Everlasting (19 page)

 
Abrielle chanced a glance behind her in an effort to gauge the distance between herself and her besotted groom. In the next instant, a cry of pain escaped her as she stubbed her bare toe on an uneven stone. Stumbling awkwardly about as she tried to regain her balance, she careened into the wall, nearly knocking herself senseless.

 
Desmond sprang forward, much faster than Abrielle would have imagined for one so roundly proportioned and well into his cups. The realization that she was in danger penetrated the enveloping fog in which she found herself, causing her heart to leap in sudden fear. The horrible dread of being trapped again in her groom’s malevolent clutches quickly prodded her to her senses, and she whirled away, frantically trying to avoid his outstretched hand. His fingers caught in her long, loosely swirling hair, but in a desperate quest for freedom she snatched free, in the process sacrificing more than a few meager strands to his unrelenting grasp. She raced onward with frantically beating heart, all too keenly aware that her life was in serious peril.

 
The way of escape was barely visible just ahead, softly illuminated by the moonlight streaming downward through the narrow windows in the lofty turret high above the stone steps. If she could manage to make her descent to the lower level without Desmond actually gaining on her, perhaps she’d be able to reach her parents’ rooms before he could catch her. Vachel might even be able to reason with the squire and convince him to be patient with his new bride.

 
Abrielle chanced a glance over her shoulder in a quest to see how far away her besotted groom was. To her dismay, he was much closer than she had dared to imagine, barely leaving her enough time to swing around the newel. Unless she laid out a ploy to lure him beyond the stairs or to confuse him, her flight would be in serious jeopardy. She was afraid he would then take malicious delight in locking his
stubby fingers into her hair again, especially since her scalp was already throbbing. But if it meant escaping her besotted bridegroom, she’d just have to take that chance.

 
Forcing every fiber of strength she was capable of mustering into her limbs in a desperate attempt to lengthen the distance between herself and her groom, she raced onward through the passageway and then, upon reaching the end of it, whirled to face the besotted ogre.

 
“Yu’ll never be able to escape me now, Abrielle,” Desmond boasted confidently in spite of his thickly slurred words and wheezing efforts to breathe. “The wall is to yur back, an’ yu’ve only one path ye can go…and that is past me.”

 
Sweat dappled her bridegroom’s brow and ran in heavy runnels down his flushed cheeks. He pressed a hand to the side of his distended belly, as if trying to ease the pain of exerting himself, and then smirked confidently as he waddled toward her.

 
She tensed as she awaited the arrival of the moment when she might be able to flit past him. Her nerves seemed to stand on end as he sauntered toward her with all the confidence of a tyrant. The closer he came, she reasoned nervously, the better her chances of slipping past him. If too much space were left between them, he’d have enough time to realize what she was about and block her path.

 
Desmond was no more than an arm’s length away when she shot through the opening as if her very life depended on it. Her bridegroom flung out an arm in an effort to catch her, but to no avail, for she spun about like a whirling dervish, easily avoiding his grasp. A foul curse exploded from Desmond’s lips.

 
Racing toward the stairs, she forced every measure of strength she possessed into her limbs. The threat of being caught by her drunken bridegroom proved a very strong incentive indeed.

 
“I’ll catch yu yet,” Desmond wheezed irately as he stumbled along behind her, “an’ when I do, be assured, I’ll teach yu to run from me.”

 
The wan glow of moonlight streaming in from the turret allowed
her to see the stairs that were just ahead. She was greatly encouraged to have had her ploy work as well as it had, but she knew she was far from safe. She could hear the plodding footfalls of the oaf behind her, slower than before, but nevertheless persistent.

 
An instant after facing forward again, Abrielle ran full force into a wall, a tall, warm, firmly muscled wall. She stumbled backward, her senses reeling, and then strong hands caught her up by her elbows, gently steadying her. Befuddled, she lifted her head and found herself staring into a pair of all-too-familiar blue eyes.

 
She gasped and tried to pull away. “Oh, Raven, nay, get thee gone from here. You must not interfere!”

 
“Yu vile, dastardly cur! Take yur hands off my wife!” Desmond de Marlé snarled. He was wheezing heavily, having exerted himself well beyond the limits of his usual slothfulness, and in the gloom, his sweaty, reddened face seemed far more bloated than usual. “Yu impu-dent Scottish rogue,” Desmond slurred thickly, his words now liberally punctuated by hiccups. He shook a balled-up fist threateningly beneath the noble nose of the taller man and continued his tirade. “Yu’ve intruded…far too often…in my affairs…An’ this time…yu’ve gone…too far. I’ll have yu thrashed…till yur bones show! This is my wife…my keep…filled with my friends…an’ countless men…who owe their allegiance to me.”

 
Raven easily knocked aside the pudgy fist with the back of his forearm. There was a dangerous edge of contempt in his soft laugh. “Men ye send out ta do your foul deeds, like the last two who lost their lives, and for what? A promise of a mere pittance as their reward? Or is it true that this allegiance ye brag of is secured not with coin but threats, vile threats against not just their lives but those of innocent wives and children as well. Was that the payment that awaited those men if they didna kill me?”

 
“That’s no business of yurs,” mumbled Desmond, his drunken smirk growing as he thought of something that would more adequately
appease his deepening desire for retribution. “Truth be, yu bloody Scotsman, I’d enjoy seeing yur severed head stuck upon a pike beyond the drawbridge of this very keep! Then every time I’d ride past yur putrefying skull, I’d be able to laugh at the memory of yur futile efforts to seize Abrielle for yurself.”

 
“If ye believe ye can do better than those poor men ye sent ta die upon my sword, I canna think of one more prone ta idiocy than ye.”

 
The taunt caused Desmond’s bulging eyes to flare, vividly attesting to his mounting rage.

 
Abrielle stood at a loss, despairing of this confrontation ending well. For now, at least Desmond was distracted from her, but she couldn’t leave Raven here to take the brunt of Desmond’s foul temper. Raven was setting himself up to be murdered, what with all of Desmond’s friends still housed within the keep, ready to kill any Scotsman.

 
An amused half smile curved Raven’s lips as he further taunted, “Still, if ye should be of a mind ta try ta kill me yourself, then I’ll gladly give ye leave ta choose the weapons we’d be using. Or is it your wont ta murder me in me sleep whilst no one is around ta see your deeds? Ye’re like a fat old rat what comes out of his hole at night, skittering here and there ta see what foul mischief he can get inta whilst others are sleeping. But I’ve ways of dealing with the likes of such vermin. Feeding their carcasses ta the cats would surely save burying them.”

 
“Yu filthy Scot-tish beggar! I’ll show yu who’s lame-witted!” Desmond railed. “Mark my words, ’twill be yur remains the cats’ll be feasting on this very night!”

 
“If ye’re set on accomplishing that feat yourself, Squire, then ye’d best bear in mind what your men failed ta consider. Afore I ever became an emissary, I was trained ta be a warrior, so ’tis a rare occasion that I dinna fight back. But then, I expect ye’ll be remembering that from our encounter in His Majesty’s palace. Ye ran off then with your
tail tucked betwixt your buttocks. Had ye any courage ta claim, ye’d have led your men inta the forest yourself instead of merely telling them where me da and I could be found.”

 
The taunt was too much for Desmond to bear with any degree of calm prudence. Whatever logic he had been able to lay claim to prior to the wedding had for the most part flown after guzzling copious tankards of ale. He was thoroughly incensed, goaded beyond the core of reason, which at the moment was most fragile.

 
A foul, guttural oath issued forth as Desmond lunged toward the taller man with fingers curled into claws. Come what may, he intended to tighten them around his adversary’s throat until he was thrashing about on the floor in the throes of death. A second before Desmond reached his antagonist, the Scotsman stepped deftly aside, allowing the squire an open path to plow on past.

 
A sharp, fearful gasp was promptly snatched from Desmond’s throat as he saw before him the stone stairs down which he had deliberately pushed his half brother to his death months ago. Desperately he strove to untangle his stumbling feet and dig in his heels, but to no avail. A thumping heartbeat later he was teetering on the brink of that very same precipice whereon his lordship had wavered, experiencing firsthand the sudden stark terror that he had once fantasized his elder brother would feel prior to setting into motion his murderous deed. His short arms flailed wildly about in a frenetic attempt to halt his forward momentum. Alas, he couldn’t recover his equilibrium, no matter how desperately he strove to stop himself from falling.

 
His wildly thumping heart pounded in his ears and against the inner wall of his chest. In an expanse of time that spanned the chasm between life and death, an eternity flashed before his mind’s eye. Precipitous views, perhaps comparable or mayhap totally dissimilar to those his elder half brother had glimpsed in the swiftly fleeting moments prior to plunging to his death, filled Desmond’s mind with a swiftly burgeoning dread. His breath caught again in a ragged gasp
as terror cauterized his very being with his own expanding visions of what seemed his hellish doom. There was only darkness at the bottom of the stairs, yet he had sat through enough burial services for those he had killed to have committed to memory many of the dire warnings in those messages. All too vividly he recalled the tormented ravings of his own mother who had writhed in abject terror of what her delirium had created. Like her, Desmond felt as if he could see demons writhing beneath him in a twisted, indistinct mass and, in the midst of their agony, lifting their arms in plaintive appeal for some sublime angel of mercy to release them from their torment. Other specters from that dark, foul abyss seemed to beckon to him and await his presence with evil, leering grins, as if they were the doomed gaolers of that despicable place. Then, as if the horror he was experiencing weren’t enough to cauterize his very being with terror, whitish vapors seemed to pass before his mind’s eye, forming an image that reminded him of his half brother. Shaking his head sadly, the ghostly apparition pointed downward toward the dark chasm opening up beneath him.

 
“I never meant to push you down the stairs, Weldon,” Desmond blubbered as drool dribbled unheeded down his chin. “It was an accident! You have to believe me, brother! I adjure you not to take revenge upon me for what happened that night! You must have mercy! You must let me live! Please have pity!”

 
Raven and Abrielle both experienced a strange tingling along their napes as they looked at each other. Never before had they heard so much terror evident in the cries of a person facing death as they were now hearing in Desmond’s desperate pleading.

 
Desmond tried mightily to find something to hang on to to halt the momentum that was swiftly building. Briefly, in passing, he braced his forearm against the buttressing stone wall, but his flabby muscles could not sustain his weight for even a fleeting moment. Of a sudden, he was plummeting head over heels in an awkward, flopping descent
of the stairs, during the course of which muffled grunts escaped his throat. Then his head slammed into the wall, knocking it strangely askew his neck. Though his tumbling descent continued on unchecked, no further sound issued forth from his flabby throat. Finally his rotund form came to rest beside the newel post on the lower level, and there he lay, his limbs sprawled wide, his mouth gaping open, his eyes staring vacantly upward.

 
It seemed an uncommonly long passage of time that he lay sprawled at the bottom of the stairs where he had come to rest after flopping face up on the stone floor. Only a wan glow from flickering candles cast from some distance away lent a vague hint of where Desmond’s body lay. From where they stood on the landing, neither Raven nor Abrielle could see into the murky gloom well enough to determine if he had been knocked unconscious by the fall or if his silence was merely a ploy to draw them near, much like a spider waits for its victims to become entangled in its web before pouncing on them and inserting its deadly venom. If the situation was indeed the latter case, then surely Desmond intended to exact harsh revenge, if not on both of them, then surely on his young bride, ere the night had passed.