sister, not me—you!”
“Me?”
Gwyneth waved the blade in the air, pointing to a painted wooden target that was half-hidden behind an enormous canvas containing a scene with a glowing risen Christ and his worshipful followers gazing into the heavens. Using canvas, a gift from Brother Giffard, instead of boards or parchment was new to her, so Brenna was especially pleased with the piece.
“I know of your skill with a knife,” Gwyneth said pointedly, not even noticing the new painting. “Of your practice with a blade.”
Brenna blinked at the charge, and tamped down the small disappointment that her sister did not notice the canvas. ’Twas true she’d spent hours plunging daggers into that scrap of wood in preparation for her trip to Italy, but she was no murderess. “My knives are for protection!”
“Then protect us.” Gwyneth held the dagger high in the air. The sharp blade shook in her fingers as if ’twas possessed by Lucifer himself. “Kill The Enforcer. This is a special blade—l’occhio del diavolo.”
Italian, the language Brenna had been studying. L’occhio del diavolo: The Devil’s Eye. What an odd name for a dagger.
Brenna lurched to her feet; her paint-splattered kirtle swirled about her ankles. Best to get this situation under control afore her sister cut herself.
“Give me that, you ninny! No one is going to kill anyone.” She grabbed the weapon, stalked to her table, swiped back the mortars she used to mix her paints, and set l’occhio del diavolo on the far side of the cluttered surface. Brushes scattered onto the floor. The scent of turpentine and oil of spike lavender floated around them.
In a quick slight of hand, she covered the nude self-portrait with a rag.
At Gwyneth’s downtrodden look, Brenna quickly added, “You will mar your lovely hands, sister.”
“Devil rot my hands.”
At that moment Duncan, a scrappy black-and-tan terrier, and the slight figure of Adele, Brenna’s younger sister, burst into the room. She, too, wore wedding finery: a heavy blue velvet gown with fanciful dagged sleeves and a steepled hennin on her head. She held St. Paul, her gray cat, in one hand and her staff in the other. Her frothy black hair fluffed around her shoulders and down her back past an embroidered gold girdle at her hips. Panthos, her large mastiff, flanked her, panting his retched breath into the chamber.
Leaning heavily on her cane, Adele wended through the scattered maze of painted boards as heedless of her artwork as Gwyneth had been. “Montgomery has reached the castle! Father is tied and being dragged across the courtyard on his knees. Make haste! You must stand in Gwyneth’s stead for the marriage ceremony and kill Montgomery tonight.”
Brenna looked from one of her sisters to the other. How could they ask this of her, after all she’d gone through without asking help from either of them? She glanced around at the paintings of saints and angels that had been her companions these past months during her confinement.
“I am not going to kill anyone.”
“You must,” Gwyneth insisted. “You are the only one who stands a chance.”
The mastiff barked, and Adele held her hand out to calm him. Her oval face looked pensive. “Victory starts with Montgomery’s death. We will inform Father Peter of the bride change. You must slay The Enforcer in the bridal chamber when you see the snuffing of the candle in the chamber across the bailey. That will be the signal that the men are in place and ready to retake the castle and free our father.”
And then your father would love you, a dark voice whispered inside her mind. You would be a heroine instead of a burden.
“This is lunacy.” Out of habit, Brenna reached for the fat, wooden cross that usually hung around her neck. When she realized it wasn’t there, she picked up a paintbrush and turned it over and over in her fingers. “I am to be a bride of Christ. I cannot harm anyone.”
Gwyneth rolled her eyes. “As Father says, you are ill suited for a nunnery.”
“Ne’ertheless, I intend to give my life to God.” She indicated the myriad of religious paintings strewn about the chamber, hoping to further her claim. She would be damned if she was going to end up like her mother, waiting hand and foot on an inattentive man with a passel of brats to care for until she collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Better to live in a convent.
The fact that Bishop Humphrey refused to consider hanging her art even in one of the cathedral’s privies was one more proof why she needed to leave England and head to Italy where she could join a nunnery and become powerful in her own right.
“I have seen your targets. You wield a dagger and paintbrush with equal aplomb,” Adele insisted. “You can do this deed.”
“A few months of practice hardly equals master—”
“You can do it!” Gwyneth swirled toward her, ermine trim flying. “You defended me against Lord Brice. And set Sir Edward’s breeches on fire. And shot Thomas in the arse with an arr—”
“Zwounds, sister, hush your babble.” Brenna clapped her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear any more of her supposed sins listed. Her father railed at her enough. “Those men deserved it. And”—she glanced around at her prison of a bedchamber—“I’m still paying penance.”
Gwyneth slid next to her, touching her on the arm. “I know of your plans to go to Italy. That you have been exchanging letters with the abbess of La Signora del Lago.”
Brenna winced at the discovery. But of course, Gwyneth would know. Adored by the servants and brightly sociable, her sister knew all the workings of the castle. She’d probably crafted some damn needlework to mark the event.
“Just do this one last deed, and we will help you on your journey. For certes, Father would grant you permission to enter the convent.”
Permission. The one thing she needed to be accepted into the holy order.
Adele rapped her cane on the planks, causing her raven hair to bounce. Duncan barked and scurried atop a trunk. “We will have men ready to whisk you away as soon as Montgomery is dead. They will be outside this door when we give the signal, and Panthos will lead you out the back tunnel to a safe cottage by the river.”
“Panthos?” The mastiff. “I’m to commit murder, then be led by a dog to escape the wrath of The Enforcer’s men?” Both of her sisters had turned lunatic.
“Aye,” Adele said calmly. Her intense, dark eyes shone with intelligence, not fever. St. Paul stretched languidly in her arms and let out a loud purr. “I have told Panthos of your danger, and he has agreed to protect you. Duncan will go with you as well; he is good at catching rabbits.”
Brenna perused her dark-haired sister who was composed and serene, floating as always in her secret ethereal haze above the pain of her deformed leg and the chaos of the earth. Of a truth, she had uncanny kindred with the beasts of nature, but—to be led by one dog and fed by the other?
“You are both daft.”
Panthos sat on his haunches and cocked his head at her.
“You too,” she told him.
“Prithee,
