The Faithful Heart (40 page)

“Lady Madeline came to me for help,” he
seethed, squeezing her wrists until she yelped in pain. “I would do
anything for her, even marry a scheming whore. Charlotte would have
wanted it that way.”

“You bastard!” she panted, yanking to get
away from him. He let her go and she stumbled back. “How dare you!
You’ll pay for this!”

“No doubt I will,” he nodded.

She charged at him again. He stepped aside
and she tripped into a table. She wheeled around and shook her fist
at him. “Don’t think you can get away with this! That money is
mine! All of this is mine!”

“What money?” He met her eyes with impassive
strength. “As far as I can see you have little more than the
clothes on your back.” He scanned her naked body and smirked.

Cold terror twined with the hatred that
boiled through her. She glanced around. Her clothes from the day
before lay over the trunk at the end of the bed. She lunged for her
dress. “You will not get away with this!”

“I could arrange for a small house for you on
the outskirts of the property,” Simon dismissed her as if ordering
a maid to clean the privy. “Although I doubt Lord John and Lady
Madeline will want you living anywhere near them.”

“You bastard,” she spit, tugging her dress
on. She was too angry to see straight, let alone fasten the ties.
“I’ll have your blood, Simon McFarland! And Jack’s and that little
bitch’s too!”

“You’d best hurry.” Simon turned away from
her, opening the door to the hall. “The lord and lady of the manor
will be home soon and this room needs to be thoroughly washed.”

She screamed and grabbed the first thing that
came to hand, a pitcher, and threw it at him. It shattered on the
doorframe. He didn’t even flinch as he walked away. For a moment
she stood where she was, chest heaving, crying in frustration. She
couldn’t let them get away with this. They would pay.

Fury pushed her on. She finished dressing,
stomping into her boots then charging out into the hall and down
the stairs. A pair of servants were polishing the furniture in the
main hall. They glanced up at her with curiosity, whispering. On
instinct she looked for her guards, but no one was there. They’d
all gone.

The village of Kedleridge was humming with
activity as she rushed out into the morning. Sounds of construction
and conversation filled the air along with the smell of sawdust and
earth.

“Roderick!” she cried out, searching up and
down the wide street. “Roderick!” She had no idea where her nephew
had gone when they had left for Derby the day before. He hadn’t
gone with them. She wasn’t sure whether he was planning to stay in
his father’s house or not. “Roderick!” If he had chosen to stay in
Kedleridge there was only one place he would have gone.

She picked up her skirts and ran into the
orchard. The sunlight filtered down through leafy boughs full of
budding fruit. She batted away the low-hanging branches that got in
her way, wanting to rip and tear the whole thing down. When a bee
zipped past her as she neared the apiary she jumped back with a
gasp and changed direction. The last thing she needed was their
venom added to her own.

“Roderick!” She found him in the tiny
graveyard beside the apiary, lying on the grass, arms outstretched,
cheek pressed to the ground above his mother’s grave. Lydia
clenched her fists. Even Roderick would choose her dead sister over
her. “Roderick, we’ve been tricked!” she shouted, trembling.

“What?” he pulled himself out of a stupor and
rolled to sit up.

It wasn’t good enough. She grabbed his arm
and pulled him to stand. “Your bastard father and that bitch
Madeline faked the letter from Prince John. Jack is still the lord.
They stole my money!”

Roderick’s eyes flew wide with shock then
narrowed in hatred. “He’s not the lord after all? After everything
I’ve done for him he’s still not the lord?”

The madness in his eyes told her just how to
steer him. “No! Your wretched, ungrateful father is still trying to
cheat you of what you deserve!”

“I’ll kill him!” He shot past her, face
flushing dark red.

“No!” She grabbed him and wrestled him to a
stop before he could charge into the apiary and on to the orchard
and the house. Her heart beat to her throat. “You can’t kill him
yet!” She cursed herself for the part of her that still wanted to
see Simon spared.

“Let me go!” Roderick struggled. She wasn’t
going to be able to hold him for long. “I’ll rip his filthy, cold
eyes out!”

“We’ll kill all of them!” She scrambled to
form and plan and stop Roderick’s mad fury in one. “We’ll get our
money back too.”

“Where is it? Where did they put it?” He
calmed.

“Windale,” she remembered. Sir Crispin had
ordered it to be taken to his home, just over the hill. Where it
could be properly guarded. “Shit. He has half an army guarding
it.”

“So? We have an army.”

She shook her head. “They’ve been paid and
gone.”

“They can’t have gone far.” The light of
reason amidst Roderick’s madness made her hair stand up. “They have
families in the forest. They were talking about setting out to find
work or continuing on in the woods as outlaws.”

“Yes.” Her hope renewed. It was dampened just
as quickly. “There aren’t enough of them to overcome the earl’s
men.”

“Then we need to find more.” Roderick started
towards the apiary again.

“Don’t go that way.” She steered him to leave
in the opposite direction. He changed course without question. “We
need more men and we need them fast.”

“We’ll find them,” Roderick ground his teeth
into a vicious smile.

Lydia didn’t know where. No one had an army
for hire sitting in their backyard.

She blinked and paused in her steps.

“What?” Roderick asked.

“I have an idea,” she hissed. Mercenaries.
That wretched Madeline has said herself there were some right
around the corner. She grabbed Roderick’s arm, head spinning as the
plot formed in her mind. “You go to the forest and tell the men I
need them again. Tell them there’s more gold in it for them. Tell
them to join me along the Derby Road where it meets the river
Derwent.”

“Why? What’s there?”

She met his eyes, the sure spark of the
coming storm in her eyes. “It’s halfway between here and
Matlock.”

Jack didn’t want to wake up. Life had taken a
turn for the decidedly perfect. He was warm and at peace and naked
in bed with Madeline curled against him. The softness of her breath
tickled the hair on his arm as she slept, head resting near his
shoulder. He didn’t even mind that his arm had fallen asleep and
his hand had gone numb. The fingers of his other hand tangled with
the beads of his rosary, nestled against her breasts. He could feel
her heartbeat. It was the most beautiful moment of his life and he
didn’t want it to end.

Madeline drew in a breath and stirred. She
stretched, rolling to her back so that she could open her sleepy
eyes and look into his. “Good morning.” She smiled, cheeks pink in
the morning light.

“Best ever.” He shifted so that they could
lay face to face. He brushed his fingers through her hair, unable
to think of anything else to say. There was nothing else to say.
There was nothing else in the entire world.

She returned his lazy smile, sliding her hand
up his side and across his back. Her lips, already rosy and swollen
from their long night, sought his. He closed his eyes and met them,
kissed her with a slow contentedness that reached to the depths of
his heart. He wasn’t in a rush. They had all the time they needed
to make love and to love each other.

A hesitant knock at the door broke the
illusion that they were the only two people in the world. He
ignored it with a growing frown until Aubrey’s voice called, “Jack?
Madeline? I think you’d better get up.”

“I’m already up!” he called back. “An’ you
don’t need to get involved!”

Madeline burst into giggles and buried her
face against his shoulder in a move that made his words truer than
ever. He couldn’t resist tickling her to prolong the giggles,
rolling her to her back and nibbling on her neck.

“I really hate to bother you,” Aubrey knocked
again, “but Crispin thinks you should hear this.”

“Crispin thinks so, does he?” he murmured
against Madeline’s throat, kissing his way along the rosary beads
to her breasts. “I don’t really want to think about Crispin at the
moment. I’m not interested!” he called over his shoulder, nudging
Madeline’s legs apart as she giggled herself blue.

“It’s just that Toby showed up at the castle
this morning,” Aubrey went on. “He was alone. Ethan’s gone
missing.”

Jack stopped what he was doing with a frown
and sat up. “Ethan’s missing?” he puzzled. Madeline shrugged and
propped herself up on her elbows. “What do I care if the wanker has
gone missing?” he hollered towards the door. “I got better things
to worry about, mate!” He winked at Madeline, who was busy staring
at his cock as though she was in the mood for sausage for
breakfast. He crawled over her again and teased her by sliding
himself against her hips.

“He found out about the money,” Aubrey
refused to leave them alone. “Toby thinks he’s going to try to go
after it.”

Jack sighed and slumped over Madeline. “She’s
not gonna give up, is she.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

He grumbled and rolled to the side, getting
up and looking for clean clothes. “Alright,” he glared at the door.
“We’ll be right there.”

The bathtub was still in the room so he
scooped out a few handfuls of water to wash with. Madeline got up
and followed suit. She helped him get dressed and then he popped
into her room across the hall to fetch a fresh dress and kirtle for
her. They were cleaned up and downstairs in the Great Hall within a
few minutes.

The Great Hall had been cleared of furniture
but for a small table near to the fireplace. The castle servants
were busy laying down fresh rushes. Their scent was almost enough
to improve Jack’s mood after his precious new life with Madeline
had been interrupted. Business was bound to take over at some
point. He might as well get used to it.

Toby was seated at the table, cradling a mug
of something steaming. Aubrey sprawled in a chair at the head of
the table, her belly huge, tired lines on her face. Crispin paced
in front of the fireplace with his usual charming frown while Tom
stood at the far end, arms crossed, studying the floor. What
surprised Jack was that Joanna was there as well, wringing her
hands and looking as anxious and pale as her brother.

“Oy, what’s this party all about, mate?” He
approached the table holding Madeline’s hand.

“Ethan’s gone missing,” Crispin told him.

“So I heard.” Jack arched an eyebrow at
Aubrey.

She wasn’t in the mood. In fact, she looked
as uncomfortable as a hen in a doghouse.

“He found out just how much money Lydia has
stolen from him,” Toby filled him and Madeline in with a shuddering
sigh. “He was angry that she’d kept the truth from him but even
angrier that Lydia was going to hand it all over to you.”

“So?” Jack shrugged. “Crispin’s got the money
now. It’s all up at Windale with a load of men guarding it. What’s
he gonna do about that?”

Toby glanced to Joanna.

Joanna blanched and swallowed as her eyes
traveled between Jack and Madeline. “He’s been living here at the
castle for the past month. He broke his foot and I’ve been nursing
him.”

Jack didn’t see how any of it mattered to him
but his gut clenched in dread all the same. “Sounds like Aubrey
should give you a right good tongue-lashin’ for that one,
mate.”

“I already have,” Aubrey piped in from her
chair. “Believe me.”

“So why’s everyone lookin’ like someone
died?”

Joanna glanced down. Toby whimpered and took
a sip from his drink to hide it. Crispin and Aubrey exchanged wary
glances. Tom stared harder at the floor than ever.

“While I was taking care of him he was
carrying on a correspondence,” Joanna paused and swallowed, “with
Lord Stephen of Matlock.” She raised her eyes to meet
Madeline’s.

“What does he want with my father?” Madeline
feigned nonchalance.

“He still thinks he can get Windale back
somehow,” Toby sighed.

“And he thinks that Matlock can help him,”
Joanna added.

“And now he’s disappeared?” Jack narrowed his
eyes.

“And you think he’s gone to my father?”
Madeline asked.

Jack would have been tickled that she
finished his thought if everyone else hadn’t been so grim.

“He was talking about it last night before we
went to sleep,” Toby confirmed. “He believes that if he can secure
Matlock’s help then he can get the money back. Once he gets the
money he thinks he can give it directly to the crown for the king’s
ransom and as a reward Richard will restore Windale to him.”

“What a load of shit.” Jack dropped his
shoulders and shook his head.

None of them took the matter so lightly.
Joanna drew a bundle of letters from the pocket of her apron and
handed them across the table to Jack. “These are the letters
Matlock sent to Ethan. They explicitly state that Matlock will do
anything in his power to help Ethan so long as Ethan supports his
bid to become the next sheriff of Derbyshire.”

Jack handed the letters over to Madeline.
“I’m still not sure why we should be fussed about this.”

“Matlock has hired mercenaries,” Crispin told
him.

“I know.” Sick dread twisted in Jack’s gut.
“Madeline told me she saw them.”

Crispin nodded. “It’s not a great force but
it’s enough to be a threat.”

“So what do we do about it?” The steel of
determination pumped through Jack.

“We need to move the money to Derby Castle as
soon as possible,” Crispin took charge. It was the two of them
working together again. The others faded to the periphery. “The
problem is that two of the four carts were damaged when they were
moved to Windale yesterday. Lydia’s men loaded them too heavily and
with the wear the carts had already experienced they broke
down.”