Her Rebel Heart (23 page)

Penitence nodded. “He has known me all my life...I only asked him not to tell anyone...”

“Truscott is a Felton man,” Deliverance said. “He is utterly honest and reliable.”

“He has deliberately turned a blind eye to no less than three meetings between these two.” Luke looked back at Deliverance. “That cannot go unpunished, Mistress Felton. He is as complicit in this as your sister and an example must be set.” He straightened and turned to Sergeant Hale. “Tomorrow at midday, I want Truscott hanged from the Hawk Tower.”

Penitence screamed.

Deliverance's hand went to her mouth. “Luke, no.”

He ignored her. “Hale, take Captain Farrington to a room in the Lower Tower and provide him with a bed, water and a bucket. I would offer you food, Farrington, but alas we are a little short.”

Hale hauled Jack up by the arm and pushing him before him left the room. Penitence, ashen-faced, looked up at Luke. He met her eyes without blinking.

“Mistress Felton.” Luke glanced at Deliverance. “Take your sister to a bedchamber upstairs and lock her in. Bring me the key.”

Deliverance went to her sister's side and put her hand on her shoulder. Penitence placed her own hand over Deliverance's.

A united front
.

“Luke, she doesn't deserve this,” Deliverance said.

Luke shook his head, unmoved, although the white-hot anger he had experienced on first catching the lovers together had begun to fade. “She has been caught consorting with the enemy. I cannot let her go unpunished. Rightly she should hang with Truscott on the morrow. It is only because I am merciful that she will stay locked up until this siege is ended and I will leave her to your father to deal with as he thinks fit.”

Penitence gave a strangled cry and began to sob again.

Luke’s anger began to ebb from him in the face of the girl’s distress. In a softer tone, he said, “I'm sorry, but you must see you brought this on yourself. How did you contrive the arrangement with Farrington?”

“He...he...” she sniffed, “...he slipped me a note that first day.”

“Oh, Pen,” Deliverance said in a shaky voice and for a horrible moment, Luke thought she would burst into tears too.

“Deliverance, are you going to do what I asked or shall I wait for Sergeant Hale?” He kept his voice hard and unforgiving. This was not the moment for sentiment.

Deliverance straightened and put her hand under her sister's arm. “Come, Pen. I don't see we have any choice.”

Luke watched the two women leave the room and sank on to the big chair at the end of the table. He would have given anything to turn back the clock. In his heart he didn't think Penitence was the traitor in their midst, but that was not the point.

He ran a hand over his eyes and cursed himself for his diligence. If he had turned for bed instead of stopping to whistle to the moon, Penitence and Jack Farrington would have made their assignation and he would be none the wiser. Now a man would die on the morrow for no other reason except he loved his mistress too well. On the other hand he now had Jack Farrington as his prisoner and that gave him a very valuable card to play in the game.

Deliverance sat on the edge of the bed with her arm around her sobbing sister.

“I'm not a traitor, Liv. I'm not.” Penitence protested her innocence through the veil of tears.

“I know. But you have to understand how this looks, Pen. What were you thinking?”

“I love him,” Penitence howled. “I had to see him. You would have done the same thing, Liv.”

I'm not sure that I would have, Deliverance thought, no matter how much I loved him, my duty is to this castle and its inhabitants.

Penitence looked up, her face stricken. “Will he really hang Truscott?”

Deliverance thought of Luke's eyes, seeing the soft, smoky grey she had come to love replaced with the glint of bright steel.

Yes, he would hang Truscott
.

“Yes.”

“He doesn't deserve to die,” Penitence wailed. “He didn't do anything wrong.”

Deliverance stared at her sister. Did Penitence really have no grasp on the seriousness of her crime?

“I will plead his case with Captain Collyer,” she said. “And yours, but I am afraid Jack is now our prisoner. There is nothing I can say in his defence.”

Penitence nodded and managed a watery smile. “At least I know where he is and that he is safe.”

“The way the Thunderer is hammering at our walls, Pen, I'm not sure he is all that safe.” Deliverance rose to her feet. “Now try and get some sleep and I am sure things will not seem quite so grim in the morning.”

She returned downstairs with a heavy heart. At the entrance to the hall, she hesitated. Luke sat at the end of the table with his back to her. All she could see of him was his right hand, curled around the stem of a pewter wine goblet.

She thought of those long, hard fingers and their gentle touch on her skin, and for a moment her knees went weak. Luke, her would-be lover, her wooer was not this man. Luke Collyer, the soldier, sat at the table and that was how she had to deal with him.

She dropped the key on the table in front of him. He looked at it without moving.

“Keep it,” he said. “I don't have time to be your sister's jailer. It would be better for you to take care of her.”

“How long to do you intend to keep her locked up?” Deliverance enquired.

Luke looked up. The steel had gone from his eyes and in that brief unguarded moment she saw the difficult position Penitence’s selfish actions had put him in. Condemning a man to death had to be the hardest decision he would ever have to make, particularly a man whose only real crime was loyalty to his mistress..

“For as long as is necessary.”

“You don't really think that she was passing intelligence to Jack, do you?”

“I don't know what to think, Deliverance. She may not have been aware she was doing it. A wrong word, a whispered confidence could have been all it took.”

“What about Truscott?”

His face instantly hardened. “There is no excusing Truscott. This is war, Deliverance. No quarter was given to the garrison at Byton remember. Is that what you want for Kinton Lacey?”

She lowered her eyes and shook her head.

He pushed the goblet away and ran a hand over his eyes. “Deliverance, Farrington knows everything that is going on within these walls. Someone is passing him that information. Whether it was Penitence or something she may have said to Jack without thought, lives will be lost and Truscott is as much a party to those deaths as if he had been the one who had handed over the information himself. An example has to be set.”

“I see,” Deliverance said with a heavy heart.

He looked up at her. “You're not going to argue with me?”

She shook her head. “No, because as awful as it sounds, you are right, Luke. Now excuse me, I am going to bed.”

She left him alone in the Great Hall and crawled alone into the big bed. She had become used to sharing it with Penitence.

She lay awake thinking of her sister and her love for Jack Farrington, and felt nothing but pity. A way had to be found of making this right.

Chapter 17

L
uke stood back and let Hale unbolt the door of the room in the Jewel Tower where they had incarcerated Jack Farrington. He had given the prisoner six hours to consider his fate and to judge by his red-rimmed eyes and hollow cheeks, they must have been very long hours indeed.

Farrington sprang to his feet. “Is Penitence all right? What have you done to her?”

“She's fine,” Luke said. “Just trimmed her wings a little. Sit down, Farrington, we need to talk.”

Jack subsided on to the stool and buried his head in his hands.

“She's innocent,” he mumbled. “We both are.”

Luke surveyed the wretched specimen of manhood. He was almost on the point of believing the pair's protestations. They were probably guilty of nothing more than stupidity but lesser men had been hanged for that crime.

“What am I to do with you?” Luke said, with a heavy sigh. “The last thing I need at the moment is a prisoner. We barely have enough to feed the garrison.” He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “If I am to believe that you and Penitence are not the traitors, who does your brother have working for him in the Castle?”

Jack looked up, genuine surprise on his face. “I've no idea. Charles keeps his own counsel on these matters. “

So would I, thought Luke. This man seemed incapable of dissembling and Luke admitted to himself that he had to accept Jack told the truth.

“So your meetings with Penitence Felton were nothing more than lover's trysts?”

“You have my word on it,” Jack said, misery written on his face and in the way his shoulders slumped.

Luke studied the younger man for a full minute without speaking. He considered the value of interrogating Jack at greater length about his brother's plans, if Jack was privy to them, which he doubted.

Jack's main worth to him was as a hostage. Even if Charles Farrington was incapable of feeling anything for anyone Charles would still have to answer to his father, and mother, about his brother’s fate and that made him useful.

He wondered about Jack's relationship with his brother and it made him think of his own brother, Nicholas, whose face he dreaded seeing on a battlefield. Every time he had taken the field, he had scanned the faces of the men he faced wondering if would he even recognise Nick before it was too late.

“What are you going to do with me?” Jack ventured, rousing Luke from his reverie.

Luke straightened and turned for the door. “Nothing for the moment. Enjoy the rest but I warn you the neighbours can be a little rowdy.”

As his hand touched the latch, Jack's voice came from behind him.

“Collyer.”

Luke turned his head to look at the young man. Jack looked up at the narrow window embrasure and sighed. “Collyer, there is something I need to talk to you about.”

Luke turned back into the room and stood looking down at the younger man. “I'm listening.”

An hour later, Luke left the room, shutting and locking the door behind him. He tossed the key in his hand. He couldn't spare a man to guard the room and with a Farrington agent on the loose he trusted the key to no one but himself. Back in his bedchamber he found a leather thong and hung the key around his neck.

Coming downstairs in the morning, Deliverance found herself confronted by a deputation of Kinton Lacey men. She had known them all her life and she knew why they had come. She listened to them plead the case for Truscott and promised she would do what she could to ensure he did not hang at noon.

After they had left she sat in the large chair at the long table and looked up at the portraits of her Felton forebears. What did you do when you could see both sides of an argument? She didn't think Truscott deserved to hang for being complicit in a lovers' tryst but on the other hand they had four hundred men at their gates intent on their destruction. As Luke would say, this was war, in all its brutality, and it was about setting an example. Putting her personal feelings to one side she understood that they could not afford to risk such a breach of discipline or there would be deaths, more deaths than just the life of one man. However pure his motives, Truscott had to be punished.

Her fingers tapped the table. Maybe a good flogging might have the desired effect? She had never seen a man flogged. Her guts clenched at the thought but surely it had to be better than hanging.

She rose and went in search of Luke. From the top of the stairs leading to the residence she saw him striding across the courtyard towards the Hawk Tower. She caught up with him as he entered the staircase.

“Luke.”

“Good morning, Mistress Felton,” he said without breaking stride.

“I have to talk to you about Truscott,” she said.

“You talked to me about Truscott last night. There is nothing more to be said.”

His pace and her skirts made the climb up the narrow circular staircase difficult, and she was panting with the exertion, which made pleading a cause extremely difficult.

As she puffed behind him, he continued to ignore her, taking the stairs two at a time.