The Crimson Lady (25 page)

She blinked once, her lashes casting spiked, black shadows against the pallor of her skin before she murmured very deliberately and clearly, “I do not love you, Braedan. I never have. You were a pleasant diversion, but that is all. This life—my life as the Crimson Lady—that is reality for me.” She swallowed, her expression so rigid and controlled that he wondered if it, too, would shatter soon, falling away like the splintering fragments of his heart. “I am sorry if hearing that hurts you, but you asked for me to say it, and now you must accept it as the truth.”

Braedan’s entire body had gone as rigid as if she had just buried a dagger in his chest. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything for the first few seconds after she spoke. When the shock began to ease, he was able to do little more than shake his head numbly before he finally let go of her and took a step back. Heat stung his eyes, but he refused to blink it away, keeping his gaze trained on Fiona. Only on her beautiful, angelic, treacherous face.

The agony of what she’d said was still reverberating through him when he sensed a movement from behind him, near the door.

“So sorry to see that this has worked out badly for you, de Cantor,” a man’s voice called in feigned sympathy. “My heart goes out, but I am sure you know as well as I, after your years of experience, that such things rarely run a smooth course—especially with women of our sweet Giselle’s ilk.”

Braedan’s feet felt bogged in a swamp-mire as he
turned and stumbled back a few steps to face Draven. It was a movement of instinct more than anything else; his uncle’s presence here was not unexpected. Nor did Braedan care, anymore, whether or not Draven intended to draw his blade and hack him down where he stood. Such would actually have been welcome as a way to end the misery that was rocking through him in ceaseless waves.

But Draven made no attempt of the sort, simply striding the rest of the way into the chamber, flanked by two guards who took up positions near Braedan while Draven himself ended at Fiona’s side. Braedan stood looking at them, unmoving, the anger and outraged betrayal he should have been able to feel at the moment buried beneath the ashes of what used to be his heart.

“I’ve been watching the conclusion of your little conversation from behind that wall there—I hope you don’t mind,” Draven murmured, raising his hand to the side of the room toward Braedan’s left, and smiling, as he added, “You see, we’re in Giselle’s old chamber for her work as the Crimson Lady, complete with the tiny viewing holes that always allowed me to ensure her safety during our years of commerce together. This room will be seeing much more frequent use in the years to come, I think.”

He reached out and pulled Fiona against him; dimly, Braedan noted that she didn’t resist, seeming pliant in Draven’s arms, though her expression retained that blank cast he remembered so well from their first days together after leaving Hampshire.

Dragging his gaze from the pain of looking on her further, Braedan said hoarsely, “Before you set your men on me to finish this, Draven, just tell me one thing; have
you any real news about Elizabeth, or was that just another of the perverse lies you seem to relish?”

“Finish this—you mean, order you
killed
?” Draven exclaimed, acting surprised. “Why wherever did you get that idea?” Then, with an exaggerated show of realization, he tapped his finger to his lips and murmured, “Ah, yes…that was my promise to you on several occasions, was it not?”

Lifting his hand away from his mouth with a shrug, he continued, “Well, no matter, the circumstances have changed, as I’m sure you’ve already deduced from Giselle’s so very poignant confession to you. Since her willing return to me, I’ve been feeling magnanimous. In truth I intend to let you go, nephew. One good turn deserves another, after all, and you did allow me to leave after our confrontation on the road to London a week past.”

“I should have killed you then, and I don’t believe you now.”

“Tsk, tsk, such pessimism. You’re a rather doubting man, aren’t you? First you question Giselle’s sincerity, and now you suspect me…but view it this way, Braedan, my boy. If you ever needed additional proof that Giselle’s change of heart was
her
idea and not mine, then in this you would have it: I have you both here at my mercy, right now, just as planned. I’d intended, in fact, to make you pay dearly for your actions against me. But she surprised me in such a pleasant way that it caused me to reconsider. Her willing return to the fold, her sudden realization of her true nature and her rightful place with me, has satisfied me like nothing else could have.”

Smiling then, he used his fingertip beneath Fiona’s
chin, turning her face toward his and taking her mouth with a kiss of possession that sent waves of sickness flooding through Braedan. He turned away in disgust, hardly caring when Draven pulled back, and said, “Needless to say, I am overjoyed with her decision, and as a gentleman, I will require nothing further from you. You may go and continue to live your outlaw life as you see fit, provided you do not cross paths with me again. I am still the sheriff near Alton, and I will uphold the law there. So have a care in your existence on the fringes of society, de Cantor.”

As if from somewhere far away and outside himself, Braedan saw Draven make a gesture to his guards; they stepped forward, and he felt them take him by the arms and begin leading him from the chamber. He didn’t trust himself to look again at Fiona as he left, didn’t attempt to halt the guards’ progress in any way, too bone weary and sickened by all that had transpired that he knew he could have sunk down to the floor right there and never risen again.

But then his uncle called out to him, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and by the by, de Cantor—about Elizabeth—it grieves me to tell you my inquiries revealed that she passed from this bitter world some three months ago. It seems she expired while giving birth to a brat with no sire to claim it. A pity, truly…”

The awful words seeped into Braedan’s numbed consciousness, igniting him from his stupor. With a bellowing growl of rage and grief, he thrashed into motion, yanking out of his guards’ grip to throw himself back into the room intending to strangle the life from Draven with his bare hands if no other weapon could be found. But before he covered half the distance, the guards
caught up to him again, fighting to subdue him until one of them finally pulled back and slammed a fist into his temple…

And then the world shattered into a painful, blinding flash of light before he sank into blackness, the last sight seared into his mind that of Draven’s superior, mocking smile, and the wounded look in Fiona’s golden eyes.

F
iona stood rigidly as she watched Draven’s men dragging Braedan from the chamber, certain that if she moved, the grief that was pounding through her would unleash itself in a torrent and swallow her whole. Her senses felt raw, her mind unwilling to grasp the enormity of what she’d just done. It was too painful to bear, and so she simply kept breathing in and out, praying that the numbness would last until Draven had finished gloating and would leave her alone.

He stood next to her, tall and oppressively powerful. Her mouth still burned with revulsion from the effects of his kiss; it had taken every ounce of her will not to yank herself out of his arms when he had done that in front of Braedan. Inside she had been crying out, wanting to beat him away and sob her agony aloud, but she’d remained quiet and impassive under his possessive assault, just as he’d expected of her.

But she hadn’t done it for him. Nay, just the opposite. She’d let Draven kiss her that way because she knew it would be the final affront to Braedan—the final betrayal she could offer to ensure that he would believe the impossible. And so she had staged the most difficult and wrenching pretense of her life, knowing that no matter what it cost her, for Braedan’s sake she couldn’t allow herself to fail in it.

And it had worked. The look of disgust in Braedan’s eyes, then, was something she’d never forget. It had sealed their fates and seared her soul in a way that she knew would never heal, no matter how long she had remaining to her between that moment and the hour of her death. Without Braedan she was already dead anyway, in every way that truly mattered.

“Well done, Giselle,” Draven said quietly next to her, still smiling, his gaze fixed to the closed door through which Braedan had been taken. When he turned his head to look down at her, she couldn’t help thinking that his striking masculine beauty was all the more perverse for the evil it hid beneath. “How does it feel, sweet, to have been the instrument of your lover’s demise?” he added, clearly relishing her pain. “I must congratulate you on your finesse, you know. You’ve managed to accomplish in one fell swoop what I never could have hoped to attain through endless planning and effort—nay, not even if I had subjected my dear nephew to months of agonizing torture in the trying.”

Draven’s statement settled home, and Fiona choked back her rising nausea. The anguish she’d been feeling from the moment Braedan had let her go swelled to greater power, burning her eyes and closing her throat, but she refused to look away, not wanting to give
Draven the satisfaction of seeing her crumble before him. She hadn’t thought she could endure anything worse than the pain of losing the man she loved, but this taunting set off a renewed flood of sickness and impotent rage.

Draven met her gaze with the fierceness of his own, her suffering clearly gratifying to him as he beat her down further with the hammer of his words.

“It is a delicious irony, is it not, Giselle?” he continued. “In choosing this path, you have finally become what you’ve always said you despised—someone just like me. You lured in the man you claim to love and then methodically set about destroying him in the most painful way possible. As surely as if you’d taken that dagger of yours and slowly carved out his heart. It was beautiful to behold, sweet. Utter perfection.”

“My God, I hate you, Draven,” she breathed, staring straight into his dark, empty eyes. “From the depths of my soul, I do.”

“That is good, Giselle,” he answered just as softly, never breaking his gaze from hers as he reached up to stroke his hand from her cheek and down the side of her throat to the curve of her breast, cupping her there with a touch that was feather light and yet filled with the dark possession she knew so well. “That is very good,” he continued in his quiet, cultured voice, “because I want to see the hate burning in your eyes when I have you writhing beneath me once more. I want to drive out all of the gentleness that
he
put there—the tenderness you refused to give to anyone but him…”

He leaned in then as she stood frozen, his mouth brushing in a profane caress over hers before he shifted
to whisper in her ear, “You see, I long ago relinquished my need for your love, Giselle. You forced me to give it up with your stubborn resistance to me. But your hate…” He laughed softly, his breath riffling the hair at her temple. “…ah well, that is mine to savor and enjoy. And enjoy it I will, sweet, until you’re begging me to give you release from it.”

Abruptly he pulled away from her, leaving her no time, even to gasp in response. Emptiness beat through her, dulling her ability to react to anything anymore. She was so tired, so tired of all the pain and the struggle. She watched as Draven walked over to the shutter, pushed it open, and peered out; her mind felt wrapped in wool from all that had happened in the past hours. The sky was hidden by the many half-timbered houses and buildings all around them, but thick darkness outside the window showed it to be the middle of the night.

“It will be dawn in a few hours,” he murmured, leaning against the casement for a moment before he shifted his gaze to her again. “You should rest while you can, Giselle. For though you are indeed very tempting, I’ve decided to wait until we’re back at Chepston to undertake the completion of our…reacquaintance shall we say. It will be in my chamber, I think—the place where I had you for the very first time those many years ago…”

Pushing himself away from the window, he walked deliberately to the door, pausing when he reached it only long enough to look over his shoulder and murmur, “Aye, rest now, Giselle, for soon it will be light. And when darkness falls again, it will be time for you to begin making payment on your end of our little bargain.”

Braedan was in the grip of a nightmare, a sleeping vision worse than any he’d ever experienced before. It had to be that, for how else could he explain the sense of complete desolation, and the relentless, unbearable thoughts that kept hammering his brain?

Fiona doesn’t love me. Elizabeth is dead
.

But he, unfortunately, was still painfully alive…

Grimacing, he rolled to his side, only to feel agony tearing through every joint and muscle he possessed. It was real, then, and not just some horrible dream. The metallic taste of blood in his mouth was no figment of his imagination; he’d wager his sword on that—except he had no sword. Nay, or any daggers either, the lot of his weapons having been confiscated by Draven’s guards when he was first taken.

It was a night he would have liked to forget, if only his aching body would let him; he’d been pummeled not once, but twice in the course of a few hours, and then left in this pile of refuse in the alley, to go on his merry way, when he awoke—a shell of a man with no future other than to live out his life as an outlaw to the crown. Considering the fact that he had faced Draven’s wrath unarmed and still made it out alive, he supposed he should have been thankful. Most men in his position would have been glad, perhaps, even eager to embrace the freedom of the existence that loomed before him.

But Braedan wasn’t most men. And Draven was sorely mistaken if he thought that there would be no retribution for what had happened last night—for what he’d done to Elizabeth and for the twisted mess he’d made of Fiona’s life. Sorely mistaken indeed.

He rolled to sitting with a groan, brushing something
wilted and green from his leg and cracking his eyes open just enough to see the first light of dawn filtering through the shadows around him. It was nearly morning, then. He tipped his head up a little, wincing when the swollen lump there connected with the wattle-and-daub wall of the building at his back. Squinting, he looked around, trying to gain his bearings. Surprise cut through some of his fogginess. It seemed that Draven’s guards hadn’t cared to move him very far before they’d discarded him like the kitchen scraps. He was sitting in the alleyway of the
stewe
-house with the red door. The same house that he’d come to last night in search of Fiona.

Before he could prepare himself for it, another wave of hurt and grief engulfed him. It didn’t seem possible that it had been hours since Fiona had stood in this place and denied ever loving him. It felt like only an instant ago, the pain was so fresh. Of a sudden his mind was assaulted with memories from other, happier times…of Fiona smiling at him as she leaned over to pick another clump of flowers from the forest floor, of her nestled in his arms before the fire as they kept watch over Nate—of her beautiful face and the passion quickening in her eyes as they made love…all of it dissolving into the agony of the previous night.

Her rejection had hurt him, more deeply than he’d thought possible. Part of him still didn’t believe it to be true. He would have wagered his life on the honesty of her love. How in God’s name could he have been so wrong?

He pushed those self-defeating thoughts back as well as he could, knowing he needed to pull himself together. There was much to be done. Elizabeth’s soul and his own honor demanded it, even if his heart felt like it had
been shredded from his chest, leaving naught but an empty, bloody hole in its place.

He was just about to attempt to ready himself to stand, when a flurry of movement at the front of the
stewe
-house made him go still once more. Keeping to the shadows behind an old crate, he tried to position himself to see what was happening. The door had opened and several people spilled out into the gray and misty light. Soldiers. They were all wearing Draven’s colors, though, so they had to be his men. Braedan had never seen the faces of the three who attacked him in the kitchen to know whether or not they were among this group. There looked to be a half dozen or so, not seeming in any hurry, though it was early for any but merchants and farmers to be about.

Braedan moved closer to the front corner of the building, still keeping hidden but wanting to have a better view of the street. The guards were talking, most of them looking none too pleased. When they all went silent, Braedan strained his neck to see why. It seemed that someone was standing in the open doorway of the dwelling, the figure of the person casting a long, dark shadow onto the street in front. The shadow abruptly moved and widened, as if a second person had joined the first, then it immediately began to shift and contort, along with the sounds of scuffling that could be heard clearly from the spot where Braedan was hiding.

“You will come with me calmly, Giselle, or I shall be forced to drag you through Southwark to the river, and that choice will not be such a pleasant one, I can assure you.”

“Nay! I will not go until you answer me.”

Draven.
And Fiona
. Shock tingled up Braedan’s spine.
Instinctively, he tensed in preparation to leap from the shadows and grip his wretched uncle by the throat. He wanted to squeeze the life from him breath by breath until nothing was left. But common sense won over. Draven had too many of his men with him; any attempt at aggression against him would surely be doomed before it began. Braedan would have to wait—and plan—for a more opportune time to seek revenge.

Pressing himself against the shadowy wall, Braedan eased closer to the street. Part of him yearned with a kind of quiet desperation to catch just one glimpse of Fiona again—to see her beautiful face one last time—while the more brutalized part of him wanted no more than to pretend indifference to her plight. This was the life she’d embraced, he reasoned, and Draven was the man to whom she’d chosen to return. It was no longer his concern, he told himself. And yet…

In the end his battered heart held sway, and he craned his neck to see her. The scuffling had ceased, though no one was moving from their positions on the street. The guards were off to the side, looking uncomfortable as they tried not to stare at Draven and Fiona, who stood in front of the door.

“I am growing impatient,” Draven said, his voice sharp, but not so quiet that Braedan couldn’t hear what he’d said. “Make your choice, Giselle. Walk civilly with me to the dock or be dragged there. It is of no matter to me, other than the embarrassment you will cause yourself by creating such a spectacle in the street. But you will choose now.”

Fiona was facing in Braedan’s direction, and almost against his will he searched her with his gaze, his heart twisting at her pallor, her stricken expression and those
haunted eyes, looking up at Draven. She seemed to be pleading for something, and Braedan wanted to curse with the pain it caused him, seeing her brought to this low state before his uncle. But it couldn’t be helped. She had made her decision last night.

“You swore to me that you wouldn’t hurt him,” she murmured finally, her voice sounding so wounded and strained that Braedan might not have recognized it as hers if he’d not seen her standing before him. An uncomfortable inkling began to gnaw inside him then, a feeling that swelled into pure horror with what she said next.

“It was our agreement,” Fiona continued, “Braedan’s freedom—his life—for my willing return to you. I did what you wanted. I cast him off—” Her voice broke, and she looked away for an instant before fixing her gaze back on Draven. “I want to know what you ordered done to him after he was taken from here. Tell me, Draven, or I will not move from this place freely.”

“Very well, then. We will go the more difficult way,” Draven snapped, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her forward to begin pulling her down the street with him.

She continued to resist, though her struggles were ineffective against a man of Draven’s size and strength. Braedan clenched his fists, rage pumping through him, but there was nothing he could do for her. Not with so many of Draven’s men standing guard. It was not that he worried for his own skin, but it would do Fiona no good if he were dead—and the seven against one odds he would be facing, unarmed, would likely ensure that outcome.

His mind was ablaze with self-recrimination and
shame as he watched them move down the street. God help him, but he had been so blind. He should have known better, should have trusted his instincts where Fiona was concerned.
Should have believed in her love for him, no matter what she’d said to him last night.
It was one of the lessons she’d been trying to teach him all along, with herself as the best example—that the world he’d spent his life judging as only bad or good was rarely either one alone, but rather somewhere in between….