WolfeBite (De Wolfe Pack Generations #10)

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I s that all there is? Where is the meat?”

Wrapped up in a dirty blanket, the only real comfort she had, Lady Maria turned her nose up at the food the servant had brought her. The servant, having served under Lady Maria and having no real love for the woman, slammed the tray against the bars and the food went flying into her tiny cell.

It splattered everywhere.

With a gasp at the flying food, Lady Maria was enraged. She rushed the bars of her cell and tried to grab the servant, who stood just out of arm’s length and laughed. Lady Maria clawed at her for a few seconds before realizing that it wasn’t going to work.

Nothing was working as she’d intended.

Her life included.

She was going on five days in this hellhole. Because of the high-water table, water seeped in through the floor, through the walls, and through the ceiling. The ceiling seemed to be more condensation than actual water leakage, but the end result was the same. Lady Maria had spent days in this wet and molding environment, a far cry from the fine chamber she had created for herself in the keep and her days of ruling the roost from the elegant solar.

This was a far cry from anything she had ever envisioned for herself.

The prostitute’s daughter who had forged documents so she could obtain legitimate positions was finally at the end of her lies. She had been trying to reconcile that very fact for the past several days, and the only conclusion she could come to was that she refused to let it end. She had grown accustomed to power and to fine things, and she wasn’t going to let this little setback deter her from what she wanted out of life. Somehow, someway, she was going to get out of this predicament and go find another family that would let her take charge of the children and possibly even the entire castle. Ashendon wasn’t unique. She still had the letter from the Earl of Carnforth that she’d paid a clerk to forge. There were hundreds of other places in England where her services would be appreciated.

But first, she had to get out of here.

The knights hadn’t come to check on her once since they had incarcerated her, and the only people she saw were the servants as they brought her meager meals. Even the blanket on her back had come from a servant, and she was positive they’d gone into the stable to get the dirtiest horse blanket they could find. It was rough and dirty and smelled like animals. Given the fact that knights hadn’t checked on her since depositing her in this hole, it would be easier for her to plan her escape.

That was where the servants came in.

And it was going to start now.

Even as she turned away from the iron bars of her cell, it was all part of a ploy that she had been planning since nearly the moment she was jailed. As soon as she stopped grabbing for the servant who threw the food, she groaned as if in great pain and fell to the floor. Her hope was that the servant would show enough interest to open up the cell to check on her, and if that was the case, she had a sharp piece of stone that she had been carrying around on her body, something she had found in this very cell because it had fallen from the ceiling.

Sharp enough to use as a weapon.

As Lady Maria fell on the floor, she made sure to grasp the stone, which had been wedged into her skirt by way of a hidden pocket. Many women had such things sewn into their garments, and the dress she was wearing was one of the finest money could buy. She’d used some of the money from the books she sold to have a local seamstress make it. There were secret pockets everywhere to store things like money and keys and valuables, and anything else she happened to steal.

Now, she’d put one of those pockets to good use.

And she waited.

The servant laughed at her. Cursed her. Even spat on her as she lay there. She wasn’t so sure the woman would come inside the cell and, eventually, the servant left. That had Lady Maria picking herself up from the floor, irritated that the servant didn’t fall for her deception, but that didn’t really matter. There would be another meal at some point and she would pretend she was ill again, anything to get the servant into her cell.

Rising from the floor amidst the splatter of some kind of stew, she waited.

Oddly, she didn’t have to wait until suppertime. Not a half-hour after the spilled stew and her fall to the floor, the door to the vault opened and light from above hit the stairwell and floor, illuminating the truly dismal conditions. Quickly, Lady Maria moved herself back to the floor and into the same position she was before. She lay there, still as stone, as two servants came down the stairwell.

She could hear them whispering.

“What happened tae her?” one servant with a heavy Scottish accent asked.

“I don’t know,” the other servant, the one who had thrown the stew, said. “But she fell down and she hasn’t moved. Should we tell Lord Hull?”

Lady Maria could only hear shuffling going on behind her, as her back was to the cell door. She didn’t dare move for fear she’d be seen and they would know she was feigning unconsciousness, so she remained perfectly still, even when one of them threw something at her through the bars. Once it struck her in the hip, it clattered to the floor a few feet away—from the sound, she assumed it was a spoon or some other utensil.

More hissing, more whispering. She heard something about let’s see , but what they wanted to see, she didn’t know. She suspected they might want to test her because they made no attempt to be quiet when they walked away, speaking of what they were having for supper and making sure they spoke loudly enough. People didn’t normally do that sort of thing when someone was lying unconscious. If Lady Maria was one thing, it was clever. She was cleverer than they were. Because she thought they were trying to trap her, she simply lay there and didn’t move.

She lay there for over an hour.

Then they were back. She wasn’t sure if it was the same women, but it sounded like it. She could hear a heavy Scottish accent in the mix and they were deciding what to do with her. Someone suggested they go in to see if she was dead.

And that was exactly what Lady Maria wanted.

She hadn’t counted on two servants, however. She was going to have to think fast in order to kill both of them without one of them at least having a chance to run away or sound the alarm. She could hear the cell door opening as the tumblers and the old lock clicked. There was a screeching sound as the door swung open on the rusty hinges.

Footsteps entered the cell.

The first thing they did was roll her onto her back. Lady Maria knew that she wouldn’t have a second chance at doing what she needed to do, so she had to take this opportunity and take it quickly. When the Scottish woman knelt over her and lifted an eyelid to see if her pupils would react to the light, Lady Maria suddenly brought up the broken stone and stabbed the Scottish woman in the neck.

The fight was on.

As the Scottish woman fell away, mortally wounded, the servant who threw the stew shrieked and tried to escape, but Lady Maria was fast. She was able to throw out a foot and trip the woman before she could get out of the cell. The servant stumbled over Lady Maria’s kicking feet and fell, face first, into the cell door. She hit herself in the nose and in the mouth, and as she stumbled back with her hand over her bleeding mouth, Lady Maria landed the razor-sharp stone into her foot. The servant cried out and staggered, falling onto her side, as Lady Maria pounced.

Jamming the stone dagger into the woman’s eye ensured quick death. Mostly, anyway. She took some pleasure in watching the woman suffer for the last few seconds of her life. Winded, and terrified that the battle had been heard up above in the gatehouse, Lady Maria rushed to the bottom of the steps, listening for any hint that the soldiers had been alerted. But everything seemed calm up above and she gradually returned to the cell where two dead women lay on the wet floor.

Now was time for her to act.

Heart pounding, Lady Maria stripped the clothes off the servant who had thrown the stew because her clothing was the least bloodied. She then proceeded to strip off her own clothing and dress in the servant’s clothes, including wrapping her head up in a woolen wimple. Then she put her clothing on the dead servant and lugged the woman over to her bed, tossing the old blanket over her so it looked as if she were sleeping. The Scottish woman who had bled out on the dirty floor she crammed underneath the cot and made sure the horse blanket covered up any sign of her.

And with that, she was ready to run.

Terrified she would be seen, Lady Maria made her way out to the stairwell again, looking to the floor above to see if there was anyone. There didn’t seem to be, so to complete her disguise as a servant, she picked up the tray that had held her meager meal. It had been left leaning against the wall. Head down, tray against her chest, she mounted the stairs to the gatehouse only to see that absolutely no one was paying any attention to the door that led down to the vault. There were only a few soldiers at the front of the gatehouse, talking to each other, and there were a few of them in the bailey near the gatehouse.

It was strangely vacant.

But Lady Maria didn’t question it. Keeping the tray clutched to her chest and her head down, she left through the gatehouse and no one stopped her. No one even looked at her. She walked quickly, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed, all the way down the road and into the outskirts of the village. Once the various small cottages and little farms appeared, she began to run.

All the way to the river’s wharf.

All the way to freedom.