Chapter 13 #2
Ruark stood behind her, his eyes hard on her father.
Dressed as he was in leather breeches, white shirt beneath a leather jack clasped shut with a heavy buckle, Ruark looked far more disreputable than her father, and infinitely more dangerous in his boots and spurs and a sword belt fastened at his waist. She almost leaned against him, even dared to touch the fold of his sleeve before she stiffened herself to stand alone.
Rose had an image of the two men facing each other in much the same way across the bows of their ships. Whatever this meeting was today, it was personal between them.
“You will abide by our agreement, Hereford,” Ruark said. “You have seen her as we agreed. Do you confirm her identity?”
Her father stepped around the table only to be stopped as a guard dropped the end of a pike in his path.
He laughed though his eyes bristled with umbrage. “Surely I am no threat, Roxburghe.” Obviously, for the benefit of those standing around them, he spread his arms. “I am unarmed. As are my men.”
“Aye.” Ruark’s smile was all teeth. “But not the three hundred you have awaiting your return outside the walls of this abbey. Or did you think you need such a force against forty men?”
The comment stirred the men to laughter.
“For it will take a siege to retrieve what is left of you should you break your word, Hereford. Answer my question.”
Her father’s gray eyes lingered on her and, for a moment, something inside her responded. Then his gaze shuttered as his attention moved to the hand resting possessively on her upper arm then to the man standing behind her. “You are more priceless than you know, Roselyn.”
“Then you do not deny her?” Ruark asked impatiently.
“Nay, I do not.”
Voices rose to a murmur around her.
Until this moment, she didn’t know how much those simple words would affect her. No one had ever publicly acknowledged her existence.
She felt shaky, for as a part of her life had been returned to her, another part was now gone forever.
“Am I allowed to approach my daughter?” Hereford demanded. “Or will your man run me through?”
Ruark looked down at her, a question in his eyes. An infinitesimal nod signaled the guard to allow Hereford to pass.
Her father walked to where she stood but not so close that he could touch her or she him.
Only slightly taller than she was, he was still a big man, remarkably fit for a man of fifty years.
Remarkably ruthless, and she dared not forget it.
She was not a fool to think he had ever cared anything about her.
He wanted her ancestral home. He wanted her Kirkland Park.
She had accepted long ago that it would be the price of her freedom.
And now he would abide by his agreement and grant it.
“Do you remember your mother?” he quietly asked.
“Nay, I do not.”
“You are more beautiful even than she was,” he said. “Beauty is a curse to women and a bane to men. Is it not, Roxburghe?” There was something sinister in his tone as he voiced the query. “Your mother was also a whore, Roselyn,” Hereford said. “It appears her daughter is of the same ilk.”
Ruark had gone stiff behind her. “Apologize, Hereford.”
“Or you will do what? Defend the honor of my Sassenach daughter?” He laughed, his eyes like daggers as they pierced Rose through the heart.
“Do you want to know the last words your mother ever said to me as I went off to serve my king and my country? She hoped God would have the foresight to send me to the bottom of the sea. I see a certain irony in the fact that it was she who was ultimately sent to die in the cold, black depths of hell. Irony and justice.”
He looked past her. “And you, Tucker . . . is this what you think I promised you when I let you keep her? A happy ending?”
Friar Tucker stood in the doorway, his hands folded in front of him. “Tucker! Lover to my beloved wife. Man of God. The man who swore on his life to the world that my daughter had boarded that ship with my wife. Does she know your own part played in this melodrama?”
Friar Tucker did not defend himself. Rose met Tucker’s gaze in confused accusation.
Her mother’s lover? His own part?
“Enough!” Ruark said, handing Rose back to Colum, who stood behind them, and she stumbled on the uneven stone floor. “Our agreement was that you would see her, and then let her go. You do not need her to get what you want. Tucker has agreed to our terms. This interview is over.”
“This interview has only just begun,” Hereford shouted above the growing din. “And what I have to say is best done in public for all to hear so there will be no mistaking what passed this day.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “I would have you answer one question, daughter. I shall even phrase it for your comprehension. Did Roxburghe have carnal knowledge of you while you were in his care?”
With her color rising, she shook her head. She didn’t understand what was happening. Her gaze sought Ruark’s.
“Answer the question, Rose,” Ruark said. “ ’Tis not your head he wants served to him this day. ’Tis mine. The consequences are mine to bear.”
Even if those consequences entailed an accusation from her father of rape? Such a public indictment coming from the lips of the English warden himself was a dangerous charge, even for a Scottish peer. “Nay, they are not yours, Ruark.”
She faced her sire. “You are mad if you think to provoke a fight this day over honor. I am your daughter . . . I have no honor in which to defend. Lord Roxburghe treated me with more kindness and respect than ever shown by you.”
“Did he fuck you, Roselyn?”
She gasped at the man’s crudity. “How dare you!”
Beside her, Colum’s hand went to his sword. Ruark stopped him with a hand on his. “Answer the question, Rose,” Ruark said.
“These things are easily discerned by an examination,” Hereford said. “You can answer the truth now or bear it out an hour from now. I have a physician with me . . .”
Rose’s gaze flung to the short, stubby man standing behind her father. He wore a priest’s robe, but she would wager her soul he was no priest. Her thoughts swerved dizzily through her options. What options? her mind screamed.
“You . . . you would not dare have a man touch me in that way!”
“I bear the consequences of my actions, Hereford.” Ruark said. “Now let her go.”
Rose stepped in front of Ruark. “He did nothing without my consent,” she said. “Nothing!”
Hereford laughed. “Consent? You foolish girl. The law does not give you the right to consent to anything.”
Her father raised both brows and confronted Ruark darkly.
“Aye, you will bear the consequences, Roxburghe. You will marry her, and take a Sassenach bride home to your precious clan, and if you want to see your brother alive, you will give me every damn thing I ask for. Including Kirkland Park and the Black Dragon for your debt to me that remains unpaid.”
The room erupted. All around them, the shouting escalated.
Rose whirled and clutched her hands in Ruark’s shirt, standing as if she was a wall between him and her father.
“Nay!” She gave him a shake. “You must refuse. I beg of you. Refuse. If he wants Kirkland Park, he will take the trade. Ruark . . . I will go with him. Please,” she whispered in desperation. “I will not let you do this.”
“Cunning, Hereford,” Ruark said. “Bloody fooking clever.”
“Ruark . . . please,” she whispered, holding herself against him.
He studied her upturned face. “Go back to your chambers, Rose.”
Then he nodded to someone behind her, and a hand came to her elbow. Colum stood beside her. “Come, my lady.”
“Nay.” Furious, she turned to her father.
She had no idea what would happen should she not agree to this foolishness, she certainly knew what might if she did.
“You will free Lord Roxburghe’s brother or I swear I will throw myself off the tower in this place and dash myself on the cobbles.
If I die before the age of twenty-one, everything I have goes to the church.
Including Kirkland Park. You will get nothing! ”
Clap. Clap Clap. Hereford brought his hands together. “Capital show, my dear. Do you hear that, Roxburghe? She would rather die than wed you. Aye, she has my blood in her veins.”
The hiss of Sheffield steel against metal silenced the room as Rose drew Colum’s sword from its sheath and with one violent move closed the distance between the blade tip and her father’s throat.
He fell backward against the table, momentarily blinded by shock and an overconfidence that failed to allow him to perceive the danger to him.
Rose tightened her grip on the hilt, her palms sweaty as she held the weight of the sword.
“Do not tempt me, Father. I care very little about you. Even less than what might happen to me should I run you through.”
A hint of color shaded his ruddy face to a darker hue and his eyes narrowed to slits. “I swear you will pay for this, Roselyn.”
“Pay? With what? Something has to matter to me first. You have seen well and good to strip me of all that was ever important.”
“Tell me the life of every man in this room does not matter to you then? For if anything happens to me . . .”
The sword began to grow heavy in her hand. She had lost the momentum of an attack that came with surprise, and she knew if he fought her, he could escape before she did too much damage. Still, even a little blood would make a terrible mess of his fine clothes.
Ruark laid his palm against the blade. “Not this way, Rose. He is here under a flag of truce.”
Tears blurred her eyes. “Men speak such fine words of honor,” she said, “when it suits their interests to do so. Your truce. Not mine.”
“Wanting to kill is not the same as killing,” he said softly.
“I promise you nothing said today is worth the price you will pay for that deed. And I am not speaking of the consequences that will befall every man here. There is not a man who does not wish Hereford dead and who would not defend your actions.”
She swallowed against the increasing tightness in her throat. Ruark cupped his palm over her face, forcing her to look at him. His eyes embraced hers. “You will have to trust that I can take care of us both.”
She saw him through a blur of tears. A hand at her elbow tugged her. “Come,” Friar Tucker urged. “Let us be gone from here, Rose.”
Ruark’s eyes told her in more than words to trust him. She did trust him. He was the only man in her life who had ever truly been honest with her.
Finally, she lowered the sword and returned it to Colum.
Not a man around her moved. Her eyes passed over one bearded countenance, then another.
A pin dropped could have been heard in the room.
Without a word, Rose strode from the hall, leaving Friar Tucker and Colum behind.
Once in the corridor, she lifted her skirts and ran.
She didn’t stop until she reached her chambers, slammed shut the door and slid the bolt home.