Page 54

“In her chamber, my lord.”

Thomas simply brushed past the man as he headed down the narrow spiral stairs and emerged out into the dusty bailey.

Crossing the sloping outer ward at a normal pace, he realized about halfway across the bailey that Desmond was following him.

Not that he cared. He simply kept walking, crossing into the inner ward and up the steep steps.

But by the time he hit the keep, an oddly-shaped three-storied structure, he could hear the screaming.

More screaming .

In times past when he’d heard such sounds, Thomas’ knightly instincts had kicked in and he’d run to the source, ready to do battle, or to help, or whatever was needed.

But the truth was that Adelaide screamed so much that he’d grown numb to it, so he took the spiral stairs in the stairwell immediately to his left, up to the floor above where the screaming was coming from.

The first thing he saw was blood.

And it didn’t even get a rise out of him.

Adelaide’s nurse, a stout German woman, had blood on her hands and on her crisp, white apron.

She was heavily-wimpled, with a white wrap around her neck as well as around her big head, and she stood there screaming in the doorway to Adelaide’s chamber.

She wasn’t making any move to help; she simply stood there with blood on her hands and wailed.

As Thomas came to the door, he shoved the woman out of the way only to see Adelaide sitting on the floor, leaning against her bed, as two stoic maids worked furiously to wrap the wrists that Adelaide had cut.

Again.

Thomas couldn’t even muster the will to be concerned. This was at least the eighth time Adelaide had cut herself since she’d been at Wark Castle and he simply didn’t care any longer. As he stood in the doorway, Adelaide happened to look over, catching sight of him.

“My lord!” she cried out weakly. “You have come! Praise to God, you have come!”

Dramatics were Adelaide’s staple. She wielded her flair for the inane like a knight wielded a sword for battle.

This was where she was most at home, seeking sympathy and attention from a man who had no interest in giving her any.

The first two times Adelaide had cut herself, Thomas had shown the appropriate concern, but the third and fourth times, he began to suspect she was doing it just to gain his attention.

The fifth and sixth times, he was sure of it, and that was when he began to see many small scars all up and down her arms. It would seem she had cut herself like that in the past, several times, not enough to truly kill herself, but enough to cause a good deal of blood, which she would melodramatically smear on the walls and bed.

This time, Thomas not only didn’t care, but he found himself becoming quite irritated about it, struggling with his usually-quick temper. When she held out a bandaged hand to him, inviting him to take it, he simply stood by the door.

“Aye, I have come,” he said, his patience gone with her. “In fact, you could have just as easily sent a servant for me rather than cut your flesh simply to gain my attention.”

The hope and joy on her pale features turned into a grimace.

“But… but I have sent servants for you and you will not come,” she said, instant tears in her eyes.

“You never come when I send for you. You ignore me constantly and I can no longer take such disrespect. I want to die, I say! It would be better if I faded away!”

Thomas took a few steps into the chamber, reaching out to rip the careful bandages off the arm she still had outstretched.

“There,” he snapped. He gestured to the shocked servants who had been trying to bandage her.

“Remove the other wrap. She wants to die, so let her die. Let her bleed to death if that is what she wants. What right do you have to stop the bleeding if Lady Adelaide truly wants to die?”

He said it so viciously that the two maids snatched their linen rolls and fled the chamber in terror. Thomas stood over Adelaide with his big fists resting on his narrow hips.

“There,” he said. “You want to die? Now you can. Go right ahead. I’ll not stop you.”

Adelaide was beside herself with outrage and distress. “You want me to die!”

Thomas shrugged. “You have been trying to kill yourself since you came here,” he said. “Go ahead; I will no longer stop you from doing what you truly wish to do. If you are going to do it, then get on with it.”

Adelaide burst into loud wails of anguish, as did her nurse, still in the doorway.

Pushed beyond his limit by two women screaming in his ear, Thomas went to the door and slammed it in the face of the nurse, turning his rage-filled expression to Adelaide, who was sitting on the floor trying to wrap her skirts around her bleeding arms.

“What are you doing that for?” he demanded. “You said you wanted to die. You will not wrap up your arms to stop the bleeding.”

Adelaide rolled onto her knees, looking at him as if in complete and utter fear of the man. “You want me to die!” she screamed. “You cruel, vicious beast of a man! I am going to tell my father that you tried to kill me!”

Thomas lifted his hands in a resigned gesture.

“Tell him,” he said. “He is coming here tonight. In fact, and you can tell him everything. Then, when he comes to accuse me of such things, I will produce a hundred witnesses who will tell him exactly the opposite. Why do you do this, my lady? Why do you create such chaos and dramatics?”

By now, Adelaide was on her feet, moving away from him, crossing the very fine carpet she’d brought with her from Kyloe Castle, moving to the window that was hung with damask curtains.

Everything in her chamber was luxurious and fine, but that didn’t matter to her.

She was still unhappy, still wild with her behavior.

She wept loudly as she shuffled away from Thomas, clearly nothing like the weak woman from moments earlier.

“I have done nothing,” she sobbed. “All I want is for my betrothed to notice me, to spend time with me, and to be kind to me. Is that too much to ask?”

Thomas shook his head. “It is not,” he said.

“But I have tried to be kind. I have tried to notice you, but it is never enough or it is never the right kind of notice. What have you ever tried to do for me except bleed all over my walls or make demands of me? You have never once shown any of the kindness you profess to want in return.”

Adelaide turned to look at him, frowning as she wiped her face.

She wasn’t an unattractive woman. In fact, she had pretty eyes and a nice smile.

Her dark hair was always well-groomed and she dressed in fine clothes.

But her behavior, from the very first day she arrived at Wark Castle, had been an abomination.

Thomas knew, in hindsight, that he should have suspected something was wrong those months ago when Northumbria brought her to Wark and then left within the hour. He didn’t even stay for supper.

Aye, Thomas should have known something was terribly wrong.

“No one understands me here,” Adelaide said. “No one understands anything about me.”

“What are we to understand, my lady?”

Her eyes flashed. “There is no respect for my skills or knowledge,” she said. “I can do many things, my lord, but you have never respected anything I have done.”

He folded his enormous arms across his chest. “What have you done?”

Adelaide was turning from tears to fury. She pointed to the bright day beyond the window. “I am tempestarii ,” she hissed. “I control the weather. The fine sky– I did this. But you do not believe me!”

Thomas could only shake his head. They’d had this conversation before.

The woman believed she was a witch capable of controlling the weather– a tempestarii , as they were known.

She was convinced that everything that happened with the sky was something she had brought forth with her divine spells.

He’d discovered that belief about a week after she’d arrived, sometime around the first instance of her cutting herself.

There was something in her blood, she said, that controlled the weather.

Every time she cut herself in her dramatic, attention-seeking fashion, she expected the weather to change.

It didn’t.

“I told you not to speak on such things,” Thomas said. “There are superstitious people about and if they believe a storm witch lives at Wark Castle, they may blame you for failed crops and famines. You put yourself in danger every time you say that.”

Adelaide was wiping at her bloodied arm with the long sleeve of her shift; the cuts had been shallow, just enough to smear blood and make the situation look dire. But now that Thomas was no longer reacting to them, Adelaide cleaned herself up.

“What do you care?” she said, sniffling. “You will not protect me.”

He lifted those big shoulders again. “I do not want my castle razed simply to punish you,” he said, watching her pale cheeks flush with rage.

Before she could retort, he held up a hand.

“I will say no more on the subject except for this– my parents as well as your father are coming to visit today and you will behave yourself. If you do not, I will send you back with your father and I do not care about the betrothal. I will take my chances with his anger. I will no longer tolerate your foolish, irrational behavior and I will not permit you to embarrass yourself in front of my family any more than you already have. Do you understand me?”

Adelaide was defiant. Having grown up with no one to deny her or set boundaries for her, she rebelled against anything of that nature that Thomas had ever tried to do. “I will not be silenced,” she said. “Mayhap your parents would like to know that you want me dead. I will tell them, I swear it!”

Thomas had enough; one couldn’t argue with a mad woman, and that was exactly what Adelaide was– mad.

Without another word, he turned on his heel and marched from the chamber.

The weeping nurse was still out in the hall, still smeared with blood, and he grabbed the woman by the arm, tossing her into the chamber where she fell to her knees.

As her cries resumed in earnest, Thomas slammed the chamber door shut and bolted it from the outside.

“And that is how you cage a rabid beast,” he hissed to Desmond, still standing outside the door.

“Pass the word to all of the servants. No one opens that door and I do not care how much those two scream. I am at an end with my patience. I will have to release them when de Vauden arrives for tonight’s feast, but not before. ”

Desmond was particularly approving of that order. “Aye, my lord,” he said. “I will ensure they do not make it out alive.”

He muttered the last word inaudibly and Thomas turned to look at him, curiously. “What did you say?”

Desmond shook his head quickly. “Nothing, my lord,” he insisted. “I will ensure no one opens that door until you give the command.”

Thomas’ gaze lingered on the man a moment, still trying to figure out what he had said that he wouldn’t repeat. He suspected what it was, but he didn’t ask again.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t agree with the man.

Listening to the weeping and screaming on the other side of the chamber door, Thomas descended the stairs, mentally preparing for the arrival of his parents and Northumbria.

He had a feeling that tonight would be an interesting night.