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“Very well. There are scores of people who would yell down the heavens if someone came too close to me.”
She should be safe enough here, he thought, yielding the point since there was a much meatier bone to pick. “You thought I was Tuggle. You told me to ready your mare. You were going to leave, weren’t you?”
“Aye, but just for a short time and I would have asked Beamis to send several of his men with me. I must go to see the Healer, a knowledgeable woman who lives deep in the Pevensey Forest. I have learned nearly everything I know from her. Even she could not save my father.”
He threw up his hands. “Then send a man to bring her to the castle. Have you no ability to think?”
“She won’t come here. She never leaves the forest. I have asked her many times.”
“Then you won’t see her for a while.” He reached out his hand and cupped her chin. She stilled instantly. “You will listen to me now, lady. You will remain here, in this garden, or within the keep. You will go no place else until I have taken care of Richard de Luci. Do you understand me?”
“Since you are near to yelling, it would be difficult not to.”
“Nay, that simply means that you hear me, but not necessarily that you understand me. I will have no more disobedience from you. Why did you wash my seed from your body? I told you not to.”
She reached for the trowel. She wanted to strike him as hard as she could. She wanted to smash his head. His gloved hand hit the trowel hard, her fingers just inches from the handle. “How do you know what I did?” she said, staring at that handle, at his fist covering the trowel.
“Your old nurse told Graelam and me. There was blood in your water basin.”
She watched him rise. Her fingers closed over the trowel handle. “Aye, I scrubbed myself clean of you.”
He said even as she raised the trowel, “You dare to raise a weapon to me?” He made no move toward her. He remained utterly still. It was that same stillness that had made her want to cross herself when she’d first seen him standing in the great hall, the sun framing him through the wide doorway. He was again garbed all in gray. She felt the rage pouring from him.
It happened so quickly neither had a chance to react. A shadow fell, then there was a blur of movement. It was Hastings who saw the dagger in the man’s hand and it was but moments from Severin’s back. She yelled, and threw herself against Severin, knocking him off his feet and onto her patch of thyme. He fell onto his side. The man’s hand flashed down and the knife sank into Severin’s shoulder.
She didn’t think, just jumped to her feet, flinging herself at the man even as he raised the dagger again to strike. She knew he wouldn’t dare hurt her else his master wouldn’t gain her in marriage and would thus lose all. She struck his head as hard as she could with the trowel, but it just seemed to bounce off his skull. Her fingers went to his eyes. He managed to jerk back, but not in time. He screamed in pain. She felt ribbons of his flesh wet beneath her fingernails.
He covered his face with his hands, groaning. She threw the trowel at him and kicked him in his groin, sending him to his knees. Two men were running toward them, but they weren’t Oxborough men or Langthorne men. She grabbed th
e dagger from the man’s lax hand and rose to meet them even as she yelled as loud as she could, “Graelam! A moi! A moi! Beamis!”
They were on her in a flash, but she kept slashing that dagger in front of her. “Filthy cowards, are you afraid of one woman? Come on, my fine warriors. Come.”
“Aye,” a voice came from behind her. “Come and let me cut your gullets.”
It was Severin. She almost whirled about to see him, but knew she couldn’t. If he wasn’t wounded badly enough to stand, then he could save both of them. She saw the flash of his sword, heard the scream of one of the men, saw the blood spurt from his chest even as he lurched forward to fall not an inch from her feet. The other man wasn’t a fool. Oxborough men were coming, and soon he wouldn’t have a chance. He turned on his heel and ran.
She turned to Severin, who stood there, sword dripping the man’s blood onto his hand. He was holding his other hand against his shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers.
“I had believed you safe here,” he said. “I do wonder how they managed to get within the keep. Are your men so slack?”
She had no time to answer. There was yelling, a man’s scream. Then Graelam and Beamis were there, men piling behind them. Beamis was pale, his eyes on his new master. “I don’t know how they got in. I don’t know, but it won’t happen again, my lord.”
“If it does, I’ll flail the flesh from your back,” Severin said. “I want the other man alive.”
“He’s alive.”
“Good,” Severin said. “I will question him.” He looked at Graelam, then down at the blood oozing between his fingers, opened his mouth, looked astonished, and fell right on top of her rosemary and horehound. His right boot landed on the small patch of mugwort.
Severin felt the deep twisting pain before he opened his eyes. But it was pain, nothing more, and he knew from long practice that he could control most pain. He’d fainted. Like a damned female, he’d fainted. He’d had to be carried and laid on his bed. He felt shame curdle in his belly. He couldn’t help it. Then it wasn’t shame curdling in his belly. He lurched up and vomited in the basin she held for him. He drew a deep, steadying breath and said, “You will go away. I don’t wish you near me.”
“Why not? Had I not been here, had I not known that your belly would probably rebel, you would have puked on yourself.”
He wanted to kill her.
“Do you still have that trowel?”
“Nay, I threw it at the man I felled.”
