The Countess and the Cavalier (Hearts in Hiding 4)

“Gawd help us, mistress, they’ve breached the west tower!”

Patience, one of her senior maids, ran screaming into the great hall where Silas and Elizabeth flanked the vast fireplace in company with Franks, Silas’ trusted man-at-arms. A procession of couriers had kept them apprised of the hitherto futile efforts of King Charles’ men to breach the defences of Drummond Castle. Elizabeth had allowed herself to hope that they’d succeed in holding the infidels at bay. Their bowmen had been efficient in picking off dozens who’d tried to scale the walls.

She turned to Silas for instruction, hoping her despair did not show.

“Go with Patience and join the other women. You know what to do.” He thrust her roughly after the maid, fingering the heavy sword at his side and adjusting his round helmet as he turned back to Franks.

Silas had no use for her now. Probably he wished at this moment that she’d gone with the children as she’d suggested, for talk had been rife for weeks that the King’s men were coming this way and that Drummond Castle was in their sights. Indeed, some would have said this was inevitable and that the Drummonds, with their vast landholdings, were a prime target. Silas had all but admitted he knew it, too. Some would have said no decent husband would keep his wife by his side in the face of such a threat, and Elizabeth would have agreed.

She also knew he’d never have agreed to her leaving him, and that to ask would have made her position all but untenable. Elizabeth was his greatest possession. She meant more to him than all his lands and cattle and rents. She was the wife he’d won through grit and determination, when Elizabeth had begged her father to consider another suitor. Silas belittled beauty and grace, but these were what had drawn him to Elizabeth and, through the man’s unfathomable perversity, rarely a night went by when he did not seek to conquer her. When the candles were snuffed out and the servants had quitted their quarters, Silas got down to the crude business of showing Elizabeth just who was master. She fed his desire and his huge need for power.

No, Silas would never let her go and Elizabeth, like the godly Puritan maid she’d been brought up, and with nowhere to go, had no choice but to submit without a murmur.

Elizabeth gathered her voluminous skirts in one hand, straightened her crisp white linen cap with the other, and ran down the corridor, calling to any of the servants who might be cowering in dark shadows, to follow her.

“To the south tower! Follow me!” she cried. She’d been surprised that the west tower was the point of entry. Access was difficult but now she had to think quickly. They could secure the tower room, which she hoped would fit them all.

A ragtag bunch collected in her wake. Screams and the sound of metal upon metal sounded dully from the courtyard. Elizabeth glanced through one of the slit windows and stopped when she saw the fighting below. She couldn’t see Silas, though it would be difficult to distinguish him from the other metal-chested soldiers fighting for God and the glorious delivery of Drummond Castle. The King’s Men, by contrast, were a riot of coloured silk and feathered plumes. She knew she should feel hatred and revulsion at the sight of them.

Turning her head away, she led the growing band of servants to the room Silas believed most secure, where she and Proctor, a lad of about fourteen, slammed down the heavy wooden bar which she prayed would keep them safe.

“You are needed to protect us,” she’d told the boy when he’d begged to fight with the men. “You’ll be sliced in two in an instant with no breastplate or helmet and then what good would you be to anyone?”

In the small, stifling tower room they could see nothing of the battle—the only window faced the beech wood. But the roar and crunch and screams, and the screech and scrape of metal, punctuated the silence and the heavy breathing of the ten of them. The stench of fear saturated everything.

The battle lasted hours and the sun was low upon the horizon when the hoot of an owl made them realise that the sudden hush must signal a decisive end.

When Patience began to wail, Elizabeth calmed her, “The master will soon come for us.”

But the fact that there was no cry of triumph to accompany the heavy tread in the corridor struck fear into her heart. She scanned the sea of faces—white, mud-streaked, reflecting terror as they stared at their mistress with blind, unquestioning obedience, as if silently begging her to tell them what to do. She put her finger to her lips. The ring of boots sounded on the stairs. Soldiers, not the ragtag band of household retainers and villagers who’d sought sanctuary within the

castle walls.

Perhaps they’d pass their hiding place. Perhaps, once they’d reached the upper ramparts, Elizabeth and her dependants could slip away, down the stairs, into the courtyard and escape through the beech wood.

Her hopes were short-lived.

“Open up, in the name of the King!”

All eyes were on her, waiting for a cue. She kept her finger to her lips and shook her head. Not a whisper or a murmur escaped her small band of followers. Even the children were silent, well trained and fearful of the rule of law in her household.

“Silas Drummond is a prisoner. Come out now or accept that his blood will be on your hands.”

Still Elizabeth maintained her silence until she heard Silas’ snarl from the other side. He did not endorse the soldiers’ demands but she knew she had no choice but to obey. They’d starve them out eventually.

A sea of harsh faces, cut and muddied, seemed to greet her as she and Proctor raised the bar and the soldiers burst in. Children screamed and the women wailed as they were roughly corralled by a ring of Cavaliers.

“Don’t touch me!” she muttered as one of them tried to seize her arm, and, at the bark of an order from his commander, the man stepped back.

“Lady Drummond, please come with us.” The commander of the force, a broad-shouldered man of middle height with a pristine plumed hat upon his wig of curling brown hair, bowed with a flourish. “You and your husband are prisoners of the Crown but we are not barbarians. We wish merely to avail ourselves of your hospitality while we discuss the terms of your punishment for your traitorous activities.”

Elizabeth said nothing. Resistance would be futile. Dignity would have to be her ally, for she had nothing else.

She and Silas were brought, alone, to the great room, heated thankfully by a well-tended fire. The King’s Men obviously meant to suffer little discomfort for however long they planned to stay. She glanced at Silas. His profile looked as if it had been hewn from granite, the hard lines of his square jaw as rugged—and as dogged—as she’d ever seen. He’d die rather than offer a single concession. Fear skittered through her. No, Silas would offer no concessions for any of them, and his wife would be no exception. The smug, cocky grin of the swaggering captain suggested he was anticipating a great evening’s entertainment at their expense.

For once, Elizabeth was glad of her plain, dark clothes, the full green skirts relieved by a white apron, still crisp, and a deep white collar. No one had called her a beauty in years and she had no wish to be considered one now.

Captain Reynolds, commander of the King’s forces, settled Elizabeth in the seat she usually occupied at table before lowering himself upon the carved, upholstered chair that was Silas’.