Page 92 of Raven's Rise
Chapter 26
“Excuse me?” Angelet must havemisheard. Or the girl suddenly spoke in Welsh. Or Angelet was having another seizure. “Did you saymurder?”
“I wasn’t here when it happened,” Robin hedged, “but I heard the story. Many times. Sir Rafe was sparring with Sir Alric on the practice field, but he had more in mind than…are you well?”
“No!” Angelet felt genuinely sick. Something must be wrong with her, because Robin’s words made no sense and yet shesaidthem. Why would she lie?
Robin put a surprisingly strong arm around Angelet’s waist. “Come with me. You need to sit down. Your face is white.”
As the two walked over to a nearby bench, which was just a plank of wood set over two stumps, Angelet whispered, “I need to speak with Rafe.”
“You mean Lady Cecily,” Robin said. “Because you’re ill.”
No. She meant Rafe, but it was no good telling Robin that. “Both of them, please. Could you fetch them? I’ll wait here.”
“Don’t collapse,” Robin warned. “I’ll get in trouble if you collapse.”
“Just hurry. And find Sir Rafefirst, if you please.”
Robin picked up her skirts and ran toward the practice fields, moving as if she did that sort of thing all the time. Angelet didn’t remember the last time she ran anywhere. Ladies did not run.
She waited, sitting in the sunny spot, undoubtedly looking much calmer than she felt. The wordmurderkept crackling in her mind, interrupting all other thoughts. She tried to explain Robin’s brief, startling statement to herself. It was obviously false. Rafe would never murder someone in cold blood. He was a knight, and she saw him fight. She even saw him kill Dobson, but that was purely to defend her.
But then she remembered Goswin’s accusation of murder, and how Rafe had reacted to that, with a split second of horror before recovering. Granted, it turned out that Goswin exaggerated the situation in his anger, but the fact remained that he thought Rafe a murderer too. What did Robin and Goswin see in Rafe that Angelet missed? Was she so starved for affection that a little flirtation from Rafe was enough to blind her to his true nature?
No. She’d seen his true nature. It was impossible for him to be a murderer because she couldn’t fall in love with a murderer.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, putting her head in her hands. She loved him. Not just cared for him, or felt a passion for him, butlovedhim. How careless of her. How incredibly foolish.
“Angelet?”
She lifted her head.
Rafe stood in front of her, his face the picture of concern. “Robin just said you asked for me. What happened?”
“What happened?” she echoed. “What happened is that Robin mentioned something no one else here thought to bring up! She said you tried to murder Sir Alric.”
Rafe’s expression changed from concerned to chagrined. “Oh.”
“Oh,” she mimicked, taking refuge in ridicule. “Is this the awkward matter that kept you outside the walls at first? Is this the reason Cecily and Alric keep talking around your return here?”
“Yes.”
His simple admission hurt to hear. “So it’s true?”
“In short, yes, it is. Look, I never claimed I was a saint. In fact, I warned you that I was anything but.”
“I never expected you to be perfect. However, attempted murder is completely beyond anything you hinted at! And I refuse to believe the matter is simple.”
“Why?”
“Because if it were simple, and it was just a case of you hating Sir Alric enough to try to murder him, you wouldn’t be allowed back here. But you were—”
Rafe interjected, “Solely because de Vere himself has been seeking me for some special retribution of his own. Alric wants me here so I can’t avoid my fate.”
She hadn’t known that was what was keeping him here, but she should have suspected it wasn’t because of her. “I see,” she murmured. “Why did you try to kill him?”
“The usual reason,” Rafe said. “Money. Same reason I agreed to escort you to Basingwerke. I’m a very simple man, Angelet. And not a good one. So when someone presented me with what looked like a profitable opportunity, I took it.”
