Page 30 of Raven's Rise
Laurence hurried out. Rafe turned to Angelet. Bethany had reached her and flung a blanket around Angelet’s shaking shoulders. It wasn’t just for warmth, but for modesty as well, since Angelet wore only her thin shift.
“Should someone fetch your shirt, sir?” the maid asked as she shot a look directly at Rafe’s bare upper body.
Angelet looked too. She couldn’t have avoided it, not when he was right there in front of her, still breathing fast from the short but vicious fight. Angelet knew she shouldn’t be staring at his perfectly conditioned torso, or his arms, or shoulders…every muscle starkly contoured by the light of the few candles in the room.
“Bethany,” she whispered. “Please do that. Fetch his clothes. Immediately.”
The maid left and returned with Rafe’s shirt, which he pulled on. Not that it mattered now. The image of him was seared into Angelet’s mind.
“What happened?” Rafe scarcely raised his voice, as if this was an ordinary conversation and there wasn’t a dead body at his feet. “Angelet? I need to know.”
“I…I’m not sure. I wasn’t sleeping well, and I heard a noise, and I woke up to find someone here in the room. I asked who was there, and he rushed toward me. I didn’t even see who it was, but he capped his hand over my mouth. To keep me quiet, I thought. But his hand was over my nose, too, and I could barely breathe.”
“Then what?”
“I bit the hand. Then I screamed. That woke Bethany. She screamed and ran from the room.”
“To get help,” Bethany added. “I pounded on the door next to ours.”
“That’s true,” Simon confirmed. “The screams woke us, but the pounding on the door got us all up. But by the time we reached this room, you had already got here, sir.”
Rafe nodded, then turned back to Angelet.
“So, from when Bethany left to get help, what happened?”
She shuddered, thinking of it. “Dobson had his hand on my mouth again, and I knew it wasn’t to keep me quiet. He meant to suffocate me. I just kept trying to get free of him, and trying to breathe. Then you were there, and you pulled him away. You know the rest.”
Rafe looked down at the body in disdain. At a word, Simon and Marcus hauled the body out of the room. Immediately after that Laurence came back with a rather disheveled-looking Tad at his heels.
“Found him sleeping, Sir Rafe,” Laurence reported. “Seems even the commotion didn’t wake him.”
“Sleeping. When you were supposed to be on watch.” Rafe’s gaze was cold. “Tad, explain what the hell happened. Where were you?”
Tad shuffled his feet and said, “I had rather more ale than usual, Sir Rafe. About an hour into the watch, Dobson told me I was nodding off…he said I should just go early to bed, and he’d rouse the second watch himself.”
“Leaving him alone and unobserved to sneak into the room and try to steal the gold from the chest. God damn.”
“I swear I didn’t know what he was up to! I’d never have gone along with it!” Tad looked utterly ashamed, and every time his gaze fell on Angelet, he dropped his eyes to the floor. “What’s to be done with me, Sir Rafe?”
Rafe glared at him. “I’ll think on it. Meanwhile, get back to bed and stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, sir!” Tad was out of the room faster than Angelet had ever seen him move.
Rafe pointed toward the empty basin. “Bethany, please go draw some fresh water from outside. Now.”
The maid hurried out of the room once more. Rafe ordered the men still there to take the body out, then turned to Angelet. His expression was far more concerned than before. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice. “Truly?”
“Yes. He didn’t manage to harm me.”
“What about your condition? Did what just happened…will it trigger anything?”
“I don’t think so. But it’s possible. I’ll tell Bethany to watch me carefully.”
Rafe sighed. “Jesu. You seem to be in danger both from withinandwithout.”
“The seizures are rare.”
“But could happen anytime,” he said. “And even if you do not suffer from that, we cannot forget that one person has tried to kill you to get at the gold. There could be another.”
