Taken and Seduced (25 page)

“’Tis I, Keswick, who wrote to you,” Adam said, standing at Florrie’s shoulder.

“You grew into a coward, hurting a woman.”

Florrie opened her mouth, but Adam shook his head. “I never deliberately hurt her. But I knew that with an untrustworthy opponent, one needs leverage. I had meant to come here to challenge you over what you did to my parents, but I had already decided that you weren’t worth it. And now I see that it would have been pointless. Time and your guilt have damaged you.”

Martindale rose to his feet, hands braced on the chair. Then he quickly stood unassisted, as if he didn’t want them to see he needed support. “What was done to your parents? I did not understand your missive.”

“You know all about the murders,” Adam said, pulling the pendant from his neck and holding it up to the torchlight. “I found this near my parents’ bodies the night you slew them.”

Those old eyes fixed on the emblem of the Martindale crest, and he couldn’t seem to look away. “Where did you get that?”

“Where you dropped it in blood.”

“You are lying.”

“You thought by killing them you would protect your ugly secret, but ’tis a secret no longer.”

Martindale’s eyes widened in sudden horror. “You cannot speak the words—”

“You are not the legitimate heir of the marquessate. You are a bastard, and somehow my parents discovered it and confronted you. And you killed them.”

Rage burned in Martindale’s eyes. “You lie!”

A sudden pounding of feet echoed through the hall, and Adam turned to see Claudius Drake, Martindale’s heir, running down the grand staircase from the next floor. He brandished a dagger, and he was closer to Martindale than the guards were.

“Bastard!” Drake shouted at Martindale, the dagger upraised.

Adam found himself catching Drake’s arm and bending it backward until he dropped the dagger. How could he be defending the one man he’d spent years hating?

A
dam kept himself between Drake and the old man, fighting to hold him still.

“How can you not be the heir?” Drake shouted at Martindale, spittle forming in the corners of his mouth. “I spent my life doing your bidding! I thought I was protecting my inheritance by protecting you! When I read the missive about Florence’s kidnapping,
I
sent men to intercept them in Huntingdonshire, and more men to intercept them in London.”

Martindale staggered back against the chair and sank into it. Adam exchanged a glance with Florrie, who looked shocked that her sister’s husband—her own cousin—could deliberately put her in danger.

“And instead my father and, now,
I
were the real heirs all along?” Drake demanded.

Martindale shook his head, eyes wide and darting back and forth, as if he saw more than the people in front of him.

“My father was the poor cousin to nobility,”
Drake continued, “having to fight as a mercenary to survive, when his life—and mine!—should have been full of wealth and power and ease.”

As the words poured out of Drake, the violence seemed to as well, for he’d stopped fighting Adam, who was able to release him. Martindale’s mouth opened and shut, as if he should speak, but didn’t know what to say.

“Can you control yourself?” Adam asked Drake coolly.

For the first time, Drake seemed to really study him. “I have seen you before. You were the wounded man in Christina’s care.” And then he looked at Florrie. “Were you there, too?”

“Aye, we were both there,” Adam said angrily. “Recovering from what your men did to us.”

Drake put his hands on his hips. “You’d kidnapped her. What was I supposed to think?”

“You should have
thought
to tell your men not to harm your cousin. I was wounded saving Florrie from certain death.”

Drake paled. “I did not instruct them in that.”

“Perhaps not, but you did not hire trustworthy men.”

“I did not have the money,” he said, his hate-filled glare turning back on Martindale.

“Make no more mistakes like that, Drake. Because your luck is about to change. You’ll have your inheritance soon enough, but not if you’re in the Tower for murder.”

Suddenly, three armed men appeared from
the servant’s corridor, and Hewet boldly stepped before them.

“And who are you?” he demanded.

The first man met Adam’s gaze over the butler’s head and Adam recognized him as a Bladesman.

“We are with Sir Adam,” the man said. “We are here to observe.”

They went to stand beside Martindale’s two guards, leaving Adam to realize that those two men were also Bladesmen. And they’d allowed Adam to speak with Martindale. The League not only wanted to observe, they wanted to judge the truth for themselves.

Yet they hadn’t interfered with Adam’s intentions. Did they trust him after all?

Through all of this, Martindale never moved from his chair, continuing to mutter to himself. Was he trying to come up with denials or motivations for the things he’d done? Florrie only watched her father. Adam wondered if she was seeing her past—and her future—in a totally new light.

Someone pounded on the front double doors, and the Bladesmen opened them, but stood before them threateningly—and then stepped aside. To Adam’s relief, Robert and Michael had found each other, and now rejoined them.

“Did I miss everything?” Robert asked, looking beyond Adam to Martindale. “He doesn’t look as if he were ever a great warrior.”

“We all age,” Adam said softly. “He has not confessed, but he has been accused, and not just by us.” He explained what had already happened, including Drake’s actions.

Drake stood apart from Florrie, but he kept glancing at her as if he wished to speak, but didn’t know what to say. An apology would be a good place for him to start, but Adam didn’t know if she would accept it.

“But Martindale didn’t confess?” Robert continued.

“We no longer need a confession,” said another voice loudly.

Timothy Sheldon and several other men came down the carved staircase from the upper floor. Adam stared at his foster father, not exactly surprised by the intrusion of even more Bladesmen. When the League took an interest, they saw it through until it was finished.

Florrie felt very distant and unreal. She was standing in a home she’d never been allowed to see, watching the disintegration of her father beneath the collapse of a mountain of his terrible lies. So many people had been hurt while he’d helped himself—and his family, she admitted to herself.

And now here was Sir Timothy, already within the mansion, though she hadn’t seen him. She turned to Adam, who watched his foster father. There was no triumph in Adam’s expression,
only solemnity and sadness, for he understood how many people had been hurt—and would be hurt.

“Why is no confession needed?” Adam asked, when Sir Timothy reached them.

“No confession because I did nothing!” her father said shrilly.

The sound of his voice, so out of control, made her shudder with horror and pity. Sir Timothy held up a torn piece of parchment that Florrie recognized too well.

“’Twas hidden in a coffer in his bedchamber.”

As I told Adam
, Florrie thought, surprised that she didn’t feel more guilty that he’d passed the location on to his foster father.

“Nay,” her father cried. “You cannot touch that!
He
will not like it.”

Florrie remembered the way he’d raved when he was ill, talking about the priest as if he were still alive. Was that who he meant?

Claudius looked between her father and Sir Timothy. “What is that?”

“Proof that the late marchioness was already two months dead when Martindale was born.”

“And he kept it?” Claudius asked in disbelief.

Watching her father, Florrie couldn’t be surprised. He was staring at the parchment in fascinated horror, muttering, gesturing, eyes wild. She may have suffered beneath his treatment for many years, and knew that he’d killed people for
his own selfish ends, but seeing him reduced to this sickened her.

“We may never know why he kept it,” Sir Timothy was saying, “but it will allow me to go to King Henry for permission to grant you the title of marquess of Martindale immediately.”

There was no greater punishment for her father, she knew. He might have preferred a quick death to watching everything he’d assumed about his life be destroyed. But Adam’s parents were still dead, and nothing could bring them back.

“’Tis cursed,” her father suddenly said, watching Sir Timothy, who was perusing the document. “He never let me destroy it.”

“Who?” Sir Timothy asked.

“The priest, the one who wrote it.”

Sir Timothy cocked his head. “It was written months before your birth. The priest must be long dead.”

Her father shook his head, and Florrie found herself holding back tears.

“Nay, since the night I found out the truth, he has never left me,” he said, looking to a corner of the great hall as if someone stood there. “Because of what I did…the priest tells me that he can never rest in peace. He was full of guilt on his deathbed when he told Keswick the terrible secret, giving him that document and asking him to set things to right.”

Florrie held her breath, saw Adam watching intently, knew this was the confession, the truth, he longed for.

“And Keswick confronted you,” Sir Timothy said, speaking in a carefully calm voice.

“Before he showed me the proof, I never knew…anything,” her father said, his expression full of an old disbelief. “How could I believe such a terrible thing about my own father? Yet…I knew he’d wanted sons, and that his wife—the woman I thought for so many years was my mother—had given birth to many stillborns before dying when I was born. But…Keswick told me that wasn’t true. The priest had explained everything, had lived with my father’s blackmail his whole life. The marchioness died with another babe, not me, and my father substituted his own child by a concubine. He
was
my father!” he suddenly shouted, as if desperate that they should believe him. But again, he wasn’t looking at them, but at the empty corner. Then his wild eyes pleaded with them all. “How could I let such a secret come out? I had daughters who would suffer!”

Florrie flinched, hugging herself, feeling too weary to cry.

“So you killed them both,” Adam said coldly, “one a defenseless woman, a young mother.”

“But she knew! She was guilty.”

Adam stiffened, but didn’t move.

“I suffered, too,” her father cried. “He cursed me, to make certain I never had sons, so the title
would go to Claudius after all. These long years I have listened to his voice condemning me.”

“The priest would have stopped haunting you,” Sir Timothy said, “if only you’d told the truth. Instead you forced three young boys to grow up orphaned, in hiding because all feared they might suffer the fate of their parents.”

“I—I—” He slumped back in his chair, looking dazed, mouth hanging slack.

Sickened, Florrie turned away and found Adam there. He took her in his embrace, and she pressed her face against his chest, glad for the reassuring sound of his heartbeat. It was over. Her father was no longer the marquess—Claudius was. And Matilda would be his marchioness, as she’d always wanted.

But Adam was Florrie’s strength. When she saw him stop Claudius from killing her father, a man Adam himself had wanted dead, she knew then that he’d really changed. For her. No one had ever rewarded her trust as he had.

“You do not need to be here anymore, Florrie,” he whispered.

She nodded her acceptance, let him lead her toward Hewet, the butler, who was looking a bit confused.

“You need to prepare a bedchamber for Lady Florence,” Adam said.

“I am no longer Lady Florence,” she said apologetically to Hewet.

“But she is my cousin,” Claudius called, “my
sister by marriage. Martindale House gladly welcomes her.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and knew that he had spent his life suffering for her father’s sins, another innocent warped.

“I ask your forgiveness,” he said.

She nodded and turned away. Adam started to accompany her, but she stopped him. “Nay, you need to finish here. Speak to your foster father and the other Bladesmen. Let me know what is decided about my father’s fate. But come to me this evening?”

She saw the way his expression eased, and he gave her a faint smile.

Bringing her hand up, he kissed it. “Wait for me, my lady.”

“Always,” she whispered.

Florrie was surprised by how hungry she was. She ate everything on the tray that was brought to her, then she fell into a deep sleep untroubled by dreams. When she awoke, Adam was sitting in a chair beside the bare hearth, watching her. Several candles had been lit, and the shutters closed against the encroaching night.

She sat up slowly, smiling at him.

He smiled back.

“Is it over, then?” she asked softly.

He nodded. “Your father has been taken to the Tower of London, where he awaits the king’s final word. But, my sweet, I fear the end will not be
long. Your father said the priest will not permit him to eat.”

She bowed her head. “He brought this on himself, regardless of the crime his father committed. He must accept the consequences.” With a deep breath, she met Adam’s gaze again, and gave him a small smile. “What of you, Adam? You are free of the need for justice at last.”

He sighed. “I cannot say it made me feel good. But ’tis done, and at last my brothers and I are free to live the lives we’d been denied.” He rose and came to the bed to sit and take her in his arms. “Florrie, I have become the man I am today because of you. Anger was ruining my life, and I didn’t even realize it. I thought I was being so calm and logical. And the anger wasn’t just toward your father. ’Twas also directed at the League of the Blade, for forcing me into a life that every other Bladesman was given the chance to choose. I know they were protecting me, and I owe them my life, but they made me
give
them my life. Do you understand?”

She nodded, caressing his cheek, smoothing the frown from his brow.

“But they do good works, Florrie, and so many people benefit. I…like helping people. Even though you may think my childhood difficult, ’twas peaceful and productive, and I felt honored by the work. Aye, I wasn’t given a choice, and that was wrong, but how many children are offered such a thing? You were not, and yet you flour
ished to become the woman I so admire. So if you do not mind, I will stay a Bladesman, and serve my yearly mission for them.”

“I am glad you’ve come to peace with the role they’ve played in your life,” she said, “but why should I mind what your choice is?”

“Because if you consent to marry me, as my wife, your opinion would count equally with mine. My life can only be complete if you allow me to share it with you.”

She covered her trembling mouth, feeling happy tears swim in her eyes.

“I love you, Florrie,” he said gently, “but I would live alone if you thought to marry me only to bring peace between our families.”

“Nay,” she whispered, her face lifted to his, “’tis my turn to be selfish. I love you, Adam. I have spent my life making things easier on everyone else, and was too ready to accept what they thought of me. But not this time. I am not going to the convent, or becoming a nursemaid to any of my sisters’ children. I want to be your wife, whether in a cozy little manor or an inn, as you do your work for the League.”

He laughed aloud then, kissing her soundly before saying, “Would you mind being a countess and living in a castle, where I swear the spirits of my parents would be so glad to see love and laughter?”

“A countess,” she breathed, shocked and almost too stunned to understand him. “Keswick…?”

“The earldom. My family surname is Hilliard. Forgive me for not telling you, but I’ve spent my life hiding from people, and now at last I’ve found someone to share everything with.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she dashed them away happily. “After all my belief that legends couldn’t come true, a Bladesman really did come to rescue me and change my life.”