Page 82 of Rebellion's Fire

Relief to see those faces, at least, warred with grief that so many on both sides would never be seen again. Henry’s shame and clear grief for her stood out in his open face, and she had to look away.

William was dead. She’d no idea how she felt about that. She just knew it was the worst of all possible outcomes that Adam of all people had killed him.

Her throat constricted, but she would not weep.

Not until the familiar view of Tirebeck Hill told her where “home” meant today. With the salty tang of the sea in her nostrils, in the taste of the fine misty rain now wetting her face and lips, she saw the people running inward from the fields and hills. Her silent tears escaped at last, mingling with the damp of the rain.

A few soldiers around the stockade watched their progress with drawn bows. Without a word from Adam, Christian pushed back the hood of her cloak to make sure they knew who rode beside Adam MacHeth at the head of the men of Ross. The Norman prisoners rode among the rest, making clear aim at an obvious enemy impossible.

The gates to the hall enclosure were closed, as they had been since William had first come. For the first time, Adam released her reins and surged towards the gate, drawing his sword. Even now, Christian’s heart seemed to fly into her mouth. At least he must have cleaned the blood of her husband off its blade, which glinted clear and pure in the rain. And he did nothing worse with it than bang on the wooden gate with the hilt.

“Open!” he yelled. “For the Lady of Tirebeck!”

From inside, someone snarled in French, “Keep back!” Then feet scuffled on the ground. A few dull thuds and muffled groans followed. Beside Christian, Findlaech actually grinned. Adam didn’t move or turn.

Then the gates opened, revealing Loegaire and Sigurd pushing them wide. They were grinning, too. A Norman soldier sat on the ground, clutching his bare head and groaning.

“Welcome,” Loegaire said with such obvious relief that Christian’s stomach twisted to realize how awful his serving of her husband had been for him.

Adam didn’t speak, merely tugged on the reins, drawing his horse aside for Christian to precede him. There was nothing else to do. The past was done and the future not yet written. But these wereherpeople. Drawing the reins into her grasp, she rode slowly forward, past Adam MacHeth and through the gates.

Just for a moment, she thought that was it. That he’d returned her and was leaving, and relief rushed through her blood. She couldn’t deal with this, withhim, right now. She just wanted to be home. And alone.

But no one closed the gates behind her. Hooves clopped in after her, and although a groom hurried to meet her horse and Eua was running out of the hall door, it was Adam MacHeth who lifted her from the animal’s back, who held her up when sharp pain from riding so long without a saddle shot through her body. He held her arm firmly on his. Eua pulled up short, standing aside to let them enter the hall together.

“Welcome home, lady,” Eua breathed as she passed.

She managed to nod, her gaze flickering over the other woman, assessing, before she looked forward into the gloomier environs of the hall. Alys, Cecily, and Felicia sat in a huddle on the bench beside the big table.

Outside, a cry rang out and an order to yield given in Gaelic and French. Findlaech, she thought in a detached sort of a way. But William hadn’t left enough men here to put up a fight, not once the heart had gone out of them by seeing Henry and the others already in captivity. And they would know William was dead. They were mercenaries, and it was time to find a new paymaster.

The women stood up. They looked petrified. Felicia took a step forward. “My lady?” she uttered, her voice husky with fright.

It was a question she couldn’t formulate, and Christian, who’d done nothing to win her affection or loyalty, was grateful for it. She nodded in what she hoped was reassurance and halted. Her place right now was with her women.

But Adam drew her on, insisting when she tried to draw back, holding his other hand over hers to restrain her without either hurt or indiscretion. Christian chose not to throw a childish tantrum but to obey.

A mistake, surely a mistake, for he walked on without pause toward the bedchamber at the back of the hall. William’s bedchamber.

A tiny sound escaped her lips, which made him glance at her but didn’t stop him. He threw open the bedchamber door, tugged her inside, and kicked it shut behind him. Only then did he release her, so abruptly that she stumbled.

“You are the lady of this hall,” he said. “You sleep here.”

“If I’m the lady of the hall, I may sleep where I wish,” she retorted.

“You sleep with your husband.”

“My husband is dead,” she said harshly. “You killed him.”

“And his hall is now mine,” Adam said, throwing open a chest and beginning to drop things into it—William’s comb, a perfume bottle that must have been Alys’s, a shawl, a necklace, a shirt. “As is his wife.”

“What?” She stared at him as he finished his tour of the room, pulling the trunk after him and hurling everything he found inside it, apart from a purse, which he tossed to her. She caught it from instinct and wished she’d let it fall at her feet.

That done, he turned his attention to the bed, pulling off the linen.

“Are youactuallymad?” Christian demanded. “Or criminally deluded? You killed my husband a matter of hours ago. Were it twenty years ago, I would not marry you!”

“It’s quite accepted practice,” he assured her, “to marry the widow of your victim. That way, you keep control of any heirs, born or unborn.”

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