The Intended Read Online Free PDF Page A

barred her door,
admitting only Mary when she returned from the Great Hall. As her
cousin put on her shift, Jaime had been tempted to talk to her
about the events that had transpired, but a sense of complicity—of
guilt, almost—kept her from discussing the matter.
    And this morning, Jaime had done her best not
to allow him a moment alone with her. She knew the questions he
would ask—questions to which she had no answers. Jaime knew inside
that she was partly responsible for Edward’s attentions. And
somehow, perhaps through her actions or her words, he had come to
assume she was ready for a more intimate encounter. He was wrong,
but she didn’t know how to tell him without destroying all that
might lie in store for them.
    The castle was no less forbidding up close,
and as they passed through the thick walls and the huge gates,
Jaime suddenly found herself faced with an appalling number of men,
women, and children who seemed to be living in the courtyard. A
dozen soldiers roughly cleared the way for them, and Edward led the
group up the wooden steps of the keep.
    Jaime held back. It was the faces. She
couldn’t tear her eyes away from the thin, drawn faces of the
children who gawked at her fine dress. Their sad, round eyes bore
through the small openings between the row of soldiers—their
starved expressions piercing her heart. She wrenched her attention
away as she heard Edward retracing his steps, his eyes locked on
her. She thought she glimpsed a spark of annoyance in his gray eyes
before he glanced at those in the yard.
    “Who are those unfortunates?” she whispered
as he took her arm.
    “Mostly the king’s enemies,” he said quietly.
“Though some of them are county criminals.”
    Leading them up the winding torchlit stone
stairwell, Edward came to a stop at the next landing. Ducking under
the low round arch of the doorway, he stepped into a very large
room—into what had at one time been the Great Hall of the
castle.
    Jaime looked at the hundred or so men huddled
in groups or lying in the filthy straw that covered the wood floor.
The stench of the place struck her, sickening her, but she clenched
her teeth and moved into the hall.
    “Perhaps this was a mistake to bring you
here,” he said mockingly. “To expose such a delicate flower to the
unpleasantness of the real world.”
    Jaime shot him a hard look and stepped past
him. Through the sharp odor of men and their waste, the smell of
burned porridge reached her senses. At one end of the hall, a loud
and greasy-looking man was ladling mush out of an iron cauldron
onto thick crusts of what Jaime was sure must be week-old bread.
And as she watched, a boy nearby poured water out of a huge skin
bag into a stone horse trough. A steady line of filthy, ragged men
made their way past, every now and then one of them casting a
furtive glance their way. She turned to Edward.
    “Why do you keep all these prisoners?” she
asked, her voice hushed.
    “Well, we serve the king.” He peered through
the murky light. “Some of these men may have trespassed against my
father in some way, but most are foreigners, and interrogating them
takes time.”
    “And once you’ve questioned them, you keep
them here...forever?”
    “Nay! That would hardly be worth our while
now, would it?” Edward’s face was grim, his eyes the color of
flint. “Few survive their sessions with Reed, the jailer. He is a
brutal but necessary man. Using those in his employ, he has become
my eyes and ears all along the coast. He knows all, and what he
doesn’t know...he extracts.”
    Jaime cast her eyes about her, but all she
could see was the sordid suffering that surrounded them. “This is a
foul place, Edward,” she whispered raggedly.
    “Aye, Jaime. There is a foul side to the most
glorious business. And war is no exception.” He took her by the
arm. “But it is important for one to see the refuse to fully
appreciate the splendor.”
    “Show me what you brought me here to see,”
she