Bones for Bread (The Scarlet Plumiere) (10 page)

Wickedly sharp, artfully honed—a mystical weapon with an evocative name. Much like the woman herself. And now he had no choice but to trust that her ability would match that art, since he was powerless to stop her. A woman like that would only find a way inside if they left her tied to a tree.

Worst of all, if she did make it out alive, she would never look kindly on him afterward. Once they stepped inside the keep, he would once again turn into the deadliest gentleman of the ton. And how could any woman see him as anything more than a monster afterward? Especially if she were standing behind, watching his bloody work.

Although he was desperately afraid she would not come out of Givet Faux unharmed, he was beyond the ability to worry about her now. He regretted it. Braced himself for it. But he could not afford to dwell on it.

As Stanley drew the layout of the interior, Ash watched her face, waiting for those fleeting glimpses she took of him. Enjoying for the last time that light of interest as their gazes connected for a heartbeat. Then her attention was back on Stanley and his drawing in the dirt.

She had no such looks for his over-handsome friend, he noticed.

But neither would she have such looks for him when the night was through. No. Once the morning brought light to his bloody work, she would have a different expression for him—if she dared glance his way at all.

He tried to tell himself it was for the best, that any woman who might reach for his heart would lose her fingers. For ultimately, he had no choice but to release the monster within. If Northwick was indeed inside those walls, the surest way to get all four kings out alive was to make certain the villains did not. As soon as the mêlée began, the red haze would descend and he would welcome it. After more than a month of searching, it would be a satisfying end.

Once again, she glanced up at him. This time, there was suspicion. Did she think he might have left without her? Of course she did.

He shook his head and she smiled as if she’d read his thoughts.

Dear Lord, don’t let her read all of them.

“We’ve been going over what we remembered from yesterday, when they allowed us to look about the place,” Stan was saying. “We found the inner walls to be circular, like the outer walls, obviously, except for here.”

He had drawn a large circle. Inside the front entrance was a large hall that took up the center of the building and ended half way through. To the right, he drew a large triangular solar with the outer edge curved to mirror the citadel wall. On the other side of the hall, he drew its mirror image. The rear half of the circle contained the kitchens, again with the outer wall rounded, the pantries mirroring the kitchen, but where the rest of the wall should have been round, it was straight, where a row of servants rooms ended.

“You see, there is a large section unaccounted for here.” Stanley pointed to the last triangular section that completed the circle. “There is also a passage that encircles the front half of the building. Approximately seven feet wide, for defense. I remember it ending in a passage to the kitchens on the left, but on the right, it ended with a large cabinet that filled the wall.”

Harcourt knelt and pointed. “We believe there is a passageway behind the cabinet, that hostages could be hidden in the space unaccounted for. We were welcomed to see the rest of the space, including the cellars beneath the kitchen, where we found a pit, but no one in it. No signs of recent use.”

“Yes,” Stan said, coming to his feet. “There are god-awful smells in some of the rooms, but those were accounted for when we met some of the occupants. It is an understatement to say this mission will not be pleasant, Miss. . .”

The woman smiled and shook her head, obviously in answer to Stan’s request for her name. Then she glanced at Ash and her smile widened. Her teeth a surprising white in the deepening darkness.

“I suppose ye could call me Scotia,” she said.

Scotia, you fool
.

Perhaps it would be better, in the end, if he did not know her true name. It would keep him from looking for her if he ever made a trek to the Highlands. Although it was unlikely their paths would ever cross again, he had the strangest feeling they would.

“So, what is our plan?” she asked, looking into his eyes.

“After we get the door open, we turn to the immediate right and head for the cabinet,” said Harcourt. “We expect to have resistance from both the front and rear as we make our way forward. Two on the attack, two on the defense. I suppose the place for you would be in the middle.”

“With no one to fight,” she huffed.

Ash leaned close. “Avoiding our backswing should keep you sufficiently entertained, madam.”

She gave him a quizzical look for a moment, then nodded and looked away.

“Thank the Lord for small favors,” he murmured.

She laughed, but did not look back. Her attention was turned to her skirts where she reached for the weapon, likely to determine whether or not their arrangement would interfere with her ability to draw it quickly. To his relief, and her own, she pulled the blade from her pocket with no trouble.

Harcourt stepped forward, took hold of her wrist, and held the blade up between the two of them. It was a rare occasion when the man was serious, but this was one of those times.

“Once our blades are drawn,” he told her, “you won’t have much reason to sheath it again. Do you understand?”

Ash appreciated the man’s attempt to intimidate the woman one last time, but his friend hadn’t seen that fire in her eyes at close range.

“We fought at Bergen,” she said quietly. “Dinna worry for me.”

“Bergen?” Harcourt looked Ash’s way. “Bergen op Zoom?”

The ill-fated attack on the fortress north of Belgium, led by her countryman, Sir Thomas Graham, had suffered heavy losses. It had been a bloody affair ending in too many dead and even more taken prisoner. The mere idea of her being present at the battle made him sick to his stomach. But that wasn’t his sole reaction—he was also relieved. At least she wouldn’t faint at the first sight of blood.

“My brother served in the 73rd Highland Brigade under Gibbs. I. . . I watched his back.”

Ash could hold his tongue no longer.

“Just how did you watch his back?” he asked.

She smiled and held up the unique blade. Its three sharpened edges shone even in the darkness. Unique and deadly. It wasn’t that a blood-thirsty woman appealed to him, but at least she would be less frightened by him. Or so he hoped.

Stanley piped up. “And your brother was taken captive—”

“Outside Reims,” she snapped. “By all means, talk war, gentlemen. I’ll just go collect my brother on my own, then, shall I?”

It was a fact they had to race to catch up with her. Damn if he wasn’t stepping up to the tall doors when he remembered North. Instantly, his mind turned away from the woman at his back to the task at hand. His heart beat at the inside of his chest as if it, too, would join the fight. Stan’s arm came across to stop him as the door opened wide. And a close thing too, as he was already prepared to carry out the sentence of death for all who dared to threaten his friend.

“Back again?” asked the large Scot. He stepped back and gestured them all inside. “Did you need a place to stay the night, then? I’m certain Jean-Yves could name a fair price. . .”

The man’s attention fell on Scotia.

“You!” He dragged a pistol from his belt and trained it on her as he backed into the hall.

His face twisted in horror as if she were the devil incarnate come for his soul.

CHAPTER TEN

Then men surrounding her seemed as stunned as she was. The plan was forgotten.

“I assure ye,” she said quickly to the room at large, “I do not know this man.”

The big Scot’s horror turned to a hurt frown and the end of his pistol dipped.

“You doona ken who I am?”

She shook her head and turned to Ash. “I do
not
know this man.”

The Scot, now angry, bent his tongue against his teeth and gave a whistle that might have drawn the stones of the keep down on their heads. She gave up her grip on the hilt in her pocket and covered her ears. Though her noble guards winced, they were able to arm themselves before the mind-numbing ricochet died. And a good thing too, as the room filled with ragged men armed to the teeth.

The Scot had disappeared. She spun about and found more villains behind them, but thank heavens her guard knew what they were about and had slid into the formation they’d planned from the start.

Strangely, it seemed more like a country dance with everyone lined up, waiting for the first note of music.

~ ~ ~

Ash fought the demands of his stomach, which insisted on emptying its contents immediately.

The Scot knows her!

She was one of them. Or had been at some point, perhaps? Either way, it seemed they’d been led, quite handily, into their own abduction.

What a clever woman, to distract him with her searching gaze, to engage his senses, and then deliver him to the hands of her accomplices. If they were unable to get North out, at least they would clap eyes on him soon. At least they could all suffer together.

As the moment slowed, he glanced about him, sensing the enemy, predicting who would first break formation and come for them. His eye caught on a scrap of paper nailed to the hall entrance, the inner edge of the archway under which they stood.
Rents due Saturday
, it read. But it wasn’t the notice but the parchment he recognized—the message she’d attached to his finger was a perfect match for it.

How silly he’d been, leaving his horse for her, that she might ride comfortably away from her nest of fellow vipers. But if she had been inside the day before, why would the Scot be surprised to see her? And why would she still be standing at his back instead of rushing away from the reach of his blade?

He could not make sense of it. But no matter. He would certainly know where she stood if he felt the cut of Wolfkiller in his back. But until he did, the fight was on.

“To the plan?” Stanley asked casually.

“To the plan,” Ash replied.

And the villains came at them.

~ ~ ~

Blair held Wolfkiller in her right hand and lifted her left leg to slip the skean dhu from her sock, a sock that was conveniently exposed thanks to her slap-dash pantaloons. But Ash had been right about the backswing of their blades. And it only took a minute of dodging about to convince her it was a dangerous place to be. As she slipped out the side of her would-be sanctuary, the men adjusted without thought, as if they sensed too much space at their backs. If she changed her mind and wanted back between them, it was too late.

A man ran at them from around the bend in the wall and looked temporarily disappointed to find only a woman to engage with, but after she knocked his sword from his hand, he became content to fight her. The weight of his weapon was no match for Wolfkiller, however, and he was quickly overcome.

Over her shoulder she called, “Are we killing them, then? Or just wounding them?”

A black shadow moved around her, obstructing her view of her opponent. She held her blade in check as the man might well be Ash. When the man moved away again, her opponent lay motionless, staring unseeing at the ceiling, his throat. . .a river of blood.

She turned to find the gentlemen all engaged with the enemy. Ash was closest to her, but he never glanced her way. Then their little war machine moved on and her dead opponent was beyond her sight.

Bodies dropped at the Englishmen’s feet in time with some silent rhythm. Engage, kill, step back. Engage, kill, step back. Harcourt and Everhardt pivoted behind her and she was again wedged between the pairs. But with no one to fight, she made herself useful by either moving Ash’s and Stanley’s opponents out of the way so the other two, walking backward, wouldn’t trip over them, or, when the bodies were too heavy to move, warning them where to step. Though it was difficult, she tried not to look at their faces so they might be readily forgotten.

Blair kept pace as they moved deeper into the right corridor and headed into the darkness A single sconce burned just before the bend, but its light was too weak to illuminate the mob within its reach. Someone lit a torch, which temporarily blinded her, but it was a blessing. At least she could keep from harming her companions.

When there was light enough to see it, the passage was a curved, slick sea of red, fifty feet long. A giant, bloody Saracen’s sword with bits and bodies lying near its edges. She slipped a dozen times but was careful not to make a sound as she did so. One look over his shoulder at the wrong moment and a man could be killed for his concern.

Because of the curve of the passage, she could not see them all, but assumed they’d left twenty of the enemy in their wake by the time the cabinet came into sight. One of the doors stood ajar and light came from inside.

“There is a passage,” Stanley called out. With only ten feet left to the corridor, he’d finished off his last opponent and was free to look about him. He took Blair by the elbow and moved toward the cabinet, then pointed at a trail of blood that led up to it, then into it. Ash was still in the fray, wrestling a man against the wall. The other two were fighting the final man attacking from the rear.