Nightshade (9 page)

He’d be crippled, he thought wryly, if he had to walk far in the things for he had to curl his toes to get them on. It still beat the hell out of frozen feet and toes.

When he’d finished, he dragged the naked man over to the others and tied him up, as well, then settled in a chair before the room’s small brazier to warm himself and think.

He would need an army to reclaim what was rightfully his and he must take what was rightfully his before he claimed Bronwyn as his wife, else he would not have the wherewithal to hold her against the king.

Fortunately, he had an advantage no one else had.

He had built Raventhorne. He knew all of its secrets.

Chapter Nine

Bronwyn had had a good deal of time to regret her emotional outburst. Indeed, she could not fathom what had come over her. She had managed to remain stoic in the face of William’s cruelties, even the beatings.

And yet Nightshade’s gentleness had undone her!

She could only think that he had believed nothing that she had said for weeks had past and she had seen nothing of him.

It was impossible to keep her fears at bay. She had imagined so many reasons for his absence that she was nigh sick with worrying herself. The worst fear was that she had, somehow, done or said something that had altered the curse upon him in some terrible way, but she could not dismiss that as pure imagination.

He no longer guarded the front gate of the keep. Trapped inside by the blizzard that had held Raventhorne in its grip for weeks, she had not discovered that until the servants began to whisper that Raventhorne’s guardian had vanished. Fear had gripped everyone within the castle from lowliest servant to the highest. The absence of the guardian of the keep filled them all with a deep foreboding that they were perched on the eve of disaster. Everywhere she went there were whispers of all sort of disasters that would befall Raventhorne and the people within in the event the keep lost its guardian.

Bronwyn did not know whether the tales she heard were a part of the original curse or if everyone was making them up out of fear.

There were whispers that he had attacked soldiers of the keep and then cursed them and flown away.

She did not know what to think, but she found she could not quake over some unnamed, possible disaster. To her mind nothing could be much worse than the marriage the king would force upon her when she loved Nightshade. Nothing could be worse than the fact that he had left her thinking terrible things, she was certain, and she might never get the chance to make him understand that she cared for him.

* * * *

At any other time, the troupe of men that appeared at Raventhorne’s gates would have caused some consternation, but it would not have put the entire keep into a panic. Weeks of speculation about the ‘curse’ had severely undermined morale, however, particularly since the winter had been more violent than anyone recalled and stores had already begun to run low since the heavy and frequent snowfall made it impossible for men to go out and hunt to replenish the meat supply.

The banner displayed only added to the uneasiness, for it depicted a great black bird perched upon a thorny vine.

It was not the husband the king had promised. Bronwyn was certain of that even before Sir Fitzhugh had ordered the gates closed and routed the men from the great hall to man the walls of the keep.

The king had promised her six months. Moreover, few traveled at such an ungodly time of the year unless they had very good reason to do so, and the snow only meant less likelihood that the troupe of men would have stirred to brave the elements.

The banner piqued her curiosity, however, and Bronwyn found she couldn’t resist the urge to bundle up and see for herself what the men outside the gates were about--whether they represented a threat or were only travelers seeking shelter from the weather.

Fortunately, Fitzhugh was too intent himself on discovering the intentions of the men beyond the gates to pay her any mind as she made her way up onto the battlements and peered down at the strangers.

It was a rather large troupe of men, Bronwyn discovered, feeling uneasiness begin to tingle along her nerve endings even before she spied the banner. Her heart seemed to stand still in her chest when a sudden gust of wind lifted it, unfurling it. She knew that banner. She did not know how, but she was suddenly certain she did.

Raventhorne.

The leader nudged his horse forward as Fitzhugh called out a demand to know their business.

The man lifted his head, scanning the walls above him and, despite the helmet that obscured his face, Bronwyn had the uncanny sense that his gaze had settled upon her.

“I am Marcus Raventhorne … And I have come to claim what is mine.”

Stunned silence greeted the bold announcement for several moments before Sir Fitzhugh broke it with a bark of a laugh that held no humor at all. “I hold these lands in the name of the king, for the Lady of Raventhorne,” he growled finally. “You expect to besiege this keep with no more than a handful of men?”

“Nay. I expect to take this keep and its lady,” the knight retorted, lifting his arm into the air and bringing it down again in a sharp chopping motion. “Now!”

Still completely stunned by the man’s audacity, expecting an attack from the men beyond the walls, it took many moments for the defenders to assimilate the fact that the sudden burst of action all along the walls was an attack and by that time the battle was all but lost.

Too frozen with fear and shock to flee, Bronwyn merely stared in complete incomprehension as the castle’s defenders seemed to turn upon each other all along the wall. By the time she grasped that the castle had somehow been infiltrated by the stranger’s army and whirled to flee, the portcullis was rising and the drawbridge falling to admit their attackers.

Whirling the moment her mind finally assimilated the threat, Bronwyn darted between the knots of battling men and rushed down the stairs. Even as she reached the courtyard, however, men mounted upon war horses had begun to spill through the gates. Uttering a gasp of fright, she gathered her skirts higher and ran faster, too panicked to realize she had no hope of outrunning mounted men.

A mailed arm snagged her around the waist, snatching her off her feet and crushing the air from her lungs as she was jerked against an armor plated chest. Fear not common sense inspired her to fight for her freedom, but she quickly discovered that she had neither the strength nor the leverage to offer much in the way of resistance.

“Be still, little rose,” he growled as he locked his arm tightly around her. “I mean you no harm.”

His words penetrated her fear and Bronwyn glanced up at him sharply, trying to see the face of the man who held her. Her heart skipped several beats as her gaze met his for there was something hauntingly familiar about those eyes.

“Who are you?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

Something flickered in his eyes. “Am I so different now that you do not know me?”

Bronwyn felt the color drain from her face, but she could not accept that what she believed was truth. It couldn’t be. It must be no more than her imagination, spawned by the hope that had never died, but the desire that had never been far from her thoughts. She ceased to struggle though, as much from hope as from the realization that fighting was useless.

The battle, she saw when she turned to look around them, was all but finished. He’d planned well, whoever he was, though she still could not understand how he had breached the walls of the keep without being detected.

The castle’s defenders, seeing their cause lost, began to throw down their weapons and cry for quarter.

When the man who called himself Raventhorne had ordered his men to round up the weapons and secure the enemy soldiers, he lowered her carefully to the ground and dismounted. It occurred to her to run the moment he released her. The urge was strong, but she knew even if she managed to escape she had no where to run to. She might barricade herself in her chambers, but that was not likely to hinder the conqueror and might well anger him enough to beat her for her impudence.

Instead, she stood docilely as he dismounted, shivering with both fear and the cold. He grasped her arm when he had handed the reins of his horse off to a squire and led her inside. Releasing her once they had reached the great fire at one end of the great hall, he removed his gauntlets and finally his helmet.

Bronwyn stared at him with a mixture of emotions, her mind chaotic. “You are … you are.”

“Marcus Raventhorne,” he finished for her, amusement gleaming in his eyes.

Bronwyn blinked, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I thought … you look....”

He caught her face, forcing her to look up at him. “You do not know me?”

His expression was harsh with some emotion she had difficulty interpreting and Bronwyn felt again an upsurge of hopefulness. “Do I?” she asked a little breathlessly.

His gaze flickered over her face and he swallowed thickly. “You told me you loved me,” he said in a low, husky voice as he stepped closer.

Tears sprang into Bronwyn’s eyes. “Nightshade?” she whispered, torn by the fear that she was wrong. “But … I don’t understand.”

His lips twisted wryly. “I will be vastly disappointed, lady, if you tell me this face is less to your liking than the beast I once was,” he murmured, dipping his head to cover her mouth with his own.

Bronwyn flinched, but the moment she felt the heat of his mouth, the moment his taste and scent enveloped her, all doubts fled. She swayed against him, kissing him back with all the longing and passion she had felt for him from the first moment he had touched her.

She was disappointed when he ended the kiss until he pulled her snuggly against his length, holding her tightly. “I hope this means that I was not precipitate in bringing a priest with me,” he murmured against her hair.

Bronwyn pulled away enough to look up at him. “We’re to be married?” she asked a little dazedly.

He smiled wryly. “By your leave, little rose--or without if needs be. I’ll be damned if I will let another have you.”

She smiled up at him. “You will not find me unwilling, my lord.”

It was late into the night as Bronwyn lay curled contentedly next to her new husband before the questions that had gathered in her mind finally made it to her lips.

“Tell me,” she murmured as she traced circles along his broad chest and followed the path with her lips, “everything.”

“
I would far rather make love to my wife than talk.”

Bronwyn was instantly torn, because that sounded a good deal more appealing to her, also, now that he’d brought it up, but she was still curious. “Tell me first.”

Uttering a long suffering sigh, he tucked her more tightly against his body. “How I came to be a man? Or how I managed to sack Raventhorne so easily when it is reputedly a nearly impregnable keep?”

“Both.”

He rolled, pushing her onto her back. “I am Marcus Raventhorne--the Raventhorne who built this keep, the man cursed to guard it for eternity--unless I found a woman who could love me as I was. You broke the curse. What I had never considered since the possibility seemed remote, to say the least, that any woman would love me as I was, was that it would still be nigh impossible for me to win the lady I loved.

“Gaelzeroth had miscalculated, however. I not only knew where he kept his wealth hidden. I knew about the secret passages beneath the castle, because I had them built. And thus, without any intention of helping me whatsoever, he gave me the means to hire mercenaries to take back what he had stolen from me.”