Both Bronwyn and Judith pleaded for the easiest way to rescue the people from the tower.
In the end, it was Gavin, as the oldest, who made the decision. The duke and five of his guard were allowed to ride away after all the gates had been ordered opened.
Amid protests, the women were ordered to stay behind while the three brothers, Roger and a dozen cousins rode into the duke’s crumbling fortress.
Either the occupants didn’t know—or didn’t care—that they were under attack, or perhaps, as Stephen suggested, it was a common occurrence. They did not rouse themselves from their drunken stupors. Men and women sprawled about the floors and across benches.
Cautiously, swords drawn, the men stepped between the bodies and searched for the stairs Bronwyn and Judith had told them of.
At the top of the stairs the three brothers put their shoulders to a locked door that opened to the room containing the cells.
“Here!” Roger said, grabbing a key from the wall and unlocking the heavy wooden door.
They were greeted by Miles, looking calm and pleased with himself, an arm around each woman.
Alyx ran, leaped into Raine’s arms where he held her very close, his eyes moist as he buried his face in her neck. “Every time you get near your sisters-in-law,” he began, “you do something like this. From now on—”
With a laugh, Alyx kissed him to silence.
Elizabeth left Miles’s arms and went to Roger, caressed his cheek, touched his bloody arm. “Thank you,” she whispered. She turned to Gavin, their eyes meeting, and she nodded curtly to him. She couldn’t forget the insults he’d paid her.
Gavin, with a grin that softened his sharp features, opened his arms to her. “Could you and I start again, Elizabeth?” he asked quietly.
Elizabeth went to him, hugged him and when Bronwyn and Judith arrived, more hugs and kisses were exchanged.
Miles’s words broke the spell of happy reunion. With eyes locked with Roger’s, he said, “Shall we go?”
At Roger’s curt nod, Miles took a sword from the hand of a young cousin.
“Now’s not the time for a fight,” Stephen began but quieted at Miles’s look.
“Chatworth has helped me. Now I go with him.”
“With him?” Raine exploded. “Have you forgotten that he killed Mary?”
Miles didn’t answer but left the room behind Roger.
“Raine,” Alyx said in her softest voice. “Miles is wounded and so is Roger and I’m sure they’re going after this woman Roger wants.”
“Christiana!” Elizabeth said, coming out of her stunned state. She’d had no idea where her brother and husband were going. “Judith, Bronwyn.” She turned.
Without hesitation, all four women started for the door.
Without a word, in unison, the men caught their wives about their waists, Raine catching both Alyx and Elizabeth, and carried them to the cell where they promptly locked them inside. For just a moment the men blinked at both the variety and the virility of the curses coming from the women. Judith intoned from the Bible, Bronwyn in Gaelic, Elizabeth used a soldier’s language. And Alyx! Alyx used her magnificent voice to shake the stones.
The men grinned triumphantly at each other, motioned to their young cousins to follow and left the room.
“I never thought I’d see the day I’d help a Chatworth,” Raine muttered, but stopped when he heard the clash of steel.
Six guards, awake, alert, were guarding the room that held Christiana, and they attacked Roger and Miles on sight.
Miles’s side wound opened instantly as he ran a sword through one guard, stepped over the fallen body and went for two more men. Roger’s sword was knocked from his left hand, he tripped over the body of the man Miles’d killed, fell, grabbed the sword in his right hand, came up and killed the man looming over him. His arm wound tore open.
As another man came at Roger, he raised his wounded arm helplessly. But as the guard’s sword neared Roger’s belly, the guard fell forward, dead. Roger rolled away in time to see Raine pull his sword out of the dead man’s back.
The three brothers welded together to protect Roger and Miles and quickly dispatched the remaining guards. They wiped their swords on the nearby bed-hangings.
It was Raine who offered his hand to Roger and for a moment Chatworth only looked at it as he would an offer of friendliness from a deadly serpent. With eyes wide in speculation, Roger accepted the offer and allowed Raine to help him stand amidst the fallen bodies. Their eyes locked for just seconds before Roger went to the bed and pulled back the hangings.