Velvet Angel Read online

  “When I’m gone, I’m sure you’ll manage to gather your courage.”

  His hand tangled in her hair, pulled her head back and his mouth took hers possessively. “Haven’t you learned yet that you’re mine?” he half growled. “When are you going to admit that?”

  He didn’t give her a chance to answer as he kissed her again, and much of the worry Elizabeth’d felt in the last days went into that kiss to make it one of desperation.

  The touch of cold steel against Miles’s throat made them break apart. Instinctively, he reached for his own sword but met only bare flesh under the plaid he wore.

  Over them stood Roger Chatworth, his eyes full of hate, his sword pressing against the vein in Miles’s neck.

  “Do not,” Elizabeth said, moving away from Miles. “Do not harm him.”

  “I would like to kill all the Montgomerys,” Roger Chatworth said.

  Miles, in one quick motion, moved sideways, caught Chatworth’s wrist.

  “No!” Elizabeth screamed and clung to her brother’s arm.

  Miles’s bandages began to redden.

  “He’s hurt,” Elizabeth said. “Would you kill a man who can’t fight back?”

  Roger turned his full attention to her. “Have you become one of them? Have the Montgomerys poisoned you against your own blood relations?”

  “No, Roger, of course not.” She tried to remain calm. There was such a wild look in Roger’s eyes that she feared to anger him. Miles lay against the wall, panting, but she knew that at any moment he’d leap again and tear his wounds further. “Have you come for me?”

  There was a sudden hush in the little room as both men watched her. She had to leave with Roger. If she did not, he’d kill Miles. She knew that very well. Roger was tired, angry, beyond all rational thinking.

  “It will be good to go home,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Elizabeth!” Miles warned.

  She ignored him. “Come, Roger, what are you waiting for?” Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear her own voice.

  “Elizabeth!” Miles shouted at her, his hand clutching at the hole in his chest.

  For a moment Roger looked from one to the other, hesitating.

  “I’m growing impatient, Roger! Haven’t I been away long enough?” She turned on her heel to leave, paused at the door. Her eyes stayed on Roger’s, not daring to look at Miles. She couldn’t risk even one look at him or she’d lose her resolve.

  Slowly, puzzled, Roger began to follow her. A horse waited obediently not far from the cottage. Elizabeth kept her eyes on the animal, not daring to look around because she knew she’d see the body of Sir Guy. Only his death would have kept the giant from protecting his master.

  Another shout, stone-shaking, came from the cottage. “ELIZABETH!!”

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Elizabeth allowed Roger to help her on his horse.

  “We must have food,” Roger said and turned away from her.

  “Roger!” she yelled after him. “If you harm him I—” she began and saw that he was ignoring her. She dismounted in a flash and was after him—but not in time.

  Roger Chatworth ran his sword through Miles’s arm and as Miles lay there bleeding, Roger said, “Raine’s wife spared my life and it’s to her that you owe your filthy life now.” He turned to Elizabeth in the doorway. “Get on the horse or I’ll finish the job, if he doesn’t bleed to death as it is.”

  Trembling, feeling very ill, Elizabeth left the cottage and mounted the horse. Within seconds, Roger was behind her and they set off at a grueling pace.

  Elizabeth sat before her embroidery frame, working on an altar cover of St. George slaying the dragon. In one corner was a boy who looked remarkably tike Kit and St. George…the saint had some of the look of Miles Montgomery. Elizabeth stopped for a moment as the child in her womb kicked her.

  Alice Chatworth sat across from her, a mirror held to reflect the unscarred half of her face. “I was so beautiful then,” Alice was saying. “Absolutely no man could resist me. All of them were ready to lay down their lives for me. All I had to do was hint at something I wanted and it was given to me.”

  She switched the mirror to the misshapen side of her face. “Until the Montgomerys did this!” she hissed. “Judith Revedoune was jealous of my beauty. She is such an ugly, freckled, red-haired thing that she was worried over my dear Gavin’s love. And well she should have been.”

  Elizabeth gave an exaggerated yawn, ignored Alice’s look of hate and turned to Roger, who was standing by the fireplace, mug of wine in hand, his face brooding. “Roger, would you like to go for a walk with me in the gardens?”

  As usual, Roger looked at her stomach before he looked back at her face.

  “No, I have to talk to my steward,” he half mumbled, his eyes searching her face.

  She could feel what he wanted to say, what he’d said many, many times: You’ve changed.

  She’d been back with her brother and her “family” for two weeks and it brought home to her how much she had changed in her five months with the Montgomerys. The time had not been enough to make any changes in the Chatworth household, but it was enough for Elizabeth to have started the makings of a new person.

  For all her insistence that Roger was different from Edmund, she saw that Roger had actually not enforced his own beliefs within his household. In many ways, the Chatworth house was the same as when Edmund was alive. The reason Roger could easily have Alice live with him was that he was oblivious to her. Roger lived with such inner turmoil, with all his love and care given to Elizabeth and Brian, that he was truly unaware of a great deal that went on around him.

  Elizabeth had no more than dismounted her horse, tired after days of travel, when two of Roger’s men, who had once been with Edmund, began to make snide comments to her. They hinted that they could hardly wait to catch her alone.

  Elizabeth’s first reaction had been fear. It had been as if she’d never left the Chatworth estates. Her mind raced over her repertoire of debilitating tricks to use on the men. But her thoughts went back to Sir Guy and how she’d broken his toes, how he’d hobbled for weeks—and later she’d sat with him, saw tears of worry gathering in his eyes over a man they both loved.

  She would not return to her skulking, fearful ways. She’d come a long way in conquering her fear of men and she wasn’t going to throw all she’d learned away.

  She’d turned to Roger and demanded that he send the men away immediately.

  Roger’d been very surprised and had quickly hustled her out of the stables. He’d tried to patronize her but Elizabeth wouldn’t listen to him. The idea that his dear little sister would talk back to him shocked as well as hurt him. To his mind, he’d just rescued her from a hellhole and she was ungratefully complaining.

  For the first time in her life, Elizabeth told her brother the whole truth about Edmund. Roger’s face had drained of blood, he’d staggered backward into a chair and looked as if someone had beaten him. All these years he’d thought he’d protected his dear little sister but, in truth, she’d lived in hell. He had no idea Edmund had summoned her from her convent whenever Roger left the estates. He didn’t know that she’d had to defend herself from his men.

  By the time Elizabeth finished, Roger was ready to kill the men in the stables.

  Roger Chatworth’s fury was something to be reckoned with. Within three days, he’d put fear in the hearts of his household. Many men were dismissed and if a man so much as looked at Elizabeth with slanted eyes, she went to Roger. No more was she going to stand for such insolence. Before, she’d not known how a lady should be treated, as her only experience was with Edmund, but now she’d had five months in a place where she didn’t have to be afraid of walking in a garden alone.

  Roger had been taken aback by her demands and she realized how she and Brian had always protected him. Roger could be so kind and at the same time so cruel. She tried only once to talk to him about the Montgomerys, but Roger’d exploded with such h