He stood in the doorway, watching as she disappeared up the stairs. “Will it come true tonight?”
“If you do not stink too badly, it should.”
Her voice echoed from the upper floor and he grinned, disappearing into their chamber but leaving the door open should she call for him. He was, indeed, an eager bridegroom, looking forward to sampling his wife and knowing it would be the last time for many months. He prayed it would not be the last time ever, for there was something in his heart now that had never been there before. The reluctant groom, the man who did not want to tie himself down to one woman, was now coming to understand what his father had been trying to tell him about marriage.
A wife may be the greatest experience yet.
Later that night, after making love to Elizaveta twice before she felt into a deep sleep, Drake was starting to think his father had been right.
CHAPTER TWELVE
~ A Destiny of Betrayal ~
Westleton Manor, Suffolk
Seat of the House of de Mandeville
Three days after the siege of Spexhall – Early October
Edmund de Mandeville had never been entirely sane.
Since he had been a small child, the only son of the bereft House of de Mandeville, something in his mind had never been entirely right. As a lad, he had killed small animals, beat his playmates, ate earthworms when it suited him, and pissed wherever he pleased. Since he was the only son, his weak-willed mother and apathetic father let him do whatever he wished and the result was a grown man, now of forty-four years, who knew no boundaries and had no sense of reality.
Edmund de Mandeville was a man steeped in madness.
But he did not see it that way. He saw it as being more brilliant than anyone else in England and he certainly saw himself as a man who should be the Earl of East Anglia. He’d always fancied himself the earl even if Christian du Reims held the title, but after the events at Spexhall with the death of Julia and her husband, Edmund’s madness only grew.
His daughter had been murdered by the man who married the East Anglia heiress so, as Edmund saw things, it was now his right to exact revenge against East Anglia personally. For decades, the grievance against the House of du Reims had been a family grievance and not a personal one but the moment Julia was returned to him, murdered by the husband of the du Reims heiress, Edmund’s grudge against them became personal.
They would pay.
Even now, in the hall of Westleton Manor, a chamber of horrors filled with rubbish, old food, carcasses of dogs that had died and were just never taken away, and dog and human feces piled up in the corners, Edmund sat with most of his senior soldiers around him, plotting the downfall of Christian du Reims. It was time, he had decided, since his daughter had died at the hands of a du Reims. Now, the ages-old grudge against the House of du Reims became his battle.
Now, Edmund would finish it.
“I know Thunderbey Castle,” Edmund was saying to the group supping on nearly-rotten mutton and thick, cheap ale. Some were still sporting bandages from the skirmish at Spexhall days earlier. “When I was a child, my mother asked if I could visit Thunderbey, and I did for a time. Christian du Reims’ father, Godfrey, allowed that I should stay for a time. He was trying to help relations between our families but that did not end as he had hoped. He sent me home when I killed his favorite dog because it bit me. But I was there long enough to know the castle. It is a castle that has a town built up right to it and the gates are almost always open to trade. There is much trade at Thunderbey. I remember this.”
The collection of bearded, smelly human beings stood around Edmund and listened to him speak. Toothless mouths sucked on the ripe mutton and downed the bitter ale. These were the men who raided the countryside and stole from anyone with anything of value, raiding into small villages and taking what they could. Sometimes they even took women. These were the men that all of the villages within a ten-mile radius of Westleton Manor feared; men without honor or the capacity for reason.
Men, most of them, who had learned everything they knew from the seeds of Edmund’s twisted mind. Therefore, they thought the same way he did, especially his sons, Glenn and Bruis. They were facing their father across the table, eager to hear the plan that would finally reclaim Thunderbey Castle and their legacy because the defeat at Spexhall and the death of their sister had been both a humiliating and infuriating experience.
They were ready for action, but not necessarily against de Winter again. They had already been beaten by the man. Therefore, it was time to turn their hatred back where it belonged, back to the entire root of the issue.
Back to the House of du Reims.
“Then we can ride straight into Thunderbey’s inner bailey,” Glenn said. He was a thin man with gnarled red beard. “If the gates are open, we can ride in and take Thunderbey out from beneath du Reims. Who is to stop us?”
Edmund held up a quieting hand to his eldest son. “East Anglia has at least six hundred men at Thunderbey, mayhap more,” he said. “Thunderbey has two sets of walls and two sets of gates. The troop house is in the outer bailey. If we were to get into the inner bailey and shut those gates, they would not be able to enter. We could take the keep from there.”
The men grumbled their comments to each other, some agreeing and some not. “Then if taking Thunderbey is so simple, why have we not done it before?” A younger man with a shaved head, who was not part of the family, wanted to know. “You have always spoken of your legacy in the hands of Christian du Reims but you have never moved against him. Why now?”
Edmund turned his sallow, venomous gaze on the young man. “Because I was concerned about my children and how du Reims might retaliate against them,” he said, thinking everyone thought the way he did, which meant in the realm of vengeance both parents and children were fair game. “But now du Reims has killed my daughter and the man must pay. I will take my legacy once and for all and make Christian du Reims suffer as my own daughter suffered. I will take his life as he took hers!”
It was a twisted view of the situation that some of the more rationally thinking men understood. “Christian du Reims did not kill Julia,” Bruis de Mandeville, tall and shaggy-haired, pointed out to his father. “She was killed by a de Winter.”
Edmund slammed his cup down to the table. “They are all the same!” he roared at Bruis. “De Winter is a usurper. He has no right to Thunderbey. I shall kill Christian du Reims and take Thunderbey, and de Winter cannot have it!”
His men looked at each other, perhaps a bit nervously. “The de Winter army will come to Thunderbey,” the young man with the shaved head spoke again. “If we take the castle, de Winter will send all he has to regain it.”
Bruis, standing next to the young man who also happened to be his friend, slugged him in the arm to quiet him. He mostly did it because Edmund had been known to throw a dagger at those who questioned him so Bruis wanted to shut his friend up. But Edmund merely grunted in response, tossing out the chaff and sediment in his cup onto the floor and reaching for the pitcher to pour himself fresh ale.
“De Winter cannot have it back,” he said flatly. “We will bottle up the inner ward and the keep and they will not be able to take it back. I will hold that castle and regain my legacy and kill anyone who tries to take it from me. The House of de Mandeville has waited long enough to regain what the House of du Reims stole from us. We will wait no longer. Let Julia’s death not be in vain. It is time to take back what is ours!”
He began to bang on the table, roaring approval for his own scheme, and the men around him reluctantly took up the cry. After the battle at Spexhall, the de Mandeville army only numbered around four hundred because they’d lost almost two hundred men when Edward’s troops had arrived in the nick of time. But no one was willing to point that out, fearful of Edmund’s insanity, so as the night wore on, Edmund’s madness was allowed to run unhinged as he planned the fall of Thunderbey and declared how unafraid he was of the de Winters and the strength that
they would bring. He vowed to take Thunderbey away from Christian and throw the man’s body over the walls.
Trouble was, he was right.
Two weeks later, in the early morning hours, the de Mandeville army approached Thunderbey Castle in groups, pretending to be farmers or travelers. Some had the wagons between them while still others carried baskets or quivers filled with weapons. Edmund might have been insane but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he could not attack Thunderbey head-on. He knew that whatever they did had to be covert, so his men became farmers or errant travelers, and approached Thunderbey’s gatehouse as men preparing to trade or simply seek shelter. They mingled with the farmers and tradesmen already moving in and out of the castle, coming in waves, until most of them were in the outer ward. Being that Thunderbey was a big castle, no one seemed to notice the overabundance of strangers.
It would be their undoing.
Once most of his men were inside the outer bailey, Edmund pretended to collapse in front of the gate leading to the inner ward and when a pair of du Reims soldiers opened the man gate in the massive inner gate to see what had happened, they were rushed by Bruis and Glenn and several other men, who quickly slit their throats. Huge waves of de Mandeville men rushed in through the man gate, quickly silencing those du Reims soldiers who tried to raise the alarm. In fact, the entire inner ward was taken as soldiers on the outer walls patrolled their posts, more focused on the land beyond the outer wall and not paying attention to what was going on inside the inner wall.
It had been, in truth, a brilliantly executed operation by Edmund, and one that moved surprisingly quickly. The first sign of trouble to the soldiers on the outer wall was when the body of Christian du Reims suddenly landed in a heap in the outer bailey. Shocked, the eyes of the du Reims soldiers, and the four hundred men that were in or around the troop houses in the outer bailey, turned to the inner wall of Thunderbey only to see it manned by men they did not know, men throwing projectiles at them, and a crazy bearded man screaming of a de Mandeville victory.
Then, and only then, did they realize something terrible had happened, but by that time, the de Mandeville soldiers were bottled up in Thunderbey’s inner ward and bailey, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.
The du Reims army spent a month trying to regain access to the inner ward before taking the embarrassing step of sending word to their allies but by then, Edmund de Mandeville was dug in to the keep at Thunderbey and had no intention of leaving it.
Ever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thetford Castle
Three days after the siege at Spexhall – Early October
Oblivious to the charge against Thunderbey that Edmund de Mandeville was masterminding, Drake was focused on the return to Thetford before his ride north to rendezvous with Edward. He never knew he could be sad to see the great rise of Thetford Castle as it dominated the countryside in the distance, but the truth was that he was disappointed to see it. It meant that his time with Elizaveta was coming to a close and he was loath to realize that. The time was coming for his departure to rendezvous with Edward and as much as he didn’t want to face it, he knew he had to come to terms with his orders. Time was growing short and he knew he could not delay. Therefore, he would have to face the farewell he was dreading.
It was odd, truly. He’d left for battle many times, and happily so, but he’d never left someone who meant a great deal to him behind like this. Certainly, he’d left his mother and father, but leaving Elizaveta was different. It was something he simply didn’t want to face. He didn’t want to leave her just as he was coming to know her. And adore her.
… aye, adore her.
It was a terrifying and thrilling thought. Did he truly adore her? Or was it something more, something greater and deeper that he didn’t want to voice, not this soon? Anything was possible, in his mind. Elizaveta and Daniella were riding in his mother’s carriage a few feet behind him and he kept turning to glance at his wife, who would smile bravely at him. Her smile made his heart jump. She had been smiling confidently at him since they’d departed Spexhall the day before, a day where she had been far more courageous than he had been. It had been a day to remember, a day of sorrow but a day of preparation. They were all preparing for what the future would bring, like it or not.
The morning after the battle against the de Mandeville army, the missive that Elizaveta had written to her mother had been sent off by messenger. Once the rider was off, Elizaveta turned into the efficient chatelaine, packing up the keep she had so recently moved into. With Daniella’s help, she managed to re-pack trunks and bags and have everything loaded back up into the carriages.
Elizaveta didn’t want to leave anything behind, not knowing how long it would be before they returned, so essentially everything was packed up and the keep cleaned out. There was almost a frenzy to her movements, as if keeping busy kept her mind off what was to come, and it was something that didn’t go unnoticed by Drake. Even so, it wasn’t something he felt that he could speak with her about. He didn’t even know where to start. So he simply let her have her way with it. He went about his business and permitted her to go about hers.
There was certainly a desperation to her movements although Elizaveta couldn’t tell Drake the reasons behind it and she was glad he didn’t ask. She couldn’t tell him of the fear and guilt that drove her frenzied pace, that the orders of a vengeful, old women were behind everything. She knew he was keeping his eye on her as she went about her duties and she found it both comforting and distressing. What if he could see into her heart and know what she had done? But he couldn’t, and she knew that, but it didn’t help the guilt. All she could do was try to force it out of her mind and get on with her business.
The army was ready to depart before the packing in the keep was finished, which meant that it was time for Cortez and James to return to Sherborne Castle. Cortez and James bid farewell to Drake and to the others, and told Elizaveta that if Drake ever misbehaved, all she need do is tell them and they would rush to her defense. Elizaveta was flattered and touched by their words even though she knew they were only jesting. It seemed that the men had a very easy rapport, all of them, and jesting and insults were part of that. She was thrilled to feel included in that banter; included in something she had never been a part of – camaraderie. It was true that she’d seen it among knights before but she had never experienced it for herself.
These are the men I am going to betray.
More and more, she could not get the burden of treachery out of her mind as much as she tried. Before she had passed her missive off that morning to the rider headed for Romford in search of her mother and grandmother, Elizaveta reconsidered sending it at all. She’d never been keen on spying on her English husband but now that she was coming to know the men she would actually be betraying, her sense of rebellion against her grandmother burned stronger and stronger.
As the messenger had waited impatiently, Elizaveta had struggled with her sense of duty. What if she didn’t send the missive? What if she never sent a missive to her grandmother? Would the woman truly send out assassins? The same answer came to her every time – she couldn’t fully trust that grandedame would not. An assassin after her father would only catapult Drake into the position of Earl of East Anglia sooner than expected, but an assassin after her or after Drake personally… nay, Elizaveta couldn’t be sure her grandmother wouldn’t do such a thing, so in a sense, she was actually protecting Drake.
But it was a sick thought. She wasn’t protecting him at all.
She was deceiving him.
So the missive for Lady Agnes du Reims took off for Romford upon the hooves of a swift stallion as Elizaveta struggled not to vomit, her nerves getting the better of her. The only thing she could do was focus on her duties for their journey to Thetford and pray that the missive she just sent never made it to her grandmother. She had done her duty, but if the missive never made it, she had no control over that. She prayed harder than she ever
had that the missive would never reach Mabelle, but then again, if Mabelle never received it, the assassins might come.
Elizaveta was a woman torn.
But she put those thoughts aside after Cortez and James left as she returned to her packing. Drake and Devon were in and out of the keep, pretending they were helping their wives when they were really only getting in the way. Drake kept finding excuses to enter the keep, only to corner his wife in a chamber and kiss her passionately until Daniella or Devon would come around and break up the heated clinch.
The rest of the morning had been spent in those pursuits, stolen kisses and gentle touches, but they’d somehow managed to get everything loaded and had finally departed Spexhall late in the day. For the two days traveling upon the road, Drake had been attentive and sweet and endearing. As they traveled, it was easier for Elizaveta to forget the missive and focus on the here and now, the delight of a new husband who clearly adored her. Even now as they neared the city of Thetford in the distance, those sweet moments were all Elizaveta could think of. She’d only known such foreplay for a few days at most but she knew she would miss it dreadfully when Drake left for Scotland. She would miss him dreadfully.
The rains had come the night before, soaking the ground, and the mud was thick in places. The carriage had gotten stuck twice within full view of the village of Thetford and it had taken several men to help push it out. It had given Elizaveta the opportunity to see Drake again, as he would rein his big rouncey over to the carriage, leap off of it, and get behind the thing to shove. He always got as close to Elizaveta has he could during these times and she would make eye contact with him, smiling at him as he smiled in return. Even in the middle of the road, in the middle of a mud puddle, Drake would find the opportunity to flirt with her. It was a thrilling occurrence.
The devilish mud finally gave way and they made it to Thetford Castle before another thunderstorm rolled in from the east. Black clouds began gathering overhead just as the carriage pulled into the vast collection of berms that was the bailey of Thetford Castle, only to discover that Davyss de Winter was staging his army. Davyss was in the bailey, in fact, the expression on his face quite clearly wondering why Drake and Devon had returned from Spexhall and brought their army with them. His confusion was great until Devon came across his father first and began to inform the man of Edward’s order. Then, Davyss seemed to gain some understanding.