The YIELDING (26 page)

Without waiting to hear what would surely be a caustic rejoinder, she entered the donjon and narrowly avoided a wench who exited the kitchen with a tray of viands borne high.

It was the nooning meal already? Bidding her breath to turn even, Beatrix smoothed her bodice, next her hair, and brushed her lips that yet felt the fleeting impression of Michael’s. Why had he kissed her?

At the sound of his uneven footfalls, she hurried down the corridor to the great hall where the castle folk were beginning to gather and where she would sit down to another meal rife with the silence drawn about Lady Laura and Lady Maude, neither of whom had spoken to her since the morning that she had thanked them for the gown. First, though, she would take her herbs abovestairs.

Pondering how odd it was to not have Squire Percival’s escort, she did not see the one who leaned against the wall until she was nearly upon him. She faltered and, for a moment, feared this was the moment he had awaited. However, he did not move from alongside the stairway but merely murmured, “This eve, Lady Beatrix.”

Heart seeking to free itself from the cage of her ribs, she managed to keep her feet moving until she ascended to the first landing. There, she paused. The scents of woodruff, fennel, and borage whispering through her, she looked to the limp herbs in her clenched and trembling hand and loosed a small, bitter laugh. And Michael thought her less in need of courage than any woman he had known…

Determined to prove him right, she turned up the winding stair. “I shall have my trial,” she told the walls. “My word on that.”

“Have you decided?”

Michael straightened from lowering Clarice to the bed. The little girl having nodded off on his lap before meal’s end, he had carried her abovestairs for the absent Lady Laura. He met Maude’s gaze opposite. “Decided?”

“I speak of Lady Beatrix.”

Michael tensed and tried to turn aside the memory of what he had done in the garden. Such a fool he was!

“Michael?”

Not since Maude had told him she did not think Beatrix belonged in the tower had they discussed the one who stood accused of murdering Simon. “I was not aware there was a decision to be made regarding her.”

Her mouth tightened. “Do not trifle with me. For one so slight, Lady Beatrix perches heavily upon your mind.”

“You do not know my mind, Maude.”

She came around the bed. “If your mind follows your eyes—which follow Lady Beatrix—I do know it.”

He did not like this conversation, but rather than leave it hung out for her to pick at later, he determined he would put an end to it. “Thrice she has escaped me. ’Twould be foolish if I did not watch her.”

Maude momentarily closed her eyes, then curved a hand over his jaw. “You forget I know you as my own son, Michael. The eyes that follow Lady Beatrix are not those of a man who stalks his prey—at least, not for the killing.”

He drew back. “My stalking is done. Now I have but to deliver the lady to trial, and that I shall do. For Simon.”

Her son’s name causing her eyes to brighten, she said, “Only if you make lies of what you know to be true.”

“What do you say? That now you are
certain
she did not murder Simon?”

“I have also watched her.”

Then that was all, for Squire Percival told she had spoken no more than half a dozen words to his captive since the telling of Beatrix’s tale.

“And what have you seen, Maude?”

“The same that you see—or nearly so.” Sorrow haunted her eyes. “Thus, you must decide what to do with her. And soon.”

With the passing of this eve’s moon, there were only two days remaining before the sheriff came.

Michael clenched his hands and swung away. “I have business to attend to.”

“I am pleased you have found your heart again,” Maude sent after him.

He did not know of what she spoke, but he knew what he must do. Unfortunately, there was not much time in which to do it. He turned out of the chamber. “Squire Percival!”

The young man, earlier relieved of his watch over Lady Beatrix, met him at the door of the solar. “My lord?”

“Summon Sir Canute and take up his watch that he might attend me.”

Surprise leaping off his face, Percival hastened from the room to retrieve the knight who had been passed the guard over Beatrix.

“You are leaving Castle Soaring.”

Beatrix stared at the one into whose presence she had been escorted. “The…sheriff has arrived?”

“Nay,” Michael said. “’Tis not to Broehne you go.”

Then the trial was to be held elsewhere? Why? Hating her fluttering lids, she said, “I do not understand.”

He straightened from the table. “I am sending you to Stern Castle—to your brother.”

Beatrix startled. “You jest.”

“I do not. Indeed, I shall deliver you myself.”

He who had revealed her capture to Lavonne? The air too thin to satisfy, she breathed deep and tried to make sense of what he told.

“We leave ere dawn.”

Why? After three days, had Lady Maude determined to believe her? But even if she had, Michael would not release her unless he also believed—or at least doubted.

Beatrix moistened her lips. “You would have me beg an explanation?”

He strode to where she stood in the middle of the solar. “Be content that your bid for freedom is won and that you shall soon be reunited with your family who will ensure the Lavonnes never again lay hands to you.”

She could not content herself with that. Michael was releasing her and intended to return her to Stern himself—or at least he thought he would. “Then you know I spoke true of your brother, that I am not the same as…”

Though over and over the name of the woman to whom Michael had likened her had gone around her head, it failed her now. Which letter had begun the woman’s name? Hoping for Michael’s patience long enough to search the dark places of her memory, she started with the letter ‘a’. Fortunately, Edithe was not far removed. “Then you know I am not the same as Edithe.”

Beneath his beard, his jaw bulged, and she knew he regretted telling her the woman’s name. “I do not know that. Merely, I am no longer certain of it.”

Doubt, then. But in releasing her, Michael would break his vow of fealty, an unpardonable sin where one’s liege was concerned. “What of Baron Lavonne?”

“’Twill be told that you escaped.” A slight smile touched his mouth. “You have done that often enough.”

To his detriment.

“Ere dawn,” he said and stepped around her as if to see her from the solar.

Beatrix was tempted, but if she took what he offered, it would be said she had murdered. She could not live like that, nor with the fear that her family’s refusal to hand her over to the sheriff would endanger them. “I will not leave.”

Michael turned. “What do you say?”

“I shall remain here.”

His nostrils flared. “Do you not understand what I offer? ’Tis what you sought hardly a month past.”

“And what I no longer seek as I have told you. I shall have my trial.”

“Do not be a fool—”

“I am not!” Beatrix stamped her foot. “Not your brother’s fool, not Baron Lavonne’s fool, and certainly not yours! I am done running from something I did not do.”

Pupils darkening, he looked long upon her. “In less than three days, the sheriff will be here.” There was a firm calm to his voice as one might use with a difficult child.

She peered up at him through her lashes. “It is as I wish.”

“You cannot hope to win.”

“If I can make
you
doubt, mayhap ’tis not so far removed to make others.”

“Doubt will not save you, Beatrix.” He lifted an arm, hesitated, then laid fingers to her cheek. “You will be found guilty. And you will die.”

She longed to reject his gesture, but it felt… Though it should not be this way, his touch was a balm to her tattered soul. Mayhap he did care for her. Mayhap it was not mere lust that had made him seek to lie with her. Mayhap he risked all for
her
, incredible though it seemed.

She drew a deep breath. Aye, incredible, just as when she had convinced herself he would not alert the baron to her presence at Soaring…when she had been so sure of him only to learn there was nothing about him to be sure. Thus, she must remain true to the vow she had made herself. Only it could wipe clean her past and let her live again.

“Though death may be my end,” she said, “the truth shall be told about your brother.” As the last word spilled, so did realization, and she lurched back.

He did
not
care for her. Did
not
risk all for her.

Wariness recasting his face, Michael lowered his arm.

“I see clearly, Lord D’Arci, what you would not have me see. ’Tis not for my wellbeing that you would deliver me to my brother, but for your stepmother…your hell-bound brother…you.” Anger shuddered through her. “You fear for the D’Arci name, that your brother’s depravity shall reflect ill upon you. Though I might die, you have not a care for me.”

Michael’s eyes lit, but whatever anger gripped him, he contained it. “You are wrong. And therein lies my problem. I do care.”

His admission would have staggered her heart if not that she told herself he lied. He did not care for her.

Especially not as you wish him to care for you
, a voice whispered through her.

I do not wish him to care for me!
And he surely did not. What man would? Unless there was considerable gain, men did not take damaged women to wife. Indeed, Michael would suffer considerable loss if he truly cared for her. If the baron relieved him of Castle Soaring, his life would likely be reduced to no better than knight errant. She could not bear being responsible for his downfall.

“I shall not leave.” She skirted him, and he let her go.

Squire Percival, who awaited her in the corridor, followed her up the winding stair and left her upon the landing.

Beatrix stared at the door of what had been her prison. In the dark before dawn, would Michael try to force her from Soaring? He could do it—steal upon her while she slept, bind her, and carry her to Stern Castle. Might he? Unfortunately, as the door locked from the outside and there was no bar to drop over the inside, she could not keep him out. Might she steal from Soaring as she had stolen from Broehne? Deliver herself to Baron Lavonne? It seemed the solution, but she knew it was better for the sheriff to deliver her.

She pushed the door inward, closed it behind her, and crossed to the bed where she lowered to the edge. Try though she did to not think about Michael and the feelings his presence, words, and touch stirred, it was futile.

He cares naught for you!
And yet—

She searched for someplace else to land her thoughts. And land they did, on the one who had warned that he would take her from Soaring this eve.

She stood against two. The only good of it, if it could be said there was any, was that she would not have to resist both at the same time.

Beatrix had not murdered. And long he had known it—his heart, that is. It was his head that had made murder of her attempt to escape persecution, his head that made Edithe’s sins hers. At the cost of Beatrix, he had wanted to believe the years could not change Simon so. But he had known it, even an hour past when all he had allowed was that he was no longer certain of her guilt. For that, there could be no forgiveness. He had hunted her to ground, made her his prisoner, nearly claimed her virtue, and repeatedly cast another woman’s sins upon her. Unforgivable.

Michael settled deeper in the chair and rubbed between thumb and forefinger the tress he had carried with him all these months. In the end, it would be all he had of her—all any would have of her if he did not take her from Soaring. Thus, though she vowed to resist, he would pass to her brother the burden of keeping her from her foolish quest.

He looked from the hearth to the pale strands between his fingers. Though he had given Beatrix enough reason not to believe him, it
was
for her he wished to see her clear of a trial. Not for Maude, for Simon, or himself.

If only she would leave willingly as she would have before that night in the rain. But she had changed—her voice, her bearing, and especially her eyes when she looked upon him. He had done that to her, trampled her innocence and trust when she had yielded to his hungering mouth. All because of Edithe, whom he had once more given the power to take from him—a woman as far removed from Beatrix as Michael was from any hope of righting the wrong he had done.

And he knew why he cared so much that the wrong be righted. Of course, he dared not allow the truth to settle too long, for therein lay weakness and vulnerability, neither of which a man could afford, especially without prospect of gain. Beatrix would not welcome him to her again, unless…

Yield to God,
she had said,
else you will never find the peace you seek.

Might
he change his course by yielding to the Lord? Might he know the peace absent from his life? Might that peace include Beatrix? It was asking much—more than anything of which he was worthy.