Always (34 page)

And so she had chosen her moment and entered, her weapon concealed at her side. Now both men gaped at her. She glimpsed the shock, anger, and fear for her on Aric's face, but ignored it to focus on Shrewsbury.

“I heard it all, my lord,” she said now accusingly. “How could you?”

“I did it for you. I was trying to save you.” Shrewsbury gasped, stumbling across the room toward her. “I gave you the potion to show you the error of your way.”

“Potion?” Rosamunde frowned at him and shifted away from him as he approached. “Error of my ways?”

“Aye. The potion is what made you ill. I was trying to show you that you are not meant for Henry! You are too good for him, my dear. Far too good to allow him to taint you.”

Rosamunde continued to sidestep, staying out of his grasp and moving slowly closer to where Aric lay tugging frantically at his bindings. Her mind was racing as she moved. Shrewsbury was not just mad; he was confusing her with her mother. She began to consider how she could use that as he continued to stalk her around the cottage.

“You were meant to be a bride of God. Only He is worthy of you. And I tried to show you that. The potion is slow-acting, and I thought that if I gave it to you every time you were here, with Henry, and you became ill every time you were with him, you would realize that he was no good for you. And it seemed to work after a while. You reconsidered your life, went to Godstow, had your child, and even decided to take the veil.”

He paused, a frown scourging his face again. “But then Henry…always Henry! He came to you and talked of marriage and raising the child together. I saw that you were wavering,” he said with bitter disgust. “You wanted him even then. Despite your pledge to God. You still loved and wanted
him.
You would have returned. I saw it all, so I had to…” Confusion replaced his rage and bitterness suddenly as he stared at Rosamunde and whispered in bewilderment, “I killed you.”

“Aye. You killed me,” Rosamunde agreed slowly. “But God sent me back to tell you that you were wrong. And to prevent you from repeating your mistake.” She eased another step closer to the bed and Aric, digging out her dirk with her free hand as she went. If she could slip that to Aric without Shrewsbury realizing it, it might help him to free himself.

“Wrong?” Shrewsbury didn't look pleased at that thought.

“Aye,” Rosamunde assured him firmly. “You are not supposed to kill Aric. That is why the drowning in the river and the pin in Black's saddle failed. Aric and Rosamunde are supposed to remain married.”

“Aric?” He looked confused for a moment, then peered blankly at the man he had tied to the bed and muttered, “Oh, aye.” Then his eyes widened and he gasped in horror. “Oh, nay. Nay! That cannot be. They will bear fruit and spread their devil-spawn across the land. Nay.” Straightening abruptly, he shook his head. “Nay. That was not God intervening again, 'twas Satan.”

Wonderful! Rosamunde thought impatiently. God stopping his attacks on her he could believe, but God stopping his attacks on Aric he could not? That
had
to be Satan's work. She was so put out by his reasoning that she almost missed the fact that she had moved close enough to the bed to slip Aric her dirk. She quickly did so now.

“Aye, it was Satan interfering. And he probably sent
you here to tempt me again,” Shrewsbury charged bitterly, drawing her attention back to him. “Always to tempt me. To tempt me to give up my own vows as you did yours. To tempt me to be a sinner like you. To tempt me to—”

“Oh, stuff it, Bishop,” Rosamunde snapped, her patience with the drivel he was spouting breaking now that she had gotten the dirk to Aric.

Rosamunde had inherited her father's temper along with his hair color. And after the stress and strain of the last couple of months—leaving the abbey, the only home she had ever known, adjusting to married life, her husband's jealous outbursts, her father's death, and the attacks on herself and then on Aric—she was understandably frazzled. Or had been. Today's events had, unfortunately, pushed her past frazzled to furious. Rosamunde felt as if she had aged ten years in just this one morning. Between the fear and anxiety she had suffered while Aric was missing, and her outrage and pain as she had waited outside the cottage listening to Shrewsbury not only confess to murdering her mother, but call her everything from sinner to whore on top of that. Frankly, she had had enough, and the temper her father had been infamous for was rearing its ugly red head.

Shrewsbury blinked at her briefly, then drew himself up. “I—”

“I do not want to hear it!” Rosamunde interrupted sharply. “I am sick unto death of listening to you go on about what a sinner my mother was and how she tempted you! She was not the sinner. You are!” She grimaced with distaste. “Standing about outside the cottage and gawking in here, watching them in their intimate moments like some depraved satyr! It probably excited you, spying on them like that. But that was not my mother's fault!”

“She—” Shrewsbury began, flushing bright red, but Rosamunde interrupted him again.

“She loved my father. She was not some whore who
bedded everyone; she loved only my father. And you killed her. Murdered her. And even
I,
daughter of ‘Rosamunde the whore' and Henry the ‘spawn of the devil,' know that
that
is a sin. You are the one who is Satan's agent!”

Sick of even looking at the man now, Rosamunde whirled on her husband impatiently. “Have you not gotten yourself untied yet?”

Aric blinked as he gazed up at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes spitting fire, her chest heaving with her anger. In short, she was magnificent. And while he had managed to cut through the bonds of one wrist by holding the knife awkwardly between it and his flesh, it was slow going.

“Almost,” he told her, holding his free hand up for her to see.

“Well, hurry—” Rosamunde began, her words ending in a gasp of surprise as Aric suddenly used his free hand to thrust her aside. Distracted though she was by trying to keep her feet, Rosamunde did catch a glimpse of the problem as she stumbled toward the end of the bed. Aric had been pushing her out of the way of a lunging Shrewsbury. Catching herself on the bottom bedpost, she glanced back in time to see Aric roll toward his still-bound hand and out of the way of the bishop's dagger. It slashed harmlessly into the bed, but his thrust had been meant for her, she realized. Her hand tightened on the ax still hidden in her skirts as she watched Shrewsbury straighten and whirl toward her.

He looked pretty mad. The angry kind, not just the crazy kind, Rosamunde thought, some of her anger slipping away, replaced by momentary fear.

“Go,” Aric shouted at her, sawing furiously at his still-bound hand with the dirk she had given him. “Get out of here, Rosamunde! Run!”

Rosamunde's fear fled as quickly as it had come at her husband's bellow. He did like to bellow a lot, she thought
irritably. And he enjoyed ordering her about far too much. And just exactly what sort of woman did he take her for if he thought she should flee, leaving him here tied up and helpless? Well, half-tied, anyway, she corrected herself as his second hand came free and he sat up, reaching to start working on the ropes around his ankles. He was her husband. They were a team, in this together, she thought with satisfaction, raising the ax she had been shielding with her skirts and grimly facing Shrewsbury.

The bishop froze as he saw the weapon, his gaze shooting to the dagger he held. Apparently he didn't like the odds, for he stumbled to the side suddenly, and Rosamunde was just feeling triumph rise within her, thinking he was fleeing, when he stopped at the fireplace and grabbed a log. Picking it up by an end that was not yet ablaze, he held it up, smiling at the torch he now held.

“Wonderful,” Rosamunde muttered as he started toward her.

“Jesu!” she heard Aric say as he paused in his sawing to glance around. “Rosamunde! My sword!”

“Well, at least he has stopped trying to get me to leave,” she muttered under her breath, eyeing Shrewsbury as he approached.

“My sword, Rosamunde! Grab my sword!”

“I am a bit busy at the moment, husband,” she snapped tartly, then dove to the side as Shrewsbury swung his torch at her head. The fiery club slammed into the bed post, its flames catching at the bed drapes. Old, withered, and shredded with time, the cloth went up with a whoosh. Flames quickly shot upward, encompassing all of the drapes above the bed even as it started a slow, but still dangerous descent toward the bed and Aric, who had freed one leg but was still working on his other.

Distracted by her worry for her husband, Rosamunde was too slow to get out of the way of Shrewsbury's next blow. It was only her instincts that saved her. Raising the ax, she used it to block the blow, wincing as the torch and
the ax met in the air in front of her face and sparks flew in all directions. They bit at her hands and face, and burned holes into her gown. Ignoring the stinging pain, Rosamunde concentrated on the matter at hand as Shrewsbury pulled the torch away and swung again. This time he brought it down toward her head.

Crying out, Rosamunde shifted her hands on the ax as she raised it, holding each end in one hand as she again blocked the blow. Again there were sparks, but this time they showered down over her like rain. Painful rain. Closing her eyes, she turned her face away, then forced herself just as quickly to look at him again as she felt the weight of the torch lift from her ax. He was swinging back for another blow, she saw, and grimly prepared to meet it. But it never came. Just as he started to bring it forward, his chest seemed to shudder, his eyes widened incredulously, and his burning cudgel then slid from his fingers to the ground. In the next moment, he had collapsed to the ground atop it, and Rosamunde was left staring at Aric.

Lifting his gaze from the dead man, he met her eyes as he lowered his bloodied sword. Stepping forward, he caught her close and pressed his face into her neck. “Oh, God, Rosamunde, if he had killed you—” Pulling back slightly, he cut his own words off by covering her mouth with his and kissing her desperately.

It was beginning to get a tad hot in the cottage by the time he broke the kiss. They both glanced around to see that the bed was completely in flames, the fire spreading quickly across the floor. Added to that, Bishop Shrewsbury had landed upon the log he had used as a weapon, and the lit end and his dry robes had made him a human torch.

“Come. Let us get out of here.” Holding her close to his side, he guided her quickly from the cottage and out into the fresh air.

“Aric!”

Moving a safe distance away from the burning building, Aric and Rosamunde watched Robert Shambley and Lord Burkhart hurry from the trees and rush forward to meet them.

“Thank God you are all right!” Lord Burkhart said, pausing before them and looking them both over quickly before turning to frown at the inferno the cottage had become. “What happened?”

Aric shrugged the question away. “I shall explain later. How did you find us?”

His father turned back with a grimace. “Well, when I told Rosamunde that I had seen you heading out into the gardens with the bishop, that news seemed to upset her. She rushed off before I could ask why, but I had a bad feeling, so I deposited your sisters back in their rooms and sought out Shambley.”

“We had no clue where to look at first,” Shambley continued. “We were checking every path until we saw the smoke rising over the trees. We knew instinctively then that if we found the source of the fire, we would find the two of you. Trouble does appear to follow you lately,” he pointed out wryly as Aric arched an eyebrow in question.

“Aye, it has seemed to,” he agreed with a sigh, then glanced down at Rosamunde. He hugged her a little closer before adding, “But no more.”

Shambley's eyes widened at the way the couple smiled at each other, then frowned as he noticed his friend's raw wrists. “What happened?” he asked; then his eyes widened. “Where is Bishop Shrewsbury?”

Aric glanced toward the inferno that used to be the cottage. “In there.”

“In there?” Robert followed his gaze, shook his head slowly, then glanced sharply back toward Aric. “Surely he was not truly behind all the trouble?”

“Aye. He was. The man was quite mad.” Aric shook his head and opened his mouth to say more, but paused when his gaze landed on Rosamunde and he noticed the small
burn holes in her gown and the small blisters freckling her hands and face. “I shall explain it all later,” he decided. “For now, I think I should get Rosamunde back to our chamber. She has had quite enough excitement today.”

He started to usher her back toward the castle then, but they had just reached the edge of the trees when Aric's father called out. Glancing back to see the older man hurrying after them, they paused to wait for him.

“Son,” the older man began as he reached them, then grimaced. “I need to talk to you about something. Something that has been bothering me.”

“Can it not wait?” Aric asked with a frown.

“Aye, but I am afraid you will hear the truth before I can explain,” he said unhappily. Rosamunde placed a hand gently on Aric's arm, drawing his gaze.

“It is all right,” she murmured. “I am fine.”

Nodding, Aric glanced back to Lord Burkhart. “What is it, Father?”

“Well…” Shifting uncomfortably, he sighed. “It is about all I told you about your mother.”

Aric arched his eyebrows. “Aye?”

“Aye.” Lord Burkhart grimaced again, then confessed, “Well, I thought at the time that what I said was for the best, but it has occurred to me since that you may hear the truth elsewhere.” Sighing, he shook his head. “About your mother—”

“Father,” Aric interrupted quietly. “It does not matter.”

“Nay?” Lord Burkhart looked uncertain.