Elias wrapped his arms around the thighs of Lettice who only appeared to be seven feet in height where she hung from a rafter. “Lord, not this!” he shouted and, taking tension off the rope, lifted her so high the back of her head bumped the ceiling.

“Theo!”

He need not have called, the squire immediately appearing beside him with a stool.

“Cut her down!”

He need not have spoken. As he continued to fling prayer to the heavens, the cool body of Lettice gently jerked as the rope around her neck gave to Theo’s blade. Then she slumped over Elias’s shoulder.

He slid her down his body. “Lettice,” he choked as he settled her to the earthen floor.

Theo lowered on the opposite side. “I fear she is long dead, my lord.”

Refusing to look too near upon her death mask, trying not to breathe the dark scent of her, Elias slid a hand over her abraded neck in search of a pulse that had probably coursed its last on the night past after Arblette took her coin.

A gasp sounded from the doorway, and Elias knew it was Honore who claimed to be as much a victim as he. True or not, neither was as unfortunate as Lettice. It may have been made to appear she had taken her life, but he did not believe it—especially with so much coin to her name.

On his knees alongside her, he lowered his head into his hands and beneath his fingers felt the open flesh of his brow. His search for a boy who might be his son had set this in motion. Had he let it be, Lettice would be alive. And were Honore of no surname innocent, there would have been no cause for her to be summoned and suffer Arblette’s attack.

He dropped his hands, looked around. The veiled woman was on her knees just inside the doorway, the boy who served Arblette standing over her as if his measly collection of bones, muscle, and sinew could protect her. Were he six feet tall, armored and hung with the keenest sword, he could not protect her were she, indeed, Arblette’s accomplice.

Was she? Surely she would not have entered the cottage were it lies she spilled. She would have fled the instant Theo followed his lord inside. The lad had to be the means by which Arblette summoned her.

Though Elias wanted to absolve her of wrongdoing, his desire to believe the best of others could see a warrior dead. Thus, he would cease with the accusations but keep close watch on her.

Feeling twice his weight, he forced himself upright and crossed to the woman. “It does not end here, Honore of no surname.”

She lowered the hands clasped against her chest, raised her face.

“There will be some gain amid so great a loss,” he continued. “Regardless of whether you truly have a care for her son, regardless of whether I am his father, you will aid me in finding him. For her.”

“I shall,” she said so softly he barely caught the words above the sound of villagers come to investigate what was of such import their sleep should be disturbed.

Elias turned on his heel, started back toward Lettice, halted as Everard’s lesson to give reason and strategy their due once more returned to him. It mattered not what number it was, only that never had he greater cause to heed it.

He was certain he could prove his innocence if accused of Lettice’s murder, but soon the sheriff would be summoned and the inquiry could last days, easily putting a hundred leagues between Arblette and justice.

As the shadow of someone approaching the doorway lumbered across the moonlit floor, Elias strode to the body laid on the scant rushes, dropped to a knee, and rasped in the English of the woman he had loved, “Whither thou goest my heart’s first love, I go not until your son is safe and justice done. My vow I give.” He kissed her chill brow. “At long last, be at peace, sweet Lettice.”

And now to the inn to retrieve his belongings. Then the hunt.