ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (27 page)

“This is the only place I know,” he said. “And besides, it was long ago now. And it seems only right that where I lost all that I loved, here I should find all that I love.”

This was the first day that he had said he loved her. Somehow in all their physical professions of love, they’d always let the words go unsaid. But once they had both said the words, they said them again and again and again.

One meeting, five months after they had first met in his shop, Anne could see that James was troubled. He still made love to her, but as they lay together under the clouds, she could tell that his mind was far off.

She leaned up and kissed his neck.

“You can tell me,” she said.

He sighed derisively.

“Like you tell me things?” he said. There was a harshness to his expression that took Anne aback.

“I’m sorry,” he said, seeing he had hurt her.

They lay for a while, neither one saying a word. Finally, he spoke.

“My friend is dying tomorrow. He’s to be executed. He was arrested only a few days ago. He’s guilty of what they say. He didn’t pay the taxes he owed. But he had no choice.”

Anne didn’t know what to say. She wondered if she could do anything about it, but her mind was struck immediately by the absurdity of asking her husband or his advisors to spare her lover’s friend. That would only endanger them both, and would not save James’ friend.

“This is not strange,” he said. “I’ve known others who have died. But it is difficult. And I know that I should go to the execution. He’ll see a crowd of those cheering for his death. He should have someone there who cares for him, and who will miss him. He should know he isn’t alone. But it is not an easy thing.”

Anne had no answers for him. She could only kiss him, and hold him.

It wasn’t until the next day that it even occurred to her that the execution might cause a problem for her. Usually, she did not attend such things. She knew it was common for them to be grand affairs, but she’d always been able to convince her husband that it was unseemly for a duchess to attend.

This time, however, she heard through a chain of servants and advisors that her husband intended for her to attend this one with him.

She was informed only a few hours before, and she was livid. He would see her. James would see her. He would know who she was, and learn of this across the distance between them, with the body of his friend as a sad witness to her lies.

But would he be angry? She had told him that she had secrets. She had told him that she couldn’t share them. Had he never suspected that perhaps she was a member of the nobility?

Anne could find no shelter in these hypotheticals. Sure, though he may have guessed she was noble, she would not be able to convince him that it wasn’t wrong of her to conceal her true rank. Were she a bit closer to his station, perhaps it would be acceptable. If her husband was not a jealous and bloodthirsty man, perhaps it would be acceptable. If she had even just
told
him, perhaps it would be acceptable. But it was too late now.

Anne went to the duke. She told him she didn’t wish to go. She told him that it made her sick to imagine a peasant’s death. She told him she didn’t feel that her moods would allow her. He would hear no excuse. He told her only that she had been distant from him. He had sensed her disloyalty, and he wanted to make it clear that although he had not taken the time to avail himself of her, she should not ever forget what price disloyalty brings.

Anne hadn’t even noticed that the king had not forced himself on her of late. Thinking of it now she tried to remember a time in the last two months and could not. In fact, he had been coming to bed later and later. Without the disruption of his body on her, she had begun sleeping before he came in. But she’d been so consumed with thoughts of her own lover, she hadn’t even stopped to consider he might also have one.

As she was unable to avoid going to the execution, she asked Sarah to help her disguise herself as much as was possible within the bounds of acceptable attire. They did their best, but still, looking in the mirror, Anne felt it was in vain. They could do what they pleased; James would know her. James would always know her.

Anne went to the execution with a demeanor as though she were the condemned. The duke commented on it harshly, but there was little she could do. She had a place beside him on the bandstand for the nobility. She kept her head down, but directed her eyes out at the crowd as much as possible. She was searching for James and hoping not to find him at the same time.

There were three men to be executed together, and while everyone was looking at them, Anne did her best not to. Which of them was James’ friend? She didn’t know, and felt guilty. She ought to know. If the world was as it should be, she ought to not only know which man it was, but she ought to have known him herself. She ought to be sharing this burden with James. She ought to have been by his side.

And then she saw him. James was there, directly in front of where the men were preparing to be hanged. It was the moment just before the hanging, and everyone was tense and still. They’d cheered before, and they would cheer after, but for the act itself they were momentarily focused. James was looking up at the man on the left. Anne’s head tilted up involuntarily, and he caught the motion and looked at her.

She should have looked away. Would that have been less suspicious? She didn’t know. She only knew she held his gaze and, as the men were dropped and the crowd began again to cheer, James’ face took on a look of both recognition and betrayal.

Anne felt suddenly sick. All of her insides wanted out of her and she threw up, directly in front of the duke. When she had recovered enough to look around her, she saw that James was no longer where he had been. The bodies at the gallows had stopped kicking, and the physician was on his way there to guide her back down to where she could be examined.

-

The physician was a rough man. He was very educated, but had apparently never learned the way of being gentle with patients. He kept asking her questions, and Anne felt she kept disappointing him with her answers. Eventually, the questions he was asking made it clear: he believed she was pregnant.

Anne felt hollow. She couldn’t even react to the news. Certainly she could be pregnant. There had been enough opportunities to become so. She saw the news spread as various people came to congratulate her. They did not know. It could not be the king’s. How many months had it been? And how early on in carrying a child could the sickness be expected to come? Perhaps she could convince him that her case was only odd, and she had begun to be sick much later than is usual. Perhaps she could claim that the sickness simply lasted much longer than is usual. But when the time came when he was expecting the child to arrive and it was not yet ready, he would know. How could he not?

When the duke came to see her, Anne knew that he knew much sooner than that. He knew. It was as simple as that.

He didn’t rage at her. Perhaps it would have been better if he had raged. He simple told, her, calmly, straightforwardly, that her child would die in childbirth, and that if anyone ever had even the slightest of doubts that the child was his, then he would make sure that she joined it.

Anne had often wished that she could do away with her husband’s anger. But she knew that behind his anger was at least a certain amount of caring. This calm man cared for her not at all, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would carry out his threats, and Anne knew that the child she carried would only see the light of day for a moment before it was taken from the world.

-

Anne sunk into a despondency even greater than she had when she had first married the duke. She did not leave her room. She did not speak to anyone. Those who came to see her found her listless and deaf to their entreaties. The duke no longer came to her, which was a blessing, but Anne couldn’t think much of it.

Sarah was with her through it, but there was little she could do. She only tended to Anne’s needs as best she could, and watched the light in her eyes fade further and further from view.

When Anne refused to eat, Sarah did her best to feed her. But Sarah only tried to convince her that she needed to eat or it would harm the baby.

“The baby will not survive, Sarah,” was all Anne could muster. Sarah was confused at first, but then she understood.

“But how can he know?” she said, as quietly as she could. Anne shrugged, and only said that he did.

“So that’s why you haven’t gone to see him,” Sarah said, half to herself. Anne didn’t have the heart to say the words that were in her mind. He wouldn’t want to see her anyway. Not after the way he had looked at her during the execution.

In her mind, Anne could not imagine how things could have gone worse. She cursed herself for having become involved with James, even as she knew that he was perhaps the only thing in her life she had ever felt that was truly good. She only knew that the pain that she had caused him, and the pain that he had unknowingly caused her, was too great to be overcome.

And then, one day, quite as a surprise to Anne, it did get worse. She was taken from her room, roughly, by guards. She did not recognize them. They were not of the usual palace guard. She asked them questions, but they told her nothing. They only brought her down to the dungeons.

She’d never been to the dungeons before. She’d had no call to visit them. Now she saw that that had been a prudent choice.

She had her own cell, at least, with a small window with bars across it. It was mostly underground, so all she could see through the window were the feet of passersby. She sat herself against the wall so that she could look at them. Now and then she saw a pair of shoes she recognized. She thought perhaps that would lift her spirits, but it didn’t.

No one told her anything. She sat for days in the cell. She slept when she could sleep, which was not often.

After a few days, Sarah came to visit her. Anne was confused when she heard her friend’s voice. Surely coming to see her would only expose Sarah. But she was at the window.

“Someone told the king,” Sarah said, after Anne had confirmed that Sarah was not in danger or under suspicion. “Someone told the king, and now the duke is embarrassed. Your arrangement with the duke can’t stand. Not now that they know. He has to do something, Anne.”

Anne’s mind couldn’t comprehend it at first. She didn’t want to understand. But then she did. She was headed for the gallows.

-

She was questioned. They wanted to know the name of her lover, but she wouldn’t tell them. They were very persuasive, in ways that Anne never would have expected. She still wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t speak his name. Not now, not ever. She had betrayed him. She should have told him. But she would not betray him further. She would take his name with her to the gallows. She would take it with her to the grave.

She tried not to count down the days, but on the night before she was to be executed, they brought a priest to her and asked her what she wanted to eat. It was a courtesy other prisoners did not get, she knew. She refused it. Not out of principle, but out of despondence.

Then she heard James’ voice.

“Anne.”

He’d never said her name. He’d always called her Jane. Hearing him say her name brought her to tears. It did not surprise her that she was imagining him, now in her last night.

“Anne, can you hear me?”

She wasn’t imagining him. He was there. She stood, her legs weak. She walked to him. She could see him there, in the dark, just outside her window. There was just enough moonlight to illuminate the basic shapes of his features. She reached her hand up, unable to speak. She needed to feel his touch. That touch had gotten her into this cell, but she thought now, even as she was about to die, that if she could feel his touch one more time, it would all have been worthwhile.

He took her hand in his, and she felt relief run through her body. She could do what she needed to do now. She would go at peace.

But the relief was soon followed by concern.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “They’ll find you. They’re looking for you. Any clue who you are and they’ll hang you with me.”

“Oh, Anne,” James said, and she reveled again in how it felt to hear him say her name. “They’re not going to hang anyone.”

He’d brought tools. He needed her help, but his life was iron. He knew how to work with it. He knew how to cut it, just enough so that she could slide out.

They were as quiet as possible, but still Anne felt someone was always just about to come.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “The duke has thrown a party to celebrate your execution in the morning.”

Anne couldn’t help but feel momentarily insulted. He was celebrating her death. For all she hated the man, it still stung. She understood his need to try and save face. He couldn’t look betrayed and lovelorn. But still, it seemed excessive.

When they’d freed her, Anne and James made their way through the courtyard as quickly and quietly as they could. They passed through the same rarely-used servants’ exit that Anne had used so many times when she went to meet him. To her surprise, he didn’t need to be led to it, and there was a horse waiting for them on the outside.

Anne looked at him questioningly.