Chapter Fifteen
Hawkstone Castle
Maxton had been holding the line at the gatehouse with the fifty soldiers they had brought with them when he saw Caius emerge from the keep.
Curious, he watched the man lumber towards him across the sloping, muddy bailey until they finally came within range of one another that they could make meaningful eye contact. At that point, Caius waved his hand at Maxton as if indicating for him to follow, and then headed towards the great hall.
Maxton broke away from the gatehouse to pursue.
He followed the man into the hall with its partially burned roof.
The section of the hall that was left to the elements was piled with melting snow, but the larger section of hall that still had the roof appeared relatively untouched.
Caius moved over near the darkened hearth and Maxton approached him.
“What is amiss, Cai?” he asked.
Caius didn’t even know where to start. “Have you seen Morgan?”
“I saw him leaving the keep. Why?”
“Where is Kevin?”
“Finding out just how many Winterhold men are left outside of the keep,” he said. “Why, Cai? What’s wrong?”
Caius let out a long, pent-up sigh. “The lady’s brother is dead,” he said. “He died last night of an arrow wound to the chest, meaning the lady is now the sole heiress to Hawkstone.”
Maxton’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Christ,” he muttered. “Then she can truly never go back to Winterhold. If de Wrenville holds her, Hawkstone’s battle is finished. He can do as he pleases with it.”
But Caius shook his head. “It is not the simple,” he said. “The lady is prepared to take up her brother’s mantle and remain caged up in the keep with thirty-one Hawkstone soldiers to the death. She feels very strongly about it. She will not surrender.”
Maxton puffed out his cheeks as the revelations just kept coming. “I see,” he said. “You left her there?”
“Aye,” he said. “I probably could not have removed her in any case. She intends to remain. Max, if we leave her here, she will die. There is no question about it.”
Maxton nodded. “Mayhap,” he said. “Cai… I know what you said when we first arrived, how as knights, we are sworn to protect the weak and innocent, but if you are thinking of getting more deeply involved in this, I would recommend against it.”
Caius glanced at him. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I know you. Something is going on in your head that you are not telling me.”
Now, it had come. Caius was prepared to deny it, but in good conscience, he could not.
Moreover, he wasn’t in the habit of lying to his friends, men who were like brothers to him.
The lines were blurring even more as he leaned against the cold hearth, trying to put his thoughts into words that they could both understand.
At the moment, he didn’t understand anything.
“I do not know, Max,” he muttered. “I should not be feeling anything more than duty, yet I am afraid I am. I am genuinely afraid that I am.”
“Feeling what?”
Caius lifted his big shoulders. “I wish I knew,” he said. “All I know is that when I look at her…”
“So you feel something for her?”
Caius threw up his hands and moved away from the hearth as he began to pace. “I do not know,” he said. “That is what I am trying to determine. I’ve known the woman a mere day and, already, I want to save her. I want to protect her from that bastard de Wrenville.”
“I know.”
Caius stopped pacing. “What do you mean ‘you know’?”
Maxton had a hint of a smile on his face. “Because the moment you wrapped your hand around de Wrenville’s neck back at Winterhold, I knew something was happening with you. I assumed you would tell me when you were ready.”
Caius deflated a little, realizing that whatever he was feeling was something he had not been able to keep to himself.
“Did anybody else notice?” he asked.
Maxton shook his head. “I do not believe so,” he said. “Mayhap Kevin did; you know he idolizes you, Cai. He hasn’t known you as long as the rest of us, but because of your relationship with his brother, he thinks the world of you. He watches everything you do, closely.”
Caius smiled weakly, thinking of the pious, powerful knight, the younger brother of Sean de Lara. “It wasn’t always like that,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the first time I met Kevin was a few years ago when he came to Richmond,” he said.
“I realized he was Sean’s brother and when I saw how Kevin reacted to mention of Sean’s name, I could see that there was a good deal of hurt and animosity.
For what Sean had become, I mean. I told Kevin that when the opportunity arose to position a man close to King John, The Marshal spoke to Sean and me in private.
He presented the situation and asked which one of us wanted to assume the duty.
Sean knew the sins of my past and because he knew of the terrible things I had done, he spared me more sins and volunteered.
Were it not for Sean, The Britannia Viper would now be the bodyguard and advisor to the king.
Kevin told me that he could never forgive me for doing that to his brother and, in a sense, he was right.
I bear Sean’s sins as if they were my own. ”
Maxton knew that. Caius and Sean had been very close for years, and still were in many aspects, but Kevin had never been able to agree with the mission his brother undertook. He had spent years hating his brother for what he’d done, but they’d been able to reconcile as of late.
“It is of little matter now,” he said. “Sean and Kevin have repaired their relationship. Kevin understands why his brother did what he did, and I know he does not hate you. Don’t you see the way he jumps to attention when you are around?
Whatever animosity he felt for you is gone.
He is very attuned to your will, in case you haven’t noticed. ”
Caius shrugged. “I suppose I have not,” he said. “I still thought he hated me.”
“He doesn’t,” Maxton said. “But back to what you were saying; I think I’m the only one who realized you were more involved in this situation that you wanted to let on.”
Caius nodded as they turned away from the brief subject of Kevin de Lara. His frustration returned.
“Emelisse is an unusually strong woman,” he said.
“I saw that from the first. But she has been through a great deal since de Wrenville started his campaign of harassment, all of it culminating in the death of her father and brother yesterday. When I told her that de Wrenville planned to marry her to his son, she tried to throw herself from the window. I spent the evening with her until she calmed sufficiently and I found myself speaking with an intelligent woman, kind and compassionate, who has been brutally abused by de Wrenville. That is when I realized I could not be neutral about this. Max, I want to protect her.”
“To what end?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“There is one way to solve this. Marry her.”
Caius looked at him as if dumbfounded by the suggestion. “After only knowing her a day?”
Maxton grinned. “Take it from a man who married a postulate,” he said. “I cannot remember when I have not loved my wife. It could have been the first moment I saw her or mayhap it developed later, but I do know that I knew within a week that I wanted to marry her. Sometimes you just… know.”
His answer seemed to dumbfound Caius even more. He wasn’t exactly appalled by the suggestion, which appalled him even more. He was appalled at himself for not being appalled. He was not a man to make life-changing decisions on a whim.
“Maxton, I do not want to marry her,” he finally said.
Maxton clearly wasn’t convinced. He began to rub his gloved hands together because the hall seemed to be colder than the air outside.
“Then ask yourself this,” he said. “What if you were to leave tomorrow? What if you were to go back to Richmond? Would you still think about her and wonder how she was? Worse still, what if The Marshal tells you to use his army and purge Lady Emelisse and her thirty-one soldiers from that keep? What would you do, Cai? Be honest because that is a very real possibility.”
Caius almost told him that he would follow The Marshal’s directive to the letter, but even as he opened his mouth to say it, he knew it wasn’t the truth. As he reminded himself… he wasn’t in the habit of lying to his close friends.
Therefore, he thought hard. Really hard on the subject of commanding The Marshal’s army into destroying the last vestiges of Emelisse’s life.
Everything she held dear. Could he take The Marshal’s army and destroy Hawkstone’s keep?
He had told Emelisse that he would not let her die in the keep, and he wouldn’t.
She felt so strongly about taking up arms in her brother’s stead, and he respected her passion on the matter, but the truth was that he would not be able to destroy the keep, even if he was ordered to.
It was her keep now.
All of this belonged to her, the entire crumbling wreckage of a life she’d once known.
“Christ,” he finally groaned. “If that order comes down from The Marshal, I cannot follow it. I will have to get her out of the keep somehow while you lead the army to destroy it. I cannot do it, Max, and I feel as if I have just lost my ability to follow an order without question. I would question this one. Not only that, I would do what I felt necessary to save Emelisse. When did I turn into a knight that questions an order?”
Maxton could see how distressed he was and he put his hand on Caius’ shoulder. “You are a man who sees something more in the situation than the rest of us do,” he said. “You see a woman in distress and you want to help her. I was in the same position myself, once. And I married her.”
Caius hung his head. “I told you that I do not want to marry her.”
“Then you would rather have Marius marry her?”
Caius’ head snapped up, the dark eyes narrowing. “He’ll not have her.”
Maxton snorted bitterly. “You will have little say in the matter,” he said.
“You are nothing to Lady Emelisse; not her brother, father, cousin, family member. You have no say in what happens to her, but the fact that she is de Wrenville’s prisoner – he has every say.
And he will marry her to his son and when he does, Hawkstone becomes his property.
There will be nothing you could do about it. ”
He was being rather harsh about it, but nothing he said was untrue. Maybe Caius didn’t want to marry a woman after only knowing her for a day, but he knew one thing for certain – he couldn’t stand by while Marius de Wrenville married her.
“If I married her, Hawkstone would become mine,” he said. “All of this glorious ruin would belong to me and I would most definitely bring my army here and beat Winterhold into the ground if he thinks to challenge me. I would destroy him.”
Maxton nodded at the mere thought. “De Wrenville would be running for his life, to be sure.”
That thought gave Caius great pleasure. “In fact, I might lay siege to Winterhold just for the fun of it,” he said, growing more arrogant about it.
“I would remove Hallam and Lady de Wrenville, of course, but then I would bombard Winterhold day and night until her walls crumbled and her floors burned, and then I would toss Covington and Marius into that horrific moat and call it justice. Although I did not know Rupert de Thorington or his son personally, Edward did. He said they were good men. They did not deserve what de Wrenville did to them.”
“They did not,” Maxton agreed quietly. “But the reality is this; you have no time to make any decisions, Cai. Mayhap you truly feel something for the lady, or mayhap you are only sympathetic to her plight. But there is no time at all for you to decide if you are going to involve yourself in this situation more deeply than you should on the lady’s behalf, for we can only feed de Wrenville false information for so long.
He does not know Caspian is dead, so we can delay the inevitable only so long.
Sooner or later, de Wrenville will know the truth. ”
“I was saying that exact thing to Emelisse,” Caius said. “Mayhap we can delay it enough to receive a decision from The Marshal.”
“That decision may be to side with de Wrenville and destroy Hawkstone once and for all.”
Caius grunted softly, closing his eyes to that very possibility. “I know,” he said. “I know he is afraid for Alice and he should be. I do not like seeing her in danger and Chadlington is a good man. De Wrenville does not deserve either of them.”
Maxton watched him as he wrestled with the situation. “What will you do?”
Before Caius could answer, Hallam entered the hall. The knight entered from the corner of the hall that had been torn up and burned, through a gap in the wall that had been knocked out. He picked his way through the debris, heading for Caius and Maxton.
“Your young squire said that he saw you two come in here,” he said, tripping over a piece of charred wood. “I just received a missive from Lady de Wrenville. It seems that Marius arrived home this afternoon.”
Maxton looked straight at Caius, who visibly stiffened in surprise. “I see,” he said slowly. “I must say, it is not a surprise. We knew he would arrive home at some point. But his arrival ought to throw this situation into more chaos. He’s probably demanding to use Pembroke troops right now.”
Hallam shrugged. “My guess is that he more than likely is,” he said. “But Lady de Wrenville was more concerned about Lady Emelisse.”
“What about her?”
“Marius plans to ride to Hawkstone tomorrow with a priest,” he said. “He is going to marry her without delay.”
Caius stared at him. Maxton’s words came tumbling down on him.
There is no time at all for you to decide if you are going to involve yourself in this situation.
Truer words were never spoken. With the shocking news that Marius was due on the morrow, there was no time left. Caius had to make a decision.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to marry her.
But he knew he didn’t want to see her go to another, and especially not Marius de Wrenville.
Without another word, he ran for the keep.