Read Online Heart of Gold by May McGoldrick - Free Book Online Page B

was no short-term affair. Though she certainly had no love for England or its king, this was treachery of the vilest kind.
    “I’ve told you that the king is going directly to Calais to meet with the Emperor Charles. Of what happened earlier, I can’t say. But if you wish to see your precious treaties with England honored, then you had better move quickly and keep that alliance from happening.”
    “What do you expect me to do, attack your king?” the Lord Constable snapped. “I know you are low, but I tell you, we will not dishonor ourselves by killing anyone under a flag of truce. Even if he is the King of England.”
    “This is all a farce.” Garnesche took a step back. “Constable, I grow sick of you and your whining demands. I tell you what must be done, but do you ever do it? Nay, you lack the stomach for real action. Barbaric. Inhumane. Low. That’s all I ever hear. Frenchman, you are a spineless coward.”
    “You are just a dog biting the hand that feeds him.” The French nobleman stepped closer to the English knight and lifted his fist. “You are forcing me to put you in your place, and I, too, am growing tired of this game. Don’t forget what happened to Buckingham. Treason. It cost him his head. The same could happen to you. But where the charge against him was false, yours will be well deserved.”
    “No one can bear witness to such an accusation. No one knows—”
    “No one, but me, traitor. And that’s enough.”
    “Henry won’t believe you.”
    “Fool, you have forgotten my connections.”
    Garnesche’s hand came up so quickly that the Constable was lifted off the ground as the knight’s viselike grip closed over his windpipe. The abrupt gurgling sound that the Frenchman emitted was quickly lost in his thrashing struggle for release.
    Grasping his foe’s wrist with one hand, he struck at the Englishman’s face with the other. A cut opened on the bridge of Sir Peter’s nose, and the Lord Constable struck at it again and again.
    But the knight was not to be undone, and Elizabeth watched in horror as Garnesche slid his dagger easily from its sheath and drove the point upward into the bowels of the struggling Frenchman.
    Unable to cry out, the Lord Constable writhed in silent agony as the knight twisted the blade about, tearing the life from the nobleman.
    Elizabeth took a step back as she watched the final twitching moments of the most powerful counselor in France. The bile climbed into her throat as she espied the cruel, maniacal grin that crept across Sir Peter Garnesche’s dark and bloodied face. He was mad. Truly mad.
    Stepping back again, Elizabeth looked about her in the darkness. She had to get help. As she began to push through the undergrowth, the dragging hem of the kilt caught on the splintered branch of a fallen tree. She could see the giant murderer through the foliage, glancing about him as he lowered the Lord Constable’s corpse to the ground. Panic struck at her heart as he wiped the blood from his flashing blade on the velvet cloak of the dead man. What if he came her way? What if he found her here?
    Yanking at the kilt, Elizabeth stumbled backward as the cloth gave way with a loud ripping tear. Garnesche’s head whipped around as she sat motionless and silent amid the soft green ferns. But she didn’t sit for long.
    The knight took a step in her direction, and Elizabeth was off through the woods, scrambling on all fours through the undergrowth. Bramble bushes and young saplings slapped at her face as she struggled to her feet. Throwing wild glances over her shoulder, she ran frantically through the dark glade. Flashes of light from a dying moon mixed in swirling confusion with the dark of the passing trees. Chaos had taken over her world, and Elizabeth felt her energy slipping away. Valiantly, she fought hard to keep down the sobs she felt rising in her chest. They were robbing her of her power to run. But on she ran anyway.
    She could hear nothing from behind her