He will crucify her!” she cried.
“Nonsense,” Piers said calmly. “Nicholas is a hard man, but not cruel.”
“You think you know him?” Aisley asked, turning on her husband. “Well, I do not. Even in our youth, he was distant, unfeeling, and when he returned from the Holy Land, so cold and hard, and his eyes so…so…” Aisley shuddered, unable to go on.
“War changes a man, Aisley,” Piers said gently, but she would take no comfort. Her thoughts were on her brother, who had made hatred his life’s blood, vengeance his only joy, and on the poor innocent who would be forced to suffer for it.
“What could Edward be thinking? He knows how Nicholas was obsessed with Hexham, chasing him down like a dog and driving him to madness.”
“I think the king knows what he is doing,” Piers said with a pensive air. “You must admit that this is the first time Nicholas has shown an interest in anything since Hexham’s death.”
“Yes, Nicholas finally responded to something, but ‘twas horrible to see it.” Aisley shuddered at the recollection of how those gray eyes, so like her own, had sprung to life with the fire of his malice.
“Edward is no fool,” Piers said. “He would not put the girl in danger, and I seem to recall one marriage he arranged to the good.”
Aisley stopped pacing to glance at her beloved husband, her thoughts diverted momentarily by their own hard-won happiness. “But that was different,” she protested. “Edward told me to choose one of his knights, and I picked you. ‘Twas my own good judgment that founded our marriage.”
“I do not think you felt that way from the first,” Piers said in that familiar dry tone of his, and Aisley could not help but smile.
“Oh, Piers,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “But I was strong and world-wise, while that child is innocent—a nun, by all the saints! My brother would abuse a holy woman!”
“Nicholas is not going to abuse her, and she cannot have taken her vows yet, or she would not be made to wed,” Piers protested.
“But she has grown up in a convent, a gentle, delicate thing, most likely, sheltered from the hard ways of the outside, and certainly unused to men and their brutality. Oh, Piers, what shall become of her in Nicholas’s hands?”
“Have faith, Aisley,” Piers answered.
“Yes, faith,” Aisley echoed. “I shall pray for her, as she will need it, and may God have mercy on the poor girl.”
Nicholas rode away from Dunmurrow without a backward glance. Nothing held him there, but something, finally, waited for him ahead. Though he feared no one, Nicholas kept enough men with him at all times to provide good escort, so he was well equipped for a new journey. Pausing only long enough to learn the location of the convent where he would find her, Nicholas had set out to fetch his bride.
He did not care what she looked like. Whether she was old or young, crone or beauty, she was of Hexham’s blood, and his hatred drove him on toward this new object of revenge. In fact, Nicholas was so eager to reach his destination that he hurried his men needlessly, the patience and discipline that had ruled his life for years loosening its tight hold upon him.
“Where go we?” A deep voice, low and melodious, sounded beside him, and Nicholas flicked a glance to the man who spoke. He wore a long, flowing robe, as did several others in Nicholas’s company who disdained the traditional knight’s mail coat.
“Darius.” Deep in thought, Nicholas had not noted his companion’s approach. Although annoyed at his own inattention, he was not surprised to be caught off guard, for Darius had the ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. Some of the others called him Shadow Man and feared his stealth, but Nicholas was not so foolish. That skill had saved their lives more than once as they roamed strange cities throughout the East.
Although he was called a Syrian, Nicholas had no idea where Darius came from originally. The population of Syria was diverse, with Greeks, Armenians, Maronites, Jacobites, Nestorians, Copts, Italians, Jews, Muslims and Franks coexisting, along with a few Germans and Scandinavians.
Darius’s name was Egyptian, and Nicholas could well picture the tall, dark man as a direct descendant of some powerful pharaoh. He had a noble look about him, and a confidence not born of the gutter. His skin was a deep gold, but light enough to suggest a mixed parentage, and Nicholas often wondered if Darius was some sultan’s cast-off son. Or perhaps he was simply the product of a knight who had raped a local woman in a crusading frenzy.
Nicholas had never asked, and Darius had never offered. Since their precipitous meeting several years ago, they had kept to an unwritten rule between them: no questions about the past. When the time came for Nicholas to return to Britain, Darius had come along, and Nicholas had shared what needed to be known with the man who came closest to being a friend to him. But that was as far as it went. They held each other to no oaths, shared no future beyond the day, and passed no judgment upon each other.
“We go to a convent,” Nicholas replied. “A holy place for women,” he added when Darius sent him a questioning look.
The Syrian still appeared puzzled as he struggled with such a foreign concept. “The women live alone together?” he asked.
“Yes, they have pledged themselves to God.”
“What do we there? I am surprised they allow men in such places.”
“We go to find a kinswoman of my enemy. Hexham’s line lives on, Darius, and I would have my vengeance upon it, at last.”
“This kinswoman is a holy one?” Darius asked.
“Nay. She but lives there with those who are.”
Nicholas saw Darius relax slightly. Although, as far as Nicholas knew, the Syrian did not practice any religion, he had a high regard for the places he deemed holy, both Christian and Muslim. “Ah,” he said softly. “And what shall you do with her?”
Nicholas did not answer immediately, for he was still considering his plans. The future, which had only a few hours ago seemed so bleak and senseless, now held endless possibilities. Nicholas tried to tamp down the clamor in his blood to a dull roar, but the patience that had been his mainstay seemed to elude him now. Thwarted by Hexham’s death, and the long, hollow months that had followed, he craved immediate recompense. Now. At last.
“I would make her suffer as Hexham did me,” Nicholas finally replied.
“You mean to leave her to bleed to death in the desert sun?” Darius asked.
Nicholas ignored the Syrian’s sarcasm, for he did not wish to be reminded of the torment of those burning days and freezing nights, or of the slow year of recovery that had followed.
“Nay,” he said. “But I would find out that which she cherishes most, and I would take it from her, just as Hexham tried to do to me and mine. I would discover what she most fears and reviles, and I would present it to her. I would torment her and take pleasure in it. I will have my revenge.”
In the ensuing silence, Nicholas felt Darius’s hard stare upon him. Although the Syrian’s dark eyes held no censure, he knew that Darius had a deep-rooted respect for women. More than likely he
