Mystique

  “Read it.”

  Alice frowned intently over the painstakingly precise script.

  The bastard son has paid for the sins of his father and mother. It is finished.

  “Dear heaven, what does she mean?” Joan whispered.

  “Katherine no doubt believes that she has had her vengeance.” Alice rerolled the parchment. “She cannot know yet that she failed.”

  Joan’s keys rattled on the iron ring as she turned toward the door. “I shall ask one of the nuns to talk to the villagers. Mayhap someone has seen Katherine.”

  Alice glanced through the narrow window of the cell. Outside the gray mist had grown darker. “It grows late. I must return to the keep before someone becomes anxious about my absence.” Namely Hugh, who might even now have awakened and begun to plan his vengeance against Rivenhall.

  Joan led the way out of Katherine’s cell, “I will send word to you if I locate the healer.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said quietly. “I think it best if poison is not mentioned, Prioress. You know how people fear it.”

  “Aye. I shall not speak of it,” Joan promised. “God knows we do not need any rumors of poison spread about on this manor.”

  “Agreed. I will speak with you tomorrow, madam. Now, I must hurry home if I am to resolve this situation before a new storm is loosed upon these lands.”

  Benedict was waiting for Alice in the great hall. He greeted her with an urgency that spoke volumes.

  “Thank the Saints you have returned,” he said. “Lord Hugh awoke less than an hour ago and immediately asked for you. When I told him you had gone out, he was most displeased.”

  Alice unfastened her cloak. “Where is he?”

  “In his study chamber. He said you are to go to him at once.”

  “I intend to do precisely that.” Alice started for the stairs.

  “Alice?”

  She paused, one toe on the bottom step. “Aye, what is it?”

  “There is something I have wanted to tell you.” Benedict glanced around quickly to make certain that none of the servants was within hearing distance. He took a step closer to Alice and lowered his voice. “I was with Sir Hugh when he fell ill.”

  “I know. What of it?”

  “The first word he spoke when he realized that he had drunk from a poisoned cup was your name.”

  Alice flinched as though she had been struck. A great weight settled on her. “He thought I tried to murder him?”

  “Nay.” Benedict smiled wryly. “At first I believed that was his meaning. I told him it was not possible. Then he made it clear that he was asking for you because he knew you were the only one who could save him. He blamed Vincent of Rivenhall from the beginning. He never once suspected you.”

  The intolerable burden lifted from Alice’s soul. She gave Benedict a shaky smile. “Thank you for telling me that, brother. It eases my heart more than you can possibly know.”

  Benedict flushed. “I know how much you care for him. Sir Dunstan says that a man of Lord Hugh’s nature does not allow himself to indulge in soft emotions. Sir Dunstan told me that Lord Hugh scoffs at love and would never give his heart to a woman. But I thought you should know that he at least trusts you. Sir Dunstan says that it is most unusual for my lord to trust anyone.”

  “‘Tis a start, is it not?” Alice whirled and hurried up the stairs.

  She clutched Katherine’s note and the ring very tightly as she swept down the corridor at the top of the staircase. She came to a halt in front of Hugh’s door and knocked sharply.

  “Enter.” Hugh’s voice held a bone-chilling edge.

  Alice drew a breath and opened the door.

  Hugh was seated at his desk. There was a map spread out in front of him. He looked up when Alice entered the chamber. When he saw her he surged to his feet. His palms flattened on the desk. His eyes were savage.

  “Where in the name of the devil have you been, madam?”

  “The convent.” Alice studied him closely. “You appear to have recovered from your ordeal, sir. How do you feel?”

  “I have regained my appetite,” Hugh said. “And I seem to have acquired a taste for vengeance.”

  “You are not the only one who craves that particular dish, my lord.” Alice tossed the parchment and ring onto the desk. “Today it appears as though you were the victim of a woman whose hunger for vengeance is even greater than your own.”

  “The healer was the poisoner?” Hugh looked up from the short letter Katherine had left on her bed. He was stunned by what Alice had told him. But he could not deny the evidence she had brought back from the convent.

  “Judging by that ring and the words of the note, I suspect she was the woman who was betrothed to your father.” Alice sank down onto a stool. “I would hazard a guess that when Sir Matthew returned from France he sent word to her that he intended to break the betrothal.”

  “So that he could marry my mother, do you think?” Hugh forced himself to keep his voice utterly calm and detached. But an unfamiliar surge of emotion flooded his veins. Mayhap his father had intended to claim him.

  “Aye.” Alice’s eyes were warm and gentle. “I believe that is very likely the case, my lord.”

  Hugh looked at her and knew that she understood everything. He did not have to try to explain what her news meant to him. As usual, Alice comprehended his meaning without his having to find the words.

  “And Katherine retaliated by poisoning my parents.” Hugh released the edges of the parchment and watched as it slowly rerolled itself. “She murdered them.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “It is as though the history of my life was just rewritten,” he whispered.

  “‘Tis a great sin that the truth was hidden all these years.”

  “When I think of how I was taught from the cradle to hate all things Rivenhall—” Hugh broke off, unable to finish the sentence.

  I will not forget, Grandfather.

  Hugh felt as though the mighty stone pillars upon which his entire existence was founded had suddenly shifted beneath him.

  His father had returned from France with the intention of wedding the mother of his babe. He had not seduced and then abandoned young Margaret of Scarcliffe.

  “Just as Sir Vincent was taught to hate you,” Alice said quietly, breaking into Hugh’s reverie.

  “Aye. It would seem that both families and these lands have paid a heavy price because of her crime.” Hugh met Alice’s eyes and forced himself to contemplate the present situation with some degree of logic. “But why did Katherine wait until today to try to poison me? Why did she not use her foul brew when I first arrived to claim Scarcliffe?”

  Alice’s brows came together in a frown of concentration. “I am not entirely certain. There are many questions that remain unanswered in this matter.”

  “‘Twould have been much easier to murder me weeks ago.” Hugh tapped the rolled-up parchment against the desktop. “The household was very disorganized. There would have been numerous opportunities for a poisoner and no one about who possessed the skill to save me. Why wait?”

  Alice pursed her lips. “Mayhap she took some satisfaction in the feud itself. As long as it persisted she could sip from the cup of discord and strife that she had created.”

  “Aye.”

  “Katherine may have been angered by the visit of Sir Vincent and his family yesterday. Everyone saw you and Vincent ride together through the village.”

  “Of course.” Hugh wondered why that had not occurred to him immediately. He did not seem to be thinking clearly at all at the moment. The news of his past was having an unsettling effect on his powers of reason. “She would likely have viewed it as the first step toward ending the hostility between Scarcliffe and Rivenhall.”

  “Aye.” Alice drummed her fingers on her knee.

  “What troubles you?”

  “I still cannot comprehend why she fed poison to the monk. It makes no sense.”

  “We shall likely never kno
w unless we find her.” Hugh got to his feet with sudden decision. “And I intend to do just that.” He started around the edge of his desk.

  “Where are you going, my lord?”

  “To speak with Dunstan. I want Scarcliffe searched from border to border. The poisoner cannot have gotten far on foot. If we move quickly she will be found before the storm breaks.”

  A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning put an end to that plan even before Hugh had finished speaking.

  “Too late, my lord.”

  “Damn it to the pit.” Hugh went to the window.

  The wind and rain struck with great force, whipping the black walls of Scarcliffe Keep and the cliffs behind it with blinding intensity. The torches would be useless in such a gale. Hugh seethed with a savage frustration as he closed the shutters.

  “Never fear,” Alice said. “You will find her in the morning.”

  “Aye,” Hugh vowed. “I will find her.”

  He turned to see Alice watching him closely. Her gaze was shadowed with grave concern. Concern for him. This was the way she looked when she was anxious about someone who was important to her, he thought. Someone whom she loved.

  His wife.

  He was briefly enthralled by the simple fact that she was sitting right here in his study. Her skirts pooled gracefully around her feet. The glow of the brazier heightened the dark flames in her hair. Hair the color of a sunset just before it is enveloped by the night.

  His wife.

  Today she had saved his life and provided him with the truth about his own past.

  She had given him so much.

  Another rush of emotion cascaded through Hugh. The force of it was more powerful than the wild winds that scoured Scarcliffe this night.

  He could not name the feeling that welled up inside him but it filled him with a deep longing. He suddenly wished with all his soul that he had a new list of fine compliments handy. He needed Julian’s elegant words. He wanted to say something memorable, something a poet would say. Something as beautiful as Alice herself.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Hours later in the warmth of his great bed, Hugh leaned over Alice and drove himself into her softness one last time. He felt the delicate shivers first. Her soft, clinging warmth tightened around him. Then he heard her breathless cry of release.

  For an instant he knew a dazed feeling of awe and gratitude. He was not alone in the storm. Alice was with him. He could touch her, feel her, hold on to her. She was a part of him.

  The shatteringly intense awareness passed as quickly as it had come upon him. Once again he was lost in the sweet, radiant glow of Alice’s passion. It swept him up and carried him aloft. He surrendered to the wild winds with a hoarse, muffled shout of satisfaction and wonder.

  Here in the darkness with Alice he did not have to control the storm. Instead, he rode it with the freedom of a great hawk to a place where the past no longer cast shadows.

  When it was over he lay quietly for a long time, luxuriating in the pleasure of having Alice next to him.

  “Hugh?”

  “Aye?”

  “You are not asleep.”

  He smiled into the darkness. “Neither are you, it would seem.”

  “What deep thoughts keep you awake at this late hour?”

  “I was not thinking. I was listening.”

  “To what?”

  “To the night.”

  Alice was silent for a few seconds. “I hear nothing.”

  “I know. The winds have quieted and the rain has stopped. The storm is finished.”

  “‘Tis a strange day.” Joan halted at the convent gatehouse. She folded her hands into the sleeves of her habit and gazed pensively into the thick shroud of fog that clung to Scarcliffe. “I shall be glad when it is done.”

  “You are not the only one who will welcome the end of this matter.” Alice tucked her mother’s handbook under her arm and adjusted the hood of her mantle. “I confess some small part of me prays that Lord Hugh will not find the healer.”

  Hugh had left at dawn to hunt for Katherine. He had taken Benedict and virtually every able-bodied man in the keep with him. There had been no word from him since he had departed.

  Restless, anxious, and filled with a deep unease, Alice had prowled the halls of Scarcliffe Keep until she could no longer abide her own company. With a view toward occupying herself in a useful endeavor, she had taken her mother’s herb handbook and walked into the village.

  There had been work enough in the convent infirmary. When she had finished dispensing cough remedies and tonics to ease joint pains, Alice had joined the nuns for midday prayers and a meal.

  “I understand,” Joan murmured. “‘Twould be easier if Katherine simply vanished but that is not likely.”

  “True enough. My lord will search for her to the very gates of hell if necessary.” Alice eyed the mist. “I can only hope that when he finds her, he will also find peace.”

  Joan gave her a gentle, knowing look. “None of us can find true peace in the past, Alice. We must all search for it in the present.”

  Alice tightened her grasp on her mother’s handbook. “You are very wise, madam.”

  Joan smiled wistfully. “‘Tis a lesson I had to learn the hard way, just as everyone must do.”

  For the first time Alice wondered what had led Joan to enter the religious life. Someday she would inquire, she told herself. Not today, of course. It was too soon for such intimacies. But there would be ample opportunity for such conversations in the future. Something told her that her growing friendship with the prioress would be important to both of them. In spite of the bleak day, Alice felt a genuine warmth flower inside her. Her future was here at Scarcliffe. It would be a good life.

  “Good day, madam.” Alice started toward the gate.

  “Good day, my lady.”

  Alice lifted a hand in farewell and walked through the stone gates.

  The fog had grown so thick that she could barely make out the wagon ruts in the street. She knew the mist must have seriously frustrated Hugh’s search. She also knew that he would not readily abandon his quest. He would comb Scarcliffe and the surrounding lands with the relentless determination that was so much a part of him.

  She could not blame him, Alice thought. He was, after all, hunting for the person who had, in all likelihood, murdered his parents. Alice knew that so far as Hugh was concerned, the fact that Katherine had apparently tried to poison him also paled into insignificance compared to her crimes of thirty years earlier.

  Katherine had taken both mother and father from him. She had deprived him of the lands that should have been his rightful inheritance. She had consigned him to the care of an embittered old man who had viewed him as little more than an instrument of vengeance.

  Alice shuddered to think what would have happened to Hugh had fate not led him to the household of Erasmus of Thornewood. Someday, she told herself, she would very much like to thank that shadowy figure who had single-handedly kept Hugh from being consumed by the fierce storms that forged so much of his nature.

  Alice could not blame Hugh for his determination to find his quarry, but now that she was alone again, her sense of unease returned. There was something that did not feel right about the situation. Too many things remained unexplained. Too many questions were still unanswered.

  Why murder the monk?

  She pondered the question for the hundredth time that day as she went past the last of the village cottages. The fog had silenced everything. The men were not at work in the fields. The women were not in their gardens. The children were warming themselves by the hearth fires. Alice had the road to Scarcliffe Keep to herself.

  The monk. Somehow there had to be a link between Calvert and the poisoning of Hugh’s parents.

  A dark, hooded figure materialized out of the fog directly in Alice’s path. She froze. Fear washed over her in a thundering wave.

  “About time you showed up.” The man reached out to seize her. “
We was beginning to wonder if you intended to dawdle in the convent until Vespers.”

  Alice opened her mouth to scream but it was too late. A rough hand was instantly clamped over her mouth.

  She dropped her mother’s book and kicked out frantically. Her legs tangled in the folds of her gown but she managed to strike her attacker’s shin with the toe of her soft boot.

  “Damn you,” the man muttered. “I knew this wouldn’t be so easy. Not a word out o’ ye.” He jerked the hood of her cloak lower over her face, effectively blinding her.

  Alice struggled fiercely in his grasp. She flailed blindly, seeking a target, any target, as her assailant hoisted her off her feet. Then she heard muffled footfalls on the road and knew that the man who held her prisoner was not alone.

  “Don’t let her yell, Fulton, whatever ye do,” the other man snarled. “We’re not far from the village. Someone will surely hear her if she gets to screeching.”

  Alice redoubled her efforts to yell for help. She managed to sink her teeth into Fulton’s palm.

  “Damnation.” Fulton gasped. ‘The vixen bit me.”

  “Stop her mouth with some cloth.”

  Alice fought back in wild panic as a length of foul cloth was drawn taut across her mouth and tied behind her head.

  “Be quick about it, Fulton. We must get off this road. If Sir Hugh and his men blunder into us in this fog, we’ll be dead before we know what happened.”

  “Sir Hugh would not dare touch us so long as we hold his wife prisoner,” Fulton protested. But there was an anxious ring of uncertainty in his voice.

  “I would not count on surviving such a meeting, if I were you,” the other man muttered.

  “But Sir Eduard says that Hugh the Relentless is uncommonly fond of his new bride.”

  Sir Eduard. Alice was so startled that she went still for a moment. Were these men speaking of Eduard of Lockton? Impossible. Eduard would not risk Hugh’s wrath in this fashion. Hugh himself had been arrogantly certain of his own dominance over the unpleasant Eduard.

  “Sir Hugh may be fond of the wench,” the other man said, “but Erasmus of Thornewood did not cause the words Bringer of Storms to be inscribed on the dark knight’s sword for naught. Hurry. We must move quickly or all is lost.”