Page 108 of The Saxon Lord's Unwanted Bride
She held her hands out, offering them up to be bound.
“What are you doing?” the king asked.
“The murderer you seek—the one who must be punished in my husband’s place...”
“Yes, yes,” he said, impatiently. “Who is it?”
“It was me.”
Chapter 28
“No! Eloise!” Harald let out a low wail. “Do not listen to her!”
Eloise kneeled beside her husband and placed a light hand on his cheek. Then she pressed her lips to his mouth, tears pricking her eyes as he flinched at the contact. Even so light a kiss was too much for his battered face.
“Forgive me Harald,” she whispered, “but I cannot let you suffer for something you didn’t do. I, and I alone, must bear the burden for my sin.”
“I’m the sinner, Eloise,” he whispered. “Let me do this—I know not how else I can atone.”
“If you wish to atone, then permit me to tell the truth,” she said. “I’ll never find peace knowing that your death was brought about by my failure to be honest.”
Tears swelled in Harald’s eyes. “I do not deserve you, Eloise,” he said. “I never did. Would that I had been slain at Hastings—then you would never have suffered at my hand.”
“If I might interject,” William’s stentorian voice boomed across the hall. “Iwould know the truth.”
Eloise turned to face the man who would soon condemn her to death.
“My lord,” Harald said, his voice growing stronger. “If my wife insists on telling the truth, I beg you grant her an audience in private, so that she might not be publicly shamed.”
“I’m not minded to grant favors to traitors,” William replied. He glanced at the queen, his lips twisting into a smile. “Perhaps we’ll have our entertainment after all.”
He addressed Eloise. “Woman, you will tell all,” he said, “but first, you must swear on the holy bones of the saints that you speak the truth.”
He gestured toward the guards.
“Fetch the priest.”
* * *
Eloise clutchedthe little box in her hands containing the sacred bones upon which she’d sworn an oath to relate the truth. Ignoring the derisive snorts of the men, she relived the day when Beauvisage had taken her by force as a child. Their crude laughter turned into whispers of horror, when she spoke of the events at Exeter leading up to Beauvisage’s death, describing every slash of the knife as she ripped his body apart in a bid to be free from him.
After she finished, William stood, body tense, anger burning in his eyes.
“If Beauvisage was as evil as you say, why was I never warned? Why did your father—my old friend Alain—wish to deceive me?”
“I begged papa to remain silent,” Eloise replied. “I wished to protect my family and…” she glanced around the hall, but in their eyes she was a ruined woman. Nothing she could say, now, would lower their opinion of her any further.
“…I also wished to protect the child I bore from the union.”
Murmurs circulated in the hall, increasing to a cacophony of voices. But what did shame matter, when she’d soon be put to death?
William raised a hand and the company grew silent.
“If he violated you as you say, then why did you not seek justice?”
If he violated you…
The king did not believe her.
