Page 85 of A Knight’s Vengeance

With rigid fingers, Veronique smoothed her gown’s crushed sleeve. “A drink first then, to ease you?” she suggested, unable to keep the edge from her tone. Geoffrey must have heard it, too, for his hand froze on the pitcher’s handle.

“Go.”

“Milord?”

“I wish you to leave, Veronique,” he said without facing her. “Close the doors behind you.”

“You are dismissing me?” As she stared at the unyielding wall of his back, the significance of his rejections crashed down upon her like a crumbling wall. “Why?”

He looked at her, his gaze shadowed with regret. His shoulders raised in a stiff shrug. “I do not feel for you as I once did. I do not want to lie with you. I am… sorry.”

His words stung. He did not need her. He did want her. Not now, mayhap never again.

Beneath her powders and rouge, warmth drained from her face. He was forcing her away because he desired the lady.

Elizabeth Brackendale was younger, more beautiful, and her noble bloodlines made her a far richer prize than a poor farmer’s daughter turned courtesan.

Veronique’s jaw tightened with fury. “I never expected you to choose Brackendale’s daughter over me.”

Geoffrey looked at her over his wine goblet, his stare hard with warning. “I asked you to leave. Do you ignore yet another of my orders?”

Veronique forced a smile with lips that felt carved from stone. “Nay, milord.” She dropped into a graceful curtsey. “I bid you good evening.”

She sensed his gaze upon her as she walked across the chamber. How she hated the ache that crushed her heart.

As Veronique hastened down the passage to the musty antechamber she claimed as her private room, her bliaut lashed at her ankles. Her eyes burned, and not from the smoke spewing from the torches. What had happened was all her fault, that black-haired, blue-eyed wench’s. Veronique remembered Elizabeth’s pale limbs entwined with Geoffrey’s, and spat an oath into the shadows.

Veronique trembled with rage. Geoffrey was her lord. Her lover. Her warrior. No one had ever challenged her position as his favorite until Lady Elizabeth Brackendale arrived at Branton.

Staggering into the darkened chamber, Veronique slammed the door and leaned back against the splintered wood. She had followed Geoffrey across the continent to this vile, festering, run-down keep because he had ambitions of power and wealth.

After spending two years of her life with him, she would not be denied her share of the riches, or the glory.

She groped for a taper and lit it from the candle beside the straw pallet. Light glinted off the polished steel mirror lying on the bed. She picked it up and looked at her reflection.

The taper flickered, illuminating the wicked smile on her blood-red lips.

If Geoffrey intended to cast her aside, she would find a way to deny him his wealth.

And vengeance.

CHAPTER 16

Elizabeth paced her chamber, her slippers tapping on the floorboards. She must find a way to change what was inevitable. Frowning, she turned and walked back the ten steps she had counted out so many times before which brought her to the opposite wall. She had to think. Think!

Worrying the end of her braid with her fingers, she spun on her heel. She had to stop the melee. The brutal battle might prove the victor’s honor and his right to Wode, but it also meant her father’s death. She knew that without doubt. Why had he challenged de Lanceau to such a skirmish when he knew he could not defeat a crusading warrior? Why?

Had he chosen the melee because ’twas an honorable death?

She forced a painful swallow. Her gaze fell to the rose wool folded on the trestle table. The melee had come about because of Geoffrey’s desire for revenge, his quest to seek justice for his father’s death.

Geoffrey was not so heartless if he felt such anguish.

He had loved his sire very much, mayhap as much as she loved hers. Even, as he had posed that afternoon on the wall walk, with the poignancy she felt for her mother’s death. He, too, knew the anguish of loss. Elizabeth hugged her arms to her chest and blinked away tears. He, too, knew the fear of being alone.

The afternoon sun faded to twilight, and when she next looked out the window, a crescent moon gleamed in the heavens, surrounded by a scattering of stars. An owl hooted in the darkness. Time was passing. Still, she had no answer.

She must stop Geoffrey. She must save her father.