“Levie,” she whispered firmly in the woman’s ear. “Come with me now. Come away from here.”
The tiny brunette with the big brown eyes sobbed loudly. She clutched at the wood, reaching up to touch her husband’s foot and then drawing her hand away in horror.
“My sweet Trevan,” she bawled. “What have they done to him? What did he do to deserve this fate?”
Kellington was trying to pull the woman to her feet, fearful of what Jax would do when he saw that she had violated his directive at the first opportunity. She was doubly fearful of what he would to do Lavaine.
“Lavaine,” she said, more firmly. “Our lives are in jeopardy the longer we stay here. You must get up and walk with me.”
Lavaine was incapable of answering. It took all of Kellington’s strength to pull the woman to her feet. Even then, Lavaine threw herself against the pole, embracing her husband’s lower legs as she did so. Kellington tugged but Lavaine held fast.
“My sweet darling,” she wept. “First my son, now my husband. I would beg God to take me as well. I cannot live without them!”
Kellington had tears in her eyes. With a few more tugs, she managed to disengage Lavaine. The woman clung to her, nearly pulling her to the ground as Kellington struggled to walk for the both of them. There were dead men everywhere and Kellington tried not to look, focusing on keeping her head down and her feet moving forward. Lavaine was like dead weight. As they made it to the wooden steps, she caught sight of enormous boots from the corner of her eye. Daring to glance up, she could see Jax standing at the base of the stairs.
His expression was hard, as it had been the first time she had ever seen him. But she knew it was the calm before the storm; she had disobeyed him and left the keep. She wanted to explain herself before he took her head off.
“My apologies, my lord,” she said as they neared the stairs. “I heard the lady screaming and only sought to help. I swear I did not spitefully violate your command.”
He didn’t reply; in fact, he stood there in stone cold silence as she practically lifted Lavaine onto the steps, ascending one at a time. It was an exhaustingly slow process but she finally got her into the keep. Once inside, Lavaine collapsed on the floor and took Kellington down with her.
“I cannot live,” Lavaine moaned. “My reason for living is gone. My son, my husband… I want to die.”
Kellington had pushed herself up. On her hands and knees, she stroked Lavaine’s dark head.
“Nay, sweetheart,” she murmured. “Trevan would not want you to speak so. You must live. You must go on, if for no other reason than a tribute to his memory. Show us what a strong woman you are; show us why Trevan loved you so.”
Lavaine didn’t hear her; she was crippled with grief. As Kellington stroked the woman’s hair, a pale, slender serving girl came up behind her.
“Shall I help ye get her upstairs, m’lady?” the girl murmured in her ear.
Kellington nodded. “Thank you, Matilda,” she took hold of Lavaine’s right arm. “Go to her other side. Perhaps we can lift her between us.”
It was a painful labor. Matilda was no larger than a child herself and lifting Lavaine was difficult. With Kellington on the opposite side, they could only raise her to her knees. The woman refused to be lifted any further. As they pleaded with her, Jax stood by the entry and watched the scene. He caught Amadeo’s gaze out of the corner of his eye; the man was in the archway to the great hall. He had heard the screams, too. With a sharp, perhaps reluctant, nod of his head, Jax sent a silent signal to his knight.
Amadeo moved forward and grabbed the Lavaine by the arms, shoving Matilda to the ground and sending Kellington stumbling. As the women screamed in fright, he unsheathed the dagger that was lodged at his waist. The intent was obvious; they had not the time or the effort to waste on a grieving woman. She could join her husband’s corpse in the bailey.
But as he lifted his dagger to slit her throat in a clean, easy motion, another body was suddenly between his weapon and the woman’s neck; Kellington had somehow made it to her feet and had thrown herself between Lavaine and the dirk. Amadeo ended up slitting a small portion of Kellington’s left shoulder blade instead of Lavaine’s tender white flesh.
Startled, he watched as Kellington fell to the floor in agony. Lavaine was still screaming, now for an entirely different reason. Chaos suddenly enveloped the small entry as servants wailed and Jax’s knights began shouting. Amadeo watched as Jax himself swept down on Kellington and lifted her off the floor; blood was on her back, his hands. Somewhat unbalanced, Amadeo lifted his blade again to accomplish his task but Jax boomed orders at him so loudly that they reverberated off the stone. The order was to cease. Amadeo sheathed his dirk and dropped Lavaine back to the floor in one smooth motion.
Weeping servants rushed forth to take Lavaine away. Amadeo snapped orders to the thin male servant hovering near the solar to bring water and thread even as Jax carried Kellington up the stairs. He sent Henley for their surgeon. Then he followed his lord to the upper floors.
“I’ve sent for the surgeon,” he told Jax as they mounted the second flight of stairs to the fourth level.
Jax did not reply. He carried Kellington into her chamber and carefully deposited her on the bed. Beyond that, he was unsure what else to do. He wasn’t the one to tend battle wounds. When he tried to get a better look at Amadeo’s handy work, she turned on him like a wild animal.
“Do not touch me,” she half-barked, half –hissed. “Get out of here and leave me alone.”
Jax and Amadeo stood over the bed, emotionlessly watching her. She was injured, bleeding, and terrified. Jax had seen enough battle wounds to understand the unstable mentality.
“My surgeon will sew your wound,” he told her steadily.
She was trembling with shock, trying to roll off the bed to get away from the two enemy knights. She was smearing blood on her coverlet.
“I said get out,” she slid so far to the edge of the bed that she fell off. She was on her knees, her lovely eyes spitting venom. “Go away from me. And send your surgeon away. I do not want him to touch me.”
Jax put his hands on his hips. “That wound needs to be tended.”
“Get out!” she screamed, shaking terribly. “Get out, get out!”
She was becoming hysterical. Neither Jax or Amadeo were adept at dealing with hysterical women; they had seen many in their life but had never know an ounce of compassion for any of them. Amadeo remained detached, but Jax was experiencing a very strange moment; it was obvious he wanted to attend her wound but was not sure how to accomplish that. He could have forced the issue but realized he did not want to. At least, not physically.
“Lady,” he tried one last time. “You are bleeding. The wound must be tended.”
Her breathing was coming in strange pants and her eyes had a wild look to them. “Get out, de Velt,” she snarled. “I do not want the help of a vicious murdering criminal. I would rather bleed to death.”
His gaze lingered on her a moment, the hatred in her voice echoing in his head. For lack of a better response, Jax jerked his head at Amadeo, who quit the room silently. Jax followed, his gaze lingering on the cowering woman on the other side of the bed. Perhaps she would calm down if he left the room for a few moments. He did not know what else to do.
When Jax shut the door, Kellington managed to stand on unsteady legs. Stumbling to the door, she threw the bolt and locked it. Then she promptly fainted.
*
When Kellington came to, it was dark. She was lying on her stomach and she could see the flicker of flames against the wall. It took her a moment to orient herself, realizing she was in her own bed and the sun had set. The events of the day came rushing back to her and she stirred, grunting when a bolt of pain shot through her left shoulder.
“Are you awake, darling?”
Lavaine’s sweet face and deep brown eyes were suddenly in her line of sight. Confused, and slightly startled, Kellington blinked as if sure the
woman was an apparition.
“Levie?” she whispered. “What… what are you doing here?”
Lavaine had a cool cloth in her hand; she wiped down the portion of Kellington’s face that was not pressed into the mattress.
“Tending you,” she looked off to her right, into the darkness of the room. “Matilda, bring me that broth. That’s right. Bring it here. Perhaps Lady Kelli is ready to eat something.”
Kellington grunted again as she shifted her body, trying to gain a look at her surroundings. “What happened?” she muttered, still struggling to orient herself. “My… my shoulder. Is it…?”
Lavaine cut her off. “De Velt’s surgeon tended it,” she replied as she accepted the broth from the servant. “It was not deep enough to warrant stitches, but you’ll probably have a scar.”
“His surgeon?” Kellington repeated, her tone gaining strength. “I told him that I did not want anyone touching me.”
Lavaine sighed heavily when Kellington shook her head at the broth. “He did not listen to you,” she said. “He was forced to kick your door in when you locked it. He brought me up here after the surgeon had tended your wound and told me to take care of you.”
Kellington tried to push herself up but wasn’t doing a very good job. “I do not need taking care of,” she managed to roll over onto her right elbow. “Levie, where did they take you after I was cut? What happened?”
Lavaine set the bowl down, tears forming in her eyes again. “Matilda and the servants took me to the kitchens to hide me from the knights,” she said softly. “Cook gave me wine until I calmed somewhat. At least… at least I was not screaming any longer.”
Kellington reached out to touch her hand. “Levie, I am so terribly sorry,” she said, now verging on tears of her own. “It is unthinkable what de Velt and his men have done. I tried to talk to them… they simply told me it was the way of war. It is the way of their war.”
Big pools of tears filled Lavaine’s eyes and spilled over onto her round cheeks. “They took the baby,” she choked out. “I have not seen him since. And Trevan….”
She began to weep softly again. Kellington struggled into a sitting position and put her good arm around the woman, the one that wasn’t hampered by a painful wound. She did not know what else to do.
“I’m so sorry, my dear friend,” she wept with her. “I had no idea such atrocities even existed. We have lived such a good life here that I had no idea horrors like this were possible.”
Lavaine sobbed into her shoulder. “If… if we could only bury him. He does not deserve to be perched on a post for all to see. He was a great knight.”
“Aye, he was,” Kellington struggled to dry her tears; they were not helping her friend. What she needed was to formulate a plan, something to ease all of their suffering. “And we will indeed bury him, have no fear. We will bury them all.”
Lavaine looked at her, wiping at her cheeks. “But how?”
Kellington’s golden-brown eyes were serious with thought. She was chatelaine of Pelinom, after all. It was her duty to aid her vassals and friends, to right the wrongs, and to do whatever she could to champion them. De Velt had created a hell when he had commandeered her beloved castle and devastated her people. She had to do something.
“Do not worry,” she assured her friend softly. “I will do what needs to be done.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“My lord?”
It was Caelen, standing in the entry of the great hall. Jax and Amadeo were seated towards the far end where a massive hearth burned brightly, spitting smoke and sparks into the upper portion of the room. The gallery was cloaked in a silver fog as the two men hovered over an old vellum map. It was Jax’s map of conquest, one he studied religiously, for it showed him where he was and what more he needed to do. Studying the map was a nightly ritual.
“What is it?” Jax looked up from the vellum.
Caelen jabbed a thumb in the direction of the bailey. “The lady,” he said. “She was pulling the body of that knight off the spike. She bit me when I grabbed her, so I threw her and her servants in the vault.”
Jax looked at him as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Slowly, very slowly, he stood straight and focused on the knight who had borne such news.
“That’s impossible,” he said flatly. “The last I saw her, she was passed out on her bed as the surgeon tended her shoulder. There’s no possibility that she was….”
“I know, my lord, but she was just the same,” Caelen insisted. “She and a few women were trying to bury that dead knight.”
“You should have let me kill her,” Amadeo grumbled from across the table. “If you do not quell this immediately, it will get out of hand. We never have women in our installations and for good reason. Why do you deviate from that practice now?”
Jax turned his gaze to his second in command, his two-colored eyes simmering with fury.
“If you question me again, you will join that knight outside on the pole,” he rumbled. “Is that clear?”
Amadeo knew he was not bluffing; the man never bluffed. He replied without fear. “It is, my lord.”
Jax’s gaze lingered on Amadeo a moment longer before turning back to Caelen. “You say she is in the vault?”
Caelen nodded. “Aye. I smacked her good when she bit me, the little bitch.”
Jax lifted a dark eyebrow but did not reply. He moved away from the map with Amadeo and Caelen in tow. The three of them descended the old wood and iron steps, crossed the bailey under a brilliant blanket of stars, and took the narrow, mossy stairs from the ground floor of the gatehouse into the depths of the vault below.
It was very dark but for a single torch burning in an old iron sconce. It hardly lit the vault with its two large cells. Off to his left he could see a few figures huddled in one of the cells; it was the same cell that Kellington had been in earlier in the day. Now she was right back in it. He took the key off the wall and opened the grate.
His mighty presence sucked up all the air in the cell. While the three servants cowered, Kellington sat on the old straw, her hand on the side of her face, gazing up at him with baleful eyes. He met her gaze, wondering if Amadeo wasn’t right in one breath and strangely glad to see her with the next.
“I see you have landed in the vault again,” he said in his deep, intimidating baritone. “You will explain yourself.”
The entire left side of Kellington’s face was red and swollen where the big knight had slapped her. She kept her right hand over it to ease the throbbing; her left arm had limited mobility with the pain from her wound. Seeing Jax made her angry and sick all over again.
“We were trying to bury Trevan.”
She said it so softly that he barely heard her. “Speak up, lady,” he commanded.
The golden-brown eyes flashed. “I said that we were burying Trevan,” she said, louder. “There is no reason why you must leave his corpse to rot. The man was simply defending his post. He did nothing to warrant such disrespect from you.”
“I told you that you could not bury him.”
“You have no reason to deny him a decent burial,” she shot back, furious and in pain with her shoulder. “If you do not allow this man a proper burial then you are indeed the monster I’ve heard tale of. I tried not to believe it until this moment, but if you cannot show respect to a man’s passing then I find you completely without honor and a horrible devil of a man.”
Caelen and Amadeo froze, looking to Jax and waiting for him to tear the woman apart with his bare hands. They’d seen such things before. The servants were weeping and shivering in the corner of the cell, knowing their deaths would be next. But Jax remained where he stood, unmoving, unblinking, the dual-colored eyes undoubtedly concocting the most horrible death imaginable for the sassy wench. After several long, anxious moments, Jax’s jaw began to tick.
“Remove the servants,” he ordered in a rumbling voice. “Clear everyone out of here.”
Caelen and Amadeo moved past Ja
x, yanking the three serving women to their feet and hauling them away. Kellington sat there and trembled, her hand still over her face, knowing she had pushed the man past his limits. But she frankly didn’t care; she was beyond caring at the moment. She knew horrible things were going to happen and she had driven him to it.
Jax stood there a good long while before making any move. Kellington flinched when he finally began to walk towards her but admirably held her ground. When Jax came to within a few feet of her, he crouched down in front of her.
Kellington met his gaze, watching the disturbing two-colored eyes as they studied her. She tensed, waiting for a massive hand to come flying out at her. But for several long seconds, nothing happened. Then he spoke.
“If I am the horrible monster you have accused me of being, you and your servants would all be dead,” he said in a quiet tone. “I would have shown you no mercy. Yet I have.”
She eyed him, wondering why he was bothering to justify himself. “But the men in the bailey….”
“Are casualties of war. How many times must I explain this?”
“But they are men, not animals. They were defending their fortress. They should be given a proper burial. That is every man’s right; even yours.”
“Oh?” he lifted his eyebrows. “And do you think that if I had died in battle that those men would have given me a proper burial?”
“My father would have. So would Sir Trevan. They are honorable men and would have allowed you your due.”
He drew in a long breath. He seemed to be looking at the hand covering her face. His enormous hand came up and she instinctively flinched, as if to pull away from him, but he stopped her.
“Let me see your face,” he said as he pulled her hand away. He studied the big red welt. “It will fade. You should not have bit him.”
She frowned. “He should not have grabbed me.”
“He was stopping you from doing something you were not supposed to be doing in the first place. Moreover, you must be weak with that bad shoulder. What were you doing trying to bury a man?”