Page 72 of Retribution

Langford stood up, looking at her with a great deal of sympathy. “My lady, I will not harm you, I swear it,” he said. “Are you badly injured?”

His answer puzzled her. “Why do you ask?” she demanded. “Why do you care? You must let me leave now. I must go!”

Langford held up his hands to show he wasn’t a threat. “You are in no danger, my lady,” he said quietly. “You are safe now. Cambridge cannot hurt you again.”

Cleodora was still in fight-or-flight mode. He took a step toward her to see to her injuries, because she was covered in blood, but she raised the knife as he came near, so he backed away. She was panicked and unwilling to trust a man she knew was loyal to Cambridge. On the other hand, Cambridge was dead and Langford didn’t seem particularly distressed.

It was most puzzling.

“What… what happened to him?” she finally said, her voice trembling. “Who cut his neck like that?”

Langford didn’t answer her, not right away. He ended up sitting on the ground a few feet away from her because she was half on her knees, half holding on to the table for support. She was clearly dazed, so he sought to calm her.

“Lady Cleodora, please listen to me,” he said softly. “Cambridge is dead. Do you understand that?”

She nodded. Then, a sob escaped her lips and the knife fell to the ground. The same hand slapped over her mouth as if to keep the scream she was building from flying out into the still air of the hall.

“What happened?” she said through her fingers. “I did not… I did not kill him!”

“I did,” Langford said calmly. “He was going to kill you.”

Those words sank in and she looked at him, shocked. “But… but why?” she said hoarsely. “Why did you do it?”

“Do you want to live or not?”

She burst into tears, quiet tears. The entire situation had overwhelmed her, chewed her up, and spat her out again. She was reeling. Langford could see that. But before he could convince her that she needed to come with him so he could take her to safety, the door to the hall suddenly opened and de Baume entered.

Cambridge’s big, bad watchdog.

That changed the air in the room, at least as far as Cleodora was concerned. Surely de Baume would see the situation and arrest them both. But he walked up to the table, seeing Cambridge lying in a pool of his own blood, and simply stood there for a moment without any real reaction. He was inspecting the scene as casually as one would inspect a summer sky. Then, he looked at Cleodora and finally to Langford.

“Is she badly injured?” he asked.

Langford shook his head, his focus shifting to Cleodora. “I do not know,” he said. “My lady, how badly are you injured?”

Cleodora was breathing heavily, struggling with her composure, but she was a little more clearheaded than she had been. The fact that de Baume had not exploded at Cambridge’s death was enough to stun her into immobility for the moment.

“I am not injured,” she finally said, looking down at her white dress, now covered in blood. “This is not my blood.”

De Baume nodded in understanding, turning his attention back to Langford. “What happened?” he said.

Langford gestured to Cleodora. “Cambridge was trying to kill her,” he said. “I made the decision to stop him, once and for all. How much did you hear outside of the hall?”

De Baume shook his head. “Not much,” he said. “Some heard some noises from inside the hall and a soldier fetched me out of concern, but no one knows what has happened. No one will know.”

Langford nodded as he stood up. “I’ll need help getting the body out of here,” he said. “The lady needs to go also. She must be removed.”

De Baume looked at her a moment before reaching down to pull her to unsteady feet. “We’ll wrap Cambridge in a shroud and tell everyone it is the lady,” he said. “Then we’ll spirit her out tonight under darkness.”

“What about Cambridge’s absence?”

De Baume thought a moment. “You’d better ask Perrin what we should tell people,” he said. “In fact, you should probably seek him now. We need to know how he wants us to handle this situation.”

Cleodora had been listening to them and it occurred to her that something was going on. These men were speaking so casually, so unlike the men she’d known over the past three years. In fact, de Baume had said more in the past few minutes than she’d ever heard him say during the entire three years she had known him.

Something wasn’t making sense.

“Wait,” she finally said, looking between them. “What is happening here? Why are you speaking as if this is something you wanted? Or expected? As if it means nothing?”