Page 65 of The Knight's Pledge
Lucan couldn’t help his grin. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the thought that, had Dana answered him in such a fashion weeks ago, he would have bristled and sputtered and ranted denials. “That doesn’t answer my initial question.”
Dana gave a little wiggle on the bench. “Well, I suppose the only truthful answer I can give is yes. I was married at one time. Long ago, mind you.Ages. I was little morethan a child.”
Lucan waited, but Dana wasn’t forthcoming. “What happened? Were you widowed?”Just say ‘my husband’ or ‘my wife’…
“Oh, nothing so convenient as that, I’m afraid. I was jilted, if you must know and can believe it.”
“No,” Lucandenied gravely.
“Yes.” Dana looked smug, but only pressed pink lips together. “At least there were no children to contend with. Yourroll, Gilboe.”
Lucan sighed. From down the table a roar of laughter rose, and Lucan couldn’t help but glance that way again as he brought his tankard to his mouth. Effie had covered her face with both her palms as if in embarrassment, but her shoulders were shakingwith laughter.
Suddenly Thomas gained his feet and raised his tankard, waving it around at the otherwise empty common room. “Me own daughter, ladies and gents. Doona trifle with her.”
Gorman drew Effie to his side in a one-armed embrace.
Lucan felt wetness dribbling over his knuckles and he looked down to see ale spilling onto the table through the crack in his tankard beneath hiscrushing grip.
“And then!” Bob the Butcher’s Boy announced loudly before rising and, not content with merely standing as Thomas had, he stepped onto the bench, towering over the party. “The poor bastard was made to walk the whole way to Sheffield with his cock still in the—well, you know. No trousers at all! Only boots!”
“Served him right!” Thomascrowed happily.
Lucan wanted to know. He wanted to know the whole of the story they’d just told, he wanted to be included in the history, in the knowledge of their adventures and escapades. He wanted to know all the people they’d saved, all the criminals they’d outed or stolen from or sent to Sheffield with their cocks out.
But Lucan was still an outsider. An outsider who had hurt Effie Annesley today, he knew. He’d hurt her because she had hurt him first, suggesting he had simply overlooked that his parents were somehow of the same ilk as the Hargraves. Everyone in the group regarded him as privileged and oblivious to their cause. A man out for himself, who would only do the right thing when forced.
That wasn’t true. Was it?
Perhaps not, but he knew that he’d been wrong in the things that he’d said to her. Dead wrong.
He allowed himself to be drawn into three rounds of dice with Dana and Gilboe, deftly shifting his seat when Dana’s foot began rubbing up the inside of his calf. He lost each time, but bought the tankards with a smile and bit of a sense of reparation. These were good people. Strange people, true. But good. He recalled the faces of the women and girls in the slave traders’ wagon when they’d been rescued—their expressions as though they were experiencing a miracle. Lucan was starting to recognize a difference now between the law simple, and what was right and good, and it was the family from the Warren who wasteaching him.
It was Effie Annesley teaching him. Effie and her brothers. And her father, Thomas. Thomas Annesley, where the story began and where it would soon draw to an unknown conclusion that Lucan would not likely be part of.
“I’m done in,” Lucan said, no longer able to sit happy beneath the weight of his guilt and self-recriminations and the unknown future. The band didn’t seem wont to bring the drinking and merriment to a halt anytime soon, and in truth, Lucan wasn’t surprised; this wasn’t his first journey with them, after all. He stood from the bench and tossed a coin to the tabletop. “No match for the pair of you. Enjoy with my compliments.”
“What a gentleman,”Dana tittered.
“A valiant effort, Sir Lucan,” Gilboe praised sagely as he raked the coin into his hand. “No shame in a fair loss.”
Lucan shuffled from behind the table and walked toward the rear of the common room and the narrow door that hid the stairs to the short upper floor. The majority of the band were sleeping in the stable loft, but Lucan and Effie and Winnie would each share the two rooms upstairs. Thomas had refused the offer to share Lucan’s chamber, saying he was unused to such luxury and would rather bed down with Gorman and the others. Lucan had wanted to comment that he’d seemed quite comfortable in Roscraig’s fine hold, but he’d held his tongue. Let the man have his choice—he’d done without such a thing for long enough.
Lucan traversed the undulating steps to the constricted walkway above and pushed into his chamber. The bolt on the door was missing its sleeve, but there was a tiny, ancient brazier glowing in the center of the floor, and the room was cozy beneath the eaves—Lucan reminded himself to stoop as he staggered to the potin the corner.
No Bannockburn Protocol for him tonight, thankyou very much.
Relieved of his physical necessity, he ducked from beneath his satchel strap and looped it over the post at the end of the bed, then crawled beneath the wool blanket onto the thin ticking, which although didn’t afford much in the way of plushness, was filled with down and insulated from the cold in a magnificent fashion as he stretched himself out with a sigh. The pillow, too, was of the same construct, and Lucan was able to punch it precisely to cradle his neck and head. He stared toward the invisible ceiling through drooping eyelids, hearing the laughter—and now wildly pitching song—waft up through the floorboards.
Effie and her family. Lucan alone.
Always alone…
He must have fallen asleep right away, because the next thing he realized was that he was riding Agrios across the fields of Castle Dare, Effie Annesley before him on the saddle, her trousered legs over to one side as she leaned back against him. His arm was laid across her slim midriff, her head just beneath his chin, and he could smell the heady fragrance of her hair. It was spring, the bees buzzed frantically around Agrios’s hooves, the trees budding and blooming and the first tiny, white and purple wildflowers springing up tall and spindly in the grass. Below them, the river ran full and wild, and the wood spread out as far as Lucan could see.
“It’s good to be home,” Effie said in the dream.
Lucan brought his hand up from her abdomen to cup her breast and she turned her face up to his. Lucan lowered his mouth to those sweet, irresistible lips, anxiously anticipating thetaste of them…
