But then the clearing was filled with the sounds of horse hooves and a hand was on her shoulder.
“Beryl, Beryl,” Padraig demanded. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she breathed, and let him gather her into his arms to help her to stand, and yet she did not release her clutching hold on his tunic. She looked around the clearing and saw Lord Hargrave leading the rescue party, his face a white, furious mask.
“Follow them!” he commanded to those riding at his side. “Find the vermin and kill them all! I want their heads mounted on stakes!” The riders lurched into action at once.
Hargrave got down from his horse and went immediately to kneel at the side of Adolphus Paget.
“Adolph,” he shouted, grasping the man’s pointed chin in his hands and turning the wide-eyed countenance toward him. He slapped the man’s face twice and then grasped either side of his windpipe. “Adolph!” Hargrave rolled the man to his side with careful, practiced skill, but an instant later he let the body rock back to the stained ground without further action.
The forest again was eerily silent.
Iris realized she was clutching Padraig Boyd’s slim, solid waist, the blood from his injured ribs sticky and drying against her. She looked up at him.
“Are any broken?”
“Naught to fash over,” he said grimly. “But grazes. Lucan, though...”
Iris nodded and pushed away from the warm, solid comfort that was the Scotsman and ran to where her brother now sat on the ground.
“Help me get the boot off,” he was saying before she was even kneeling properly. “The foot is swelling and I’d not cut it if it can be helped. They’re Italian.”
Padraig joined them in the next moment and helped to pull Lucan’s pierced boot from his foot. He cried out as the slender leather slid away, and a trickle of blood spilled out in a stream.
“Goddamn him,” Lucan gritted. “That bastard! I’ll find him and kill him myself!”
“I do hope you’re satisfied, Lucan,” Hargrave said in a sanctimonious tone over all their heads. “Now you perhaps have a sense for what I’ve had to deal with in keeping Darlyrede safe from those… those common criminals. This is on your head, you know.” He looked to the only man-at-arms who had remained. “Take Lord Paget’s body on your horse to carry back to Father Kettering.”
Hargrave then turned his gaze to Padraig. “That’s the second death in as many days in your vicinity, Master Boyd. If I didn’t know better, I would think someone had a grudge against you.”
Chapter 14
Iris rode back to Darlyrede behind Padraig Boyd on his retrieved horse, at first trying to keep a distance between her torso and his wide back, clutching at the right side of his tunic. But the rolling gait of the horse and the shock of the morning soon became too much for the little strength she had left—both mentally and physically—and she at last gave in to the urge to lay the side of her face against his warm ribs and close her eyes as they made their way back to the courtyard.
If either of the arrows that had injured him had been inches inward, he could have suffered the same fate as Adolphus Paget. Iris couldn’t imagine what her world would be like in this moment if Padraig Boyd had died, if she knew she would never again see his teasing smile, feel the warmth of his presence or the solid strength of his hand; debate the easy logic of his thoughts and the morals that guided him, his clear understanding of right and wrong. Iris’s mind was a blank when she tried to gauge the suffering she would have felt at the loss of him.
Euphemia Hargrave had suffered.
Iris felt as though she’d been dropped into a dark chamber—shock causing all her senses to be exquisitely alert to the point of discomfort, and yet all the information they relayed to her made no sense in the blackness. Was the silence absolute in her head, or was she surrounded by a deafening roar? She didn’t know which way to turn to escape; was it blistering heat or icy cold that seared her nerves? Was the ceiling just overhead or was she standing at the brink of a bottomless abyss, hungry for her to take that first, fatal step into the nothingness that would swallow her forever?
Would Iris be delivering salvation to Caris Hargrave with the information she now possessed, or the penultimate blow that would at last break the fragile woman?
He would never show me such mercy.
For some reason that she could not order in the chaos of her thoughts, the memory of what Lady Hargrave had said to Iris haunted her—specifically, the mention of the word “mercy” in regard to why her husband would never kill her.
It was the reason the thief in the forest had cited for taking Euphemia Hargrave’s life.
It was the most merciful thing I could do.
They arrived just then, and Rolf appeared at their side to help Iris from the back of Padraig’s horse before he himself swung stiffly down. A page took charge of the mount, and she and Padraig wordlessly made their way toward the section of inner wall that housed the chapel and Father Kettering’s parsonage, following the form of Lucan, supported by a king’s soldier beneath each of his arms.
They ducked through the doorway in time to see Lucan being lowered onto a cot, and the priest swirling through the throng of oblates and soldiers, handing out supplies and issuing crisp orders.
“I must fetch wrappings for Lord Paget. Clean Sir Lucan’s wound,” Father Kettering commanded. “But leave it unbandaged for now.” His eyes fell upon Padraig, and Iris tensed at the way the priest’s mouth thinned as he looked pointedly at the bloodstains on Padraig’s clothing. “Master Boyd’s as well. Lord, I’ll need more comfrey,” he muttered.
The
