Roger seemed to be in no such hurry. He wandered up to the altar and idly picked up one of several candlesticks and began to consider it carefully as he spoke dispassionately. “My dear Ian, if I had my way, you would still be in Shadowsend. I’m still not entirely sure why you are here at all.”
Ian crossed his arms over his chest, trying to resist the urge to snatch the candlestick from his hands. “I could not stay there, abusing people’s innocence and trust by pretending to be their honest priest. With Lady Imogen gone the whole purpose of the deception was lost.”
“But, Ian, you are a sanctified priest.”
“That couldn’t save me from you, could it?” he spat out bitterly. But when he saw Roger’s smile harden he drew a deep, steadying breath. “Tonight I have heard from the woman I had traveling with the Lady Imogen. She has told me that the party is camped only hours away.”
“So close,” Roger said softly as he carefully returned the candlestick to its position. “I never realized that my little sister could be so resourceful.”
He stood for a second, staring at the cloth covering the altar, then turned quickly as if to leave. Ian stepped in front of him, his face taut with outrage.
“Is that all, then? Is that all you have to say?” Ian searched the serenely beautiful face in front of him for a moment, then quickly looked away before he could begin to actually believe in it. He shook his head in disbelief. “Because of you, I have just thrown away my last piece of self-respect and here you are treating it as if it all means nothing to you, as if this is just a tidbit of gossip I have collected merely to entertain you. If you don’t care, why have you made me act a Judas all these years?”
Roger raised a brow questioningly. “My dear Ian, calm yourself. Priests don’t have any need for self-respect. That is what their God is for, after all.” He smiled brightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And don’t forget that you also have me and my eternal patronage.”
“I’d be better off with the patronage of the Devil himself.” Ian turned from Roger then, no longer able to abide being so near him and for once not caring if the other man saw his contempt.
“Careful, or I might just remove that patronage.” Roger’s cold eyes raked over Ian. “Till now, I have been very generous and let me assure you, you will miss my generosity if I decide to withdraw it.”
Ian’s hands clenched impotently at his sides. He knew that there was nothing he could do and his silence was an admission of his own weakness.
Roger smiled approvingly. “Good. I’m glad that you have managed to see sense. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a very important appointment with the king. Thank you for the information, but I would prefer in future if you confined our contact to messengers.”
Ian watched him stride confidently from the chapel and had to resist the urge to cross himself. The deed was done and there was nothing he could do to undo it.
He turned and walked slowly toward the altar, staring at the glowing crucifixion. Suddenly he sunk to his knees, impervious to the cold that radiated from the stones and, for the first time in months, found inside of himself enough of the priest he had once been to be able to form the words of a simple prayer.
But he didn’t waste this small miracle on his own tattered soul.
No, he prayed for the young woman whom he had been systematically betraying for years, and who was even now throwing herself into the very mouth of Hell itself. It was a last desperate act, and he knew with a sinking certainty that it would be futile, just as everything had been since the long-ago day he had meet Roger Colebrook.
He knew Imogen well. He had watched her from a distance, had watched her grow and blossom over the months of her marriage and had even been a little proud when she had found within herself the courage to confront Roger, a courage he himself lacked.
Admiration, however, couldn’t blind him to the facts. The chances were she wouldn’t survive the game Roger was playing with her, few did. But still Ian prayed.
He prayed for a miracle.
A shiver ran down Imogen’s spine as the high walls of William’s fortress cast them into the shadows. She hunched her shoulders, trying to steel herself against the darkness of this desolate place. It seemed impossible to comprehend that somewhere within this stone menace was the man who had brought a little sunlight back into her life.
It was all so alien to her, yet if her life had been all it should have been, she would have belonged to this cold darkness, it would have been so much a part of her that she would have long since stopped seeing the suspicion and hate that had built those thick stone walls. She would have seen nothing wrong in destroying an innocent man to satisfy another’s dark desires. With eyes that saw, she would have been blind to the gentleness and love that lurked under Robert’s armor.
And that would have been a tragedy indeed.
Imogen’s hands tightened compulsively as she heard the horses’ hooves strike the fortress’ stones. Suddenly, there was no room to retreat. She was now committed to do all that needed to be done. She stiffened her spine, and felt her chin rise aristocratically. It was as if generations of breeding were suddenly manifesting themselves inside her after years of absence.
That breeding was the only chance she had. It might not give her an ability to beg, but it would hopefully give her the confidence she needed to make demands of a king.
They halted, and Imogen’s horse pranced several times before being subdued by Gareth’s firm hand on the leading rein.
“Halt. Who seeks admittance to King William’s fortress?”
Gareth sat stiffly in his saddle and for a second allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy of turning tail and getting Imogen the hell out of here. Only the certain knowledge that she would never forgive him if he did so stopped him from making realities of fantasies.
Grudgingly he called out, “It is Lady Imogen of Shadowsend and her retainers who seek admittance into the king’s presence.”
His voice sounded calm enough, but he also made sure that it was injected with just the right amount of confusion, as if he was asking how anyone could question Imogen’s right to approach the king’s gates.
Imogen smiled tightly at Gareth’s display of arrogant confidence. It was a side of the laughing man she had never noticed before, but to judge from the stunned silence that descended, it was very effective, for all its infrequent use.
She silently wished he would share a little of that arrogance with her. She was painfully aware that every eye in the castle’s outer bailey must now be trained on her. She knew she would be the center of their rapt attention, but she couldn’t let herself be cowered by it. Instead she sat serenely as if it all meant nothing, but that only served to titillate their audience further. The sound of many voices murmuring scandal started low and spread like wildfire. Imogen felt her face flush as the words Lady Deformed reached her ears.
“Sir Gareth, why am I waiting? We have declared ourselves, surely that is enough,” she asked imperiously, deliberately pitching her voice well over the rumble of the crowd. A hush fell, no one wanting to miss one moment of this surprise entertainment.
“I’m not sure, my lady,” Gareth said respectfully, but Imogen could hear the smile in his voice as he too began to play to their audience. “Perhaps you have stunned the poor guards with your beauty.”
She shrugged her shoulders, as if such extravagant flattery was only her due. “Surely they can be just as rapt when I’m inside the castle as when I’m outside in all of these draughts.” She knew by the sigh of satisfaction that rose around her that she was playing her part well.
If only she could believe the part, but it was all bravado and went only skin-deep. She was terrified that someone would shake themselves free of their surprise and recall that she was the wife of a would-be assassin.
Fear was becoming an all-too-frequent companion, she thought abstractly, her every sense straining to try and gauge if their bluff was working. When she heard the clank and rasp of the guards stepping aside to let them pass, Imogen thought she might actually faint from the relief that flooded through her.
She allowed her muscles to sag with it instead, but only for a moment. She quickly straightened in her saddle. They had overcome only the first obstacle and there were many more still to come.
Gareth brought the horses to a halt near the large oak doors of the main entrance, slid swiftly from the saddle and walked to Imogen’s side. He reached steadying hands around her waist and gently lifted her to the ground. Taking her arm, he nodded stiffly to the groom taking their horses to the stables, while trying to hide the sinking feeling in his gut as he watched their means of escape disappear around the corner.
His attention was brought back to Imogen as a shiver went through her body. He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “You are doing well, Imogen, you acted just like a princess,” he whispered admiringly, then added with a sad smile, “Robert will be proud of you.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
Matthew slowly walked over to join them, looking around the courtyard in disgust. “And to think I had to work so hard to get out of here! I should have saved myself the bother if I was only going to throw myself back into the Devil’s teeth.”
Gareth flashed a grin at Matthew. “I’m glad you didn’t see fit to mention your recent adventures to the guards. If they recognized you as an escaped prisoner, all the hauteur in the world wouldn’t have got us in.”
“We would probably still be trying to explain it as they walked us to the scaffold,” Imogen murmured.
Matthew snorted derisively. “No chance of that. These idiots wouldn’t recognize the end of their own nose, much less the reappearance of an escaped prisoner.” He shook his head. “They are a rabble of ill-disciplined old women. Give me a month and I might just be able to whip them into a vaguely capable group of scullery maids, but only if the hard work didn’t kill them all first. It would take a lifetime to turn them into soldiers.”
“Should you be complaining about their lack of discipline when it was that self-same lack that let you escape in the first place?” Gareth asked with a raised brow.
“It is the principle of the thing,” Matthew said loftily and Gareth laughed out loud.
Imogen’s smile was tight and preoccupied, her mind working at a furious rate as she tried to decide how to proceed. “Attack and surprise,” she said quietly, and for a moment it almost seemed as if she was once more in front of the Keep’s hearth, listening to Robert explain to her the intricacies of chess.
Gareth only just caught the softly spoken words, but he understood what she meant. He slipped his arm through hers and began to guide her up the main steps. Matthew followed behind more slowly, glaring at the gathering crowd in what he knew was a satisfyingly threatening manner.
Imogen flinched as the main doors closed behind them, but she continued to walk beside Gareth with the appearance of calm confidence. She knew only too well that if they were to succeed, they had to move so fast that no one noticed that they were, to all intents and purposes, laying siege to the king and his fortress.
Any hesitation on her part and it would mean doom for them all.
Their luck held, with the guards too stunned to challenge them. They were all shocked at finally seeing for themselves the infamous Lady Deformed. Word of their arrival had spread quickly, and the halls were already filling with people eager to catch a glimpse.
Gareth cast a concerned glance down at the small form walking close to his side. The serenity of her face didn’t fool him for a moment, not when he could feel the death grip she had on his arm. He would have done everything in his power to shield her from these cruel, prying eyes, but there was nothing he could do.
It didn’t help his temper any that he knew the curiosity of the crowd was being fed by their need to see Imogen’s infamous deformities for themselves.
Even unseen, Lady Deformed—the misbegotten sibling of Roger the Angel Courtier—had titillated the court’s jaded curiosity, but this was just too good an opportunity to be passed up. That there was no damage to be seen on the proud figure that walked with such graceful dignity excited them even more.
Excited, titillated and aroused, Gareth thought grimly.
He felt his brows draw tightly together as he noticed the lust that flared to life on more than one man’s face. Their amazement was quickly turning from something a little less innocent, and into something a little more carnal. He tried to glare them all down, but for every man who lowered his eyes at the ferocity of Gareth’s raw anger, there were another ten that became more intrigued by the fragile beauty who managed to inspire such fierce loyalty.
Loyalty at court was even rarer than innocence.
His irritation communicated itself to Imogen in the sudden tautness of his body. She gently squeezed his arm, trying to reassure him. “Don’t let it worry you, Gareth; their rude curiosity doesn’t hurt me. It is no less than I had expected.”
Gareth gritted his teeth, but if she could stand it, then so must he. Tolerance didn’t mean acceptance, however. Payments would be extracted later and he silently began committing each leering face to memory.
He was so busy at it that they almost ran into the guard who suddenly stepped out from the crowd and halted their progress.
“The king demands the attendance of Lady Imogen Beaumont in his chambers immediately,” the man said formally, but he also gaped openly at Imogen, not at all deterred by her glaring companions.
“Excellent,” Imogen said loudly for all to hear, “lead on.”
“Ah, my lady, I’m sorry but the king has requested only your presence. I’m afraid your retainers will have to wait for you elsewhere.” He gave Matthew and Gareth a pointed look, expecting the men to immediately obey the royal edict, but neither made any move to abandon their lady.
Imogen’s arm tightened around Gareth’s.
“I’d hate to appear to be disobedient to my sovereign, but I’m afraid that one of my people will have to come with me. I am unable to see and I need their help. Surely the king does not expect me to abandon my eyes?”
Imogen’s voice was soft, but everyone in the room heard her simple pronouncement and it created a minor uproar.
For a moment, the guard’s eyes clouded with confusion, but he recovered quickly. He stepped toward her and bowed gallantly. “It would be an honor, my lady, to act as both your escort and your eyes if you would allow it.”
She hesitated for a second but knew that there was no other way. A royal command was a royal command. She didn’t dare disobey.
She slowly removed her arm from Gareth’s.
“Wait for me,” she murmured.
“Forever, if need be,” Gareth said fiercely as he bowed respectfully over her hand.
Matthew moved quickly to do the same, his creaking joints protesting their ill use loudly. It was all the reassurance she could take with her.
She felt the stranger link his arms through hers, and found herself walking stiffly beside him as she left behind her last link with the familiar.
The guard walked slowly, careful to guide her around every obstacle, but it seemed to Imogen that in no time at all they were outside the king’s chambers, waiting to be formally announced. She listened intently to the faint sound of her name being spoken, and the curt, rumbling reply it got. An absolute terror settled over her as she gracefully walked into the chamber on the guard’s arm.
All was silent in the room except for the rhythmic, agitated tapping of a fingernail on wood.
Imogen loosened the guard’s arm, and dropped into a faultless curtsy. “Sire,” she murmured, her early training returning to her in an instant.
She remained in a low curtsy and while she couldn’t hear anything over the loud beating of her heart, she managed not to flinch when she felt a meaty finger smooth along her jawline and lift her face to the light.
King William’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he looked into the face of Lady Deformed for the first time. Courtiers had almost killed themselves in their rush to get to his chambers with the news, each eager to be the first to tell him that Lady Deformed was a beauty without equal. They had all wanted to see his reaction, wanted to be the first to know whether the king would treat this innocent beauty as his lover’s sister or as a traitor’s wife.
Their descriptions had varied wildly, but the central astonishment had remained true in every telling of the tale. Each of them had said in their own way that Lady Deformed was even more worthy of the title “angel” than was her brother.
William had gritted his teeth and refused to let them know that he was as genuinely astonished as they were. He couldn’t let it be known that he was as ignorant as everyone else of the truth. He hated the thought of people knowing that Roger had never once seen fit to tell him that the rumors about his sister had been no more than a tissue of lies. Never once had he tried to tell William the truth, not even in the relative privacy of the royal bed.
In fact, until Roger had unexpectedly suggested the marriage between Imogen and Robert as a vicious joke, he had never once spoken of his sibling, and William had foolishly assumed that the silence was the result of discretion. Now that he could see for himself that there had been no need to hide this lady, however, he had to also admit the unpleasant truth that he had never really known what deep game Roger had been playing.
He dreaded finding out, but this woman was going to make it impossible for him to hide from the truths that would tear apart his life.
He dropped her chin suddenly and moved over to look out the window. “So, why exactly have you decided to invade my fortress, Lady Imogen?” He paused, then added bitingly, “I doubt your brother requested your presence after all this time.”
“Like any other dutiful wife, Your Majesty, I have come to be with my husband.” As she said the dangerous words she kept her face carefully lowered. “I have also come to prove him innocent of the gross accusations that have been leveled against him.”
William turned toward her and leaned against the windowsill, crossing his arms over his stocky chest. “You would dare plead for the life of my would-be assassin? It is a very dangerous thing to do in the circumstances,” he said coldly, but was unable to hide a faint flicker of admiration. He watched her lift her chin slightly when most men he knew would be cowering at such a display of royal disdain.