Page 75 of The Knight's Pledge
Guilt squeezed him again. Damned Gorman. Virtuous bastard.
Lucan stood in the doorway feeling the heel, his hands full of gracious food from a thoughtful woman. His eyes prickled and he was terrified he might start blubbering at such kindness that hedidn’t deserve.
“You sleep well, now,” Mari whispered and reached out to squeeze his forearm and gave him a wink. “Say your prayers. And don’t mind James.”
Lucan turned back inside the room and set the bowl down on the ticking before closing and bolting the door. He carried his cider back with him and balanced it on the meager corner of the stand while he took off his boots and belt and loosened his gambeson. He turned back the coverlet and then retrieved his cider, crawling beneath the thin wool. He rested the mug against his hip before lifting the worn cloth, and the spicy-sweet fragrance of the pudding touched a physicalplace in him.
He’d ruined the most important mission of his life. Since the day Effie Annesley had shot him in the Darlyrede wood, he felt as if his orderly existence had spun out of control. Nothing that had happened since then had been within his command, within the orderly realm he’d kept for himself for the past fifteen years. He’d failed in his undertaking, betrayed Gorman, and fallen in love with Effie Annesley. And yet, Mari had thought enough of him to bring him a bowl of warm pudding and a cider.
He realized then that everything he’d ever been working for was naught but a lie. A meaningless farce. Mari didn’t care if he was a knight with a claim to a Northumberland estate. She didn’t care where the women they’d rescued came from, who they were, or what they’d done. She didn’t care that Gorman and Effie had never married, or if Dana was in fact a woman or a man. She didn’t care that Chumley was a drunk—he had cause enough, didn’t he? Mari loved them all, just because they wereunder her roof.
And Lucan suddenly understood the meaning of the word ‘good.’
Say your prayers, she’d reminded him.
How long had it been since Lucan Montague had prayed? How long since he’d done more than allow his mind to wander in some chapel while a disinterested priest droned? How long had it been since he’d believed his prayers were heard by anyone or anything, or that theyeven mattered?
Since the night his parents had died, he realized.
He ate the pudding and finished the cider slowly, savoring each bite and sip, trying to squeeze the caring out of each tang of spice and flavor. He leaned over and set the vessels on the floor, and with the taste of Gale’s good bread pudding in his mouth, he lay down on his side and faced the guttering candle.
By the time Lucan Montague had finished his prayers, the chamber was dark, and the candlewax was cold.
Chapter 19
They stayed at the White Swan for two days, resting, gathering supplies, getting the women settled. And Effie was glad of the refilling of her spirit and her resolve, even if the tension of trying to avoid Lucan Montague caused her shoulders to ache.
Avoiding him while he was never farfrom her mind.
Gorman was Gorman. They didn’t share a room at the Swan—they seldom had, for years now—but they still ate together and worked together and shared their little jokes.
James Rose barely looked in her direction, his young face—by all evidence now a man’s—bearing the tell-tale wounded expression of betrayal, so much like the night he’d been freed from Elsmire Tower. Effie had seen that look many times, on many faces; it wrenched at her heart to think that she was the cause of his pain.
Kit Katey sat next to her at meals, their shoulders just touching, as if she could somehow take a little corner of Effie’s burden onto her own narrow frame.
And no one at all spoke of her sin.
Tommy got on at once with both Gale and Mari, of course, and under his direction the band made sure the Swan had plenty of firewood, the well was kept free of ice, and the animal pens tidied with fresh bedding over the thick, decaying layer of the stalls, which kept the structureshumid and warm.
Effie wore one of Mari’s old skirts while her trousers dried by the fire, and for once she wasn’t annoyed at the way her prickly legs touched at her calves above her boots. She was not ready for battle tonight—there was a big enough fight ahead of them all and she held on to this last bit of peace in the empty common room greedily. Her bag was packed once more, ready to depart on the morrow. Ready to reach the Warren and leave most of their party to the safety of the caves before charging on to London and toGeorge Thomas.
George. How she missed his small face. His clever speech. His little ways at play or at his lessons. She could see him so clearly in her mind when she closed her eyes. How Tommy would rejoice in him, she knew—their spirits were so similar.
“All ready to go?” Gale’s voice pulled her from her reverie, and she raised her cheek from her fist to look up at him as he entered the common room in his long white apron, carrying a tray of bread rounds that would be usedin the supper.
She nodded as he slid the tray onto the end of the trestle and then slid himself onto the bench at her side. She leaned at once into his shoulder.
“Your da’s a good sort,” Gale said quietly.
Effie nodded. “I think so.”
“I’m proud to have stood in his place until now.”
She looked up at him. “Whatever are you talking about, Gale?”
He shrugged his big shoulders, a gentle giant if ever there was one. “The two of you are nae well acquainted yet. When you have gotten to know one another better, he’ll be yourda, in truth.”
“That doesn’t mean you andI will change.”
