Free Boadicea's Legacy by Traci E. Hall Page B

“Bring your lady wife and daughter and make a trip of it. I can show you around, bring you to Thetford where Boadicea is supposed to have lived. The women would feel the history that is theirs alone. Surely that is a compromise worth considering?”
    Lord Robert Montehue, his face as red as a cooked ham, jerked his stubborn chin in the air. His blue eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say no. Osbert wanted to pump his fist victoriously in the air.
I’ve got him
.
    And then Thomas de Havel and his men came riding over the fields, ruining the new crops just beginning to thrive, destroying the compromise that he’d been working so hard toward.
    Robert looked at Os and spat to the ground. “Ye sided against me with that toad? Pox on you.”
    Os tightened the grip on his sword handle. “Never,” he promised. “I’d rather be dead than have my good name besmirched by joining forces with him.”
    Lord Robert raised a suspicious brow as they watched de Havel march closer. It seemed as if de Havel’s men took pleasure in ruining the new sprouts in the once neat rows. It infuriated Os, and he clenched his knees around Bartholomew’s middle—prepared to surge forward and kill the bastard, if need be. A joustmaster had to learn patience and calm, else he would be injured.
    There was no money in injuries.
    Thomas came close enough to be a threat. But to whom, Os couldn’t tell. He braced for bloodshed and saw Robert do the same.
    Then he heard Ela scream. He knew it was her, the red-haired temptress who’d toyed with his dreams for a fortnight. It resounded in his soul, a cry that pierced him in the heart.
Never again
, he thought wildly.
Nobody will ever
touch his woman so brutally again
.
    He shook his head, not understanding his thoughts. He and Lord Robert exchanged a glance as Lady Deirdre shouted and pointed toward the back of the manor with her green and white scarf.
    â€œThe forest.” Os grabbed Bartholomew’s reins in one hand and drew his sword with the other. Thomas de Havel chose that minute to spring his men forward, ready for battle. Without thought, Osbert signaled for his men to join with Lord Robert’s against the common enemy. Somehow, de Havel seemed to have an army of fifty or more.
    â€œI must save my daughter,” Lord Robert said, fighting his way free of the melee. A soldier in black and red let loose a mace, and it knocked Robert to the ground with a horrifying thud of spiked metal hitting flesh.
    Os reached down his hand to lift the bleeding man up, but Robert gritted his teeth against the pain and shook his head. “Don’t waste time—just go get my daughter. And I hold you to your damned oath to bring her back as she was when she left this place.”
    In other words, Os thought as he searched for Albric, Warin, and St. Germaine, find Ela before she was a victim of rape. Just the word left a foul taste in his mouth. Or—and God help him, because this was even a worse thought—before Thomas de Havel took her maidenhead and forced her hand in marriage. The king would approve in haste, once the damage was already done, and consider it to be fair.
    His friends gathered around him, their horses stampingto return to the thick of the fight. “Our alliance is with the Montehues, against de Havel. I’ll be back. If I’m not, go to Norwich.” They were all three strong Earl of Norfolk knights, and he knew they would treat this mission like it was their own.
    Os urged Bartholomew in the opposite direction. They raced around the side of the manor and toward the forest. This time, he had no fear of what was in the deep heart of the wood. He’d been there and survived it.
    He vowed that Ela would too.

    Ela breathed in the foul horse taste of the burlap bag, then bit the fabric, tearing at it until she had a hole she could poke her face out of. Her teeth cracked together with each uneven hoof step, and she