Nevertheless, he thought, squaring his shoulders, she would have to pay a price for her deceit. She was guilty of putting a hunger in his heart, and he would not be satisfied until he forged his spirit in her fire.









Chapter Twelve


















A murmuring of masculine voices was audible through the closed solar door. Clarise hovered on the gallery, uncertain whether to wait for their conversation to end or to knock. Though she trusted Doris to care for Simon in her stead, she could not leave the baby alone with the cook all evening.

She was eager to put this reckoning with the Slayer behind her. Throughout the meal, she had caught him sending her narrow-eyed looks, and she’d held her breath, awaiting a public denunciation, only it hadn’t come. At the same time she’d had to keep an eye on the food’s distribution as Harold struggled to perform his duties without his wife.

Following supper, the abbot had excused himself to visit the chapel. The Slayer had scraped back his chair and announced to his second-in-command that they should retire to the solar. Clarise was left to deal with a fussing baby. She withdrew to her own chamber, chafed by the delay in the inevitable confrontation.

Never before was she so hopeful of the Slayer’s help. He’d made it clear by his looks that he knew who she was. And yet he hadn’t mocked or publicly exposed her. Perhaps all her worries had been for naught.

The door of the solar opened suddenly, and Sir Roger stepped through it, stopping just short of plowing her down. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “I was just coming to get you. . . Clarise DuBoise.” At the purposeful mention of her name, she drew a quick breath and searched his face for condemnation. His expression was taut. The smile that hovered perpetually at one corner of his mouth had fled.

“Please,” she begged, grabbing his sleeve as he held the door for her, “I never wanted to lie to you. Please understand that I had a very good reason.”

“Go in,” he said, ignoring her plea, but his tone had mellowed. He gave her what she took to be a pitying look.

Her heart beating with dread, Clarise inched through the portal, expecting the worst. Her gaze flew to the Slayer, who was seated behind his writing table. With the candle behind him, shadows pooled in the hollows of his face, concealing his expression.

She looked back at the knight in a silent plea for his support. But then he shut the door between them, and she was left alone with her nemesis.

Two tallow lamps cast feeble light onto the tapestries. Rain beat loudly on the closed shutters. The room seemed full of menacing shadows, not the least of which was the Slayer himself, dressed in the black tunic he had worn to dinner.

“Where is Simon?” he asked, breaking the stillness.

The hard edge of his tone made her stomach cramp. “With Doris in my chambers,” she replied. “I will fetch him right away—”

“Stay,” he commanded before she could flee. He propped his elbows on the writing desk and leaned forward. Light rose up his cheekbones, illuminating the scar on his cheek. “You owe me an explanation first,” he told her very softly.

To give herself courage, she thought of how he’d come by that scar. “My lord, I will tell you the truth,” she promised him, “and you must ask yourself what you would have done in my stead.”

“Fair enough.” He watched her with a steady gaze.

Clarise clasped her hands together and squeezed them. “A year and three months past Ferguson appeared at our gates, a traveler with just a band of men,” she began, saying the words she had rehearsed in expectation of this hour. “They begged my father’s hospitality and we gave it, never suspecting how we would be repaid.” She took a breath to steady the tremor in her voice.

“That night Ferguson sprinkled poison in my father’s drink. He hides his powders in his brooch rings.” The memory replayed itself, and the words came more easily. “My father fell from the dais, stricken with pains. The Scots jumped up, catching our knights unawares. They pulled daggers from their boots and killed every man that dwelled in Heathersgill. Then Ferguson took his sword and severed my father’s head from his body.”

A thundercloud had gathered on the Slayer’s forehead. Encouraged by his look of outrage, she sought to convey the depth of her horror. “Ferguson dragged my mother to the upper chambers. She had just seen her husband beheaded and now she was being forced . . .” She put her hands to her ears, hearing the awful screams again. “Oh, God, I could not stop him from raping her!” she cried.

The warlord came abruptly to his feet and rounded the table. She was startled to feel his arms band around her. He pulled her gently against him, and the last thread of her self-composure snapped. She tried to master herself, but her grief consumed her. A ragged sob tore free from a place in her that she had kept firmly under wraps. “I am sorry,” she wailed, shamed by her loss of control.

“Hush.” With no warning, she felt the floor fall away. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the high bed.

Clarise was vaguely conscious that the warlord had seated himself at the edge of his bed. He scooped her in his lap, cradling her as if she were a babe.

She was helpless to fight her grief. It rolled over her in waves, drowning her in despair. Memories of her gentle father besieged her—how she missed him! The plight of her poor mother and sisters crushed her spirit. She had done all she could to help them, but ultimately she was helpless without a champion.

At last her tears had run their course. Clarise stirred. Her nose was buried in the crook of Christian’s neck, where every breath was filled with juniper and musky maleness. Just knowing how near his mouth was to hers left her weak with private yearnings. Yet she realized she could not stay where she was. She had yet to confess her reason for coming to Helmesly.

Lifting her tear-stained face, she looked at him uncertainly. His thoughts seemed far away as he brushed aside the tendrils that had straggled into her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. “Why did you say you hailed from Glenmyre? You pretended to be a freed serf and then Monteign’s leman.” The lines of his face grew harsher as he shook his head. “Why so many lies?” he demanded.

Sensitive to his rising ire, she tried to get out of his lap, but the warlord held her fast. His grip became bruising.

“Very well, I’ll tell you!” she submitted. “I lied because Ferguson sent me here. Aye!” she cried, seeing the flash of surprise in his eyes. “He sent me to poison you, just as he had poisoned my father.”

The Slayer let go of her wrist, only to seize the locket that still dangled from her neck. “Poison me?” he growled. “With this? Did you carry the poison in here?”

“I did once,” she admitted, meeting his blazing eyes with the appearance of courage. “He said if you weren’t dead in two months’ time, then he would hang my mother and sisters.”

The horror of that ultimatum left him temporarily speechless. “Where is the poison now?” he asked more gently.

“I poured it out.”

“Out? Where?”

“Into the air,” she said, gesturing. “ ’Tis gone. I couldn’t do it.”

He let the locket fall from his grasp. “Why not?” he asked, tilting his head back to look at her.

Why not? She focused her gaze on the scar he’d received because he was once so devout. “Because you are not evil,” she told him simply. “I realized that almost at once,” she added.

For a startled moment, he stared at her. Thoughts ebbed and flowed behind his gray-green eyes. Then he released her, all but thrusting her off his lap.

She staggered on her feet, while he himself prowled to the far side of the room. Clarise backed away from him, uncertain of his actions. Should she flee to her room and let him decide her fate? Nay, ’twas better to remain and answer his questions. She could see that he was battling with the knowledge that the woman who had seemed to be Simon’s best hope was also the one who’d been sent to kill him.

Locking her trembling knees, she awaited the Slayer’s judgment. Her heart beat so heavily that it rocked her lightly on her feet. She watched him as he paced back and forth, casting her disbelieving glances, as though trying to reconcile the woman before him with the one he’d known before.

Clarise’s gaze fell to his hands, clenching and unclenching as he stalked in and out of the candlelight. She became aware of a rising sense of sympathy for him. He had just come from salvaging Glenmyre. How must he feel to discover that she too had been sent to undermine him?

“ ’Twill be all right, my lord,” she heard herself soothe. “No harm will come to Simon or to you, I swear it.”

He swiveled suddenly and glared at her. “Were you in league with the minstrel?” he demanded in a chilling voice.

She shook her head. “He’d been sent by Ferguson to assure that I arrived at Helmesly and that I fulfilled my evil task, but I had nothing to do with his pilfering. He said there were others who would gladly see you ousted. They were the ones who helped him steal.”

The warlord made a sound of disgust and stalked to the window to lean out of it. He gulped down air as though needing its purity. The rain outside spattered the windowsill. Droplets bounced off the stone to wet the warlord’s tunic, but he didn’t seem to care.

“My lord, there is something more I need to tell you,” Clarise admitted. Now that she was baring the truth to him, she wanted no more secrets between them. They would start anew and be guided by honesty as Ethelred had suggested.