as she untangled her veil from her hair.

“He said you were dead.”

Her greeting had an undertone of wrathful accusation to his ears, though tears rimmed her eyes. Where was her anger directed? He could not tell.

“A slight exaggeration.” He stepped closer. A dark bruise spread from her left cheekbone to her temple. Her eye on that side, he saw, was bloodshot and swollen. His voice rattled like gravel in his throat as he said in a different tone, “He hurt you.”

“He meant to take me to Ireland with him. I was of no mind to go.”

“Preferring to stay and make certain I’d been killed.”

Resentment flared in her eyes, along with something that looked like half-blind agony. “Ross…”

“Later,” he said, and let his sword dangle from his wrist by its fighting cord as he reached to lift her to her feet. Alarm poured like acid along his veins as he saw she could barely stand. Curses roared through his mind. What had Trilborn done to her?

He should have killed the bastard while he had the chance.

Stabbing a glance toward the others, he saw that Braesford had helped his enemy to his feet. His breastplate had been removed, and Braesford was binding a pad of shirting to a nasty cut that pumped arterial blood from his wrist.

“Touching,” Trilborn called out to where Ross stood holding Cate. “How would you treat a female who cared
about you, given you’re so tender toward one who tried to have you killed?”

Cate inhaled a sharp breath, swayed on her feet. Dismay at the accusation or guilt for a truth revealed? Ross could not tell, wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she felt at this charge Trilborn had hinted at before.

“That little dagger of hers is a lethal toy, is it not? You found it in your bath after an attack. She tried to bleed me with it. Welladay, I’d have killed you if my sword arm had been in good form.”

“I didn’t,” Cate whispered. “Well, I did cut his arm, but I had to do that.”

“She did, else I’d have had her,” Trilborn said lightly. “First she spewed like a fishwife, enough to turn any man’s ardor limp. I do think she’s breeding with your get. A dilemma, I will admit, but you can always shut her away until the babe is born.”

Ross’s hold on her tightened; he couldn’t help it. Was Trilborn right? She had been through so much. What if she was with child and nigh to losing it?

“Cate?” he demanded.

Hot color washed over her features. “I think…mayhap.”

Rage slammed into him, along with a fierce protective urge that turned his every muscle to stone. Trilborn had been at Braesford Hall, had somehow guessed Cate’s condition. Had he meant to punish her, and him as her Dunbar husband, by seeing to it she miscarried? The threat to his unborn child was blighting, but worse still was the danger to its mother.

“How do you know where I found the knife?” Ross
demanded of Trilborn. “How could you know unless you were told of it by your hireling?”

“Mayhap she told me? No, I merely took the trinket when she offered it, and hired a man for her. I’d have found a more nimble assassin if the plot had been less hasty.”

“I didn’t offer it,” Cate cried, “I didn’t!”

“Careful, man,” Braesford said. “You’re confessing to attempted murder.”

Trilborn laughed. “What odds, if I take her with me?”

“What odds indeed?” Ross said, turning with Cate in the circle of his arm, supporting her as he walked with her toward Trilborn. “That’s been your purpose all along, to take Cate away from me. Why not confess to attempted murder? They can’t cut off your head twice. Though the headsman will surely come for you for treason and your try at regicide, Cate could well burn for attempting to kill her husband. But you will never take her from me, not here and not in the hereafter. She is mine by duly consecrated ceremony. She is my wife, my hope and my future, and I’ll hold her with the last breath in my body.”

Manic rage twisted Trilborn’s face. The grunt in his throat rose to a bellow. Wrenching his arm from Braesford’s grasp, he bent to snatch up his sword from the grass at his feet. In the same move, he lunged in low attack, slashing at Ross’s unprotected knees.

Ross spun Cate away, slinging her away from danger. Without looking to see where she fell, he swung up the blade that dangled from his wrist, parried with a hard twist of his body to stop the wild advance. The steel edges of the weapons scraped together, screeching metal on metal. Then the two settled to the fight.

It was not pretty, had no fine moves, no elegant strategy. It was cut and thrust and hard, laboring effort while the sun poured down upon them and sweat stung their eyes. It was kill or be killed.

Trilborn was crazed, advancing, always advancing, with savage daring in his blows and bloodlust in his eyes. Ross parried, watching, waiting, knowing the Englishman could not keep it up, knowing his wrist was weak, knowing he must tire. Yet the man seemed possessed of demonic strength. He had no fear, no caution and scant defense.

He wanted to die.

Trilborn meant to die by the sword rather than face the ax, had asked for it moments before. He wanted no trial with jeering nobles, no date with the headsman while the crowd laughed, bought pasties and threw slops. He meant to be a suicide.

Ross was of a mood to oblige him.

He did it then, and not just from fury, from ancient scorn or even for Cate, but from sudden, vital compassion. He used his strength and skill for a slicing cut as clean and true as he could make it. It took Trilborn in the neck, providing the exact sharp and sudden end as a headsman’s blow. It was a merciful finish for an old enemy. It was what he might have wanted someone to do for him, had he been in Trilborn’s shoes.

When it was done, when Ross could catch his breath, could bear to face the horror and condemnation in Cate’s eyes, he turned to her. She lay where he had thrown her, sprawled in the grass. She did not move when he dropped to his knees beside her, didn’t move when he called her
name, didn’t move when he gathered her close. She didn’t move when he took her up with him upon his destrier and turned back toward Henry’s camp.

She never stirred at all, not even when he whispered over and over into the braided silk of her hair, “Don’t let her die. Pray God, don’t let her die.”

The messenger from Scotland arrived at Braesford a month to the day after the Battle of Stoke. The news came to Cate where she sat in the courtyard garden Isabel had created, reclining among cushions in a bower of roses while stock and lavender scented the air.

It was Ross who brought it, approaching her with quiet footsteps as if he feared to wake her. It was not so unreasonable, for she had slept much of the weary way from the battlefield, and dozed often since then. Concussion, Henry’s physician had called it, though Gwynne swore it was because she was breeding. Mayhap she was right. Though close work with a needle and other such tasks still gave her a headache, she was tired of being treated like an invalid.

This deferential approach was not how she had once dreamed of being accosted in a garden by a handsome knight, as in the
Roman de la Rose.

“Yes?” she asked, lifting her lashes, which she had let fall briefly against the brightness of the sun. “What is it?”

“Do I disturb you? I can return another time.”

“No. Please.” She moved her feet, gesturing toward the end of the bench. “I heard the trumpet for the gate. Is there word from the king?”

Ross accepted her invitation, turning to face her as he settled on the bench. “From Braesford, rather, under Henry’s seal. All is well with him. The number of the fallen from the battle at Stoke has been set down as only two hundred killed for Lancaster, though several thousand for York. And the young pretender, born Lambert Simnel, is safe. Henry, unlike Richard before him, saw no need to have this boy done to death. He has been put to turning a spit, instead, earning his keep in Henry’s kitchen. Even the priest who tried to turn him into a prince has been sentenced to prison instead of death.”

“Judicious.”

“Oh, aye, if that’s another word for canny,” Ross said. “He would distance himself from any hint of child murder, and who can blame him?”

Cate could only agree. After a moment, she said, “And was that all?”

“There was also a message from the old laird, sent first to London because he thought it would find me there.”

“Not ill tidings, I trust.”

Ross gave a small shake of his head that set the sunlight to shimmering in the dark waves of his hair. “All is forgiven. I am ordered home.”

Home. He still considered Scotland as where he belonged. She looked at the rose blossom she had broken from the canes that arched above her, twirling it in her fingers. “A grand boon, but sudden. How does it come about?”

“Word reached my father that Trilborn was slain by my hand. The Englishman was the last of his line. The
feud is over. Having brought this about, I am considered to be redeemed as a Dunbar.”

“Being in charity with you, your father, the laird, is prepared to overlook a small thing like taking a Sassenach wife?”

Ross leaned forward, resting his wrists on his knees and meshing his fingers together. “As you say.”

“Will you go then?” The words were light, almost without expression. She was proud of that, regardless of the effort required to make them so. “I must.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if he would return, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words. “When?”

“At once. An escort was sent along with the message.”

At once. He did not intend to wait for her to make ready, did not mean to ask her to go with him. A lump formed in her throat of such size it was impossible to speak.

He glanced at her, and then returned his gaze to his hands. “It’s best if you don’t travel just now,” he said, as if in answer to her unspoken question. “You haven’t been well, and there is the babe.”

It made a fine excuse, just as it had excused him from sharing a chamber with her, or a bed, since their return. It was time that was ended. “I’m perfectly well now.”

The gaze he turned on her was dark with doubt. “Are you? You were so… I thought you might die.”

“Are you certain that’s all?” She drew a deep breath, let it out with care. “Or can you possibly believe there was truth in what Trilborn said, that I sought your death
to fulfill the curse of the Graces and be free of our marriage?”

“Cate, no.”

“I wouldn’t blame you.” She went on with a quick shake of her head. “All those things I said about the curse, the evidence of the knife you retrieved, the confession of a man who expected to be executed—it must look damning.”

“It looks impossible,” Ross countered, his voice firm, his eyes clear. “You would never connive in a sneaking murder, Cate. If you wanted to be rid of me, it would be in so fine a rage you’d carve out my lights and liver with your own hand.”

It was not a picture she could appreciate, but she let it pass. “Well then?”

He rubbed his hands together with a dry rasping of sword calluses. “I never deserved to take you to wife,” he said to the ground at his feet. “You are Lady Catherine, daughter of a peer of the realm, while I’m naught but a border reiver. They’ll call me laird one day, but ’tis an honorary title with little nobility about it. To think you might want me dead was naught but an excuse to keep me from homing to you like a hawk to the lure, to prevent me from turning into an Englishman for your sake.”

“That could never happen,” she said as a smile twisted her lips.

“More than that,” he went on with a dogged air, “I kept you with me when I should have sent you away from danger. I left you unprotected at Henry’s camp, and look how that turned out. I’m a selfish bastard and no courtly
knight. Even yon David, Braesford’s squire knighted by Henry, proved a better lover.”

“No,” she said plainly.

He seemed not to hear. Rising with the effortless flex of hard muscles, he moved away to stand with his back to her. “You would be better without me.”

Was that truly what he meant, or was he saying he preferred to return to Scotland alone? He had been forced to marry her, had accepted Henry’s charity because he had no home or homeland. That was changed now.

“What of Grimes Hall?”

“It was given for your sake. You must do with it what you will.”

She opened her lips to ask if she was to bring up their child by her will only, and alone, but that smacked of whining. She would not make him a hostage again, tied to her by the babe they had created. Nor would she beg him to stay with her, to love her, though the words rang in her head with such force that the ache of concussion returned from the pressure.

“So this is farewell,” she said to his broad back.

“If you will it so.”

Her will. That word again.

“What has my will to say to anything?” she demanded in ire. “When have I been allowed any decision whatever in this affair?”

He swung back to face her. “You could have refused to be married.”