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There was no denying reality. She had wedged herself into a situation from which there was little chance of escaping unscathed, unless she dared admit who she was. To do that was sheer foolery. Given the antipathy between the Slayer and the Scot, she would quickly become the Slayer’s hostage. He would think he had the upper hand until he learned that Ferguson wouldn’t pay a shilling for her return. Ferguson would then do what he’d threatened in the first place—hang her mother and sisters in the courtyard.

Since forcing her mother into marriage a year ago, the Scot had taken all that he wanted from Jeanette, and then cast her aside. The marriage had given him the legitimacy he needed to rule Heathersgill without the peasants’ revolting. Now that he’d established his foothold, Jeanette and her daughters were dispensable.

With her eyes still closed, Clarise drew her strength from the knowledge of their desperate plight. Jeanette was likely in her rose garden this morning, where she drifted like a wraith among the bloodred blooms. Since her beloved Edward’s death, she’d been mad with grief, scarcely sparing a thought for her three daughters.

Merry, of course, would be hiding in the woods outside the castle walls, where she would not fall prey to Ferguson’s men-at-arms. In the forest she sought poisonous herbs for her herbal. Clarise was not the only one who plotted Ferguson’s demise, but the wily Scot had all his food tasted before a morsel ever passed his lips. Merry had only succeeded in poisoning a number of men-at-arms.

Kyndra, who was six, was the only daughter who seemed oblivious to the changes in their lives since Ferguson first killed their father. Covered in filth and grime, Kyndra would be playing in the buttery with the servants’ children.

Clarise drew a deep breath and let it out again. Somehow, some way, she would find a means to save them all. But she would not sell her soul to the devil to do it. She would not poison the Slayer of Helmesly.

Nor could she tell him who she was. As long as the warrior believed she nursed his son, she was safe. She would stick to her flimsy disguise and pray that he would question her no further. Simon seemed content to drink the goat’s milk, and all she had to do was ensure a steady supply for him while endeavoring to reach Alec.

Clarise whipped back the bed curtain and put her feet to the floor. The sight of a tray inside her door gave her pause. It was laden with cheese and bread and—God be praised—milk for Simon. She rubbed a grain of sleep from one eye. The necessity of finding the source of the goat’s milk could be put off for a little while. First she would tend to the matter of reaching Alec.

The baby awoke at the sounds of her stirring. She fed him the milk until he burped with repletion. Then she changed his soiling cloth, adjusted his swaddling, and viewed her own reflection in a square of hammered steel.

Dark circles rimmed her eyes. Her hair was a tangled mess and her gown wrinkled from wearing it to bed. While her vanity protested, she knew she would be safer this way. She looked the part of a harried nurse, not a tempting female. The Slayer would look elsewhere to assuage his amorous needs.

Thrusting aside the memory of his tongue at her breast, she left the room with his baby in her arms and hailed the first person to cross her path. “Good morrow,” she called to a girl staggering under a load of clean linens.

Rays of sunlight poured through the crossloops, splashing warmth onto the folded sheets. Blue eyes set in a pretty face peered around the pile. “Ye art the new nurse!” the girl exclaimed in the English tongue.

“Dame Crucis,” Clarise supplied. “You may call me Clare.” Instantly she saw the resemblance between this girl and the one who’d tended Simon earlier.

“I am Nell,” the girl said eagerly. “Me sister Sarah gives thanks that ye haffe come.” Her gaze fell to Simon. “Sarah raised all eight of us when oure mum and da died. But not e’en Sarah knew how to comfort the wee master. ’Tis a miracle ye haffe wrought. Ye saved me sister from a fate most dire.”

The word dire hung in the air between them. Clarise glanced down the deserted hallway and stepped closer to the girl. “What happens when the Slayer is angry?” she whispered, recalling the sharpness in the warlord’s eyes. “Does he . . . maim his servants?”

The color drained from Nell’s round cheeks. “Sarah tol’ me ne’er to speak on it!” she whispered back. “Pardon, madam. Dame Maeve wille be sore vexed with me, do I tarry longer.” She slipped past Clarise with her teetering load.

Struck by the girl’s palpable fear, Clarise nearly forgot her purpose in questioning her. “Just a moment,” she called out, halting the maid at the stairs. “Can you tell me the way to the chapel? I missed matins this morning.”

Nell cast her gaze to the floor. “The chapel is in the forebuilding, but it hast ne been used since Our Ladyship wed the lord,” she admitted, clearly crushed by that circumstance.

Clarise kept her disappointment guarded. “You mean, there’s no priest here?” She required a priest to convey her message to Alec. Merry’s blood! Her spirits took an abrupt downward turn.

The girl sadly shook her head.

“Well, how do you confess?”

Nell brightened. “The Abbot of Revesby visits Rievaulx once a week. We confess to him.”

“The Abbot of Revesby comes to Rievaulx? But there’s already an abbot at Rievaulx.”

“Aye, but he ne speaketh English like the Abbot of Revesby doth.”

Clarise had doubts about enlisting an abbot’s help. “Is this Abbot of Revesby a kindly man?” she asked, recalling the malignant glimmer in the Abbot of Rievaulx’s black eyes.

“A truly holy man, he be. He hath many differences with the Abbot of Rievaulx,” Nell added, seeing her wary expression. “Would ye like to come with us on Friday? Most folk walken to Abbingdon to hear his words.”

So there was a way to contact Alec, but it would take some time. “I would like to come with you,” Clarise replied, though she had doubts that the Slayer would let her go. Hadn’t she sworn to keep vigilant watch over Simon?

Thanking the laundry maid, Clarise bid her good day and followed a wing of the castle toward the east tower. With no luck in enlisting the aid of a priest, she tackled the next most pressing need: finding the source of the milk Simon drank. She couldn’t ask for a mug every time the baby hungered.

The more Clarise wandered, the more the size of Helmesly impressed itself on her mind. It had been built to house the king and all his men, should the baron be blessed by King Stephen’s presence. Yet as she peered into the guest chambers, she found them all wanting. The beds had been stripped of their drapes. The embroidered cushions had been plucked from the chairs. The chests were gutted. The torch holders were devoid of torches. Had the goods been sold to pay for weapons? she wondered.

She found herself comparing Helmesly with her own ravaged home. Ferguson had set fire to the hall one day while brawling with his second-in-command. The roof now had holes that the rain poured through, a circumstance that pained her heart whenever she thought of it.

In her father’s day Heathersgill had been a lovely stronghold, built at the highest point of the Cleveland Hills, making sieges almost impossible. The only way to take the keep was by trickery. And that was how Ferguson had come to claim it for himself.

If her father could see what had become of their home, she thought, her heart compressed with grief. If he saw his lovely wife, wasted to a skeleton, her hair cut to jagged lengths, his ghost would haunt the wall walks.

If something should ever happen to me, he’d often told Clarise, protect your mother and sisters as best you can. He’d raised her much like a son, which explained why he had laid such a burden at her feet. And he could never have predicted that his death would come so soon, while Clarise was yet a maid with no husband to call upon for military might. Nonetheless, she felt that she had failed him. Oh, she’d failed him.