Devil's Dominion (21 page)

Bretton forced himself away from thoughts of Allaston to focus on the message Dallan was bearing.

“A missive?” he repeated, confused. “For me?”

Dallan nodded. “A rider dropped it at the gatehouse and fled,” he said. “It seems the army of the dead outside the walls frightened him sufficiently, but when the sentries collected the missive, it was addressed to Bretton de Llion.”

Bretton eyed the man with both curiosity and suspicion as he took the parchment. He inspected it with great interest, turning it over in his hands so the seal was exposed. He squinted as he studied the red seal, attempting to discern the details of the seal. After a moment, shock registered across his bearded face.

It was the seal of the House of de Llion.

℘

It was dark on the entry level of the keep now that the sun had gone down. Bretton sat alone at the scrubbed table with the open missive in front of him, listening to his men out in the bailey as night descended. Laughter and shouts wafted in through the three long lancet windows on the north side of the room, windows that faced the kitchen yard but the hall was near the kitchen and he could hear the sounds coming forth. Men were enjoying themselves now after a victorious campaign at Rhayder. It was the sound of mercenaries enjoying their latest bloody victory.

But Bretton wasn’t interested in celebrating. In fact, he wasn’t interested in much at the moment. He kept the missive at his hand, every so often glancing down at it, but the room had grown so dark that he couldn’t see the carefully scribed letters anymore. But he really didn’t have to, he knew what it said. He had been reading it all afternoon.

In the keep, there had been some movement during the time he’d sat and read the missive. Allaston had eventually come down from her bower, but he was sitting out of her line of sight as she descended the stairs and quit the keep, he assumed, to oversee the evening meal. In truth, he hadn’t thought about her much since he’d received the missive. All of his energy had been directed at the contents of the parchment that contained the seal of de Llion. He’d smelled the aromas of cooking meat, of freshly baked bread as Allaston and the kitchen servants cooked for several hundred men, but he wasn’t particularly hungry. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he was.

In an emotionless limbo, he continued to sit as the evening deepened and the room around him grew dark and very cold. He sat and fingered the missive, pondering the contents, for minute upon minute, turning into hour upon hour. He had no real concept of time passing, lost in a world he didn’t much like to reflect on. The world of his past. At some point during the passing of the hours, he heard the keep entry open and footfalls approach. Light was approaching, too. He glanced up, slowly, to see Allaston as she entered the chamber with an oil lamp in her hand. Two servants trailed behind her, one with a bucket of something and one with a tray of food. Allaston pointed to the dark hearth.

“Blandings, please light a fire,” she said, and as the old man with the bucket moved for the black hearth, she directed the fat servant with the tray towards the table where Bretton sat. “Robert, please take the food to the lord.”

Bretton sat there, not saying a word, as a tray of food was placed before him. Allaston moved around the table to a bank of tallow candles, impaled on an iron floor sconce, and lit them with the flame from the oil lamp. Soon, a warm glow filled the room as the candles gave off their significant light. She was business-like and polite as she set the oil lamp down on the table so he could see the food laid out before him. Taking the wooden pitcher off the tray, she poured a measure of dark red wine into the earthenware cup.

“Blandings, please make sure to bring in more fuel for the fire before you leave,” she called over to the man who was stoking the hearth. “And bring more peat, it lasts longer.”

The man responded in the affirmative as Allaston proceeded to take the trencher and other items off the tray, setting them in front of Bretton. Smells of garlic and meat and onions filled his nostrils and he realized that he was the slightest bit hungry. Allaston was pulling bread and butter off the tray, setting it within his arm’s reach, working around the parchment without moving it aside. When she was finished with her task, she took the tray off the table and headed for the door but Bretton stopped her.

“Lady,” he said, his raspy voice soft. “Hold, please.”

Allaston came to a halt by the door, pausing to look at him. It was the first time she had looked him in the face since entering the hall. But Bretton didn’t say any more, at least not until Blandings finished stirring up the flames in the hearth and left the room in search of more fuel for the fire. Only when he heard the keep entry shut did Bretton continue.

“Will you please join me?” he asked softly.

Allaston was clearly hesitant. She moved to the table, slowly, and took a seat that was well out of arm’s length. It was obvious she was fearful of being grabbed again and Bretton was rather sorry. He knew his actions had terrified her. She said she would hate him forever if he completed his dastardly deed, and even though he hadn’t completed it, it was quite possible she hated him simply for attempting it. Nay, he didn’t want her hate. Oddly enough, he found he wanted her comfort. He’d never depended on anyone in his life but, at the moment, he wanted to depend on her. She was the only person in his entire life that had ever shown him the slighted amount of compassion and understanding. That fleeting taste had given him a glimpse of what he had been missing.

“For my earlier actions…,” he began, “I am a man not given to regrets but I fear that my actions… I cannot explain what it is I felt or why I did what I did. I did not mean to injure you.”

Allaston’s countenance was guarded. It wasn’t exactly an apology but he was trying. Still, she wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. If she did, it might show the man that he could get away with things like that and that certainly wasn’t the case. He had crossed the line of propriety with her and she was unwilling to forgive and forget at the moment. He had hurt her feelings, scared her, and embarrassed her, and she wasn’t ready to release those emotions against him.

“You did not injure me,” she said after a moment. “Why have you asked me to join you? Is there something more you require for your meal or comfort?”

He shook his head, slowly, his eyes on the parchment that was lying on the tabletop a few feet away. He reached around the oil lamp to retrieve it, holding it up in front of him as he read the words again. His normally impassive expression was in danger of becoming something emotional.

“I received a missive earlier today,” he finally said. “It is from a cousin I have not seen since before de Velt destroyed Four Crosses. This cousin is three or four years younger than I am, so in truth, I do not know the man. I only know
of
him. But he speaks of my grandfather, who is also his grandfather. I have only vague memories of the man.”

In spite of her anger towards him, she was inevitably interested in what he was saying. She was also surprised by the news. “That seems strange,” she said. “How would these relatives know where to find you?”

He frowned and tossed the parchment aside. “That is the question I have been asking myself,” he said. “How did they find me? When I escaped Four Crosses, they certainly made no attempt to locate me, so how were they able to locate me now?”

Allaston could hear bitterness in his words. She was coming to think there was some resentment there. “Where does this cousin live?”

Bretton glanced at the parchment in spite of the fact he had tossed it away. “Bronllys Castle,” he said. “It is well south of here. My grandfather is the garrison commander for the Earl of Hereford, or at least that is what my cousin says. I do not remember any of those particulars, but I do remember that my grandfather was stationed at Bronllys.”

Allaston asked the obvious question. “If you have family there, why have you not contacted them before now?” she asked. “Surely they would like to know you are alive and that you did not perish with your family.”

Bretton looked at her and she could see the turmoil in the bright blue eyes. “They would not care,” he said flatly. “If they loved me so much, why did they not try to find me after Four Crosses was destroyed? They could have searched for me but they did not. In fact, I prayed nightly for such things, praying for my grandfather to come and save me. Instead, he left me to the mercy of others. Nay, my relatives do not care for me. This missive simply asks if I am the Bretton de Llion whose father, Morgan, commanded Four Crosses. They do not even know for sure if it is me. If they truly cared, they would have come personally and not have sent a cold and impersonal missive.”

Allaston’s eyebrows lifted. The man, in her opinion, couldn’t have been more wrong. “How were they supposed to find you?” she asked. “Your entire family was killed at Four Crosses and they naturally assumed you were killed as well. There was no way for them to know otherwise. But now, somehow or someway, they have heard that you are here at Cloryn so they are reaching out to you.”

He snorted rudely. “By sending a missive?”

“Do you think, given your reputation, that it would have been safe for one of them to have come personally?” she countered. “What if you are not the cousin they seek? It could have been a very hazardous situation in that case.”

Once again, she spoke the truth. Bretton considered her a moment, pondering her words, before looking back to the parchment. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, looking at the contents of the missive once again without touching the parchment. It was quite clear that he was torn, not knowing how to react to it.

“That is a logical conclusion,” he said. “My cousin asks me to meet him at The Falcon and Flower Inn in Newtown. It is about twenty miles from here, to the south. He has asked me to meet him there on the first day of the new month, which is two days away. I have not yet decided if I will do this.”

Allaston was curious. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “Because I am not entirely sure there is a need,” he said. “What could my cousin possibly say to me? We do not know each other. We are simply related by blood and, I am sure, worlds apart in philosophies.”

Allaston thought on that. “Mayhap you could discover how he knew where to find you,” she said. “If it were me, I would be most curious to know.”

He cocked his head in agreement. “I will admit that I would like to know.”

“Then mayhap you should meet with him,” she said, her eyes glimmering in the weak firelight. “I would also think… well, at least by my reckoning… that I would want to find out why they did not try to find me after Four Crosses burned. They could have a sound reason for it, you know.”

He looked at her, studying her lovely face across the flicker of the oil lamp. “Why would you encourage me to seek people who abandoned me?”

“That is my point. You do not know if they did for certain.”

“Aye, I do. No one ever came for me.”

“Mayhap because they did not know where to look,” she stressed. “You said yourself that you escaped with a few servants and that they took you away. If anyone is to blame, it is the servants. They should have contacted your grandfather but they did not. It’s not for me to say, of course, but they could have even ransomed you to your grandfather. It seems to me that they thought there was more money to be had in selling you.”

She always seemed to make sense. Bretton was coming to admire that quality about her. His men would essentially tell him what he wanted to hear, dependent upon him as they were for riches, but Allaston wasn’t dependent upon him at all, at least not like that. She had the luxury of speaking without prejudice. Maybe that was why he had asked her to stay and listen to his tale of the mysterious missive. He knew she would have an opinion on it. He was glad she did.

“You have an excellent point,” he said. “To be truthful, I never thought on it that way.”

“Then mayhap you should meet your cousin and see what he has to say.”

Bretton mulled her words over, thinking that perhaps her advice was sound. Truth be told, he did want to see Rod. He wanted to know why no one had ever looked for him and he thought Rod might have the answers to questions that had pestered him for years. It was a sorrow he buried deep, but something that had fed his anger against de Velt. Were he to admit it, there was a lot of anger against his family, too. He had felt abandoned.