Page 2 of The Knight's Pledge
She scrambled to her feet and turned back toward the wood, running, stumbling; tears leaving hot, wet tracks on her cold cheeks.
She would die in the forest rather than subject herself to the supposed mercy of any nobility ever again. From hell, all of them. She would freeze, or starve, or be devoured by wild animals—she didn’t care anymore.
Yes, Euphemia Hargrave would die that very night—she must. But she vowed she would never, for all eternity, forget the pain Lucan Montaguehad caused her.
Chapter 1
January 1459
Steadport Hall
Northumberland, England
Lucan Montague stared at the rich draperies gathered into an intricate swirl over his head, the hills and valleys of the canopy touched by the eternal sunset of the blazing hearth fire to his left. The hues predicted nighttime, and indeed the sun had set over Northumberland hours and hours ago, yet Lucan’s throbbing foot and the memory of bright blue eyes would not allow his furrowed brow to smooth into slumber. The smell of smoke still burned in his nostrils despite several irrigations, and he wondered if his hands would ever be free from the black soot stains. He wondered if he’d everbeenfree of them, really. Hadn’t they been lurking just beneath the thinnest layer of his skin? Lurking like a phantom miasma, the demons from his past now returned…
It had been two days since Darlyrede House had burned; two days since his sister Iris had married Padraig Boyd before the shell of the ruined estate; two days since they’d come to sturdy Steadport Hall as guests of Lord and Lady Hood to recover and make their plans.
Two days since Lucan had slept.
Padraig and Iris were already gone off to London now, and Lucan should have accompanied them. Tavish and Lachlan would be arriving there for the meeting he had summoned them to long ago, and Lucan’s presence would be demanded. But Lucan was unwell. Perhaps more unwell than he dared even admit to himself.
His head pounded, and his foot throbbed where Euphemia Hargrave’s arrow had pierced his boot, pinning him to the forest floor that day what seemedyears ago now.
Nay, not Euphemia Hargrave, he reminded himself. She calls herself Effie now—Effie Annesley.
Lucan called her a criminal. A criminal whom he would report to the king when he made his disastrous testimony about the debacle of Darlyrede. Not only had Lucan lost the man he was charged with finding, one of England’s richest estates was now smoldering rubble and the nobles overseeing it—Vaughn and Caris Hargrave—were dead.
And Thomas Annesley, the man who’d been on the run from the Crown these past thirty years after being accused of killing his fiancée on the eve of their wedding, had a daughter. A daughter with eyes the color of the cornflowers that had carpeted the rolling hills between Castle Dare and Darlyrede House.
A daughter who had lived in the wood with a band of criminals forfifteen years.
A daughter who had shot Lucan through the foot.
Lucan would return to the king a failure. A disgrace to his station as a knight of the Royal Order of the Garter. He had no idea where Thomas Annesley was. Lucan had cost England a fortune and been laidup by awoman.
Lucan told himself he was only taking advantage of Lord Edwin Hood’s hospitality in order to recuperate and rest, but in reality, Lucan knew that he was hiding like the cowardly failure that he was. Thus, his being unable to sleep was perhaps justified.
He was thinking that perhaps he should simply own up to his new pusillanimous existence by retreating to France with his tail firmly between his legs when he heard the door to his borrowed chamber creak open in the dim light of the fire.
Lucan frowned and lifted his head from the cushions to peer down the length of his body, past the thick bedpost toward the door. It must be halfway to dawn—who could be creeping about the chambers at this hour?
A dark head poked into the room, the shielding door awash with reflected firelight at first shadowing the coloring and features of the face of his visitor with the blackest shadow. Then a thick-set body emerged to carefully close the door behind the intruder, and Lucan recognized the sturdy tunic, the dark red hair like sheep’s wool lying on the broad shoulders.
Lucan’s heretofore furrowed brow raised in surprise. “Rolf?”
Darlyrede’s steward flinched and turned immediately to face the bed. His already pale face was made the more so by the gloomy shadows beneath his hound-eyes, his dark red beard framing the man’s apparent distress.
“Sir Lucan,” Rolf said. “My apologies for disturbing you at such a late hour, but I fear it is most urgent.”
Lucan pushed himself to his elbows, his melancholy and self-pity vanishing. This was a very welcome distraction. “Is itIris? Padraig?”
“Nay, lord,” Rolf said as he crossed the floor and began to gather Lucan’s discarded clothing.
Lucan threw back the bedclothes at once and grasped his left calf to lift his injured foot and swing it over the bedside, where it’s throbbing increased.
Many thanks, Effie Annesley. You hag.
“Ulric?” He reached out his arms to slide them into the sleeves of his partially laced gambeson and then pulled away to shimmy into the quilted piece. “He’s to already be arrived in London.”
