Beloved (4 page)

But he had given her a weapon to make certain she did not have to go—not immediately, anyway. “You do not wish me to speak
loudly?”

He shook his head. “Then I won’t…. But I do need to talk to you about Sibley’s—”

Bigun’s fingers closed on her wrist once more and he hauled her with him across tessellated black and white tiles. Her kidskin
half-boots made no more sound than the servant’s soft, gold slippers.

The room into which he drew Ella completely stole her carefully prepared and persuasive speech.

Bigun closed them in and set about lighting too few of the candles held aloft by an extraordinary company. Ivory and jade
figures, some more or less human, some reptilian or beastlike, offered up thin, white tapers in golden vessels. On her previous
visit Ella and Bigun had conversed in the vestibule. She rather thought she might prefer to return there.

“I came to see Lord Avenall,” she said shakily when her voice at last returned.

“You did not make progress at Sibley’s.” Bigun faced her. The scanty flickerings from the candles wove fingers of yellow through
the shadowy crowd. “You failed. My decision was wrong. What occurred there troubled my master.”

“How do you know?”

“Leave now.”

Ella pressed her elbows to her sides. “I know he will want to see me.”

Bigun shook his head. “I know he will not.”

Ella gulped, and breathed through her mouth. “Ask him.”

“No.”

“He will be angry if he discovers I was here and you didn’t tell him.”

“He will not discover.”

Nearby, jeweled eyes glinted in the two heads of a green jade creature. Ella stepped away—and bumped into an ivory dragon
with a long, lolling gold tongue.

Candlelight gleamed on Bigun’s gaunt features. “My master cannot receive you,” he said. “Leave, please.”

A subtle aroma reached her nose. Burning flowers? Her eyes stung. “You don’t understand, Mr. Bigun. As I told you the other
day, it is imperative that I see Saber.”

“Bigun.”

“Sorry. As I said the other—”

“I do not remember another day.”

Ella opened her mouth—and promptly closed it again. “Leave. If you please. Do not return. Do not trouble my master further.”

She was not alone in feeling desperate tonight. “What’s afoot here?” Beneath the servant’s cold exterior Ella felt deep anxiety.
“Is something wrong—with Saber?”

He didn’t answer.

There
was
something wrong with him. “Tell me.” Her chest grew tight. “He is ill. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s ill and doesn’t want me
to know.”

Bigun’s face lost all expression. “I want to go to him, please.”

“That is not possible. Not wise. Out of the question. My master is quite himself. He will not see you.”

Quite himself.
He had not been himself since he’d left her in Cornwall four years earlier. She’d tried and tried to forget him, but then
she’d discovered he was staying near her Scottish home at Castle Kirkcaldy—so near that he could have come to her within an
hour.

He had not come, so she had gone to him.

On that occasion she’d managed to get into his presence, though only for a short time. He had sent her away. But he had been
recovering from a battle injury and she’d been certain he did not want to burden her. She’d also been certain he would seek
her out once he was whole again.

He was whole again. Ella had seen him at Sibley’s. Still he had not come to her. He had walked away. She drew herself up and
said, “Is he alone?” Or with the famous Countess Perruche?

Bigun’s eyelids lowered briefly. His mouth drew straight. “I should not have spoken of my master’s club to you.”

“I thought you were worried about him. I felt that. You saw that I cared for him and you wanted me to see him, didn’t you?”

“He is alone.”

“You never answer my questions directly, Mr. Bigun.”

“Bigun.”

“Yes, as you say. I am in serious trouble. That is, I may be in serious trouble. And I am certain Saber would wish to know.
He once promised me he would always come to my aid if I needed him. I need him now.”

Bigun’s brow furrowed.

Trembling, Ella struggled to open her reticule. Her fingers caught in the ribbon rosettes at the closure. By the time she
tugged a folded piece of paper into view she was close to tears. “Please, Bigun,” she implored. “If you doubt that Saber would
come to my aid, take this to him. When he reads it, he will not turn me away.”

With another of his unexpected grabs, Bigun snatched the note.

Ella took a step toward him. “You’ll give it to him? Now?”

He turned away and opened the door. “My master sleeps.”

“I beg you to do this. If you will not, I don’t know what I shall do.”

With his back to her and his head bowed, Bigun paused.

“Please will you…?”

“Remain here.”

He left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Relief and hope lightened Ella’s head. She reached out to steady herself—and grasped the ivory elephant’s cold, golden tongue.

Sunlight shot along curved blades.

His horse reared. All around him horses reared and screamed. And men screamed. He fought his mount. Down. Down. “Down. Get
down! Everyone, retreat!”

Nigel Brannington’s horse smashed into Saber’s. “Hold on, Nigel. Hold—” Nigel didn’t hear him, would never hear him again.
His remaining blue eye saw nothing. The rest was blood.

Hot, so hot. Bound. Hot and bound. Twisting against his bonds. Sweat and blood. All, sweat and blood. He had to be free, to
help them. His company. He must save them.

“Sir! Sir, help!” a soldier shouted to him, a soldier thrown from his horse.

“Mount and ride, boy, ride. Go! Go! Go!”

Little more than a child.

A blade sang overhead, swept this way and that, swept down toward the child soldier.

Saber ran through the next tribesman to come at him, withdrew his sword, and leaned to sweep up the boy. “Hold on. Keep your
head down.”

He rode with the boy, made it safely from the tangle of whooping men protecting their barren Indian hill, made it out of the
sea of blood and flesh and terror.

The company was his. They had expected no trouble, simply a quiet reconnaissance of the area. He must go back for them. Not
one more must be lost.

Nigel Brannington was already lost. Many were lost.

He must go back. Bound. Twisted in bonds and held down. Sweat. So hot. “Go back!”

Sweat ran over his horse’s hide. Lather dripped from the mud-spattered animal—lather and mud, and blood. Foam flew from its
mouth. The whites of great, frightened eyes rolled upward.

Saber spurred the beast on, away from the edges of the safe village where he’d quickly left the boy.

He had led his unsuspecting men toward death. “Faster.” He was strong. He would not die because he was strong, and he must
save the rest.

Blowing hard, the horse crested a hill and Saber saw the fray again. “On. Faster!” The animal’s hoofs drummed. They beat the
sun-baked ground. They hammered. They pounded.

Bound by twisted bonds. Bonds that raked his damp skin. Holding him down. Stopping him from saving them. His men. “Silence!
I’ve got to have silence! Stop! Stop, I tell you!”

Saber’s own shout forced his eyes open.

Pounding, pounding.
The hoofs.

He flung himself to the edge of his bed and thrust his feet to the bare wooden floor. It was always so. The sheets wound about
his body, the screams—then his feet to the cold floor. No carpet, so that the floor would be cold—cold enough to shock him
to consciousness.

Again, it had happened again.

He sagged to sit on the bed and let his head hang forward. How many times had he ridden into the madness that day and managed,
with strength that could not have been his own alone, to help another of his men to safety? Not enough times. He had not saved
them all.

Many had died, too many, and it was his fault.

Would it never be over?

The crazed episodes came more frequently now.

A sharp, rapping sound almost stopped his thundering heart. Rapping at the door, God help him. The black thing he had become
did not even recognize a knock at the door for what it was.

“Go away,” he called.

Instantly the door opened and Bigun slipped inside. He closed the door firmly and turned the key in the lock.

“What is it?” Saber asked. His hair clung damply to his neck. Chilled by the icy cooling of sweat, his naked body shook. “Speak
up, Bigun. What’s the meaning of this intrusion? And why the locked door?” Had the faithful servant decided to turn on his
troubled master—to become his jailer?

“You will drink, my lord,” Bigun said. He carried a candle, and this he set beside the bed while he poured water from a pitcher
into a glass. “Drink, my lord.”

Saber pushed back his hair and took the glass. The water bathed his parched throat, and he gulped thirstily.

Bigun refilled the glass. “I regret I took so long to hear you. I was distracted by an event below.” He moistened a cloth
and pressed it to Saber’s brow.

Saber closed his eyes. “No matter.”

They had first met on the ship back to England. The dour Indian had tended the English lord in his almost constant delirium.
At his own request, once ashore Saber had been transferred to Devlin North’s care. It had been some months before Saber encountered
Bigun again. On that occasion he’d saved Bigun from a crippling penance.

Coincidence had placed Saber on the same ship for his second trip to India. Bigun, too, was aboard, but this time another
Englishman recognized the Indian as a fugitive from justice. Some matter of filching leftover food from the English officer’s
kitchens for beggars at the door. Evidently the paltry theft and the devastating punishment to which Bigun had been sentenced
was all that concerned the pompous officer.

Bigun’s wrist had been upon a block, a sword raised to ensure payment for crusts, when Saber intervened. Cousin to a duke,
an earl in his own right, Saber’s rank had “persuaded” the other Englishman to relent. Afterward the Indian insisted he must
spend the rest of his life repaying the debt.

He looked critically at Saber now. “You will sicken, my lord,” he said, wringing out the cloth. “Let me help you dress.”

Saber shook his head. Still naked, he stretched out on the mattress and rested the back of a forearm over his eyes. He preferred
to sleep without clothes—when he slept.

“There was the event,” Bigun said.

“Hmm?” The answer might be to abandon sleep entirely. Only in his sleep did the specters rise.

Bigun cleared his throat. “The event. Below.”

Saber slid his arm to the pillow above his head. “What are you talking about, man? Event below? Another of your damnable riddles.”

The Indian drew himself up to his full, diminutive height. “A visitor.”

“A visitor?” Saber peered through the dim light. “At… what? Two in the morning?”

“Well past four. Now.”

Past four? Saber pushed to his elbows. “The devil you say. Who is it?”

Silently, Bigun produced a folded sheet of paper from a pocket in his tunic.

Glancing from his servant to the paper, Saber took it and turned on his side. A flood of sickness swept through him and he
fell back.

“My lord!” Anxiety raised Bigun’s voice.

“It’s nothing. It passes—when the memory passes.” There were few secrets between master and servant. Bigun had learned the
nature of Saber’s demons when he’d first tended him.

Saber rose to an elbow again, unfolded the paper, and held it beneath the candle:

“My dearest Saber,”
he read.
“I will not ask you to forgive my little masquerade last night. You would not agree to see me, so I found a way to see you
without your permission.”

He arched his neck backward. “Bigun, do not tell me there is a female somewhere in this house—other than our incomparable
housekeeper?”

Bigun shuffled his feet and said nothing.

Saber moistened his dry lips. “I see. There is another female in this house.”

He read on:
“Once you said you were my friend. You told me you would never deny me if I was in trouble. I am in trouble, Saber. I need
you.”

He made a fist on his thigh. Yes, he had told her he would never deny her, but that had been when he was still a whole man,
when he had dreamed of making her his, his beautiful bride—his wife, the mother of his children.

All gone.

“My lord?” Bigun said tentatively.

Saber grunted and continued reading:
“Tomorrow evening there is a soiree at the Eagletons’. No doubt you are also invited. Please relent from the solitary sentence
you have assigned yourself—and me—and come.
Please,
Saber. But first, will you see me now? Just for a moment? So that I may look upon you and know peace? With affection, Ella.”

“My God!” Sweat broke upon his brow again. “Get rid of her! Do as I tell you, at once.”

“She is lovely. Lovely. Young. Serious, I believe.”

“Serious, yes,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Serious, determined, willful, outrageous—trusting, gentle—and wasting
her time on me.”

“You could spare her a few minutes.”

“No. How did she get here?”

“By carriage.”

“And alone?”

Bigun sighed. “Alone.”

“Send her home. Instruct her coachman to protect her at all costs. She should not be abroad at such an hour. What can Struan
and Justine be about? First she appears at Sibley’s to torment me … now this. She should be in the safety of her parents’
home, not wandering in the night.”

“Hmm. She insists she must talk to you.”

Saber threw wide his arms. “Look at me. Look, Bigun. Soaked with my own sweat. Wild. A sick man.”

“You, my lord,” Bigun said very solemnly, “are a very strong, fit man.”

“Not in my mind! I can never be free of the sickness in my mind. How could I ever subject a sweet female to such horror as
living with me would represent?”