A Knight's Pledge, page 1
Books by Heather Grothaus
THE WARRIOR
THE CHAMPION
THE HIGHLANDER
TAMING THE BEAST
NEVER KISS A STRANGER
NEVER SEDUCE A SCOUNDREL
NEVER LOVE A LORD
VALENTINE
ADRIAN
ROMAN
CONSTANTINE
THE LAIRD’S VOW
THE HIGHLANDER’S PROMISE
THE SCOT’S OATH
THE KNIGHT’S PLEDGE
HIGHLAND BEAST
(with Hannah Howell and Victoria Dahl)
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
The Knight’s Pledge
Sons of Scotland
Heather Grothaus
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Copyright
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 2022 by Heather Grothaus
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First Electronic Edition: March 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5161-0710-0 (ebook)
First Print Edition: March 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5161-0714-8
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Books by Heather Grothaus
The Knight’s Pledge
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Dedication
For Jackson, for Lillian, and for Emmelia.
You each make me a better person.
Prologue
February 1442
Castle Dare
Northumberland, England
Euphemia was yet a mile away from the castle when she saw the glow against the inky night sky. There could be no mistake that the Montague hold burned.
She struggled through the winter-brittle underbrush, grateful for her thick woolen cloak as the thorns sought their way beneath the hem, ripping at her thin gown and lashing the flesh of her legs. They would soon discover her gone from the chamber that was her prison at Darlyrede, and so she must hurry—run, when the terrain allowed. Whether the rumors were true, and she found Thomas Annesley at Castle Dare or not, Euphemia now understood that she could never return to Darlyrede House if she wished to live.
She knew too much.
She must warn the Montagues at once of her suspicions—surely they would take her into their protection until the king could be told.
She at last came to the fringe of the wood and looked upon the chaos surrounding the once elegant stone keep. Smoke lay thick around the motte, the red glow of the forge revealing the survivors milling there as if lost. The creaking and popping of timbers being devoured only emphasized the significance of the charred shell. There was nothing left to save.
Euphemia made her way among the refugees without fear of being discovered—she already knew that in the plain cloak with the old, pale blue gown beneath, her hair flowing and tangled and littered with the detritus of her flight, no one would take her for the Hargraves’ supposedly pampered niece.
“The poor children. To lose both parents at once.”
Euphemia stopped and looked around with wild eyes, but could not discern from where the snippet of conversation had come.
Lord and Lady Montague were dead?
No. No, no, no…
The sound of a young child sobbing wafted through Euphemia’s shock, and she turned slowly to discover a little girl—not likely older than four—shivering in a heap on the frozen turf, her threadbare nursery gown stretched ineffectively over her knees.
“You’re just a baby,” Euphemia breathed to herself, and her fingers went at once to the clasp at her throat, forgetting for a moment the blow dealt to her plans. “Here,” she whispered as she crouched down near the girl and piled the warm wool about her. “Here you are. Why are you alone?”
“Mama?” the girl whimpered, and as she looked up, Euphemia beheld milky, sightless eyes surrounded by thick, sooty lashes in the perfect face. “Mama?”
Euphemia rushed to her feet and stumbled backward, staggering away from the child while trying to muffle her hysterical sob. This was a horrid dream, surely.
But until she woke, she couldn’t pause. She must find the Montague children. She must find them before Vaughn Hargrave did, for if he felt at liberty to commit such vile atrocities in the waking world, what would he do in a nightmare?
At last she saw them, there on the fringe of the inner circle, watching the last of the hold be consumed while their elderly nurse knelt in prayer nearby. Lucan, older than Euphemia’s ten and five by perhaps only a year, with little Iris clinging to his leg, still in her nightdress. Handsome, young Lucan still in his tunic and trousers, his eyes wild and red-rimmed, his narrow face pale beneath the fall of his dark hair. He held what appeared to be an orphaned slipper in his right hand.
Orphaned, perhaps like the blind girl child; orphaned like Euphemia. The Montague children were now orphans, too, and just as endangered as she was, even if they didn’t yet know it.
“Master Montague,” she rasped as she neared him with her arm out. “Lucan.”
He whirled around, giving her only the briefest glance. “I have nothing for you,” he barked. “Go with the others until the morn.”
“Lucan,” she pressed, glancing around nervously at the crowd. Vaughn Hargrave could be anywhere. “You must come away with me at once. You and your sister. We must go to the king. The Crown will aid us.” She reached him at last and took hold of his arm. “We must—”
He whirled around and struck Euphemia with the slipper in his hand, so unexpectedly and so soundly that she twisted and fell to the ground, her frozen cheek now burning from the blow. “I said, I have nothing for you, wretch,” he shouted. “I am lord here, now. You are not worthy to serve the house of Montague, let alone hold the king’s name in your filthy mouth.” He took a step toward her.
Iris still clung to his leg and she let out a fresh wail. “Lucan, stop!”
The elderly nurse had risen and was now coming toward them, her wrinkled face tear-streaked. Euphemia met the woman’s eyes until the young master of ruined Castle Dare recalled her attention.
“Go,” he growled at her. “I don’t ever want to see your face again, or I’ll cut you down myself.” He turned away from her, gathering his sister up from the cold, smoky ground, and half carrying little Iris further along the burning ruin.
“Are you alright, girl?” a man’s voice called out.
Euphemia looked up and saw a servant approaching near the Montague children’s nurse—a groom or the like, from his dress. Neither servant recognized her, she was sure. Behind them both though, Euphemia caught sight of steel gray hair…
She scrambled to her feet and turned back toward the wood, running, stumbling; tears leaving hot, wet tracks on her cold cheeks.
She would die in the forest rather than subject herself to the supposed mercy of any nobility ever again. From hell, all of them. She would freeze, or starve, or be devoured by wild animals—she didn’t care anymore.
Yes, Euphemia Hargrave would die that very night—she must. But she vowed she would never, for all eternity, forget the pain Lucan Montague had caused her.
Chapter 1
January 1459
Steadport Hall
Northumberland, England
Lucan Montague stared at the rich draperies gathered into an intricate swirl over his head, the hills and valleys of the canopy touched by the eternal sunset of the blazing hearth fire to his left. The hues predicted nighttime, and indeed the sun had set over Northumberland hours and hours ago, yet Lucan’s throbbing foot and the memory of bright blue eyes would not allow his furrowed brow to smooth into slumber. The smell of smoke still burned in his nostrils despite several irrigations, and he wondered if his hands would ever be free from the black soot stains. He wondered if he’d ever been free of them, really. Hadn’t they been lurking just beneath the thinnest layer of his skin? Lurking like a phantom miasma, the demons from his past now returned…
It had been two days since Darlyrede House had burned; two days since his sister Iris had married Padraig Boyd before the shell of the ruined estate; two days since they’d come to sturdy Steadport Hall as guests of Lord and Lady Hood to recover and make their plans.
Two days since Lucan had slept.
Padraig and Iris were already gone off to London now, and Lucan should have accompanied them. Tavish and Lachlan would be arriving there for the meeting he had summoned them to long ago, and Lucan’s presence would be demanded. But Lucan was unwell. Perhaps more unwell than he dared even admit to himself.
His head pounded, and his foot throbbed where Euphemia Hargrave’s arrow had pierced his boot, pinning him to the forest floor that day what seemed years ago now.
Nay, not Euphemia Hargrave, he reminded himself. She calls herself Effie now—Effie Annesley.
Lucan called her a criminal. A criminal whom he would report to the king when he made his disastrous testimony about the debacle of Darlyrede. Not only had Lucan lost the man he was charged with finding, one of England’s richest estates was now smoldering rubble and the nobles overseeing it—Vaughn and Caris Hargrave—were dead.
And Thomas Annesley, the man who’d been on the run from the Crown these past thirty years after being accused of killing his fiancée on the eve of their wedding, had a daughter. A daughter with eyes the color of the cornflowers that had carpeted the rolling hills between Castle Dare and Darlyrede House.
A daughter who had lived in the wood with a band of criminals for fifteen years.
A daughter who had shot Lucan through the foot.
Lucan would return to the king a failure. A disgrace to his station as a knight of the Royal Order of the Garter. He had no idea where Thomas Annesley was. Lucan had cost England a fortune and been laid up by a woman.
Lucan told himself he was only taking advantage of Lord Edwin Hood’s hospitality in order to recuperate and rest, but in reality, Lucan knew that he was hiding like the cowardly failure that he was. Thus, his being unable to sleep was perhaps justified.
He was thinking that perhaps he should simply own up to his new pusillanimous existence by retreating to France with his tail firmly between his legs when he heard the door to his borrowed chamber creak open in the dim light of the fire.
Lucan frowned and lifted his head from the cushions to peer down the length of his body, past the thick bedpost toward the door. It must be halfway to dawn—who could be creeping about the chambers at this hour?
A dark head poked into the room, the shielding door awash with reflected firelight at first shadowing the coloring and features of the face of his visitor with the blackest shadow. Then a thick-set body emerged to carefully close the door behind the intruder, and Lucan recognized the sturdy tunic, the dark red hair like sheep’s wool lying on the broad shoulders.
Lucan’s heretofore furrowed brow raised in surprise. “Rolf?”
Darlyrede’s steward flinched and turned immediately to face the bed. His already pale face was made the more so by the gloomy shadows beneath his hound-eyes, his dark red beard framing the man’s apparent distress.
“Sir Lucan,” Rolf said. “My apologies for disturbing you at such a late hour, but I fear it is most urgent.”
Lucan pushed himself to his elbows, his melancholy and self-pity vanishing. This was a very welcome distraction. “Is it Iris? Padraig?”
“Nay, lord,” Rolf said as he crossed the floor and began to gather Lucan’s discarded clothing.
Lucan threw back the bedclothes at once and grasped his left calf to lift his injured foot and swing it over the bedside, where it’s throbbing increased.
Many thanks, Effie Annesley. You hag.
“Ulric?” He reached out his arms to slide them into the sleeves of his partially laced gambeson and then pulled away to shimmy into the quilted piece. “He’s to already be arrived in London.”
“Nay, lord.” Rolf dropped to his knees to assist with fitting the trousers over Lucan’s bandaged foot and then fit his left boot—regrettably split up the shank to accommodate his swollen, crippled appendage.
Blasted Effie Annesley…
Lucan rose, drawing up his breeches and lacing them while Rolf assisted with the boots. The chamber seemed wont to tilt and wobble for a moment while the pounding in his head increased, but it passed almost as soon as it had begun.
Then Lucan took his belt and wrapped it around his waist, pulling the buckle tight against his flank. He glanced up as Rolf held forth Lucan’s sword.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t wish to tell you, lord.”
“You don’t wish to—?” Lucan took the sword and slid it into his sheath. “You’re not the sort to play coy, Rolf, and your loyalty is stalwart, so I have no doubt of the sincerity of your plight. But I would know what we are about at this late hour, when you have come taking such pains to be unobserved.”
Rolf’s throat convulsed as if he forced himself to swallow, and his eyes were dark, wild. And yet he remained composed. “There is no time to waste. I will tell you to where we hie once there is no chance that we might be overheard.” He paused. “Please.”
A secret? A desperate secret. Lucan’s eyes narrowed for in instant, but then he shrugged. “Very well.”
It’s not as if he’d anything else better to do besides disparage himself, his foot, and blasted Effie Annesley.
It took only moments to be through the compact hold of Steadport Hall and into the stables to retrieve Agrios, who stood saddled and at the ready. Rolf’s mount, too, was waiting at the wide opening, loosely tethered with his muzzle in a bucket of oats, munching loudly in the darkness. It was clear even in the gloom that Darlyrede’s steward’s horse had been hurriedly wiped down after a hard ride, and the stable floor was dark with water near the trough while a sleepy stable boy dozed with his head in his hands on a nearby stool.
“I’ve got it,” Lucan muttered with gruff embarrassment when Rolf made motions of assisting him in mounting. The steward stepped away without argument to coax his reluctant mount from its treat. It took Lucan three awkward starts, but he at last sat astride as Rolf led his horse through the stable doorway and held the door while Lucan ducked beneath the lintel, his head pounding so that starbursts seemed to be exploding on the periphery of his vision.
Effie Annesley had turned him into a cripple, at the mercy of others’ aid, just as surely as if Lucan were an old widow woman.
Effie Annesley, risen from the dead.
A moment’s superstitious hesitation overcame Lucan as he followed the steward into the cold, black Northumberland night, Agrios’s hooves crunching into the snow. “Rolf,” he called out. “Tell me true: do we return to Darlyrede?”
Any other would perhaps have missed the man’s hesitation in answering, but Lucan had known Rolf Littlebrook since Lucan himself had been a boy, and so he saw the blink of a pause, heard the awkward guile in his lie. “Nay, lord.”
“Rolf…”
“I swear it, lord,” Rolf insisted. “We will pass by the place and, aye, ‘tis true that tonight’s misfortune is tied to Darlyrede House, but it is not our destination. Someone needs help, and by my word, you will know what can be done.”
Lucan blinked. “Who needs help?”
“Effie Annesley, lord.”
Lucan pulled up hard on Agrios’s reins, causing the destrier to balk at the uncharacteristically rough treatment. He turned the horse back toward the stable.
