The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,46
changed abruptly. “Now go, and never, ever return. If I see you again I shall have my cooks prepare you for dinner.”
“Your threats don’t frighten me—”
“No?” The Earl’s voice was swallowed by the scrape of metal. Cordaella stiffened, reeling forward, Philip barely able to catch her before she slumped against the stones. “Then perhaps this will!” Eton answered as metal clanked against the parapet and the man shrieked, falling backward. “Help! Help, God, help!” the peasant cried, his voice spiraling faintly into the morning mist.
“Enough!” Eton pulled his sword free and swiftly drew it across the other’s neck. The peasant lay still. “God damn whore,” he muttered softly, wiping the blade off on his cloak. “Whores, all of them.” His footsteps receded, taking him down the second tower’s stairs.
Philip would have jumped to his feet, but Cordaella was vomiting against the balustrade. He tried to shield her from the body of the peasant, the throat slit, a pool of blood spreading towards them. “Come, Cordy, we must get out of here.” She stared at him in horror, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We must,” he insisted. “The guards will be back. Father mustn’t find you anywhere near here.” He pushed her to the head of the stairs. “Hurry!”
He was pulling her down the stairs, and she tripped, falling helplessly against him. Everything blurred, tears blinding her. She felt as if she was going to be sick again, and it took all of her control not to be ill on the stairs.
Philip pushed her into her bedchamber and shut the door. Cordaella stood in the middle of the floor, clasped her arms around her, and cried. The terror relived itself again and she was sure she would always picture her father bleeding. Red, red, it stained her hands, her skirt, the floor. The Earl had killed her father. Even as he killed the man on the tower.
She lifted her hands, imagining them covered in blood. The Earl made it look so easy…killing. Could she kill a man? Would she be able to do such a thing? She stared at her palms, and they looked too narrow, too white.
No, she couldn’t kill the Earl, she didn’t have the physical strength or murder in her heart. She turned her hands over and finally hid them behind her back. There must be another way; she knew there was always more than one solution. She would make him pay. Somehow. Someday.
CHAPTER SIX
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IT WOULD COME back to her, the scene on the parapet, and she would be struck mute standing lost, silent, as she listened to the voices playing in her head, hearing again the peasant’s accusations, the Earl’s contempt, the screaming. She wondered how many others Eton had murdered. And none of it seemed significant to him because all who had died were common, peasants. Dirt.
For years she had wondered what happened, there in the snow of Ben Nevis. Now she knew the truth and did knowing change anything?
Autumn was passing quickly. She thought ahead to November and December, before long it would be St. Nichol’s and then the twelve days of Christmas—. When she first arrived at Peveril she had been surprised by the numerous Yule festivities: costumes and singing, dancing and gift-giving. The Nativity, on December’s twenty-fifth, had been barely noticed in Glen Nevis, her father and she too poor, too busy to make up costumes and masks. Yet those Yule celebrations had been mystical, green pine branches draped across the door, tucked under eaves and into shutters. Outside it was cold, silent, white. Inside the fire glowed, the fragrance of pine filled the air and the sticky gold sap dripping from the boughs formed puddles on the floor. It had seemed lovely to her, beauty in the simplicity of the rough wood toys and the green garlands on the brown walls.
Cordaella stood on tiptoe, reaching up high to lift the garland off of the Earl’s bedchamber wall. The dried herb and flower wreath was replaced with another. She stepped off the stool, careful not to crush the brittle wreath under her arm. The bedchamber door opened and Eton walked in. “Mary,” he said, “where is my—” breaking off when he saw Cordaella instead of his wife. “What are you doing here?”
“Lady Eton asked me to change all garlands with the ones we made during the summer.”
He seemed to be examining her, the same inspection he gave his best horses. “You are almost sixteen, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my lord. In