Chapter Twenty-One #2
It was a bracelet, its wooden beads carved inexpertly into crude renditions of little pomegranates.
Alys’s bracelet.
All the air left Piers’s body and his face raised slowly, looking for Judith Angwedd to be standing across the room, beaming in triumph. But she was truly gone.
“My lord,” a voice behind him called, but it seemed too far away, and Piers was not accustomed to people addressing him by that noble title.
I only ask that you realize that Bevan is not with me at the moment. You will be able to guess his company soon enough though. Only keep that in your thoughts before you would do anything foolish. You know how … spirited he can be.
“Lord Mallory,” the voice said again, and Piers turned. He knew his lips were slack, his eyes wild. At the man’s wary look, Piers closed his mouth.
“Sorry. Yes?”
“The king will indeed hear your plea on the morrow, along with your stepmother’s,” the keeper of the doors advised with a frown as he glanced down at the wooden beads dangling over Piers’s fist. “But I am to warn you that if you are playing about with something you are not lawfully entitled to, he is prepared to see you punished straightaway. He does not well tolerate having his time wasted.”
Piers nodded faintly. He barely comprehended what the man was saying to him.
Bevan had Alys. Piers recalled the fleshy boy who had gleefully tormented and tortured Piers after he’d lost his mother, when Piers had been too small and frightened to fight back.
And now the drunkard, who had once kicked a dog to death when it had dared to sniff at his boots.
Bevan, whom Piers suspected had raped more women than he’d ever spoken to, and who not even the most heartless lords in the land would accept as a husband for their daughters.
Piers knew nothing weaker than Bevan was safe in his presence.
And that man was now holding a delicate and innocent woman such as Alys in his evil and depraved clutches. Piers’s Alys. His wife.
“I understand,” Piers said and nodded again. He understood too well, perhaps. “My thanks.” Piers began to turn away, feeling as though he were lost in a thick fog the color of terror.
“My lord,” the man called Piers’s attention once more.
Piers half turned.
“Have you secured shelter for the night?” he asked in a lowered tone. The lion’s eyebrows were drawn together, and had Piers been in possession of his capacities, he might have seen the concern there.
“Ah … no. No, I’m afraid not. I’ve”—he cleared his throat—“I’ve only just arrived in the city.”
The lion-maned man seemed to think for a moment, debating something behind his golden eyes.
“My wife bears our first child even now. I do expect it will be some time before I see my court suite or my own bed.” He reached into a slit in his tunic and withdrew a key on a ribbon. He held it out to Piers.
Piers frowned and took it as if in a dream. If he could only think straight for one moment. “Forgive me, but—”
“Go above. Show the guard this key and tell him you have Lord Julian Griffin’s permission to pass the night in his rooms.”
Piers stared at the man for several moments. “Why are you doing this?”
Julian Griffin looked at Piers, and there was no ulterior motive in his eyes, no trickery. Only truth.
“Because I saw your boots,” he answered low. “And the little strand of beads you now hold was not in your possession only a moment ago. I believe you have a great battle before you.”
Piers nodded faintly. “I will one day repay you for your aid.”
“Good day, Lord Mallory,” Julian Griffin said dismissively and directed his eyes over Piers’s shoulder. “Good day to you, my lady. How can I be of service?”
Piers turned to see the frowning woman behind him, obviously impatient to speak with the keeper of the king’s court. Piers sidestepped out of the way, nearly stumbling. The woman swept past to take his place.
“Is there any time to spare today, Lord Julian? I fear my grandmother is—”
Piers dragged his feet back down the length of the receiving hall toward the wide stairs he’d seen when he’d arrived.
Somewhere, somewhere close, Alys was being held by a madman. And it was all Piers’s fault. Sybilla Foxe had not been the only spy tracking them after leaving Ira’s village, and Piers’s innocent beacon to alert Alys’s rescue had brought hell down upon her instead.
He looked to the ornate ceiling above his head, as if by concentrating he could discern Alys’s location amidst the warren of rooms stacked atop him.
Was she even being held in the king’s home, though?
Or an inn nearby? He did not know where or how to begin to search.
Should he tear the stones apart and still fail to locate her, should he raise alarm to the king’s guards—mayhap even the lion-maned Julian Griffin—Judith Angwedd would surely hear of it.
She would hear of it, and then Alys’s life would be forfeit.
He had but one recourse.
He would disavow his claim before the king.
Gillwick had just slipped out of his fingers, for good this time.
He would truly never have anything to offer Alys.
Nothing but her life, which was in his hands now.
And Piers was determined to move very slowly, act very carefully in the next several hours.
There would be death in London, but Piers would breathe his last before he allowed that death to be Alys’s.
He forced his feet to move him from the hall and climb the steps mechanically, the worn soles of his boots slapping marble. He jostled people he passed but he could not care. He did not see them.