*
It was herfault, really. She’d had the courage to attack the man but she hadn’t been able to escape as she had hoped. Therefore, she was forced to face the punishment. She had taken a risk and it had come back in her face.
Allaston was back in the vault again. Grayton, upon discovering her over Bretton’s unconscious body, had grabbed her by the neck and dragged her back down to the molderingdepths of Cloryn’s dark vault. He had quite literally thrown her back upon the dirty straw that had been her only bed for three weeks before slamming the grate and making sure it was bolted. The entire time, he’d never said a word, and neither did she. In truth, there was nothing for either of them to say.
That had been a few hours ago. Allaston huddled back against the wall, still in the fine clothing she had been wearing. She suspected that she was going to remain here forever, or at least until her father showed up. Mayhap then they would release her if only to dangle her before her father to show the man their prize. Truly, she only had herself to blame and was therefore resigned to her fate. Hysterics weren’t going to change anything.
So she sat and waited, for what, she didn’t know. She was confident enough that de Llion wouldn’t kill her. He’d been clear that he needed her alive. So the only alternative was to keep her locked up because she had proven she couldn’t be trusted. As she sat there and pondered the course of her dismal future, she heard bootfalls on the steps leading into the vault.
And so it comes, she thought to herself. Even if de Llion wasn’t going to kill her, he had said nothing about not beating or abusing her. She deserved the punishment for what she had done and braced herself for that very real possibility. Resigned though she might be, it didn’t stop tears of fear from stinging her eyes at the thought of what might lay ahead.
It was dark in the vault, as usual, with the only light coming from the stairwell that led to the gatehouse above. She could see a figure descending the steps, realizing it was de Llion simply by the sheer size of the man. He came off the stairs and turned in her direction but she couldn’t see his face because the light was behind him. All she could see as he approached were shadowed features. It made it difficult to gauge his mood, which she could only imagine wasn’t too good. When he came to the locked grateof the cell, he simply stood there. Even though Allaston was looking at him, she couldn’t see his eyes.
“I was told to leave you down here to rot,” he finally said in his raspy, deep voice. “I should, you know.”
Allaston lowered her gaze from his shadowed face. “I would expect you to.”
He paused before answering. “I would except for two good reasons,” he said. “First of all, in spite of what you did, it was astonishingly brave. It showed cunning and resourcefulness. I did not expect a female to show such courage. Second of all, you could have easily killed me but you did not. I want to know why.”
Allaston kept her gaze averted. “Because I am not a killer,” she said. “In spite of what you think, in spite of the de Velt name, I am not a killer. I could not take your life. I could not take anyone’s life.”
“Then why did you knock me unconscious?”
“Because I wanted to escape. That was my only motive.”
Bretton watched her lowered head from his position outside of the cell. After waking up with an excruciating headache almost two hours ago, lying on the floor of the chamber where Allaston had been, he truly had no idea what had happened. He remembered walking in the door and little else.
Pushing himself off the floor, he caught sight of the fire poker a few feet away. A perusal of the chamber showed that he was quite alone and that had been his first clue as to what had transpired. No prisoner and a suspiciously discarded poker. Only when he had left the room and gone in search of a soldier to sound the alarm that Allaston had escaped had he run into Grayton, who was returning from the gatehouse. Grayton had told him all he needed to know and Bretton had spent the last hour and a half listening to the man rant about Allaston and how Grayton had been mistaken to think the woman was worthyof being released from the vault. But Bretton, strangely enough, couldn’t seem to agree.
So he sat and imbibed a couple of cups of wine to stave off his headache as Grayton fumed and the barber-surgeon put three stitches in the back of his scalp. When the wine was gone and the stitches were finished, Bretton chased Grayton away before making his way down to the vault where he now stood. Looking at Allaston’s lowered head, he still couldn’t bring himself to be angry about what she had done. One small woman had managed to do what no one else had ever accomplished– she had managed to disable him. Oddly, he found some humor in that as well as admiration.
“Where were you going to go if you escaped?” he asked quietly. “Do you even know where you are?”
Allaston’s head came up and she looked at him. “Cloryn Castle,” she said. “Your man Grayton told me.”
Bretton nodded faintly. Then he reached out and threw the bolt on the cell, pulling open the old, creaking door with the rusted hinges. He just stood in the doorway, watching her.
“Where were you going to go?” he repeated.
Allaston shrugged. “I was going to find a church,” she said. “I thought the priests would help me.”
“Did you not stop to think that I would find you?” Bretton asked. “Alberbury Priory could not stop me. What makes you think another church would?”
Allaston shrugged. “I am sure that it would not,” she said, some frustration in her tone. “I simply want to return to what I was doing before you came and tore me away from my friends and mentors. I want to return to the cloister. I do not want to be a part of your war games, de Llion.”
His gaze lingered on her. “And yet, you are,” he said, his voice soft. “What about your father? Did you plan on warning him about me?”
Her frustration grew. “Of course I did,” she said. “I planned on sending him word that I was safe and not to engage you. Do you not understand? I want him to stay well away from Wales and well away from me because I love my father and I do not want you to kill him.”
He was aware of her mounting agitation. “That is between me and your father.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You just said I was a part of your war games,” she said. “Therefore, this is between you, my father, and me. You have made me an unwilling participant in all of this.”
He nodded, once, as if he understood her logic. “I will agree with you,” he said. “But trying to escape me is futile. There is nowhere for you to go that I will not find you.”
Allaston sighed heavily, exasperated. “That is probably true,” she said. “But I will ask you this question, de Llion, and you will be truthful with me. Think back to that day when my father besieged Four Crosses. If you could have done anything at that time to save your father, wouldn’t you have done it? That is what I was trying to do by making an escape attempt– I was trying to save my father.”
Bretton pondered her words. As he did, he took a few steps into the cell, standing a mere few feet from where Allaston was huddled. He crouched down so that he could look her in the eye, seeing her ghostly pale face framed by the dark cloak over her head.
