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“Burdett.” Hugh boomed the man’s name and saw Edlyn jump. His interfering wife started to walk forward, but he placed his horse between her and the steward and effectively blocked her path. “Burdett!” he boomed again. “You have held this demesne for the traitor Edmund Pembridge, and for this act of treachery, I exile you from my lands.”
“What?” Edlyn sounded indignant.
Hugh paid her no heed. “Get out. Take your kin and get out with nothing but the clothes on your back, and be grateful I don’t hang you from the highest tree.”
Burdett lost all color, and his wife wept openly.
Edlyn said, “What?”
She spoke loudly enough this time that heads turned. The wife sucked back her tears, and Burdett craned his neck to see.
“Have you run mad?” Edlyn grabbed Hugh’s stirrup. “You can’t throw these people out!”
“I can.” Hugh backed his horse away. “I have.”
She hung on to his stirrup. “They’ll starve—or worse.”
“They served a man disloyal to our king and prince.”
“They kept their vows to him. For that they should die?”
He couldn’t believe his wife confronted him before his men and—he looked around—the bravest of the castle servants. He wanted to reach down and slap at Edlyn’s fingers until she let go, but that didn’t fit with the dignified image of the king’s justice. In what he considered a reasonable tone, he said, “I’m not sentencing them to death. If I were, they’d be swinging already. I am simply—”
“Tossing them out into the world with only the clothes on their backs and without a way to live. They’ll die, or they’ll turn outlaw.” She lowered her voice. “They’re older, and they’d be no good at it, and then they’ll die.”
“That’s not my concern.” He tried to back up his horse again.
She followed. “Look around you, Hugh. This castle is perfect. Every bit of it is well maintained, and it has to be because Burdett and his wife have worked to keep it so. It’s not the earl of Pembridge who did the labor—all he did was choose the steward, and wisely it would seem. Burdett and his wife have taken pride in Roxford Castle, a pride far beyond the usual, and they deserve a chance to prove themselves to you.”
“It’s not possible.” He jerked the reins and wheeled the horse away.
The stirrup jerked out of her hand, and she balled her fingers and cradled them as if he’d hurt her. But she came after him, her features alight with a flame. “Don’t tell me it’s not possible. You’re the lord. Anything is possible for you.”
Angered in his turn, he snapped, “The prince expects a swift demonstration of justice.”
“You sit on your horse in all your glory and you revel in your ultimate power.” She stared at him as if he were an unusually large form of vermin. “In all your years of fighting, you have never contemplated anything but victory. But the world is littered with knights who never contemplated anything but victory, and just because they lost a leg or an eye, they’re reduced to begging on the streets. The graveyards are full of stewards who served their masters faithfully only to have their masters abandon them. Is that justice?”
“What do you want? Did you want me to change the way of the world?” He forgot about his men and the watching servants. He forgot about everything but Edlyn and her simple notions. “And while I’m at it, I could make the sun rise in the west and the tides run once a day.”
“I want justice!”
“The prince decides what justice is!”
“The prince.” She said it in the kind of voice a priest used to speak of Satan. “The prince’s justice had its way with me. I’ve sat in the dirt outside my home and hated the intruder who threw me out. I’ve watched over my children in the wilderness and feared for their lives. I’ve wondered if I would have to turn outlaw or prostitute to feed them on the trek to the abbey. I’ve begged for a crumb and humbled myself for a blanket. I’ve felt the prince’s justice, and it didn’t feel just to me.”
Hugh didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think, except that he’d been stupid beyond all belief. Edlyn was being stubborn and maddening because she’d faced the same trial the steward and his wife now faced. He could dismiss womanly compassion—as he had with the outlaws who had kidnapped her—but this was personal.
Yet the prince expected Hugh to do his duty thoroughly.
He looked at Edlyn’s set, furious face.
The prince was fighting far away and she was here, and she could make his life hell forever.
He dismounted slowly, giving her a moment to think about her insolence. He walked toward her, his step measured.
She didn’t retreat. She just glared at him through those witchy eyes.
He took her hand. He looked at it. A fingernail had been torn back, and the skin on the insides of her fingers had been scraped away when he’d jerked the stirrup from her. She hadn’t cried and tried to get her way by making him feel guilty. She’d made him mad and tried to make him feel compassion. Well, he didn’t. He didn’t care about Burdett and his wife, but he did care about his comfort. And…well…he cared about Edlyn.
