Exile’s Bane (15 page)

The earl shook his head so hard his fly-away hair ended up in his face. “Her claim has been eliminated,” he croaked, his dark eyes blazing behind the shelf of hair.

“If she has no claim . . .” Gorgon leaned close to the earl’s face and in a sly crooning voice asked, “. . . why do you want her gone?”

“I have paid you to take her.” The earl lowered his head like an angered bull. “You have no rights here.”

A roar ripped out of Gorgon. He whipped a dirk from under his doublet and went after the earl.

“I made you what you are, you ingrate,” the earl cried.

It was my chance and I took it. I raced past the hearth to the door and down the cool, dark stairs, the sound of crashing furniture behind me. My chest rose and fell as though I had run halfway to Bolton. Frantic to escape, I rushed up the short north corridor, which shimmered in moonlight coming through the distant windows at its end. I stopped in breathless horror, for a shadow wielding a flashing sword appeared in the dim light. Gorgon’s hulking Manx officer.

He came for me, his long stride eating up the passage between us.

Chapter Twelve

I ran back the way I had come, past the arch that led into the private tower, which remained ominously quiet, and on down the east corridor to the next turning. My right foot went awry, twisting my ankle, and I went down on my side. Sharp pain slammed up my arm and down past my ribs. After a deep breath, I lifted myself up on a sore elbow, found nothing broken, and looked back the way I had come. No one was there. Had I imagined the man with the sword who had appeared in the moonlight? Stiff from the fall, I got to my feet, limped forward, and gingerly fingered my scraped forearm.

Before Gorgon or my uncle found me, I needed to get to my rooms and away. I had no idea where I was going to go, probably to Uncle Justin in Manchester, but I had to go quickly. I turned up the dark central corridor, feeling my way. The moonlight did not extend to this windowless passage, though it illuminated the stair hallway in the distance. Just past a silent doorway, I sensed movement. Before I could flee a strong arm twined around my waist.

I screeched, found strong legs to kick with the solid heels of my wooden mules. A small groan came from my attacker. His grasp loosened slightly, which allowed me to twist around to face him. A broad chest presented itself, and I pummeled it with all my strength. When that appeared to do no good, I scratched at his face. I had reached high for his eyes, when his hands rose to my shoulders. His thumbs pressed hard into the joints. He pushed me away, and shook me brutally.

“Stop it. It’s me. Elena, it’s me, Duncan.”

I gasped and threw my arms around him. First frightened and then shaken out of my wits, I shivered now uncontrollably. He enfolded me in his arms and held me until I stilled and my frantic breathing slowed. He smelled of wood smoke and ale. His arm around me, he led me back down the corridor and turned into the east corridor toward the private tower. I jerked us both to a stop.

“No,” I whispered. “I dare not go that way again.”

At that moment the light from the corner sconce must have illuminated my torn dress, for he gently grasped me by the shoulders again. He looked me up and down. His eyes widened at sight of my partially exposed breasts and gaping bodice.

“What’s happened to you? Are you hurt?” He shrugged off his doublet, slipped it over my arms, and pulled it around me. Carefully, he pulled the buttons through the button loops.

“No, I am not hurt, just rattled.” I relaxed into the close masculine smell and cozy warmth of the doublet.

“Who did this?” he asked in a tight voice.

“Who else? That monster, Gorgon.”

“I’ll kill him,” he growled through clenched teeth. He spun around and took a step toward the private tower. A cold rasp sounded, that of his sword pulled from its sheath.

“No,” I cried. I stepped after him and threw my arms around his sword arm. “Don’t make it any worse. Gorgon already has his eye on you.”

“He does, does he?” he said. He turned back to me. In the low light, the taut plane of his face sharpened. Within his grim smile, white teeth gleamed.

“Please, Duncan,” I pleaded. I clenched his arm tighter. “Just take me where we can talk and be together for a few moments. Please.”

“The prince does not appear to be disturbed,” he whispered after a long moment.

His sword flashed in the low light as he sheathed it. The outline of his extraordinary shoulders moved closer, his hair a nimbus of orange-tinged light, and he led me away from the private tower entrance down the long east corridor toward the back of the house.

At the far corner of the house, close to my rooms, we came to a dim hallway that I was familiar with. He took me in and stopped just short of running into the stone and mortar wall that closed off the entry.

“I thought there was an entrance here, to an empty tower,” he said, amazed. He ran his hand over the rough wall. “I was sure of it.”

“There is only one door to uh . . . to Amilie’s tower,” I said, not so sure I really wanted to do this. “Actually, it is the safest place for us to go. If you wish.”

He nodded.

“Come with me,” I whispered.

We moved carefully down the south corridor to the stair and out the small servant’s door at the back of the house. Comfortable as the oversized satin doublet was, I had quickly overheated in it. I sighed in relief at the cool, earth-scented air.

The stable yard stood out in peculiar relief in the moonlight. The old storage tower, where Peg and I had been confined, stood in gloomy silhouette along the house’s back side. I led Duncan past the stable area to the tall, dark tower at the opposite, northeast corner of the house. We approached the unimposing door, and I turned to face him.

“There is a kind of ghost here,” I said quickly, my own pulse stepping up at our proximity to the tower. “Will you stay with me?”

His eyebrows, dark in the ethereal light, went up.

“She will allow us through to the roof,” I added hastily.

“Uh, are you sure about this?”

“All the great houses have a ghost. Ours is a gentle spirit. I have used this shelter many times in my life.” A cold fingertip slid down my backbone. “Just not lately.”

“She, you say. What if she does not care for me?” He stared at me and took my arm in an iron hold.

“She will love you, because I do,” I said, only realizing what I had said after the words were irretrievably gone. With a cringe, I put a hand to my faithless mouth.

But he seemed not to have heard my slip of the tongue, for he looked back toward the stable, then turned to me, and nodded. “We must go on. Something stirs behind us.”

We stepped through the entry. The door swung closed behind us, leaving us in unrelieved darkness. The air was dry and pleasant with the smell of rose-scented rushes, though my feet trod a bare stone floor. I took Duncan’s large, moist hand. With my other hand, I felt my way along the walls, and led him up the stone steps that I remembered from my childhood. It was a stairway, like all those in the towers, that clung to the circular walls.

We ascended to the second level. Moonlight poured down the upper turn of the roof stairway on the other side of the landing. I stopped, tightened my hold on Duncan’s hand, and searched the dark room to our right. Though indistinct, the outlines of a bed, perhaps a table, and a bulky hearth ledge stood out.

“Amilie. It is me, Elena,” I said softly, not wanting to alarm the ghost. I took an additional anxious breath, suddenly sorry I had led Duncan here to my childhood haven. It had been years since I had faced this empty room. “May we use your roof for shelter this night?”

The hearth sighed with a sudden flush of air. Duncan stiffened beside me. A further sigh came forth, a pleasant human sound. A questing current of rose-tinted air came to us from the far side of the large, circular room.

Air brushed my right cheek and rested there, like a gentle palm. The feeling moved away, and my hair swung to the languid push of an invisible hand.

Duncan squeezed my hand tightly. I turned my head slowly and looked at him, his face white in the dimness. Amilie must have caressed his face as she had mine, for he put his hand to his cheek and wiggled his shoulders uncomfortably. His hair rose in concurrent clumps as though a hand ran through his bright locks.

The ghostly draft whistled lightly around us. Silence followed. Duncan dared a wide-eyed look at me.

“Wait,” I mouthed at him.

Anxious moments later, a great whoosh of air encompassed us and pushed us toward the roof stair. We clattered up to the roof. A peaceful night sky arched above us, dominated by a bright round moon.

“Is she still here?” Duncan looked uncomfortably back at the stairway we had climbed and then around at the rooftop we had achieved.

“No. She never leaves the tower.”

“How do you know her name?”

“It is scraped into the stone beside the roof stair. Amilie 1425.”

“My God. Was she imprisoned here?”

“I think so. Some call this the Tower of Madness. No one will follow us in.”

“No one told me
that
name.” He looked mildly insulted, his brows drawn together, but the insult fell away, and concern tightened his mouth. “If she was . . . or is . . . mad, can we trust her?”

“My father brought me here when I was young. He knew of her and claimed she had never hurt him, though he did say she could be quite nasty if offended.”

“How do you offend a ghost?”

“Maybe by not asking permission to enter? A noisy entry? I do not know. She has granted me shelter many a time in my younger life . . . and now at a time when we desperately need it.”

“Why the piles of litter up against the parapet?” He tucked my hand under his arm and into the fold of his elbow, and we strolled around the roof’s perimeter.

“It has always been like that.”

“But roof litter generally moves all over the place in the wind. Look, a stone bench.”

The wide, ornate bench faced south with a view of the stable, the postern gate, and the indistinct hills in the moonlit distance. We sat side by side where I last sat as a child, my feet dangling, nowhere near the roof floor. Self-conscious, I looked up at Duncan and admired the curve of his full lips. His impressive size set off a flutter deep in my stomach.

At that moment, the postern gate below swung open with a squawk. The outer gate opened almost immediately with a similar screech. A loud creak of leather and the ting of metal issued from the stable below.

I rushed to the parapet, Duncan behind me, in time to see horses bolt out of the stable. They appeared to be Gorgon’s Manx followers. The last rider through the stable entrance was Gorgon himself, his vivid blue surcoat visible in the moonlight. He spurred his horse into a gallop, shot past his assembled men and out the gates. His riders followed in a jumble of bounding horses.

“Come back, you blackguard,” a familiar voice shouted far below us. A dark figure strode into the stable yard and raised a fist. Moonlight flashed on multiple golden threads clothing the shape below. “You owe me,” my uncle cried out in an infuriated scream, his fist raised high.

“At least he didn’t kill him,” I whispered to Duncan as we retreated to the safety of the stone bench.

“Who?”

“The earl actually saved me from Gorgon.” I patted my torn bodice under Duncan’s doublet. “But then Gorgon attacked the earl. That’s how I slipped away.”

Astonishment lifted his eyebrows and widened his eyes. “That gets Gorgon out of your life, aye?”

A door slammed shut below. I nodded my head and took a relieved breath. Yet I could not help but question why my uncle had saved me from something that would have gotten me out of Tor House more quickly. Since when had my honor made any difference to him? The lack of logic in his actions rankled in my mind. But Duncan and I moved closer together on the cold stone seat, and my uncle’s unreasonable nature was the last thing I wished to consider.

“Why did you not tell me you were betrothed?” He surveyed me with a bitter, turned down mouth. “Were you simply enjoying yourself, gaining supporters?”

“I would not do that to anyone,” I said, then closed my mouth and studied my shaky hands. “I owe you an apology, Duncan.” My gaze rose to his dim, clean-shaven face. “I cannot abide Gorgon. I tried to refute the betrothal, but it was useless.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“No, long before tonight’s banquet. Before Gorgon even arrived. The earl wants me gone, and Gorgon is his method.” I reached out for his hand, which he gave me after a short hesitation. “What has happened between us has been genuine, for my part. I have just . . . been terrified I would lose your attentions if you knew of my betrothal.”

“You need not have feared.” He touched my chin with querulous fingertips. “No betrothal would keep me from you, unless you chose it to be so.” He leaned close, his dark gaze intent on me. “My promise to assist you remains. With Gorgon gone it will be considerably easier.”

I smiled and nodded in agreement. Something I had thought of earlier crossed my mind. “Did you ask for the Tor House appointment?”

“I did, and the prince was in complete agreement, but I will have to go with him to York when he returns.”

I bent my head to avoid looking at him, to evade his words and their crippling meaning. “And that woman?” I asked, in a voice that trembled. I pulled away from the arm he had snaked around my shoulders. “What is she to you?”

The dimple in his chin deepened. A gentle look crinkled the skin around his dark eyes and lifted the edges of his mouth, as though I were a favored child who failed to understand.

With a huff of irritation, I shifted away from him on the bench and straightened my back, stubbornly awaiting his explanation.

“Do you remember my telling you of Ben Nevis and the events that occurred there? Where I nearly died as a boy?”

I nodded, unable to figure what this had to do with a loose woman hanging off his arm.

“Annie was found there also, a mere babe. We are the last of our family, perhaps even of our clan.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“When our grandmother died, just before the war, Annie had nowhere to go. She was naïve, attractive, and very much aware of her effect on men.”