By the Unholy Hand by Kathryn Le Veque

Author:Kathryn Le Veque [Veque, Kathryn Le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medieval
Published: 2019-01-23T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

“NAY,” MAXTON SNARLED. “She is not going back.”

There was a battle brewing in William’s solar. A half-hour after Maxton relayed Andressa’s revelation to The Marshal, the productive and interesting discourse had turned into something else, and William had brought about the statement that Maxton had been dreading from the moment the news had been revealed. Somehow, he knew it would all come down to this.

Now, it was Maxton against William, perhaps the most talented assassin ever known against the greatest knight England had ever seen. And all of it over… a woman.

But in the face of Maxton’s fury, William stood firm.

“Think, Maxton, think,” he implored. “It is the perfect situation. If we send her back to St. Blitha, then she can report on everything that is taking place. We will have a spy right in the center of the viper’s nest.”

But Maxton was having none of William’s bigger-picture rational. He was looking at the woman in the middle of it, not the king she would be saving as she spied upon a very deadly mother abbess. To him, the very suggestion was ludicrous.

There had to be another way.

“She is not a spy,” Maxton snapped. “She is a pledge, a simple woman. She does not have the skills for this, nor the experience. She will get herself killed spying for you.”

There was an accusation there, slung at William at full velocity, but the man didn’t flinch. There wasn’t much he flinched at these days. It was just past sunset, and Farringdon House was lit up with candles and fires, projecting light into the darkness of night that had settled. The smells of the evening’s meal wafted on the breeze, tantalizing those who were ready to eat. Mostly, that meant William, his retainers, and the knights who were in residence that night, but at the moment, the feast would have to wait.

Everything would have to wait.

Kress, Achilles, Alexander, and Gart as witness to the brewing storm. Gart had been out most of the day with the de Lohrs, as he served David these days, but he’d returned to Farringdon House to see how Maxton’s plans were coming along only to run head-long into what seemed to be a very angry confrontation between William and Maxton. Kress had filled him in on the reasons behind it, through swift whispers, and now Gart stood on the fringes of the chamber like the rest of them, watching Maxton and William hash out the situation, hoping they weren’t going to have to pull Maxton off of the old earl at some point.

It was a tense circumstance to say the least.

“What you do not seem to realize is that she is already in danger,” William said. “Sending her back where she belongs is safer for her in the end because they will not suspect that anything is amiss. They will not know she has told you of their plans, but if she stays away any longer, I am sure they will become suspicious. You told me

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