Her Dark Knight's Redemption

A few stolen bread loaves had brought her to this dark door. Bread she hadn’t eaten so she was hungry. Scared. But if going forward meant getting this day over with and back to Gabriel as she promised, it was what she would do.

Releasing the latch, she stepped into the room. The men behind her closed it.

Then there was only her. And a man cradling a child.

Chapter Five (#u72a54595-01f8-5158-94d4-7601fb1ba97c)

Reynold did not wait to turn as he had with the wench before. He needed to know immediately if the thief he’d spotted at the market would suit his purposes.

If not, he’d have his men march her to gaol and start again. So he turned, expecting no more or less than what he always expected. Except... Something was different.

Maybe it was the night of no sleep, that underneath it all he felt his hand still tremble at a killing he couldn’t complete and one he didn’t want to make. Last night had shaken him and he’d altered his course from past deeds because he had Grace, who remained quiet and watchful.

It was different and he blamed the child in his arms for his reaction to the woman in front of him. Standing still, remaining quiet, letting her gauge him as a man with her large eyes.

What did she see? Dirt, blood, his weariness. Running, always running, and last night his mind unable to let him sleep since he held his greatest vulnerability. He didn’t have the advantage he usually desired.

He never allowed strangers to simply stare at him. Customarily, he hid in corridors or corners and waited to emerge. He liked watching. The waiting made the person he watched reveal more than they wanted to.

Most never knew he was inspecting their mannerisms for weaknesses as they paced and twitched. As they lifted his enamel boxes off his tables or inspected his books. When he’d eventually emerge, to hide their moment of vulnerability they’d cover their shock with spilling words.

There’d been an exception to this once. Not so long ago, a maiden, scarred and far too loyal to another knight, taunted him out of the shadows, but she was a rarity. He knew immediately that this woman in front would also be an exception. How she would, he didn’t know, because he’d been foolish.

For a while he ruminated on his situation and last night. He’d been standing in front of her, so that he was fully exposed to her, revealing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It was time to inspect her in turn.

She reminded him of a pixie. Despite the years of filth marring her skin and dishevelled clothes, everything about her was delicate and frail. The only abundance was the length of her thick wavy black hair, bound in an irregular plait, and the freckles across her nose.

If there wasn’t such poignant awareness in her large eyes and the tell-tale sign of soft curves under her threadbare gown, he’d mistake her for a child instead of a woman grown.

Her eyes were not dark as he’d thought. Blue? Difficult to tell with the curtains closed in this room. But her hair was so dark it was almost as dark as his own. This would be useful when it came to his daughter, to his plan.

There were questions in her eyes. Fear, too, but not the sort he was used to. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she wasn’t skittish as though she worried about her own life. Another’s, perhaps. He’d seen that once before.

She was quiet, which surprised him, as she made a perusal of him, of Grace in his arms, and then her eyes took in the room.

His favourite room filled with tapestries, silks, comforts and stacks of books. Because it was hard on the bindings and parchment, he never placed the books upright if there were enough tables to support them. As his only true family, he liked to take great care with them.

Her eyes didn’t gleam with greed as Cilla’s or with awe. Instead, she looked curious. He should have met this thief in one of the bare rooms on the other side of the house. A room that wouldn’t have revealed anything of himself. She now knew more of him then he of her. Since the fateful day he’d overheard his family’s intentions to kill him, he’d never revealed anything of himself.

It was the child in his arms. Any act he did from this point on wouldn’t be as he had done in the past. The game had changed.

Another turn of her gaze around the room. Another one of him. ‘Why have you brought me here?’ she said.

Her voice. Direct with an elegant lilt to her words. A common demeaned thief should have spoken with guttural accent like Cilla. Instead, she held almost a cultured accent that both intrigued and confounded him. It was a boon. A dark-haired woman with a pleasing accent and desperate to survive. He didn’t deserve it, but Fortune favoured him greatly this morning.

Aliette had been afraid of only one thing her entire life. Darkness. As a child, she knew shadows hid bad people. As an adult, she avoided them for in a building’s crevice was inevitably a man with a knife. Around a corner would be a guard or a hand to grab what food she’d scavenged.

At night, when Darkness came, she huddled in whatever sliver of moonlight she could under her bridge. Night was always worse, for she’d fall asleep and remember that, when she woke one morning, her family had left her in the night.

Darkness was cruel. And though logically Aliette knew the man before her stood in daylight, his surroundings were clear and every feature of him was there for her to see, every instinct in her clamoured the opposite.

This man before her was shadow and night. He was Darkness.

Dishevelled raven hair, dark tailored clothing and a black gaze lit with a feral light. He was clutching a child wrapped in a tattered white gown that drooped almost to the floor.

Blood. Unmistakably blood was streaked across his clothing and his cheeks. Mud splattered along his breeches, his arms and thickly encrusted on his boots as if he had tromped through freshly turned graves.

The child’s crumpled swaddling was also streaked with dirt and blood, and it remained unnaturally quiet and still. As if it was dead...or pretending to be. She couldn’t see its face for the man held it far too tightly to his chest.

Would it escape if he eased his grip? Perhaps it was a changeling he’d dug up for some ritual.

The room was no comfort from her thoughts. The sumptuous surrounding only confirmed her certainty that this man was Darkness. For Darkness was powerful and encompassed everything. Perhaps kings could surround themselves with such opulence, but she couldn’t imagine they possessed such extravagance as this man.

Too long had it been since she had been to church, but she fervently wished she was there now so she could beg for sanctuary and stand under a hundred candles. To beg for Helewise, Vernon and Gabriel as well, though they weren’t in this room with her.

For she had feared Darkness all her life and finally he bared himself to her. His ruthlessness apparent in the savage edges of his cheeks and square of his jaw. His arrogance drawn by the refinement of his nose and arch of his brow. But the eddying dark grey of his eyes, the lush frame of lashes and soft curve of his mouth bore him a cruel beauty. If this was how Darkness deemed to personify itself, it wasn’t safe for any of them.

Because Darkness enticed.

‘Why have I brought you here?’ he said. ‘It is an interesting question that you ask.’

Fanciful thoughts she couldn’t stop that beat with the hammering of her heart. The low rumble of his voice did nothing to help her. Neither did the fact he found the question on whether she lived or died interesting.

‘An important one, I think,’ she said.

One brow raised. ‘Extremely, but most do not dare ask it.’

The others he brought to his lair? Aliette shook herself to stop her errant thoughts. She wasn’t a child anymore, and this was daylight. Despite the warning hairs on her neck, he could be no more or less than a mere man with a child. Mud, blood and gold aside, he was human and not the most important one in her life. Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon were above such fears. She needed to, she must, return to them. Whatever this man wanted, she wanted it over. She’d been gone long enough. Gabriel might leave the house and search for her. If so, Ido could snatch him for gaol.

‘Whatever it is you want of me, tell me now and have done with it.’

‘So much haste.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not for my death.’

A quirk to his lips. ‘Most of us aren’t hasty for death.’

Us. He wasn’t Darkness. Of course he wasn’t. But he was dangerous. He had enough wealth and power to drag her here with no interference.

‘Why am I here?’ she repeated.

He adjusted the child in his arms. She saw tiny fingers curl, but little else. For a child, it was unnaturally quiet.

‘Do you have a family?’

She couldn’t answer that and remain safe.

His brow rose at her silence. ‘Do you have a father? And a mother?’