The Countess and the Cavalier (Hearts in Hiding 4)

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On the Eve of battle between King Charles’s Cavaliers and a Puritan stronghold.

Elizabeth’s eyes watered from the acrid smell of smoke as she squinted into the setting sun and watched the enemy make camp on the other side of the beech wood. The chirping of sparrows preparing to nest for the evening reminded her of previous, less dangerous summers, but the beads of sweat that had gathered on her brow and upper lip were as much owing to fear as to the heat.

“They’ll attack at first light.” Silas’ hand was heavy on her shoulders as he stood beside her on the battlements. “We must get some rest while we can, for there’ll be heavy fighting tomorrow. Come to bed, wife.”

It was an order Elizabeth could not refuse, though she’d have rather remained and kept the King’s Men in her sights.

She glanced at the ravens that roosted on the stone ramparts nearby. Shivers of dread twisted themselves about her entrails. Before nightfall the following day, the ordered world she knew would be gone and the undulating patchwork of tilled and forested land over which she and Silas now gazed would be theirs no longer. Forfeited to the Crown.

As to their own fate… Well, that was in the hands of Almighty God.

Slipping her hand into the crook of her husband’s arm, Elizabeth glanced up at his harsh, uncompromising profile, his mouth hard, his eyes as cold as stones. Even as he contemplated the death and destruction ahead, Silas’ expression was not so different from his usual look, she reflected. For once, she envied him his lack of emotion.

She kept her voice steady. “Dorcas says you have briefed the household on what’s expected of them.” Elizabeth was glad Silas did not remark upon the trembling of her hand as he led her down the twisting stairs from the south tower. Courage was a requirement of a wife. And loyalty. Loyalty to the death, as Dorcas, her maid, had unsurprisingly told her was the master’s uncompromising dictate to his servants. It was the return Silas expected on the security he provided those who lived under his roof at Drummond Castle—his minions and his wife.

He grunted. “They’ve always known what is expected of them and they will put up a good fight. Drummond Castle is the only home they have.”

It was also the only home Elizabeth had. Although she inhabited it reluctantly, she had nowhere else to go. The King’s Men were on a mission to crush all resistance from the Parliamentarians, men like Silas who abhorred the corruption of Royal power. Not even her mother’s sister—a lapsed Puritan now married to one of the King’s courtiers—could save them, she reflected, wishing she’d spoken to her Aunt Anne of the simmering danger and her fears in greater depth when her aunt had visited the previous year.

“God is on our side.” Silas ushered her into their bedchamber. “We will fight them, wife, for God would expect nothing less.”

“And if we don’t win?” She did not look at him as she removed the linen cap that bound her long pale hair, exiting briefly into an antechamber where Dorcas was waiting to help her out of her dress. His harsh voice followed her. “If we do not win the fight, we will win the battle.”

Once Dorcas had laid aside her dark green gown with its modest trimming of lace at the collar—a fitting ensemble for a Puritan of rank who must appear sober yet distinguished from the lower orders as God ordained—Elizabeth returned, wearing her night shift.

She pulled back the counterpane and lay down, tensing as she prepared herself for what would follow.

“Their numbers are greater but we will fight to the death,” Silas muttered as he rolled on top of her, pinioning her to the mattress, hiking up the hem of her night rail as he did every night. This time, though, Elizabeth saw in the summer twilight that bathed the room that he was looking directly into her face. A fire burned in the depths of his usually cold grey eyes and she shivered, despite the heat and the stifling weight of her husband who was demanding ever yet more from her. The fact that he had access to her body had never been enough for him. She wondered how he could expect to have her heart when he had not the capacity for kindness.

One day, she thought, the burden of her obligations to this man who controlled her, virtually to her last breath, would break her.

“Aye, husband. A sacrifice I will gladly make,” she whispered, closing her eyes against his harsh face, her heart doing strange things as she imagined the tiny figures she’d seen in the distance. Cavaliers. Fear was in the ascendant, naturally, but even after all these years she felt a tremor of excitement - limned with bitterness. Not all Cavaliers were the enemy…

Constancy was another matter.

She must have allowed her thoughts to get the better of her. With a grunt of irritation Silas inserted his knee between the two of hers, which were clamped tightly together, and jerked them apart. The next moment Elizabeth felt the sharp, painful thrust of his manhood as he forced himself into her - staking his claim. There was no other way to describe the brutal breaching of her tender, unwilling parts.

Noiselessly, obediently, she lay unmoving on her back and stared at the canopy of the bed, blocking her mind to this man who drove into her with the determined concentration of a rutting bull.

For eight years Silas had claimed her like this. No preliminaries. No words of love. She was his wife, his chattel. The woman whose beauty delighted him but whose temperament disappointed him. She knew it was so, though he’d admit to neither. Love was a weakness, an indulgence. Reining in his wife’s failings—the determination and softheartedness she displayed towards her children and those weaker than herself—was part of his life’s work.

Elizabeth had survived by quarantining a little piece of her mind and soul, so carefully shielded that Silas would never guess that’s where she went when he invaded her body. If he did, he’d crush her.

Tonight Silas laboured longer than usual. In the half light of the long summer evening, as Elizabeth disconnected her mind from the body she hoped her husband would soon surrender, she wondered if, like her, he was more afraid than he cared to admit.

With a grunt and a frenzied series of jerking thrusts, Silas finally came, his body a suffocating dead weight for a few moments before he rolled off her belly. To her surprise, he put his hand upon her arm and drew her closer.

“You have been a good wife.” His perfunctory praise concealed more emotion than she’d received in many a year. Elizabeth felt suddenly proud. She was a good wife. She’d not married Silas for love but she’d obeyed her father’s dictates—in the end. Once she’d made her vows she’d toiled and suffered in the execution of her wifely duties, and she’d never complained.

As for her husband, Silas had never pretended to be anything other than he was—hard, uncompromising, unforgiving. And loyal. She had to grant him that. He would risk his life to protect the castle that was home to so many. And his family.

Tomorrow, when the boiling oil spilled from the battlements and swords were drawn, shedding blood on both sides, Silas would be in the thick of it, protecting the honour, lives and livelihoods of the hundreds of peasants who depended upon him.

The brief touch of his hand across her shoulder might have

been affection, for he said, almost gruffly, “Aye, Elizabeth. The children would only have complicated matters. You were right to insist they be sent away.”

The fact that Silas was endorsing a stipulation she’d made several weeks ago, which he’d been so against at the time, defied every facet of his unforgiving, unyielding character.

He went on, “They are safe and when we are gone they will be raised as godly Puritans to avenge the deaths of their parents.”

The innocent faces of little Oliver and Agnes blurred in Elizabeth’s mind, coalescing into the cold, hard-planed angles of her husband. Elizabeth had always been a hard-working wife but she was determined—a trait for which she’d been punished and for which, in this instance, she’d been prepared to suffer greatly. Last week the children had left for the protection of Silas’ kinsman, a day’s ride away.

“You think we will die, husband?” She desperately hoped not to die and wanted to be reassured. She knew it was a weakness Silas would not indulge. Silas had never indulged her, though God knew he’d desired her from the first moment she’d changed from the child of his father’s friend to a comely maid of fifteen. Foolish child that she’d been, she’d thought she could turn it to her advantage. That she’d experience more kindness at the hands of her new husband than in the household of the father who’d bartered her and laid waste her dreams of happiness with the one man she’d truly loved.

“The Lord in his infinite wisdom will decide our fate. We will accept it with dignity and courage. Now sleep, for we have an early start.”

* * * *

They were up well before dawn, stationed upon the ramparts while the men rallied their defences.

Once again the breeze carried the scent of the enemy’s campfires. Elizabeth studied her husband as he gazed, with clenched jaw and balled fists, upon the farming land that had belonged to the Drummonds, extensive now after five generations. He was proud of what his family had achieved - justifiably so. Like his father, he’d been driven to acquire, not for personal gratification but because thrift and industry were manifestations of his esteem for his Creator.

He turned suddenly and must have seen the fear Elizabeth was trying so hard to conceal. His brows contracted. “Do not be afraid, wife. You will find the courage when you need it.”

She nodded, staring across at the beech wood from which the first soldiers in the column were emerging, like a thin ribbon of gaudy colour.

As a concession, the reassurance of his words was immense but glossed over, as Silas snorted his derision. “We might as well have a party of primping princesses wielding metal batons. They have the numbers but we have God on our side.” He gripped her upper arm, his thick fingers biting into her flesh, pulling her with him to the northern ramparts. He’d performed his husbandly ministrations, offering her all the kindness of which he was capable. Now it was time to brief her on her responsibilities. “While I am engaged in the fighting you will muster the women and boys into a tight force to repulse the enemy with whatever weapons can be spared. God knows, you are not versed in the violent ways of men, but He will condone the killing of these infidels. As many as you can, wife.”

The blood lust in his eyes struck fear into the core of her soul. Silas used violence sparingly but efficiently. She suspected he’d relish dying on his sword…after he’d used it to slit the throats of and disembowel as many of the opposing forces as he was capable. The flicker in his eye suggested he was close to embracing what lay ahead.

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