voice lowered and quivered as she struggled to stand tall. Fatigue was robbing her not only of balance but thought, as well. “I am nearly too tired to stand, let alone think, so please, Kenneth, reconsider your actions. Or at least tell me why I’m here.”
His expression softening only slightly, Kenneth took a step over the threshold, only to stop when he caught sight of the soldier beside him. “If you are so tired, mayhap a nice rest in isolation for a day or two will clear your head and return your memory.”
She shook her head, tossing away the cobwebs that exhaustion had draped across her thoughts. She surged forward. “Nay, you’re a fool! I can’t be imprisoned! Not now! You know nothing of women in confinement, or of babes and all the dangers that can befall them! ’Tis a perilous time for Lady Ediva!”
The soldier shoved her back, hard, and Kenneth grabbed the man’s hand as Clara struggled to remain standing.
“’Tis a perilous warning from Colchester, also, so mayhap keeping you from Lady Ediva is warranted!”
Clara felt the blood drain from her face. The cold left in its wake sent a shiver through her. No. Please, no. Had the guild masters in Colchester finally told their baron, Lord Eudo, why they’d insisted she be sent here to replace the midwife who’d died? This tiny village and isolated keep would never have been her choice of home. Had Lord Eudo suspected something was amiss from her departing look that day a month ago, and finally gleaned the truth from the guild masters on whom he’d bestowed far too much control? She shivered again. Or had that evil Lord Taurin finally arrived to claim what he had no right to possess? Did Taurin have enough influence to take her into custody, as well? Nay, she would fight this, for more than just her life was at stake.
Worry bit into her. All she knew was that Lord Eudo had seen fit to warn his brother of something he’d learned. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat.
Nay. She would not be frightened. She had done what was right and true in her eyes and would do so again. The guild masters, and indeed, all the townsfolk of Colchester, had no right to toss her out, and Kenneth had no right to imprison her for what she’d done there!
Through the dimness, she peered at Kenneth, recalling how they’d met. A month ago, he’d ridden to Colchester to escort her here. During the majority of the time they’d spent traveling, his looks had been cold enough to freeze the North Sea solid. She’d bristled, and still stinging from the town’s rejection, she’d lashed back at Kenneth by correcting his sloppy equestrian habits. The ride here had been awkward and unpleasant.
“You are a brutish race of people,” she whispered harshly. “All of you Normans are, coming to our land, taking what you see fit and discarding us when we are of no more use!”
Kenneth ordered the guard away. When they were alone, he stepped forward into the dank, stinking room. With his dark tunic and leggings, he immediately blended into the shadows around them. “I can tell by your expression you know exactly why you’re here.” Triumph lit his face at her guilty surprise. “See, you do know the reason, don’t you? Then you should be imprisoned.”
She snapped her head to the right to hide her expression. All the worries of the past spring flooded back. The weak, frightened voice begging her for asylum, her desperation to keep safe a frail young mother and her newborn son, whom no one here would even know, much less care for. Aye, all her own fears and that of the young woman’s washed back over her.
But Clara had pledged with her life to allow no harm to come to the helpless pair. And that included never revealing their location. She’d told only one person and she was far away from Colchester. ’Twas needed, for the lives of mother and son depended on it.
If time in this horrible room, with its stink of mold and filth from drunken soldiers who’d needed to sober up, was part of the cost of her personal integrity, ’twas a cost she was willing to pay. She would never reveal where mother and child were, no matter who ordered it. The guild masters and the townsfolk in Colchester, even her own father, God rest his soul, should he return and demand she divulge their location, would never learn it.
Should Lord Taurin find Rowena and the babe, ’twould be disastrous, for he had been brutal when he’d bought her as a slave and brutal in fathering the child against her will. The Good Lord had designed that Clara help Rowena through her childbirth and then hide the pair away when Taurin’s men arrived looking for them.
Since coming to Dunmow, she’d secreted Rowena and her infant to another hiding place, one closer by. It had taken a whole night and part of an early morning to travel the few leagues from the first hiding spot to the other, but Rowena was safe for now. And she would stay that way, no matter what the cost to Clara in keeping the secret.
Kenneth leaned toward her, his voice softening. “So, Clara, save yourself. Tell me where they are. Tell me all about them.”
Never. Revealing their new location would surely sign a death warrant for the mother, and Clara had long since pledged to save lives, not take them. Only God should take lives.
She squared her shoulders as her eyes finally adjusted to the dimness and her nose to the stench. Her mouth thinned further as she folded her arms. Whatever Kenneth had read meant nothing, and she would not dignify his curiosity with an answer.
“Fine,” Kenneth said, apparently reading her determined stance. “We’ll sort out your stubbornness after you’ve had time to chew on it. I’m thinking you’ll find your decision as tough as old shoe leather.”
Clara watched as Kenneth grabbed the ring of the heavy plank door to slam it shut. At the last moment, she raced forward, hoping to say that Lord Adrien should hear her explanation, not just his brother’s message. But when her hands connected with damp wood, she knew it was too late. Slowly, she sank to the dirt and rubble at her feet, her hands dragging down the roughly planed door. Something sharp stabbed into her left palm as she crumpled into a ball, worried and desperate—yet not surprised. She’d known this day was coming.
Lord Adrien and Sergeant Kenneth d’Entremont were both Normans, like that filthy baron who’d caused this trouble for Rowena. They would likely never believe the tales of brutality that had Rowena fearing for her life if she stayed with her master. Lord Adrien was a good man, but would any Norman care about a poor Saxon mother as Clara did?
Her head shot up. But they would care for Lady Ediva upstairs! When Kenneth had grabbed her arm a few moments ago, she hadn’t even been given a chance to call out instructions to Margaret on how to care for her mistress and the new babe. Surely they would see that she was needed!
Please, Lord, keep Ediva and her child safe! Clara bit her lip through the prayer. There was so much that could happen. Things that could easily end their lives. She jumped up and smacked the hard, mold-darkened wood with her stinging palm. “Nay! I must return to Lady Ediva! Kenneth, you must let me return to her! Kenneth, she could die! Think of your lady! Think of her babe!”
But her cries bounced around the dark room to no avail, and her hands pained from pounding on the door. She could feel blood splatter onto her cheek from the injury in her hand. Ignoring it, she called out her plea to consider Lady Ediva, but no one, save herself and whatever creatures scurried within the cell, heard her voice.
With one last soft cry on her lips, she fell to the floor again.
* * *
Kenneth paused at the base of the narrow stairs that led down to this filthy place from the kitchen. His gaze moved from the guard posted at the top to the door he’d just slammed shut
