Page 207 of Historical Hotties
“I repeat my question; what do you intend to do?”
“Ride to London and settle this once and for all.”
At his side, Carington came alive. “No, English,” she tugged on him in a panic. “Ye cannot go. The king will kill ye!”
Massimo, too, put a hand on Creed’s arm, his pale face intent. “She is correct; the king only wants to make an example out of you. The man is vile, petulant and evil. You cannot become a martyr. You cannot let him win.”
There was something in the way that the priest said the last sentence that made Creed look strangely at him. There was agood amount of power behind the emphasis on the word. There was almost anger behind it.
“Win?” he repeated. “This is not a game to be won or lost. What I do, I do to save my friends who have been protecting me for well over a year. It should have never gone this far and I blame myself and my distorted sense of self-preservation. Everyone was trying to hide me or help me flee, but I should have stood my ground and faced the charge like a man. Perhaps I was indeed a coward to run.”
At his side, Carington was weeping softly again. Galen, Burle, Stanton, Richard and Denys had all heard the exchange. They began to move closer, no longer able to remain bystanders to what Creed’s apparent intentions were. The man that they had been harboring and protecting for months was now on the verge of disrupting all they had tried to do for him.
“The priest is right, Creed,” Denys insisted weakly. “The king will only make an example out of you.”
Creed swung on him. “You came all the way to Prudhoe and threatened my wife because you wanted to take me back as your prisoner,” he said pointedly. “And now you change your mind when I am set to comply? This makes no sense.”
Denys was unsure how to reply. He lifted his shoulders wearily. “As I said, I felt I had little choice,” he said quietly. “But perhaps… perhaps I am hoping you will come up with an alternate solution. Truth be told, I do not want to arrest you. But I do not want to see my wife held captive, either. If there was only an option to allow both of us what we wish I would gladly take it. I have prayed to God since this madness began for the wisdom to end it but I cannot think of anything; the only option, in fact, seems to be to give the king what he wants. He will accept nothing less.”
Creed stared at him, hearing Carington weeping softly and taking a moment to touch her cheek gently to quiet her. Helooked around to the faces surrounding him, men that were ready and willing to die or kill on his behalf. Men who had always protected him. He had to end this; he knew that. It all started with him and it would end with him. As he wracked his brain for an answer, an idea slowly began to occur.
“The king wants me dead or alive,” he muttered thoughtfully.
De La Londe, Richard and Galen were the closest to him. The earl nodded firmly. “If you go to him alive, he will kill you in the end,” he said quietly, eyeing Carington as he did so. “You know this.”
Creed nodded, thinking of his brother and what Ryton would say to all of this. The man always had an answer. But Ryton was dead at the hands of Jory and there was no answer to be found.…
Or was there?
Creed looked at the earl. “If the king is going to kill me regardless, then perhaps… perhaps he would be satisfied if I was killed in the attempt to capture me. Perhaps he would be satisfied to be presented with my body.”
Richard’s brow furrowed. “Your body?” he repeated. “What are you talking about?”
Creed’s mind was working furiously as he looked at Denys. “If you were to bring a body back and tell the king that it was me, do you think he would be satisfied?”
De La Londe scratched his head. “He knows you on sight. He will want to see the body and he will know right away if it is not you.”
Creed searched for a solution to that issue. “But what if the body was damaged somehow? Perhaps the face was obliterated. It could easily happen in a sword fight, for example, if I were to resist you.”
“Or it could have happened in the battle at Hexham.” They all turned to look at Galen as the man stepped forward. He wasfollowing Creed’s train of thought and took it a step further. “We lost many men in that battle, including your brother.”
Creed’s eyes narrowed as he tried to follow Galen’s line of thought. “What are you saying?”
Galen cleared his throat softly, his gaze moving between Creed and the earl. “We have many bodies from that battle,” he said quietly. “Suppose we produce one and send it on to London with de La Londe. It would be decayed beyond recognition and we would tell the king that it was you.”
Richard was the first to respond to the idea. “It could work,” he replied hopefully. “Yet we would have to find a man of Creed’s size and hair color. Do we know of any?”
Everyone was busy scratching their head in thought or mulling over a potential subject when Creed’s quiet voice suddenly filled the air.
“Jory,” he muttered.
The earl looked at him as if he could not believe his ears. “D’Eneas?”
Creed sighed faintly and looked at his wife, who was very much interested in the conversation now that it meant her husband was not going to turn himself over to the king. He smiled weakly at her and looked back at the earl.
“Aye; Jory,” he nodded, thinking of the decaying corpse now buried in Prudhoe’s cathedral because Baron Hawthorn, upon learning the circumstances of his son’s death, did not want the body returned to him. “Although I am twice his size, when a man’s body has decomposed over the months, it is difficult to know just how big, or small, he truly was. But our hair is the same color. If I was killed at Hexham those months ago, then it is possible that Jory’s body could pass for me.”
Richard was interested and doubtful at the same time. “But his face… the king would recognize the features as not yours.”
