Epilogue #2
Andressa had regained what was rightfully hers without a drop of blood being shed, but the caveat was that it became a military installation, and a powerful one.
All three children had been born here, including Danae, who had been born only six weeks after the incident at St. Blitha.
Maxton had no sooner married the woman and return her to her ancestral home when she gave birth in the middle of the night, quite quickly and with very little trouble, to a small but healthy baby girl.
Maxton had immediately been in love.
It hadn’t mattered that Danae Eleanor of Loxbeare hadn’t been his biological daughter. He couldn’t have loved her more if she had been. All that mattered was that she was healthy, as was her mother, and Maxton and Andressa embarked on a new marriage with a new baby.
It was everything either of them could have hoped for.
Even now, as Maxton held two more daughters in his arms, he thought quite possibly that no man had ever been happier or more content. Life was good, and everything was wonderful, but as he stood there and reflected on his good fortune, he noticed a missive in Cullen’s hand.
“What did you bring?” he asked the man. “Did a rider come?”
Cullen nodded. “You did not hear the sentries?”
Maxton cleared his throat softly, glancing at his wife, who was fighting off a grin. “Nay,” he said. “I was… occupied.”
Cullen smirked as he broke the seal on the parchment. “It’s from The Marshal,” he said, carefully unfolding it. His gaze fell on the words written and, quickly, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “It seems that The Marshal is raising an army to go to Ireland.”
The good mood of the chamber began to fade as Maxton knew what that meant – that William was asking for his sword and his support. He didn’t even have to hear the words; he just knew. He looked at the girls in his arms, feeling sad as if already missing them, before replying.
“When?” he asked simply.
“Soon,” Cullen said. “He goes on to say that both de Lohr brothers are part of his army, and since Kevin de Lara serves David, he will be involved. So is Gart. But isn’t Gart somewhere in Devon now?”
Maxton nodded. “Dunster Castle,” he said. “He has a new wife and family now.”
Cullen turned back to the missive. “Savernake has committed men, which means Dash will be going,” he said. “So has de Winter. That means Bric will be returning to the land of his birth to fight other Irishmen.”
Maxton thought on the fiery Irishman, someone he’d come to know well over the past few years. “Bric’s loyalty is unquestionably to de Winter even though his heart is in the land of his birth,” he said. “This will be a difficult campaign for him. What else does it say?”
Cullen continued reading down at the bottom. “Sherry and Achilles serve William directly, so they shall be commanding The Marshal’s armies,” he said. “But Kress isn’t mentioned.”
“That is because William is sending Kress into Wales for an important diplomatic mission,” he said. “A marriage alliance, I believe.”
“Kress is an excellent diplomat.”
“Aye, he is,” Maxton agreed. “Is that all it says?”
Cullen shook his head. “He asks for men you can spare to send to Ireland,” he said. Then he lowered the missive. “I would like to go, Max.”
Maxton nodded. “You will, as will I,” he said, glancing at his wife to see that, already, she wasn’t happy about this in the least. He set the girls to their feet, ushering them towards their mother. “I must speak with Cullen about this. Please take the girls with you when you go.”
He kissed Andressa on the cheek, a gentle invitation for her to leave so the men could speak privately. Andressa picked up the weepy Ceri, but she didn’t leave right away. She was fixed on her husband.
“Max,” she said reproachfully. “Last year, you spent almost nine months in France for William. You promised you would never be gone overly long again.”
He kissed her again, gently turning her towards the door. “And I will keep that promise,” he said. “But I cannot ignore William’s summons. You know that. Let me speak with Cullen about it and I will talk to you later.”
Grossly displeased, Andressa did as she was told, taking the three little girls out of the chamber.
They didn’t want to go, which made it difficult, and Maxton could hear them whining and complaining all the way down the stairs to the floor below.
He heard Andressa, trying to lure them away with talk of puppies.
That usually worked. When the sounds faded, he finally turned to Cullen, who was looking at him with a grin on his face. Maxton frowned.
“What now?” he demanded. “Why do you look at me like that?”
Cullen laughed softly. “Because you don’t want to be away from those women as much as they don’t want you to be away from them,” he said. “Even now, you miss your children, Max. I will be honest – I’ve never seen such a change in a man.”
Maxton’s frown turned into an ironic smirk of sorts. Ignoring the man’s statement, he took the missive from Cullen and began to read through it.
“What I did not tell you was that the foray into Wales will involve me, Sherry, and Achilles also,” he said quietly. “Andie does not know that yet.”
“When will you tell her?”
“When I leave.”
Cullen knew that was the wise thing to do, considering how attached Maxton and Andressa were to one another. She never took his departures well.
“You will note on the missive that William would like us to convene with our army at Lioncross Abbey Castle, Chris de Lohr’s seat, in six months,” he said. “It is clear he wants to make the crossing to Ireland after the spring thaw. But I did not want to say all of that in front of your wife.”
Maxton was still reading the missive. “Six months will come before we realize it,” he said. “And I shall be in Wales with Kress for part of that time. Andie is going to be quite unhappy.”
Cullen knew that. He had the benefit of not having a wife and, in times like this, it was a good thing.
But over the course of the past few years, he’d had the privilege of watching Maxton and Andressa, and seeing the love they had for each other.
It had made him wonder if he was missing something.
More and more, he was thinking that he might be.
There were times when he wished he had a wife and children, too.
But not today. There was much on the horizon coming, something that a wife and children wouldn’t figure in to.
“When do you leave for Wales, then?” he asked. “And I am assuming you want me to remain here.”
Maxton nodded. “It will be sometime next month,” he said. “The last I heard, Kevin was supposed to accompany us since his father’s lands straddle the Marches. Kevin knows the area we are going to quite well.”
Cullen nodded as he absorbed the information. “And his brother?” he asked quietly, bringing up a rather delicate subject among their tightly-knight group. “What about Sean?”
“You know as much as I do about him.”
“But what has become of him, Max? I have heard such terrible things about the man.”
Maxton had, too. It was a sad subject for them all.
“I do not know what he has become,” he said after a moment.
“No one does. He entered into the king’s service and now has become the man’s henchman.
If John wants a woman, Sean kidnaps her and brings her to the king.
If John wants someone murdered, Sean will do it.
I do not judge the man when it comes to the abuse of men, for certainly I am in no position to judge him, but the stories of the women and children…
that is quite horrific. I have heard from David that Kevin will not even speak to his brother any longer because of it. ”
Cullen had heard the same thing. “Speaking of murder,” he ventured, “I also heard that it was Sean who was sent to find Richard’s bastard son, the one the Holy Father tried to place on John’s throne those years ago. Have you heard anything about that? Some say he murdered the boy.”
Maxton shook his head at the horrible reputation Sean de Lara now had, worse than anything the Executioner Knights had ever suffered.
At least their reputation had some rationale to it, acts committed during war and conflict for the most part, but Sean’s reputation had descended into madness.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for King John, and everyone knew it.
“Confidentially, I was told that he had a hand in Arthur of Brittany’s death,” Maxton said after a moment.
“No one can seem to locate either boy, in fact, though I believe Lothar has tried to find Richard’s bastard.
That’s what I heard, anyway. And he has given up.
It is as if both boys have simply vanished, with fates unknown. ”
“Both heirs to the throne, both missing and presumed killed by de Lara.”
“Exactly.”
Cullen pondered the darker rumors that had been flying about England for the past few years, many of them revolving around Sean. “They call him the Lord of the Shadows now,” he said. “The man has become part of John’s darkness.”
Maxton waved him off. “All men must choose their own paths and far be it from us to weigh and measure what those paths might be,” he said. “Sean de Lara is not my concern. My venture into Wales and Ireland is. How do you suppose my wife is going to accept any of this?”
Cullen scratched his head. “She is not,” he said flatly. “Mayhap send for your father to come and stay with her while you are away. He loves the woman and his granddaughters. Why not ask Magnus?”
Maxton thought on his father, a man he’d not spoken to in many years until his marriage to Andressa.
At her urging, they both went to Loxbeare Cross Castle to tell him of their marriage, and found an old and lonely old man who had been very surprised to see them.
His brother, Emmett, had been welcoming, and Magnus had been surprisingly welcoming also, especially when he saw that Maxton had married.
It had been a shock that his wayward son had finally taken a wife.
Much had been hashed out the day Maxton had arrived at his childhood home.
He remembered that day very well. He had spoken to his father about so many things, asking the old man why he’d never responded to his missives, only to be told that Magnus had been too overcome with sadness and despair at Maxton’s absence to do it.
He burned the missives, hoping that would ease his sorrow at a son who never wished to return home.
He thought if he ignored the issue, it would go away.
It didn’t.
Oddly enough, there was no disapproval for Maxton’s reputation.
In fact, Magnus had been proud of his son who had fought with Richard in The Levant, and who had returned to England and wed an heiress.
So many things had been discussed during that visit, and it was a relationship that was still being restored, even more so when Maxton was informed that his little sister, Lucy, had died in childbirth with her first child a few years before.
Maxton had wept deeply for the loss of his sister.
Which was why his own daughters were perhaps so precious to him, and to his father, too.
Magnus had traveled to Chalford Hill for the birth of his younger two granddaughters, and he came to visit them at least twice a year.
Maxton never thought he’d enjoy a good relationship with his father, ever, but time and understanding – and the addition of four women into his life – had changed all of that.
Life, as he knew it, had changed altogether.
“Mayhap I shall ask my father to come and stay with my family,” he finally said.
He began to hear the cries of his children wafting through the lancet window and when he went to peer from the window to the bailey below, he could see them playing with the friendly dogs that wandered the bailey.
They did so love the dogs, and the sight made him smile.
“In fact, I shall go ask my wife if she would like for my father to stay with her while I am away. Mayhap that will soften the blow of my departure.”
Cullen smiled wryly. “I doubt it. But best of luck.”
Maxton couldn’t disagree with him, but he had to try. With thoughts of his father on his mind, he quit the master’s chamber where they were, making his way out of the keep and heading out to the bailey where his children were rolling in the dirt with the dogs.
A more joyous thing to see, he could have never imagined.
As Maxton came upon his wife, who was standing there in a dress the color of wine, with beautiful embellishments around the elbows and wrists and neck, he took a moment simply to look at her.
He couldn’t remember when she hadn’t been part of him, and he of her.
For a man who had spent his life engaged in dark and dirty deeds, the fact that he’d found peace and love was something that still baffled him, and there wasn’t one day that he didn’t give thanks for all that he had, for the children that he had, and for the woman who was his entire reason for living.
For a man who had been wandering and searching his entire life, wondering if there was more to life than what he’d known, looking into Andressa’s sweet face told him everything he needed to know.
The Executioner Knight had found a love story for the ages.
Finally, he was home.
* THE END *