Page 45 of The Knight's Pledge
Kit Katey joined father and son, tentatively laying her slender hand on Gorman’s wide back and allowing Rolf to take her up in a one-armed embrace.
Winnie slid her arm around James Rose’s slender waist. Chumley laid a hand on Bob’s shoulder. Gilboe crossed himself, his eyes closed and his head lowered, Dana mimicking his pose.
Lucan felt someone take hold of his hand. He looked down and Effie was pulling him back toward the door.
“Come on,” she said quietly.
Back in the street, Effie led him away from the market center and toward the sloping dirt road that curved toward the river.
“You’re wondering what that was about, I suppose.”
“I am,” Lucan said. “Rolf was to stay be—”
“Gorman told me just this morning that I was not giving you enough credit,” Effie interrupted. “So I will tell you. But I’m warning you now.” She came to stop at a crossroads where a narrower, dirt track intersected the main pike. The wind blew the tendrils of her hair loose from her plait and the late, low afternoon sunlight burnished her skin with a cold glow.
“If I should tell anyone, you’ll kill me?”Lucan grinned.
Effie did not answer his attempt at lightheartedness. Her face was solemn, without trace of anger or outrage.
“Elsmire Tower burned last night.”
Lucan stilled, unable to even blink as her gray gaze bored into his eyes.She continued.
“Rolf led those left behind at the Warren in burning it to the ground after he knew we would have had plenty of time to reach the White Swan.”
“Why?” Lucanasked at last.
“You know the story of Rolf’s son, supposedly run away or dead many years ago after being accused of theft.”
Lucan nodded.
“Gorman hadn’t run away. He was taken. To Elsmire Tower. Adolphus Paget kept him prisoner for more than five years.”
Confusion seized Lucan’s brains. The frown seemed to freeze the flesh of his face. “What? That’s absur—” Lucan stopped mid-sentence. That day in the wood where the family had ambushed him and Padraig Boyd, the day Effie Annesley had shot him in the foot, the day Adolphus Paget had been killed, blooming once more to fuzzy life in his mind.
Gorman had looked down upon the man as he lay dying. “Were I you, I’d be cautious throwing my lot in with the likes of this innocent.” He’d nudged Adolphus Paget’s shoulder roughly with the toe of his boot. “His riches are made from the sale of slaves. Young slaves. Girls, stolen away. Lads, as well. Isn’t that so, Adolphus?” He’d crouched down suddenly so as to look into the nobleman’s anguished expression, upside-down to him.
Effie continued over Lucan’s pain-filled recollections. “Paget used Gorman as bait on his travels, to lure other victims into his clutches, to blackmail uncooperative nobles into keeping their mouths shut. He threatened Gorman by telling him that if he tried to escape or send word to his father, he would have Vaughn Hargrave kill Rolf.”
Lucan’s mind was reeling. “HowdidGormanescape, then?”
“Gale,” Effie said. “He was the cook at Elsmire years ago. He grew suspicious at the activities of Paget and Vaughn Hargrave and although he had no power to do anything to stop them, he refused to turn a blind eye to the suffering. He and Mari took Gorman and a few other children that night, straight after their supper, from beneath Paget’s very nose.”
“Paget didn’t sound the alarm?”
“How could he have?” Effie asked. “All of the children Gale and Mari took with them had been abducted by Paget or his deviant followers. As far as anyone outside the hold knew, Elsmire had only lost a pair of servants. They crossed into Scotland for safety, and Gale built the White Swan.”
“Gorman eventually told them about his father, Rolf, at Darlyrede,”Lucan guessed.
“Yes. It took months of planning to get a message to Rolf to come when next Hargrave went on one of his many trips. They didn’t dare write who it was from, or the reason behind the trip. It’s a miracle Rolf came at all. Perhaps somewhere in his heart, he suspected that his son was still alive.”
“But why didn’t Rolf then expose both Hargrave and Paget?” Lucan asked.
“You still don’t get it, Lucan,” Effie said, her voice strained. “Tell me, who would havebelieved him?”
Lucan stared at Effie for a long moment, trying to come up with an argument in his head. But a hard knot formed in his stomach as Lucan realized Effie was right—no one would have believed such an outrageous accusation about two of the richest, most powerful noblemen in the north of England. Rolf would have lost any means to secure another position. No livelihood, probably deemed a liar or an extortionist. He likely would have spent the rest of his poor, miserable life with a price on his head, while affairs carried on at Elsmire Towerand Darlyrede.
Effie turned back toward the inn, and Lucan followed her. He could do nothing else, rendered completely powerless by the tale she was telling him.
