“Why have you brought me here?” she asked in a hoarse voice. She recognized him immediately from his visit to Langumont.
As of yet, she had not turned her attention from Bon de Savrille, and had not looked closely at the crowd of gawking men. Instead, though she was overwhelmed by fear, she forced herself to hold the dark gaze of the bearded man standing before
her.
“My lady, I have brought you here to do you the honor of making you mistress of Breakston,” Bon de Savrille told her as he reached for her hand.
But he froze, pushing back a thick lock of hair to look at what must be a large, purplish bruise on her left cheek.
He whirled on Berkle, the man who’d been the leader of the group who’d abducted her. “You have allowed my wife to be ill used!” de Savrille screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “You were not to harm a hair on her head were my very words to you, you low lying, cat sucking whoreson! Throw him in the dungeon,” he screamed at a nearby guard.
A violently protesting Berkle was dragged from the hall, and immediately after issuing that command, a calmer Lord de Savrille returned his attention to Maris. He made a surprisingly subservient bow. “I pray you will accept my apologies, my lady, for your abuse at the hands of my loyal knights. ” He leered at Maris, leaning forward to capture one of her hands in his and raising it to his mouth for a damp kiss.
Maris had been struggling to focus, to make sense of her predicament at the same time as keeping her composure.
Just as her thoughts began to separate and to clear, her gaze swept the group of men surrounding her. They rested on a face that was familiar, but out of place…and as the realization that Sir Dirick de Arlande stood in the crowd with her enemy, the world went blank.
She slid to the floor in the first swoon of her life.
“My lord!” exclaimed Ernest of the hillock as he was ushered to the dais in the great hall. Merle, along with his guests and wife, was breaking his fast after attending mass that morning.
“My lord Merle,” began Gustave, who approached with the horrified serf, “Ernest begs an audience. ”
Ernest fairly trod upon the seneschal in his excitement to reach his lord’s table. Executing a brief, but respectful bow, he stammered in his guttural English that he’d found not only the body of Lady Maris’s maidservant, Verna, but also his lady’s brilliant blue cloak crumpled in the snow.
“What say you?” Merle bellowed, standing in his alarm. His words, too, were in English, and thus the meaning was lost upon the other nobility at the high table.
“Aye, my lord, ’twas a fright to me, my lord, whenst I came upon the bloodied, ravaged body of Verna of Langumont. Her’s not breathing or moving and sure as I stand, the wench is dead. And my lady Maris,” his eyes grew round, “’twas nawt sign of her’n but for her cloak, ’round the bend from mine own home. ”
“Gustave, send for the guards of last eve,” Merle roared in French to the hovering seneschal.
“My lord, what is it?” cried Allegra, standing with a horror-stricken look on her face. Victor and Michael d’Arcy had stopped eating as well.
“Know you where Maris is this morn?” asked Merle fiercely of his meal companions. “Have ye seen her yet this morrow?”
They each in turn shook their heads. Allegra’s eyes had grown wide and her face pale as the snow beyond.
The guards from the watch of the night before rushed into the hall, startled out of their sleep, half dressed and with mussed hair.
“My lord,” bowed the captain of the night watch. “What is amiss?”
“Did my daughter leave in the company of her maidservant during your watch?” Merle fired the question before the man rose from his bow.
“Aye, my lord, she said on as she were called to the side of Ernest of the hillock,” explained the captain. “He was gravely injured. ” His eyes swiveled to Ernest and realization washed over his face. He looked back at his lord, “She is gone missing?”
“Aye,” said Merle. Then, his voice rising in supplication, he bellowed, “Has no one seen my daughter?”
Silence greeted him.
“Á Langumont!” he cried, standing and nearly toppling the large table in his haste. “We must search while the trail of her abductors is fresh! Á moi!”
“My lord husband,” Allegra’s voice wavered, barely heard above the roar of men calling to arms. “My lord!”
“I shall return her to you safely, fear not,” Merle told his wife, worry creasing his face even as he gave orders to his men.
“But my lord, I—I believe I may know whence she has been taken. ” Allegra plucked at the sleeve of his tunic. “’Tis my—my brother—my half brother, Bon de Savrille. ”
She was hardly able to choke out the words. Merle froze and turned, giving her his full attention as she stammered a wary description of his visit, including his threat to have Maris to wive.