Nicola Cornick - Lord Greville's Captive

Anne’s eyes narrowed with disdain at the insult. Her chin came up.

‘I am not accustomed to being spoken to like a camp follower,’ she said coldly, ‘nor do I come from General Malvoisier. I wish to speak with you on a personal matter.’ Her gaze lingered on Guy Standish and the guards. ‘Alone, if you please, my lord.’

Simon strolled across to the table and poured himself a goblet of wine. He was shaking with a mixture of fury and frustration. He spoke with his back turned to her.

‘Have you then come to plead for your own life rather than for your betrothed and the people of Grafton, Lady Anne?’ he said. ‘Your self-interest is enlightening.’

‘I have not come to plead at all.’ There was cold dislike in Anne’s voice now. She took a deep, deliberate breath. ‘I have come to strike a bargain with you. I am here to tell you of your brother, my lord.’

Simon heard Guy Standish gasp. The guards shifted, looking at him, their gazes flickering away swiftly as they saw the way his own expression had hardened into stone. His men had all been with him when Henry’s body had been returned, bloody, beaten and unrecognisable, in defiance of all the laws of truce. They had seen his ungovernable rage and grief, and they were no doubt uncertain how he would react now that someone dared to raise the subject again.

‘My brother is dead.’ Simon’s tone was unemotional, masking the images of death that still haunted his sleep. ‘I imagine that you must know that, my lady. It was General Malvoisier who sent him back to me—in pieces.’

Anne met his shuttered gaze with a direct one. ‘It is true that he sent a body back to you, my lord, but it was not that of your brother.’

This time, no one moved or spoke for what felt like an hour. It was as though none of them could believe what they had heard. Simon found he could only observe tiny details: the crackling of the fire, the snow melting from Lady Anne’s cloak and forming a small puddle on the cobbled floor. He looked about him. The small barn was untidy. Despite all his attempts to make it more homely, it still looked what it was—no more than a glorified cowshed. There were maps and plans lying scattered across the wooden table where he and his captains had plotted the following day’s attack earlier that evening. There was a carafe of red wine—bad wine that tasted of vinegar—staining the surface of the parchment. His trestle bed was tumbled and disordered in testament to the fact that he had been unable to sleep. It was no place for a lady. Yet this lady had forced her way into his company and dared to broach the one subject that drove his rage and his anguish.

‘What are you saying?’ His voice sounded strange even to his own ears. He cleared his throat. ‘That my brother is alive? I regret that I cannot merely take your word for it, my lady.’

Lady Anne drew a step nearer to him. She put out a hand and touched his sleeve. He wondered whether she could read in his face the desperate fear and the spark of hope that he felt inside. Her voice was soft.

‘Take this, my lord, as a pledge that I tell you the truth.’

Simon looked down. She was holding a ring of gold with the arms of his family cut deep in the metal. It was true that Henry had not been wearing the signet ring when his body was sent back, but Simon had assumed that Malvoisier had added looting the dead to his other sins. Now he was not so sure. Hope and dread warred within him. He found that his hand was shaking so much he dropped the ring on to the table, where it spun away in a glitter of gold, momentarily dazzling him. He heard the guards shuffle with superstitious discomfort. Standish was looking strained, incredulous.

‘Forgive me, my lady, but it is easy to take a ring from a dead man.’ His voice was rough. ‘It proves nothing.’

The tension in the room tightened further.

‘You do not trust me,’ Anne said bluntly.

Their eyes met. ‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I do not. I trust no one.’ The anger seethed in him. He wanted to believe her; his heart ached to believe her, but that was the very weakness his enemies were trying to exploit. Suddenly his ungovernable rage swelled up. He swept the maps and plans from the table in one violent movement and turned on her.

‘Does Malvoisier take me for a fool to send you here on the night before battle to pretend that my brother is alive? He does it deliberately, in the hope that I will call off the attack! Dead or alive, he seeks to use my brother as a bargaining tool!’

‘General Malvoisier knows nothing of this,’ Anne said. She sounded calm, but she was very pale now. ‘Only your brother and a handful of my most trusted servants were party to the plan. I have come to ask that you call off the assault on Grafton, my lord. Your brother is alive; if you attack the Manor, you will surely kill him in the process.’

Simon stared at her, as though by searching her face he could read whether she told the truth. Her gaze was steady and unflinching. She looked as candid and honest as she had when she had accepted his proposal that hot summer evening in the gardens at Grafton. But that had been a long time ago and looks could be terribly deceptive.

He made a slight gesture. ‘Why come now? I thought my brother dead these two weeks past. Why wait so long?’

‘It was impossible to arrange safe passage out of Grafton sooner,’ Anne said. ‘General Malvoisier—’ She broke off, then added carefully, ‘The Manor is closely guarded.’

Simon knew that was true. He had been studying Grafton’s defences for all the months of the siege and knew there were few weaknesses. The Manor was small, but it was battlemented like a castle and ringed with a moat and low-lying marshy ground. There were snipers on the battlements and the house was garrisoned with a whole regiment of foot soldiers. He also knew that, despite Malvoisier’s reputation for drunkenness, his men were well drilled, and frightened into obedience. No, escape from Grafton was well nigh impossible.

‘Sir Henry said that you would not believe me, my lord,’ Anne said. She quoted wryly, ‘He said, “Tell that stiff-necked fool brother of mine that he must listen to you, Anne, for all our sakes.”’

Simon heard one of the guards give a guffaw, quickly silenced. It did indeed sound like the sort of comment that Henry would make. He was irreverent and light-hearted even in the face of danger, but his flippancy hid a cool head and quick mind. On the other hand, Anne had known Henry when they were both young. She would remember enough about his brother to deceive him if she were so minded.

‘If Henry has truly sent you,’ Simon said, ‘I will wager that he gave you some other proof to satisfy me.’

Anne’s tone was dry. ‘If you are minded not to trust me, my lord, then no proof on earth will persuade you, other than seeing your brother with your own eyes. And that I cannot arrange.’ She paused. ‘He did mention to me an anecdote that might convince you. It was not something that I had heard before, for all that we spent some of our childhood together.’ She paused, as though the thought was a painful reminder of a past that could not be recaptured. Then she cleared her throat and resumed.

‘Apparently there was an occasion on which you lost Henry in the woods when he was a child of eight. He told me that you preferred to dally with the milkmaid than act as nurse to your young brother that day…’

Simon froze. It was true, but he had long forgotten the incident. He had been eighteen and had much preferred to take his pleasure with a willing maid that summer afternoon so long ago. He had left Henry to fend for himself in the woods for a little while and had been mortified on his return to find that his brother had completely vanished. Now that Anne had reminded him, he could recall the desperation of the hasty search, the fear that had gripped his heart before he had found his little brother hiding in a forester’s hut. That fear had been a faint echo of the anguish he had felt when he had been told that Henry was dead. He had always tried to look after his brother.