Chapter Five #3
The command came from the steps leading up into the gatehouse.
Everyone turned to see Hoyt standing at the base of the stairs, without his makeup or fancy gowns.
He looked as they all remembered him, a massive man who had been the best warrior of them all.
Bertram hadn’t seen his brother this serious, or this normal, in some time. It was unsettling.
“He is a spy,” Bertram said to his brother. “If we let him go, the consequences could be lethal.”
“If you do not, the same could be said.” Hoyt entered the vault, slowly. His eyes were on Derica. “Look at her, Bertram. She means what she says. Let him go or we shall all be sorry.”
Bertram knew that his brother was correct; there was only one choice to make. He found himself cursing the day his only female child was born. At that moment, something between them changed.
“Then I shall release him,” he said. “But I shall also say this; there will be no marriage. I will never again hear the name Garren le Mon and if I ever see him again, I will kill him. Make no mistake. My mercy is given only once.”
Derica was not surprised. Her terms had been accepted; now her father was extending his own. It was a compromise of the greatest proportion, but Derica considered it a small price to pay for Garren’s life.
“As you say,” she whispered.
She kept the sword against her stomach as she watched Hoyt unlatch the shackles around Garren’s wrists and ankles.
It was sorry to say that she didn’t trust her family, but she did not.
She had lived with them too long and knew too well of their ways.
She had to maintain the threat even though, deep down, she would not have done it.
It was bluff that, with the mere thought of her death, had worked against her father. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
“Sir Garren is free to go to the stables and collect his horse,” she said pointedly to the men around her. “He will not be touched.”
The younger men grumbled, kicked at the ground, but dare not dispute her. The older men glared. Only Hoyt stood there, with no discernible expression, but the message was obvious; his support was with Derica and, subsequently, with Garren. The tides of the de Rosa household were shifting.
Garren rubbed his wrists. Hoyt was standing next to him and their eyes met, silent words of understanding passing between them; Hoyt had seen Garren tend Derica and had seen the tenderness in the man’s eyes.
It was more than courtesy or infatuation; there was genuine emotion there.
Whatever his brothers were cooking up now against Garren was not only detrimental to Derica, but to them all.
Walls were being built with little hope of ever being torn down again.
Garren turned to Derica. “I will not leave you here.”
Derica could feel her anguish welling. “I cannot go with you. Be fortunate that you leave with your life.”
He was going to argue with her but thought better of it; surrounded by the de Rosa clan, she had a point. He was indeed fortunate to be leaving with his life. But in his estimation, it wasn’t over. Not as long as there was breath left in his body.
“Then the last time I see you will not be with a sword against your gut,” he said softly. “Take it away and let me see you one more time the way you were meant to be.”
That was all it took for Derica to throw down the sword. She wanted to run to him and throw herself in his arms, but she dared not. It might set her father off and she had no way of knowing. They gazed at each other, a thousand unspoken words between them.
“You haven’t asked me if it is true,” Garren said.
“If what is true?”
“If I am a spy.”
She shrugged weakly. “That is because it doesn’t matter.
You are Sir Garren le Mon of Anglecynn and Ceri, a man who came to me with kindness and compassion such as I have never known.
That is who you are to me.” She could read the longing in his eyes and her heart was broken.
“Now, go. Please. While there is still time.”
“I shall not forget you, lady.”
“Nor I, you.”
His expression said everything that his lips could not. Derica watched him walk from the cell, listening to his boots until they faded away. Her father, uncles, brothers stood there, unable to move, unwilling to say anything. Everyone stood in a dark, brooding mass.
“Derica,” Daniel said softly. “You must understand that Father was only doing what he thought he had to. To protect you.”
Derica held up a hand to him, a gesture to be silent.
She was not prepared to speak to any of them at the moment, not even the eldest brother who seemed to go against the grain of the de Rosa personality traits.
Now, she simply wanted to get away from all of those who had turned her once-happy future into a nightmare in a matter of hours.
When enough time had passed, she wandered from the vault and into the sunshine.
Garren had long since passed through the gates.
She stood there, in the middle of Framlingham’s massive ward, watching the green countryside beyond the gates as if expecting him to reappear any moment.
She was beyond tears, beyond exhaustion, and every fiber of her being cried for the future she would never have.
It was difficult to comprehend what this short week in her life had brought to her. Nothing seemed worth the living any longer.