Lord of Vengeance by Adrian Lara Read Free Book Online

panel. “Papa? Are you in here?” This time she rapped harder and the door creaked open enough for her to peer inside.
    Her father sat slumped in his ornately-carved, cushioned chair, staring out the open window. He did not turn when she entered; indeed he hardly seemed aware of her presence at all. In his lap, he held an object--a book. Her mother's Bible, she realized as she drew closer. The same book Raina herself used to pore over when she was feeling particularly lonely and missing her mother.
    “I'm sorry if I have disturbed your reading, Papa, but when you didn't answer me--”
    Her voice seemed to rouse him from his thoughts and he looked up at her suddenly, his eyes sleep-weary and ringed with dark circles.
    “Are you unwell, Papa? Since the tourney, you've been acting so strangely. You spend most of your days alone in here, and I know you are not sleeping as you should.” She touched him tenderly on the shoulder. “I am worried about you.”
    Clumsily, he reached up and patted her hand, though if he heard her concern, his attention seemed focused elsewhere. With trembling fingers, he caressed the edge of a gilded, illuminated page in the book spread open in his lap. “How she loved this Bible. Beauclerc himself commissioned it for her when she was but a babe, can you imagine that? She was beautiful even then, my Margareth. Beautiful enough to enamor the king on first glance.”
    “Aye, Papa,” Raina answered softly, but in truth she could no longer recall her mother's features. Every portrait of her had been taken down--destroyed, according to castle rumor--soon after her death. Now, as ever, her father spoke of his wife only when deep in contemplation or fraught with worry.
    At the risk of upsetting him, Raina had learned long ago not to press for details of her mother, permitting her father his private reflection. But as a child, she had been full of questions: What was her mother like? How did she enjoy passing her time? Did Raina resemble her, even a little bit?
    Her father's answers, when they came, were doled out reluctantly, sparingly, as if his wife were a treasure too precious to share, even with his daughter. Raina had her own memories of her mother, though they were puzzling in contrast to her father's carefully measured accounts of a spirited woman who charmed kings and queens alike. The woman Raina remembered was a pitiful, sad creature. A fragile woman, given to bouts of deep despair and a mere shadow of the bright angel her father must have known.
    Often Raina wondered if her birth might have had something to do with her mother's decline, if perhaps in his vagueness, her father was trying to shield her from the truth. Blaming herself in part for the loss of such a cherished being, Raina had learned to accept her father's version, though her own troubling memories remained.
    She pressed a kiss to his freckled pate. “I miss her, too. But at the moment, Papa, I am deeply concerned about you. I have been talking with Nigel--”
    Her father stiffened instantly. “I told you to stay away from him,” he snapped. “I don't want you speaking to him, letting him fill your head with lies!”
    Raina stepped back, stunned, and more than a bit confused at his outburst. “That we are under threat of attack is not a lie, Papa.” He exhaled as if to regain his composure, then settled back in his chair while Raina continued. “The entire keep is abuzz with reports of these raiders. Nigel says 'tis only a matter of time before they set their sights on Norworth.”
    Her father shook his head soberly. “He won't come here,” he said in a low, reflective voice. “He'll plunder my holdings and take what he feels he is due, and then he will leave. But he won't come here.”
    “He,” Raina repeated. “You are speaking of the man from the tourney, aren't you? You are speaking of Rutledge.”
    Raina recalled well the name he'd given himself, recalled too, her unsettling encounter with him in the woods and