Chapter Twenty-Three #3
“You honor me, my lady,” he said softly. “Let me deal with my brother and then I shall be at your service for whatever you wish to do for your husband. But please know how deeply sorry I am. He was a great man.”
Maryann smiled bravely, a comforting moment in the midst of the chaos. “And you will make him proud, I am sure,” she said. With a lingering look at Boothe, she turned for the door. “Whatever you do, make it hurt.”
With that, she passed through the door, leaving Wynter standing there with big eyes at her mother’s brutal suggestion.
She looked at Gage to see his reaction and all she could see was respect.
Respect for the indominable Lady Ashington.
At that moment, Wynter could see that all was right between her husband and her mother.
She couldn’t have been more grateful.
Gage caught Wynter’s expression and his smile lingered, just for her, before vanishing as he turned to Boothe.
“Now you have heard the confirmation from the lips of the dowager countess,” he said. “I am Ashington. Now, I will ask you a question – I want to know if these words sound familiar: a kingdom can only have one king.”
On the ground, with a bloodied nose and a welt on his temple, Boothe was in a position he wasn’t used to.
Dominated and controlled by his younger brother, the man he’d exiled those years ago.
A man who had come back to defeat him in a way he could have never imagined.
As Gage spoke, there was indeed something familiar in his words, but Boothe wouldn’t admit it.
“Are they supposed to?” he said defiantly.
“How about ‘there can only be one dominant male.’”
Boothe was starting to think he had said those words to his brother at some point because they definitely sounded like something he would say.
“Get on with it,” he snarled. “Say whatever you are going to say and get on with it.”
Gage cracked a smile. “Believe me, I shall say what I want to say,” he said.
“And then I shall get on with what I wish to do, but if I were you, I would not be so eager to see what that is. For every offense against me, I wish you a thousand years of humiliation. For every offense against Brian de Luci, I wish you a thousand years of pain. For the chaos you have created within the Ashington earldom and for the shame you’ve brought to the de Reyne name, I wish you a thousand years of remorse and anguish.
Enjoy the rest of your life, Boothe, such as it is, because it is all your own doing. ”
With that, he snapped his fingers at Laurence and Clark, who rushed forward to take Boothe between them.
As Boothe howled and kicked and bellowed, the procession of the prisoner began.
They dragged him out of the solar, down the steps of the keep entry, and back to the gatehouse.
Gage, Wynter, Etienne, and Dirk followed.
By the time they reached the gatehouse, however, they had accumulated quite a group.
It was the submission of Lord Stagshaw for all to see.
The vault was located below the gatehouse and Laurence and Clark hauled Boothe down the stairs, with Laurence slugging him at one point so he’d stop fighting so much.
Nothing would ever be as satisfying to Laurence as punching the man who had upended his life.
By the time they reached the vault, they had three choices of where to place him – two small cells plus a third option, an oubliette that had once been a well that had dried up years ago.
It had been turned into a dungeon, a pit for the worst offenders, and Boothe was dropped into this pit, sliding down the slick walls, into the dank darkness with no end.
As the other knights stood back, Gage and Laurence stood at the entry to the pit, listening to Boothe scream and beg because it was so dark.
All they could feel, at that moment, was that justice had indeed been served.
For Brian.
For them all.
“Do you remember on our ride into Northumberland, you mentioned putting your brother in the vault and throwing away the key?” Laurence asked.
Gage nodded, soaking in the sounds of his brother’s misery. “You asked if he could see your face, too, when I did,” he said, gesturing to the hole. “Is this what you meant?”
Laurence turned to him, grinning. “Better,” he said sincerely, clapping Gage on the left arm. “Much better.”
With that, he headed out, lulled by the sounds of Boothe’s agony, but Gage remained. As he stood there, realizing that his brother’s reign of terror was finally over, he felt a soft hand slip into his. He turned to his wife’s smiling face in the dimness of the vault.
“For Brian,” he muttered. “For your father. This is justice, Wynnie.”
Wynter nodded. “I know,” she said. “And I love you for it.”
That was all Gage needed to hear. Without another thought on Boothe de Reyne, he took his wife back out into the lovely Northumberland evening. For Gage, this moment was more than vengeance, more than punishment.
It was the righting of a wrong.
Boothe de Reyne had the rest of his life to contemplate that, in the end, his brother finally won.