Chapter Fourteen
Aleysia watched, horrified, as one by one the commander and his men fell under the effects of poison.
“No!” someone shouted. A man’s voice.
She looked across the table at the only other person still sitting upright, besides Father Timothy, rushing to the commander’s fallen body.
“Richard! What have you—” She realized what she was saying immediately and snapped her mouth shut. She had to think. The priest was awake! Oh, Richard. What did you do?
“Come, dear lady.” He stood up and beckoned with both hands. “We must hurry! Father Timothy,” he called out, covering his ears. “Stop your shouting. ’Tis only a sleeping enhancement I put into the wine. They will wake up in a few hours.”
Aleysia closed her eyes and held her breath. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? He’d done this! The priest was sure to tell the commander if he woke.
“Sir Richard,” Father Timothy warned after he made certain the commander was still alive. Was he? “If he doesna wake up, I vow before God I will kill whichever of ye is responsible fer this.”
“I am,” Richard assured him. “I am getting her the hell out of here.”
“No!” Aleysia shouted, quieting him. When she had his attention, she softened her tone. “I did not want to go. But now, he’s…” Her gaze fell to the commander lying on the floor, guarded by his friend. Her heart skipped beats and she closed her eyes to try to think clearly. “He’s going to think ’twas my mead.”
“We could be on a ship back to Normandy in two hours,” Richard said with more urgency. “We haven’t a moment to spare. Come! Please, Aleysia, enough talk! You will be given over in marriage to someone either King Edward or Robert the Bruce choses. Come, for your brother’s sake.” He moved around the table to go to her. “We must leave! I promised your father, your brother, that I would protect you. This is our only chance to escape. We can go home, dear girl.”
She put up her hands to stop him. “Do you know what you have done?” She didn’t want to go to back to Normandy. The commander had told her his king would grant her Lismoor without having to marry. It was better than losing everything. Better than Normandy. Better than running.
“Father,” she cried, turning her gaze on him. “You must not tell him ’twas Richard. Do you hear? Let him believe ’twas my mead.”
“My lady, I—”
“I beg you, please. I will not leave if you vow not to tell him ’twas Richard.”
“Aleysia,” Richard said sternly. “Absolutely not! If we leave now, no one has to take any blame for anything.” He reached for her wrist to pull her away. She snatched it back and shook her head at him. “We will be long gone by the time he awakens!” he argued. “I will not let you do this!”
“’Tis already done, Sir Richard!” she told him. “By your hand. I am trying to save your life. You will be silent and not order me about again.”
She turned her attention back on the priest and looked into his doe-like eyes. “Do you vow it?” she asked softly, praying for his agreement. “Richard did this to save me. He would do anything to save me. Just as you would do anything to save him.” She pointed to the commander.
Father Timothy turned to Richard. “Do you vow ’twas only a sleep enhancer?”
The knight nodded. “I vow it to you. I did not know you would not be drinking, Father Timothy. I would not harm you. But I will not let—”
“I will not run,” she promised, cutting Richard off. “I will take the blame.”
“No! I will not let you!” her knight fought on. His eyes were glassy, his voice broken. “Please, my lady. This was not my intention. He will be so angry.”
“Sir,” the priest said, finally leaving the commander and going to lay his hand on Richard’s arm to offer forgiveness and mercy. “If she stays and takes the blame fer what is already done, he will be lenient with her.”
“How do you know he will be lenient?” Richard asked.
Father Timothy turned his gaze on her. “He is…fond of her.”
Her laughter sounded a bit mad to her ears. “Fond of me? Are you mad? He hates me—” Her eyes darted to Richard. The last thing he or the others needed to know was that she didn’t hate the commander. Not entirely.
“No,” Father Timothy corrected. “I know him and if ’tis anyone he hates presently, ’tis himself fer what he thinks of ye.”
She remembered his lips brushing against hers and brought her finger to her mouth. “What does he think of me?”
The priest shrugged his narrow shoulders. “That, he will have to tell ye himself.”
She nodded. All right. There was no time for that now. “Will you promise, Father?”
“Aye, lass. I promise.”
She smiled and offered him her gratitude. “Now, what should we do?”
“My lady, I do not—”
“Sir Richard, ’tis decided,” she said, stopping him. “We are staying. Lismoor in the Bruce’s name is better than no Lismoor at all.”
She left both of them and went to stand over the commander. Would he be lenient this time? He’d looked so angry just before…she rubbed her eyes and then let them move over the length of him, from his bare knees to his strong thighs—one of which was exposed by his plaid riding up from his fall. Her face grew warm and she looked at Richard speaking with the priest where she’d left them.
She knew it wasn’t a good idea, but she sat on the floor with the commander. What was there to do but wait for him to wake up? While she waited, she thought about what Father Timothy had told her. Was the commander fond of her? What did it mean? What did she want it to mean? She looked down at his sleeping face, his dark hair falling over his cheekbone and the wound she’d inflicted on him with her arrow. She could have killed him. She never missed. Giles had made her practice archery from an early age.
She’d let the commander’s stark, deadly beauty distract her. She felt something for him she didn’t understand. It wasn’t love. It felt more feral, more like she wanted to tear off his clothes and climb all over him.
“You look at him as if you feel something soft for him,” Richard said, coming to stand over her.
She closed her eyes to gather patience. Her friend had put their lives in danger by tainting the wine. Would Cainnech still help her keep Lismoor? She wanted to weep. She loved Richard and knew he’d done this for her. She would not let him die for it.
“I feel nothing toward him but hatred,” she told him. “But I am not a fool. The King of Scots has ordered these things. If I kill this one, another takes his place.”
“You need not kill anyone else,” he tried arguing and sat on the bench. “No one will look for you in Normandy.”
“And what about Mattie and Elizabeth? The villagers? Do I leave them all to whoever comes here next?”
“No, no,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Of course not.”
“How long do ye think they will sleep?” Father Timothy asked, coming near them and checking on William and then on the commander again. “His pulse is stronger. He is well.”
“As I said, I would not kill him,” Richard answered. “He will likely sleep until morning.”
“He is goin’ to be angry.”
Aleysia looked up at the priest, glad to see that he had forgiven her as well. She hoped the commander was so generous. She had no idea what he would be like when he woke. What would she tell him?
Father Timothy sat beside her and touched his hand to her arm. “Dinna be afraid, my dear. All will be well.”
She exhaled a low sigh. Would it? “How do you know?” she asked him softly. It didn’t matter if he was fond of her, this wasn’t the first time she had tried to kill him.
He drank the mead. Even if it was an arrogant answer to her unspoken challenge, he still had to trust her to drink it.
“I canna say how I know,” Father Timothy said after she might have groaned. “But I was reminded of somethin’ tonight.” He paused and turned his tender smile on her.
“What was it?” she asked him.
“Alas, I canna say.”
She frowned and blew out her next breath through her nostrils. Why did he say anything in the first place? “Are you trying to be mysterious, Father?”
His smile grew into a chuckle. “No, nothin’ like that. I know all will be well because I have seen a slight change in Cainnech for the first time in sixteen years.”
What? What was he saying? He’d known Cainnech—the commander for that long? And in sixteen years, the man hadn’t changed? And what was the “slight change” he mentioned? She had questions. Lots of them.
She slid her eyes to Richard and then to the priest. “Father, I’d like to confess.”
He stared at her, looking unsure and a bit stunned. “Of course.”
She looked at Richard and smiled. “You will excuse us, will you not, dear friend?”
Her knight moved his gaze between them. Finally, he nodded and stepped away.
When they were alone, but for the slumbering bodies around them, she turned to look into the priest’s large, brown, blinking eyes. “Let us get this out of the way then. I lied.”
He sat, waiting for more. When nothing else came, he cleared his throat. “How many times?”
“I do not know how many times, but add to it the one I just told.”
A hint of his warm smile returned to his face and emboldened her to continue. “I wanted to speak to you without Richard.”
“Ye are fergiven, and aboot what?”
“About the commander,” she told him quickly and in a whispered voice.
He inclined his ear and she leaned in to him so that he could hear, poor old man.
“What kind of man is he when he is not killing his enemies?”
Father Timothy drew in a deep sigh and sat straight again. He paused for a moment and then said, “I dinna know. When he is not killin’ his enemies, he is thinkin’ aboot killin’ them.”
She sat there staring at him. Did he not understand the question? “But you have known him for sixteen years. What was he like before he became a soldier?”
“My dear,” He tried to pat her hand. “Cainnech should tell ye these things, not I.”
She shook her head and pulled her arm away. “You tell me. I wish to know.”
“Why?” he asked.
She sat back, unsure how to reply.
“I willna tell him,” the priest coaxed in his soothing tone. “Ye are still confessin’, are ye not?” He continued before she had a chance to reply. “I am not permitted to repeat what I hear durin’ one’s confession.”
She knew that. But could she trust him? And what did she want to confess?
She turned to gaze down at the commander. She hated herself for what she was feeling. “I find him infuriating and arrogant. Part of my heart hates him, but…” Oh, how could she speak it out loud? She was betraying her brother, her friends, her purpose. She closed her eyes when the priest remained silent and patient. “He is not altogether terrible.”
“No, he is not.”
She opened her eyes and set her gaze on him. “How has he changed? Surely, you can tell me that.”
He nodded, his comforting smile returned. “He is sorry he came here.”
Six words that set her heart to pounding and insinuated so much she hardly knew where to begin or what to feel. He was sorry he’d taken Lismoor from her. She was glad to hear it. It softened the blow. She had seen fleeting glimpses of regret in his eyes, but she was unsure if she’d conjured it in her own mind. Could she forgive him?
“Why is he sorry?” she asked, settling her eyes on the sleeping commander.
“I dinna know. Truly,” he added when she gave him a doubtful look. “But I believe it has to do with ye. If ye and Richard had been anyone else, ye would both be dead, despite King Robert’s desired peace. Cainnech is not known fer his mercy.”
Her blood chilled. How could one so beautiful be so frightful at the same time? “How many did he kill at Berwick?”
“None. We saw what was happenin’, and with no way to stop it, we left. Cainnech doesna raid villages.”
The commander had told her the truth then. They had nothing to do with Berwick. Her stomach calmed a bit. He wasn’t a complete barbarian. What did it matter? He was going to wake up thinking she tried to poison him and his men again. She couldn’t put her trust in the assurances Father Timothy gave her when he wasn’t sure of half of them.
“Perhaps I am a fool to stay when I can run.”
“Or perhaps ye have more courage than a regiment of men. Not many would be willin’ to face his wrath, and fer someone else.”
Aleysia smiled. She liked Father Timothy. Did this make her a traitor to God as well? “I imagine the commander’s wrath is quite frightening.”
The priest chuckled and lifted his eyes to Heaven. “Thank goodness he saves it fer his enemies.”
She subdued the urge to tremble. She was his enemy, wasn’t she? Especially now. She wasn’t courageous at all. She was simply determined not to lose her home or her freedom by running off to Normandy.
Facing this beast of a man at his worst was another matter entirely. There were many more things she wanted to ask the priest but Richard was returning.
“You have known him for sixteen years,” she said, “since he was a child then.”
Father Timothy nodded.
“How did you meet him?”
“I was travelin’ with an unholy regiment of Englishmen,” he began and waited for Richard to return to his seat. “They attacked a sleepy village in Invergarry and killed many people, includin’ Cainnech’s parents. They brought him back to camp and kept him as their servant. They kept him tied him to a tree and struck him often. He was seven.” He paused, his smile gone now, his voice lowered to a weighted whisper. “I did my best to keep him safe from their flyin’ fists, but I didna always succeed.”
Aleysia listened, unsure if her heart was beating or not. They killed his parents and…kept him as a servant? Now it was no surprise why he seemed fond of William. They had servitude in common. She gazed down at him, imagining a beaten, afraid, little boy.
“Where did they take him?”
“They brought him with us,” the priest replied. “Fer eight years, he served the English on the battlefield.” He paused and looked away to clear his throat. Aleysia knew the memory was painful for him. “They took no pity on the boy.”
“You stayed with him?” she asked, blinking away a tear and the urge to touch her fingers to the commander’s face.
“I did.”
“Thank God he had you.”
“I do,” he said, back to smiling. “But he needs more than just me.”
She looked startled at first and then she laughed. “You certainly do not think that I—?”
“No!” he laughed with her. “Not at all. I have tried to find his two brothers, but to no avail—”
“His brothers?” she asked as a shiver went through her. The English army had left three boys orphans.
“Aye. I was back at the camp when they burned his homestead. He told me of them. Two younger lads, Torin, who was five, and wee Nicholas, who was just two when last Cainnech saw them. I have tried to find them but as ye can imagine, ’tis difficult. I have only been able to learn that Nicholas was sold fer a stone soon after, but I dinna know to whom.”
“How tragic to know your brothers might still be out there, alive somewhere and you do not know where.”
The priest yawned and shrugged his shoulders. “He doesna seem to think on it often, but I’m sure it weighs on him.”
They spoke a little longer, mainly about her relatives in Normandy and why she would not run to them.
When the birds began chirping, signaling the breaking dawn, and the first of the men began to stir, Father Timothy sent Richard to the keep with a vow that he and God would keep Aleysia safe.
“Go to yer room and wait there,” he told her. “I will speak to him when he wakes.”
“Why did you not drink the wine?” she asked before she left.
“’Twas sour and I prefer whisky.”
She smiled and then she left because she didn’t want to be the first one the commander saw when he opened his eyes and realized what had happened. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid of him, though she was. But her blood rushed through her like waves on a tumultuous sea because he’d drunk the mead. She had somehow gained his trust. If he didn’t kill her, he would never let her out of his sight again. She would be forced to be near him day…and night.
But even more than that, her heart ached because if he felt something for her, as Father Timothy had claimed, she’d surely lost it now.
She couldn’t believe that her own heart could betray her. How could losing something she didn’t want…and likely didn’t have anyway, make her so miserable?
She entered her solar and shut the door, then leaned her head against it.
There could never be anything between them. They were enemies. He was the one she and her friends had prepared for so diligently, for so long. She moaned with the pain of it and pushed off the door. It was all for nothing. And worse, she, their leader and friend, had weakened with a hint of warmth in the otherwise cool indifference of a Highland warrior.
She threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. What would she tell him when he found her? She’d been prepared to take the blame for Richard. She thought she could convince the commander of her guilt, but she had let her heart go soft after hearing about his past…the past he couldn’t move beyond.
Oh, how could people be so cruel to bring a child into war? To kill a child’s parents and sell his brothers—it was too much. How could she forget it and pretend to hate him?
She didn’t have long to think about it when her door came crashing open and an angry warlord stood at the entrance.