WolfeStrike (De Wolfe Pack Generations #2) - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,91

wander. He is to remain to this room.”

“Do you want us to stand guard, my lord?” one of the soldiers asked.

Tor shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “He appears too sick to move, so that is not necessary for now. Barbara and Lenore will keep him restricted to this chamber.”

He said it for all to hear, including Barbara and Lenore. They were bent over the man, preparing to decide what they would need to help him, as Tor shut the door and left them alone with their patient.

When he was gone, Lenore’s eyes welled with tears.

“Did you hear that?” she sniffled. “He is going to send us away!”

Barbara was beginning to pull off the man’s tunic, a simple tunic that bore no colors. “Help me,” she said, and Lenore rushed to lift the man’s arms. “And you should not have said what you did, you fool. You confessed everything to him when you told him that we were preserving Jane’s memory.”

Lenore continued to sniffle. “It is true.”

“But you do not want him to know that,” she snapped. “That is our mission in life, not his. We must preserve our sister’s memory.”

They managed to yank the man’s tunic over his head, tossing it aside. That left a mail coat that needed to come off and they began to struggle with it.

“All because of her,” Lenore seethed. “She had no business coming here. This is her fault.”

She was speaking of Isalyn. Barbara was well aware. As they heaved the man into a sitting position so they could remove the coat, Barbara replied.

“Her father came here because his son was betrothed to Isabella,” Barbara grunted as she held the man up for Lenore. “You know that. You know that Tor is attempting to smooth over the fact that he killed the man’s son. But the daughter… you saw the way Tor looked at her.”

“She looks at him the same way!” Lenore screeched and the man fell back to the mattress as they yanked the mail coat from his arms. “She will make him forget Jane. She wants him to forget Jane, I know it!”

Between the two of them, they tossed the mail coat to the floor. Barbara brushed back the hair that had fallen in her face and bent over the unconscious man again.

“Mayhap that is true, but we cannot touch her,” she said. “If we do, you heard what he will do to us. I do not want to spend the rest of my life in a vault.”

“Then we have to make her leave,” Lenore said as if that were the obvious solution. “We have to make her want to leave.”

“Or pay someone to remove her.”

Lenore looked at her sister in shock. “Remove her? How?”

“Abduct her.”

Lenore gasped. “Do you think we should?”

Barbara shrugged. “We may not need to,” she said. “But time will tell. She is only here for a visit, after all. It is not as if she is a permanent resident, but we must keep a close watch. If it looks as if she and her father are staying too long, then mayhap we can motivate them to leave. Mayhap we can even motivate them to leave… sooner.”

“How?”

“I do not know,” Barbara said, but the thoughts were churning behind those dark eyes. “But it will come to me. Until then, I intend to keep a close watch on Isalyn de Featherstone.”

Lenore agreed. “And what about Isabella? What about her?”

Barbara shrugged. “She is no longer to be trusted,” she said. “But we cannot seek any vengeance against her, as much as I would like to. She is a de Wolfe and if something happens to her, the entire clan will come down around us. We would provoke their wrath.”

Lenore understood. “I like Bella a great deal, but she should not have spoken out against us.”

Barbara lifted her eyebrows. “It is clear she has been watching us. I should have been more aware that she would have seen the signs. But for now… we do nothing. We cannot.”

With Tor’s threat hanging over their heads, their hands were tied. They were conniving but they weren’t stupid.

They didn’t want to end up in the vault.

Lenore sighed heavily. “Very well,” she said, reluctantly pushing that subject aside. “Now, for this man – what would you have me do?”

Barbara turned her focus away from treacherous women and on to the unconscious man. “Come with me to the kitchens,” she said. “We will gather a few things to help him.”

Lenore nodded, following her sister from the chamber