A cold shaft of fear pierced Riona. “Eleanor, has someone…?”
She hesitated, trying to think of a way to put her question so that Eleanor wouldn’t feel even more ashamed if the truth was what she feared. “Has anyone…anyman…hurt you?”
Understanding dawned in Eleanor’s eyes and she shook her head. “No.” Then she started to sob again, and her voice caught when she said, “Not yet.”
Not yet?
“It’s Percival,” she said, sitting on Riona’s bed. As tears slid down her cheeks, she explained, her voice halting, her anguish obvious. “He’s afraid Sir Nicholas won’t choose me, so he wants me to…toseducehim.”
As Riona stared at her, aghast, she learned there was yet more.
“When I’m with him…in his bedchamber…Percival is going to find us together andmakeSir Nicholas marry me. I tried to refuse but…” Eleanor took a deep, shuddering breath. “He said that if I don’t do what he wants, he’ll send me to a convent, but first he’ll…he’ll take…he’llrapeme.”
She broke down completely, covering her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking as more sobs racked her slender body.
Feeling sick, Riona sat beside the distraught girl and held her close, silently cursing Percival and his horrible, evil, despicable scheme, while trying to think of some way to help.
“Oh, Riona,” Eleanor sobbed. “To whore myself into marriage! To trick a man that way—any man! But I can’t even bear Percival’s touch! I’d rather die than let him—”
“He won’t,” Riona said firmly, her dismay and distress overruled by her determination to protect the helpless girl who clung to her. “And Percival is a fool if he thinks Sir Nicholas could be forced into marriage, for any reason, by anyone.”
Eleanor drew back, regarding Riona piteously as she sniffled. “Then what am I to do? Should I run away? I thought of that last night, but I was so afraid Percival would discover me trying to flee, or come after me and catch me and…and…”
“No, don’t do that,” Riona assured her. On her own, young, pretty, innocent Eleanor would surely fall prey to men as terrible as Percival. “You should go to Sir Nicholas and tell him of this terrible scheme. As a knight, he must protect you, and he will.”
Eleanor’s voice trembled as another tear rolled down her cheek. “If I did, Percival would surely claim I was lying, or didn’t understand him properly. It would be my word against his, and even if charges could be brought against him, he’s got too many powerful friends who would vouch for him. He would be free, and then he’d come after me, or anyone who tried to help me. You don’t know Percival, Riona. He’s vicious and vindictive. He’d never rest without punishing me, or anyone who tried to help me.”
A desperate look on her face, she started to stand. “I shouldn’t have come to you. If Percival finds out, he might try to hurt you, too. I should just do what Percival wants, and if Sir Nicholas won’t marry me, I’ll…I’ll go to the convent.”
Riona rose and took Eleanor firmly by the shoulders. “You mustn’t even think of dishonoring yourself. Even if I’m wrong, and Nicholas could be compelled to marry you, how happy do you think you would be, knowing your marriage came about by trickery and deceit? How long before your husband came to resent you?”
She took a deep breath. Something had to be done, and by God, it would be. “The two of us will thwart Percival’s plan.”
Eleanor stared at her with a mixture of wonder, hope and fear. “The two of us? How?”
How indeed?
“I don’t think Sir Nicholas is the sort of man to brag about his conquest, and you surely wouldn’t,” Riona said, thinking aloud, and going by what had already happened between herself and Nicholas, when he had…
She forced those memories away. “All we really have to do is convince Percival you’re doing what he wants, that you’ve managed to become Sir Nicholas’s lover without that actually being so.”
“How can I do that?”
“You’ll have to let Percival see you sneak into Nicholas’s bedchamber late at night. You stay a little while, then sneak out again.”
Eleanor started to visibly tremble, and her eyes were wide with fear. “What about Sir Nicholas?”
“You go to his chamber when he’s already asleep.”
“What if he woke up and caught me? And Percival plans to find us together. That could still happen, whether Sir Nicholas knows I’m there or not.”
That was, unfortunately, true. It was too much of a risk to send Eleanor to Nicholas’s chamber. “I’ll go.”
“You?”Eleanor exclaimed.
“Me,” Riona confirmed. This plan had its own dangers, but not nearly so many for her, and none for Eleanor. “If I wear one of your dresses and scarves, I should be able to fool Percival. We’re the same height, and both of us are slim. And he’ll be expecting to see you, not me.”
“But what if Sir Nicholas finds you there?”
