Allaston nodded her head. “Aye.”
She sounded ill. Grasping the back of her surcoat, he slid her off of the horse and onto the ground. Allaston hit feet first but she lost her balance and fell back onto her sore bottom, wincing as she did so. Bretton pulled the horse to a stop and looked down at her.
“Well?” he said, sounding displeased. “What do you have to say for your behavior back there?”
Allaston was slowly getting up, brushing off her bottom as she moved rather unsteadily. “What would you have me say?” she asked, refusing to look at him. “You killed that woman and her family. It was….”
He cut her off. “Allow me to clarify the situation,” he said. “I did not kill her and her husband. My men did. As for the boy, I am not sure who did that, but everything that was done was completed at my direction.”
She looked at him, then. “But why?” she wanted to know, pain in her voice. “Why would you do such a thing? You allowed that lady to be… abused horrifically and then killed. She committed no crime against you!”
Bretton would not be reprimanded and he struggled to hold his temper in check. “Such is the nature of conquest, lady,” he told her. “Your father did the same thing. He killed everything that moved because anything left alive, no matter how seeminglyinnocuous at the time, can at some day or some time be a threat. I am a perfect example of that. I escaped to live as Jax de Velt destroyed my home. Now, I have come back to kill him. And I shall.”
Allaston wasn’t going to be sucked into another argument against killing her father. They’d had that conversation too many times. “You had the chance to hurt him very badly back there,” she said. “You should have put me on a pole.”
“And, yet, I did not,” he said. “You are more valuable to me alive than dead at the moment, but that may change.”
“So you have said.”
“You do not believe me?”
Allaston wasn’t in any mood to be toyed with. “I believe you like to play games with me,” she said bitterly. “You have moments when you are quite rational and quite human, and I feel comfort with you, and then you have times like this when you are mad with vengeance and all you do is threaten. Do you know what I think? I do not think even you know what it is you want out of life. You want to kill my father, that is true, but I do not think you know what you want to do after that is accomplished or even what you want to do with me. Sometimes you treat me like a prisoner, other times like a companion. You are a man in great turmoil, de Llion, and you have sucked me into the turmoil with you.”
As always, she was quite astute. His first reaction was to rage at her but he found that he couldn’t because she was right. Everything she said was correct. Puzzled, and feeling reprimanded, he did what he often did when faced with such things– he withdrew. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore because he didn’t want her to get the better of him. This novice nun, this prisoner, and this beautiful woman he couldn’t seem to get out of his mind, had increasing control over him.
When Bretton fell silent and turned away from her, Allaston studied the man closely. He tended to brood when he didn’t have an answer to what she was saying. She’d seen it before.Be kind to him. She’d tried that before but it hadn’t worked. She’s tried to fight him, too, and that hadn’t worked, either. However, now they knew each other better and she was coming to understand him a bit more. Deep down, his vengeance was a result of a horrible sadness, something inadvertently perpetrated against him by Jax de Velt.
Just like everyone, Bretton wanted to be satisfied in life. He was not satisfied now and he believed that killing Jax would lead him to gratification. Allaston thought a moment on how she could help him find contentment and perhaps save her father at the same time. After the man had refused to put her on a pole, even after she’d provoked him, she had a feeling he might be more apt to listen to her persuasion.
“De Llion,” she said softly, moving in his direction. “Bretton. May I call you Bretton?”
He looked at her, seeing that she was coming towards him. “You will whether or not I want you to,” he said, rolling his eyes with exasperation. “You never do anything I want you to do.”
She smiled agreeably. “Bretton,” she began quietly. “When my father set out to conquer Four Crosses those years ago, it was not with the express intent to hurt you or ruin your life. You were simply collateral damage. Surely you understand that.”
“I do.”
She thought carefully on what she would say next. “I do not believe that we are all born predisposed to what we will become,” she said. “In other words, you were not born to be a killer. I am sure you were born a very sweet little boy who loved his parents very much. You probably had pets and toys like all children do. What you have become since that time… you chose to become a killer and to seek vengeance against my father,who inadvertently ruined your life. Killing him will not bring your parents back and it will not suddenly make you a happy and content man. On the contrary, I believe it will leave you more empty and angry than before. You will not find the true happiness you seek in another man’s murder. Therefore, I want to make you a proposal.”
He was trying not to look interested. In fact, he waved her off. “There is nothing that you can propose to me that will satisfy me.”
“Will you at least hear me?”
He rolled his eyes again. “I am sure I have little choice but I will tell you again that it will do no good.”
Allaston was going to give it her best try. She had always been persuasive. She hoped her luck would continue to hold.
“I decided when I was twelve years old that I wanted to become a nun,” she said. “I have always wanted to serve Our Holy Father as a Bride of Christ, but I am not sure anymore if that is something that will make me happy. Let me explain… my happiness lies within my family. It took me a long time to realize that and even as I served at Alberbury, it was not happy. I missed my family, my parents and siblings, because I believe the love of a family is something God has given to us to enjoy and to appreciate. Even before you came and abducted me, I was coming to think that I had been misplaced at Alberbury. I was not particularly happy for the reasons I just outlined. I wanted to go home and spend time with my family, and mayhap someday have a family of my own and a home of my own. Isn’t that something you would like to have as well? A wife who is loyal and children who love you?”
Bretton was looking at her again, the bright blue eyes guarded. “I would like heirs but only to carry on my name,” he said. “A wife and children will simply be something else that belongs to me– possessions.”
It was a cold way to view it and she wasn’t entirely sure she believed him. There was something about the man that suggested he wasn’t completely emotionless as he wanted others to believe. He was simply afraid of being hurt again, of losing someone he loved. In many ways, Bretton was still that little boy who had been so devastated by the loss of his parents and sister. She went forward with her proposal.
“I do not want to see my father killed, especially when it will not bring you the relief or happiness you seek,” she said. “I understand the love of a family, Bretton. I understand how it can fill you like nothing else and my father, after those years of warfare, understands it, too. The love of my mother was strong enough to make him stop his dreams of conquest. Love is the greatest thing of all. Therefore, because I love my father, I am willing to make this sacrifice– I know I told you that I would kill myself I you ever touched me, and I swore I would not agree to marry you, but the situation has changed. I will offer myself to you as your bride if you will cease your vengeance against my father. When you marry me, I come with a dowry– my father has several castles and since I am his eldest daughter, I have been given Belford Castle on the Scots border. My dowry was promised to Alberbury when I took my final vows, but since I have not taken them, the property still belongs to me. I have an annual income of three hundred gold crowns a year as well. All of this will be yours if you marry me and cease your vengeance against my father. Will you at least consider it?”
Bretton gazed steadily at her. He couldn’t quite bring himself to deny her but he didn’t understand why. Perhaps there was a part of him that wanted to have her by his side, as his wife, because clearly, she had grown on him since the day he had abducted her. In fact, he couldn’t imagine not having her around. But he wasn’t yet ready to give up on his vengeance against de Velt, not when it had been part of him for so long.Torn, he averted his eyes, sighing heavily as he did so. Allaston, not receiving any manner of answer, moved towards him so that she was standing by his left leg. She looked up at him earnestly.
“Remember when you were a child and your father meant so much to you?” she asked, trying to tear down his walls of resistance. “Think of the family we might have– a son or two, or even three. Mayhap even a few daughters. Think of what they would mean to you and how you, as their father, would be proud of them. That kind of pride is so much better than the empty victory my father’s death will bring you. Can you understand that?”
