Page 8 of The Knight's Pledge
Lucan raised his hand and motioned with his fingers. Gorman placed the page in his hand while Effie Annesley approached with both her hands now gripping a rather ornate silk cushion she’d procured from the shadows. Lucan glancedat her warily.
“Don’t worry,” she grumbled as she stuffed it behind his head. “I’ll not smother you before you’ve read it.”
Lucan shook out the page and turned it toward the light of the torch anchored somewhere behind his cot. The sheet was marred by a ragged hole in the center and Gorman obviously knew the question on Lucan’s tongue before he could ask it.
“We found it nailed to a tree yesterday, near where George’s footprints disappeared.”
We have the boy. He will be delivered to the king. Have mercy on yourself.
VP
“VP?” Lucan asked as he looked up from the page. “Vivienne Paget? She is the only one I know of with those initials living in the vicinityof Darlyrede.”
Gorman’s face was grim. “I’d wager my life on it. But she wasn’t alone, and she was not the mastermind behind this plan.”
“Because it says ‘we?’” Lucan was unconvinced. “Perhaps it means we, my servants and I. Orthe royal we.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, it’s Caris Hargrave,” Effie Annesley snapped. Lucan turned his head to regard the woman as she explained herself. “Vivienne Paget doesn’t have the physical strength to lift more than a kerchief to her disgusting mouth. She’d retreated to Elsmire Castle after her scum of a husband was killed.”
“Caris Hargrave is dead.” As much as Lucan despised Effie Annesley, he would not allow her to hold such morbid fantasies, especially if the welfare of a child hung in the balance. “Padraig Boyd left her, dead of an attack of asthma, in the dungeon of Darlyrede House when he rescued my sister. The manor collapsed in flames around her.”
But Effie was already shaking her blonde head. “She’s not dead.” Her words were little more than a strangled whisper. She rushed forward and jerked the page from Lucan’s grip, pointing at the last line. “Have mercy on yourself.” She tossed the page back to him. “She must have said those exact words to me a thousand times. I canfeelher. Crawling like a leech under my skin, still. She’s not dead. And she has George.”
Lucan was prevented from perhaps saying something foolish by the entrance of a pair of figures, each bearing a tray. One was the berobed friar from the hunt, the dubious patron of the supposed children’s charity, and the other was tall, broad shouldered in the woolen kirtle and lace trimmed underdress. Golden curls peeked out from the hood of a short cape, hiding the visitor’s visage even as they and the friar jostled each other to reach Lucan’sbedside first.
“Why, good day to you, Sir Lucan,” the friar said, the fiery light of triumph in his eyes as he elbowed his statuesque partner aside. The man was still sans eyebrows, his oddly cropped dark hair swishing across his forehead. He gave a shallow bow. “I thank God that we have met again, this time in more pleasantcircumstances.”
“I don’t know that I share your gratitude for the situation,”Lucan muttered.
“As we had no time for formalities when last we met, I am Gilboe,” the friar went on, ignoring Lucan’s sarcasm. “And I have brought you a repast from God’s bounty, prepared with my own hands.” He bowed again as he offered forth his tray, laden with what indeed looked to be a delightful selection of delicacies, had Lucan possessed any appetite whatsoever.
But the monk was shunted aside rather forcefully as the blonde pushed forward. “What good Sir Lucan better wants,” a sultry, lisping voice scolded, “is a good, hot, satisfying drink.” The face hidden in the golden curls turned toward him, and Lucan almost yelped at what was possibly the shadow of beard beneath the pale, soft-looking skin.
“A stiff one,” the tray bearer added with a wink. “Dana, at yourcompleteservice, lord. Mead?”
“Will you go or not?” Effie Annesley’s demanding query dragged Lucan’s already fuzzled attention from the peculiar attendants.
“Go where?” He was confused, a feeling foreign to him, and it was causing an even more unfamiliar sensation of panic in his chest.
“Didn’t you read the—argh!” Effie growled and grasped at the sides of her head, turningaway from him.
Lucan’s muddled brains chose just that inopportune moment to note that she was once more wearing trousers,of all things.
Gorman swept into his line of sight, blocking out the unsettling view of the hint of the curve of Effie Annesley’s backside beneath the flared hem of her tunic.
“We believe George has been taken to London,” he said calmly, clearly. “As you have been employed by the king for some time, and are rumored to now have evidence to the Hargraves’s crimes, we need your help.”
“The king will most likely have me arrested as a failure,” Lucan said. “And”—he waved his hand about, encompassing all present with the motion—“he should certainly have the lot of youdone, as well.”
Dana drew back with a gasp. “I beg your pardon.”
Gilboe raised his face to the shadowed ceiling with his eyes closed. “Forgive him, Lord.”
Lucan ignored the melodramatics. “It’s likely nothing more than a trap to lure you to London to give yourselves up. Caris Hargrave is dead, I tell you.”
Effie spun around and charged toward the cot, but Gorman held a warding arm to his side, protecting Lucanfrom her wrath.
“Even if she is dead,” Gorman allowed, “and even if this is only a snare to apprehend us, the fact remains thatsomeonehas taken our son. Our George,” he added and the pain on his face was just as palpable to Lucan as the pain in his own foot.
