Suzanne Robinson (33 page)

Drawing Fulke’s pistol from his belt, Alexis ducked into the hole revealed by the door, taking the lamp with him. Iago bounded after him. At the foot of a steep staircase lay a black chamber much like the dungeon at Castle Richfield, only smaller. Set in one wall were three doors with peepholes. Alexis flung the first one open. The door banged against a wall. Nothing.

He was about to open the second door when Iago threw himself at it and barked. Pounding came from the other side.

“Kate?”

“Alexis! Open the door.”

He stuffed the pistol back in his belt and opened the door, and Kate threw herself into his arms. He hugged her and buried his nose in her mass of tangled hair. Iago sprang in the air, yipping at them.

“Little savage.”

“Someone locked me in.”

He felt her tremble and stroked the back of her head. “What happened?”

“Mrs. Beechwith wrote me a note.”

“I know.”

“And when I got here, somebody hit me and dragged me down into this cell.”

Kate lifted her face. Her cheeks were smudged and her lashes were wet. Alexis kissed her, gently, and then, as he remembered his fears, he hugged her to him so hard that she gasped. She cried out something, and her hands clawed at his back. He smiled and began to release her. He heard Iago growl and then yelp, but before he could turn, something hit the back of his head and he collapsed.

• • •

Alexis heard someone groan. He frowned, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. There it was again. He couldn’t open his eyes to see who was making that pitiful noise.

“Alexis, don’t move,” said Kate’s disembodied voice.

“Noise,” he said. He could barely hear his own voice.

“Shhh.”

“Who’s makin noise?”

“Hush. It’s you. That bastard hit you, but he’s gone now. Are you all right?”

Still unable to open his eyes, Alexis tried to bring his hand to his face. He couldn’t. Neither hand would move. As his senses returned, he could feel a great weight tearing at his hands and arms. They were suspended above him, and he seemed to be hugging a wall. Grinding his teeth together, he pulled, and found that his wrists were bound by chains.

“What?” he mumbled.

“I can’t see very well,” Kate said, “but I think he’s chained you to the wall. He hit you and Iago with a rock and shoved me back in the cell before I could stop him. Can you get free?”

Alexis tried to ignore the stinging and pounding in his head and managed to straighten from his slumped position. The pain in his arms eased somewhat, but he could do no more than strain helplessly at his bonds. At last he opened his eyes. They focused on his own shoulder. On the floor beside him, Iago lay motionless. Nearby he spotted his coat and, lying on top of it, Fulke’s gun. He pulled at the chains again.

Kate shouted encouragement to him, but her words stopped as, to his right, the trapdoor sprang open. Someone came down the stairs holding a lamp. It was a figure in
black, dressed in dark boots, trousers, and a cloak. Alexis strained to see his enemy’s face.

“Mother?”

“Lady Juliana!” Kate cried.

Juliana walked over to Alexis and set the lamp on the floor. Stooping, she picked up the gun and stuck it in her belt.

“Mother, what are you doing?”

“She ruined it all,” Juliana said.

“I don’t understand.”

Juliana shoved the cloak back from her shoulders and glared at Alexis. “She ruined it all by making you happy. I was punishing you. I had it all planned, years of suffering, losing the ones you loved, as I lost my husband.”

Closing his eyes for a moment, Alexis cringed away from his mother.

“You know,” he said. “You know what happened that day. Have you known all along? Oh God, why didn’t you tell me? I’d rather know for sure that I killed them.”

Juliana raised her fist. Alexis turned his head and met her eyes. She was breathing rapidly and glowering at him.

“It was worse than that, you fool. He died instead of you, and it’s all your fault.”

Alexis held his breath, then let it out while his tortured thoughts assembled themselves. “My fault. What did I do?”

“Don’t you remember? You and Thalia were to go riding together that day. If you had, the right ones would have died, and I would have had my dear Phillipe all to myself again.”

“Mother?” He sounded like a hurt child. “Tell me the whole of it.”

“I suppose it won’t matter, although you deserve to be kept guessing. I got back from arranging the trap and found all of you gone. It was already too late when Fulke told me Phillipe had gone riding with Thalia and that you
were chasing after them. You monster. If you hadn’t quarreled with Thalia, you would have been the one to die instead of Phillipe.”

His legs were shaking. His whole body trembled, and his head was going to split open with the pain. He heard Kate calling to him, but he couldn’t answer. He was seeing himself quarreling with Thalia over luncheon. His father’s furious voice sent him to his room. Then he was riding, riding, riding, and Thalia was falling, her head toppling to the ground. Father’s horse screamed.

“Stop,” Alexis whispered to himself. He lifted his gaze to his mother once again. “The reason I don’t remember putting that wire between the trees is because I didn’t do it. And you let me think I killed them. All these years. Why? Why do you hate me so?”

“Because you stole his love!” Juliana screamed. Her face distorted by rage, she continued shouting at him. “Before you and Thalia, we didn’t need anyone else. But he loved you, especially you. He would tell me how proud he was of you, how brilliant you were. God, I was sick of seeing the two of you laughing together and sharing things. And then one day he told me I was ill.”

Her rage vanished abruptly as if it had never been, leaving no trace of emotion in her visage. When she spoke again, her voice was calm.

“He came to me and said that I was getting sicker and sicker, and that was bad for Thalia and you. He was taking both of you away with him.” Her voice rose again, taking on the high, querulous tone of a child. “Phillipe said I would have to stay in a new place with doctors. He said I was getting much worse, and he was afraid.”

Her mood switched once more without warning, and she snarled at Alexis. “He was especially afraid for you. He’d seen me watching you. Seen me. It was your fault he turned against me.”

“Mother, he loved you,” Alexis said. Juliana wasn’t listening to him.

“I knew then that I had to get rid of you. If you were gone, he would love me again. You were his son, and a male, and you could ride like he did, and soon you would hunt, and go to clubs and shoots, and accompany him to all the places I couldn’t. You’d stolen him from me at last, and I wanted him back.”

“But he died instead of me.”

Juliana looked at him, smiling. “Yes, and I nearly died too, but I lived because I wanted you punished with years of suffering, losing the ones you loved as I lost Phillipe.”

“Did you ever love me, or Thalia?”

“At first,” she admitted, sounding frighteningly rational. “But you killed my love over the years. It took me a long time to realize you were stealing my Phillipe, you see.”

Alexis felt a tearing at his heart, as if something inside it were dying. “You said you punished me. Dear God in heaven, Mother, what have you done?”

Juliana laughed.

Behind him Kate called out, her voice sounding thin and strained.

“It was her,” Kate said. “She visited Ophelia the night of the fire. It was she who set the fire. It was you, wasn’t it, Juliana?”

“She wanted to please me, to make me like her,” Juliana said, turning to speak to Kate. “It was easy to get her to meet me secretly. She thought we were going to make a plan to capture Alexis for her. I drugged her wine and set the fire. Only … only Alexis wasn’t hurt enough when she died. Not nearly enough.” Juliana’s voice wavered. Her eyes strayed from Kate to Alexis, then back to Kate.

“I was going to kill Carolina Beechwith, but you arrived, and then I found out about Hannah. You were at
Thyme Hall that day too, when she begged Alexis to impregnate her. Hannah was one I missed.”

Alexis lowered his forehead to rest on his arm. “Don’t say any more, please.” He lifted his head to plead with his mother. “You’re ill. Let me go so I can take care of you.”

“Oh no. Your final punishment is about to begin. I’ve decided since you won’t die when I want you to, you’ll be punished for that as well.”

Alexis stared at his mother’s twisted face. Reeling inside from her last words, he could say nothing. Juliana suddenly reached toward him. He felt her hand at the neck of his shirt, then she ripped it from his body. The violence spurred his tongue.

“The keep.”

She dropped the shirt and sneered at him. “Yes, the keep. Your guardian angel Valentine ruined your death for me. After I had worked so hard to loosen those stones and made sure Fulke noticed them, your stupid friend came along and warned you.”

It wasn’t believable. After all she’d confessed, Alexis still couldn’t accept her hatred. He was aware that his mother was still talking, but he couldn’t seem to hear her. Her mouth was moving. He watched her lips pull back from her teeth. She stopped talking, and he was jolted back to awareness when she turned from him.

She disappeared from his sight and returned holding a whip. He looked from the whip to the woman’s face, then shook his head, murmuring a denial. She couldn’t. Mothers didn’t use whips on their children. He almost laughed at himself. He bit down on his lip, using the pain to ward off hysteria.

Juliana yelled at him, calling him a monster. Then she vanished. He tried to twist his neck far enough to see her, but she was directly behind him, and far away.

A hissing crack ripped through the air, and a line of pain etched itself from his shoulder to his waist. His body
arched. Confused and disbelieving, Alexis blinked his eyes. Another blow tore at his ribs. The leather dropped from his flesh and slithered on the floor. He gripped the chains at his wrists as pain crawled over his back.

Kate was shouting at Juliana. His beautiful Katie Ann hurled threats and curses at Juliana, and it was the sound of her voice coupled with the knowledge that she was in danger that cleared his mind. He had to endure, survive. For Kate.

Kate was hoarse from screaming at Juliana. She beat at the door of her cell as the woman raised the whip again. She shouted Juliana’s name, and the woman turned to her.

Juliana had been handsome. Her silver hair and thoroughbred height commanded attention, and she shared with her son an almost royal dignity. All had vanished from the being that confronted Kate. The hair was still vivid, but it was tangled and matted with leaves and snarls. She crouched like a shrike hovering over a dead insect, her shoulders hunched forward and her body curled into itself. Even her nails seemed to lengthen and curl into talons.

Juliana whirled away from Kate. Her arm flexed, and Kate heard a snap. The movement was impossible to follow, but the results were plain. Alexis jerked and cried out. Another red line appeared on the flawless skin of his back.

“No!” Kate screamed her fury at Juliana, and her voice cracked.

Juliana paused again and looked at Kate. Her chest heaved and spittle had gathered at the corners of her mouth. Kate shouted, but her voice was drowned in the pounding of boots on the stairs. Fulke hurled himself down the last step, racing toward Juliana. She raised the whip, but he ripped it from her hand. Howling, she
grabbed for it, but Fulke threw the whip into the shadows and ran to Alexis.

Frustrated at her impotence, Kate pounded at her cell door. Fulke pulled at a ring set in the wall to hold the chains that bound Alexis. The chains loosened, and Alexis fell to his knees. Fulke helped him rise, supporting him while shooting questions at him.

“Don’t wait!” Kate yelled. “She’s mad, and she wants to kill him. Get him out of here.”

Fulke’s head came up. He shot a startled look toward Kate. Someone else was running down the stairs, but Kate paid no attention.

“She’s dangerous, I tell you. Where did she go?”

Alexis lurched toward Kate’s voice, but Fulke pulled him back. Val sailed past both of them and fumbled with the key in the lock of her cell, then collapsed against the door frame, out of breath. Alexis struggled with Fulke, cursing at him. As Kate shoved the door of the cell open, Juliana darted out of a shadowed corner. In her hand was Fulke’s gun, and she aimed it at the two wrestling men.

Everyone moved at once. Alexis threw himself in front of Fulke. Kate and Val sprang at Juliana. Kate tackled the woman’s feet, jerking them out from under her. She heard a shot, but her face was smothered in the folds of Juliana’s cloak. A heavy weight landed half on Kate and half on Juliana. Feet jammed into Kate’s stomach, and she doubled over while an unseen struggle took place beside her. Another shot robbed her of her hearing for a few seconds. She unwound herself, shoving her hair back from her face, and peered across the floor. Alexis was bending over Val, lifting his friend off a black bundle on the ground. Val moaned.

“Did she hurt you?” Alexis asked.

“Kicked me in the chest. The gun.”

“It went off,” Alexis said.

Kate got to her feet and rushed to Alexis. Wordlessly
he held out an arm. She fastened her arms around his waist, and he held her to his side. They looked down at Juliana. She lay on her back, eyes open and staring at them. The bullet had entered her head beneath the chin and gone out the back of her skull.

Kate closed her eyes against the sight of spattered blood and tissue. Alexis left her to kneel beside the still Iago. As he cradled the dog’s head on his lap, Iago groaned, then a pink tongue snaked out and licked Alexis’s cheek. Alexis laughed.

“You always did have a thick skull, old fellow.”

Val approached and held out his arms for the dog. Alexis relinquished Iago and took Kate’s hand.

A groan came from beyond Juliana’s body. Kate turned to see Fulke crawling on the floor.

“What happened to him?”

“He tried to stop me from helping you,” Alexis said.

Fulke was rubbing his jaw. “You could have been killed.”