I Adored a Lord (25 page)

“Yes, yes, fine. Please go now to the stables and ask the grooms if Lord Vitor returned with his horse this afternoon.”

“The stables? Across the drive? Now?”

“Yes. Now. As quickly as you can.”

“But I am wearing evening slippers.” He pointed his toe upward to illustrate.

Her patience snapped. “Mr. Anders, the man that protected you from Monsieur Sepic's ridiculous accusations not to mention his fetid jail could be in great danger at this moment. The least you can do is dampen your slippers to help him.”

“Danger? But the murderer is apprehended and incarcerated in that very jail.”

“Monsieur Paul is not the murderer. You inspired no one to murder. We don't yet know who did kill Mr. Walsh, but it was not the mayor's nephew. Now, I beg of you,
go
.”

He went. When she reached the dining room she made an excuse for him and endured a moment of Juliana Abraccia's hotly jealous stare. Conversation remained general while the removes were served, but Ravenna could do nothing but watch the door and wait for Martin Anders's return. When he finally came, his brow was drawn and cheeks flushed from the cold.

“I fear I have no good tidings,” he said quietly as he slipped into his seat beside her. “Earlier today Lord Vitor's horse returned riderless.”

Panic sped through her. “What of Lord Case?”

“He had not taken out his horse, and none of the grooms reported seeing him today.”

“Why did they not report the peculiar return of Lord Vitor's horse to his highness?”

“The groom I spoke with gave the news to one of the prince's guards, who assured him that he would inform his master.” He shook his head. “He must not have.”

“I must know which guard,” she said, pushing back from her seat.

“Miss Caulfield, you cannot leave the table before the prince does.”

“Make my excuses. I am ill,” she uttered, and hurried from the room. She went straight to the stable. The groom Mr. Anders had spoken with described the guard to her, explaining that he was one of the newer men among the prince's guard that had not before visited the castle. He matched the description of the guard she had seen with Lady Grace.

She went to Ashdod's stall and ran her hands over the horse's withers and powerful neck, the panic beating at her like waves. “Tell me.” She pressed her lips to the gray's coat and whispered. “Tell me what has befallen him and where he is.” The horse hung its head for a moment, then tossed it back.

As she crossed the drive toward the house beneath a sky heavy with clouds, Iona and Sir Beverley met her.

“Ye've come out withoot yer cloak, lass. Yer cold as death.” Iona stripped off her cloak and slung it around Ravenna's shoulders.

“Mr. Anders told us of your discovery,” Sir Beverley said. “The prince sent for the guard that the groom spoke with. He is missing.”

Iona grasped her fingers. “We'll find them,” she said. “We'll find them an' it'll be well, lass. Ye'll see.”

T
ORCHES WERE
LIT
and servants and gentlemen bundled into woolens and tromped into the night to search. The clouds that blocked the moon now released their heavy contents, washing the snow into deep puddles and soaking Ravenna as she stood at the gate with Iona and Cecilia and waited.

“I should have gone.” She could not bear being useless.

“The prince forbade it,” Cecilia said. “The searchers mustn't feel they need to protect ladies while they are searching.”

“I'm not a lady,” she whispered.

“There are thirty men looking for them, Miss Caulfield. They will find them.”

“But I was the last to see him.”

“They'll search where ye've said. They'll find them.” Iona wrapped her arm around Ravenna's waist and hugged her close.

The torches returned in pairs and trios, faces visible in the circle of their glow, shimmery with rain and grim. When the final pair of guards returned with Sir Beverley, who had climbed to the hermit's refuge, his lips were purple and his eyes grave.

“We will find them tomorrow, my dear,” he said.

But later, as icy rain clattered against the windowpane in her bedchamber, Ravenna huddled against the glass wishing she had the eyes of a wolf to see through the dark and a wolf's strength to hunt through the night. Tomorrow would not be soon enough.

 

Chapter 17

Lo, What Light

C
onsciousness returned to Vitor with the awareness that he preferred to wake to a mongrel's whine than to bone-­chilling cold and throbbing pain in his head. Body not quite prone, his face was pressed against a hard surface, his arm pinned at an angle beneath him. He shifted, and agony exploded across his shoulders. His groan sounded like a wounded animal's.

“Awake finally, brother?” came a murmur beside him. “Featherweight.”

“Damn you.” He lifted his free arm and touched the back of his head. He remembered the blow that had knocked him off Ashdod, yet felt only fiery tenderness.

“Are you broken or bleeding?” Wesley asked diffidently.

Vitor cracked open his eyes to make out his brother beside him in murky shadow. “Only bruised,” he replied.

“Then damn
you
,” Wesley said.

The chamber was tiny and round, less than three yards in diameter, void of windows and door, and tapering outward as the walls climbed. There was no visible ceiling, only hazy gray.

“Where are we?”

“An empty ice cellar, I believe. But that may be the loss of blood speaking.”

“Were you shot?”

“In the arm. I have managed to stanch the bleeding, and the cold assists in slowing the flow. But I have lost the use of it.”

Testing the strength of the arm beneath him, Vitor pushed up and smothered another groan. The cold burrowed into the pain and drove it deeper. But none of his bones was broken.

“The shot was meant for you,” Wesley mumbled.

“How do you know?”

“He was pointing the pistol at you.”

Wesley had stepped between him and the shooter?

Vitor climbed to his feet and ran his hands over the wall. The earth was packed hard and smooth, without even notches where a ladder might fit. Perhaps the cellar was yet unfinished. If it belonged to the chateau it would be within Chevriot's walls. If it belonged to the village it could be farther away.

“How deep is the—­”

“Twenty feet. Perhaps more. Even if I were able to stand we could not climb out.”

“How did he carry us down here?”

“There was no carrying. Rather, tossing. Rolling, really, as the walls are slanted. And he was not he, but they. Two of them.”

The lying guard he had assigned to Ravenna's protection and perhaps the man she had found with Whitebarrow's daughter.

“How long have you been conscious?”

“I never lost consciousness entirely. Huzzah for my hearty constitution,” Wesley said dryly. “Of course, I was not bashed in the skull with a branch rigged like a catapult. And you broke my fall into this hellhole. Thank heaven for small blessings. See, little brother? I told you a life of monastic discipline would be to no avail. All that tedious prayer yet you cannot even summon a saint to rescue you from assassins.”

“How long?” he repeated.

“It wanted but a quarter hour to carry us here on the back of your horse. Since then it has been perhaps six, seven hours. The light has been fading swiftly this hour. Soon we will be in darkness.”

Seven hours. The guests at the castle would be gathering for dinner.

“Did they take my horse?”

“They argued about it for some time. In the end they decided he was too fine to pass off as their rightful property and would only bring them trouble on the road. They sent him off. It sits right with me that the knaves know their worth is less than a gentleman's mount.”

Ashdod would have returned to the castle stable hours ago, his arrival alerting the grooms. Vitor breathed deeply through bruised ribs, rubbed his hands over his face, and discovered the knuckles of one hand battered and sticky. He could not bandage it. The cellar was too cold for him to use his neck cloth for anything but warmth. He leaned back against the wall, taking care to keep his head bent.

She would wonder at his absence. She would look for him in the drawing room and be piqued when he did not appear. Would she mention his absence to another guest, Lady Iona, or Sebastiao? Would her skittish heart lead her to the wrong conclusion or would she trust in him and sound the alarm?

Hours earlier on the mountainside, as the sun had shone through bare branches, he had stood amidst the quiet and seen her in every silvery ray and glittering drop of ice. She was astoundingly confident, brazen even, and strong-­willed. But at moments she became that creature he had seen on the turret stairs: wary and uncertain and ready to flee.

“Why did you follow her to the stable?” he said into the cold silence.

“I did not follow her. I came upon her entirely by chance and decided to take advantage of the opportunity.”

No monastic training had prepared Vitor for the rage that seized him now. “With a bottle of wine and two glasses?”

“I never drink alone.”

“A sprained ankle and shot in the arm will be as nothing when I am through with you, Wesley. I will break your legs. Both of them. You know I will do it. I will break every bone in them and you will never walk again.”

His brother was silent for a long moment.

“I did follow her. I sought an opportunity to question her about her intentions toward you.”

Vitor snapped his head around to stare at his brother in the gathering dark.

“I have only your best interests at heart, Vitor. She is nobody, the orphaned daughter of God knows whom. Her sister is a duchess, true. But only months ago rumor in town had it that their mother was a plantation whore in the West Indies and that Lycombe's new duchess had not fallen far from that tree.” He said it plainly, as though reporting on a horse race.

“Only fools listen to rumor.”

“Perhaps. But the hue of Miss Caulfield's cheeks and hair suggest that in this case rumor is not far from truth. Has it not occurred to you that she could be the daughter of a less-­than-­pure union between master and slave?”

It had occurred to him. But he had seen more of the world than his brother. Her features bespoke not mestizo or mulatto, but Andalusian, from the southern lands of Spain, where centuries ago Chris­tians and Moors had intermingled.

“Even if her blood is free of taint,” Wesley added, “she is a servant and entirely unconnected in society except for her sister's extraordinary marriage to Lycombe.”

“And I am the bastard son of a Catholic profligate. How do you suppose I am enjoying the insult you are dealing her with this patronizing show of false concern for me, brother?”

“I have said none of this to her, of course.”

The darkness had become complete, and with the gathering blackness the cold seeped more mercilessly into Vitor's blood, making him sluggish.

“What did you wish to say to me when you summoned me up the mountain, Vitor?”

“I did not wish to say anything. I wished to beat you to a pulp and leave you for the vultures.”

“Ah. Violence from my monastic brother.” He sounded thoughtful. “But I suppose there is a first time for everything. Remarkable that a girl should inspire it.”

“A lady.”

For a moment his brother said nothing, then: “A lady.”

“Did you drug the wine you brought her?”

“Drug? Why, no.” Wesley's surprise sounded sincere. “Was she ill?”

“Where did you find the bottle?”

“In the butler's pantry.”

Vitor had not believed his brother put the poison in the wine. His methods of chastisement had never been trickery, and only once had they resorted to secrecy.

The muffled sound of rain came down the cellar shaft now, at first in patters, then faster, angrier, as though it sought to wash away the snow in a flood. Vitor's head was heavy, the bruise throbbing, every one of his muscles sore. He closed his eyes upon the darkness and listened to the rain.

“It was I.”

Sleep snatched at Vitor. “Huh?” he mumbled.

“I was the man in the belly of that ship off Nantes. The man on the other end of the knife.”

Vitor drew a long breath and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “For God's sake. I know that.”

His brother's sharp inhale sounded through the stillness.

“Enlightened men do not employ the tactics of medieval inquisitors, Wesley. Have the lessons of the great men of our age entirely passed you by?”

“It was not by my design that I did what I did to you.” His voice was tight.

Vitor turned his head as though he might see his brother through the blackness. “How could you have believed treason of me?”

“I didn't. They did. You had not lived in England for a decade. Your loyalties were for a foreign king.”

“An ally.”

“In France they lost sight of you.”

“And because of that they believed me a traitor? How simple the minds of Englishmen are. How foolishly black and white. He is a son of the kingdom or he is a treasonous spy.”
She is a servant or she is a lady
.

“My superiors would not listen to me. They believed that because of our bond you would confess to me without . . . unnecessary force. I told them they were fools to believe you would ever say a word, force or not. To no avail.” He paused for a long moment. “But when you said nothing, spoke not a word in that horrid cabin of that wretched ship, despite how they—­I—­threatened you, I began to mistrust you. It was again like . . .”

“When she lied to you.”

“Your proud, stubborn silence allowed me to believe in her lies.” Wesley's voice had stiffened.

“Blame me all you wish, brother. It will not change the truth that on that ship you broke both the law and my faith in you.”

“I regretted it even as I obeyed their orders, Vitor. I did it for England but I suffered. It was as painful for me as for you.”

Vitor rubbed the scar between his thumb and forefinger. “I doubt it.”

“Is that why you wished to meet with me this morning? To repay me?” His voice shook.

“You know me so little.”

There was another stretched silence during which the damp cold of rainy mist settled on Vitor's hair and skin.

“I blamed you because she did not love me,” Wesley said. “I was furious. She did not want me, so I blamed you for it.”

Vitor understood. Even two years at the top of a mountain in Portugal had not cured his anger entirely. But perhaps he had always been angry. Perhaps he had been running since he was fifteen and left the only home he knew. Not seeking adventure. Running from shame into dangers again and again not because his fathers asked but because nothing else drove the anger away.

Then there came a moment during the war when, weary of running, he had finally returned to Airedale, to the family he had abandoned. He might have stopped running then.

“I did nothing to encourage her.” Fannie Walsh had needed no encouragement. He had put her off firmly, informed the marquess of the matter, and left for Portugal, where Raynaldo had again sent him into war. “I did what you would have done in my place.”

“I know. Father told me.”

“And yet you still hated me for it.”

“I was blind to reason.” Wesley's voice muffled. “Until now. Until this week . . .”

Until Arielle Dijon.

Vitor understood that well enough.

Neither of them spoke for some time.

“Do you wish to fight me now?” Wesley finally said. “With my useless arm and gimp ankle it will be a brief scuffle. But if it will satisfy you, I shall make my best effort at defending myself.”

“Thank you, no. I don't fight injured men. Even if I did, the tilt of this floor would make it an uncomfortable endeavor.”

“Mm. I daresay.”

“Wes, we are going to die here.”

“We are.”

Vitor drew a slow breath. “You first.”

“No, you. I insist.”

“As the eldest, you deserve the honor.”

“Vitor.” Wesley's voice was sober again. “If I die now and you are rescued, and you succeed to our father's titles, there is something you should know.”

He waited.

“I am no more Airedale's son than you.”

Vitor lifted his head.

“Father could not give her a child,” Wesley said. “They wanted children, desperately, he no less than she. He asked her to do it. He begged for years before she agreed to it. Together she and he chose our fathers, men both of them respected, and of noble blood so that if it should ever become known and we lost all, at least we would not feel the full shame of it. She was never unfaithful to him. Not as you have believed.”

Vitor sat stunned. It did not undo the years of knowing that he was not a true Courtenay and of imagining his mother's inconstancy. But there was some measure of peace to be had in knowing.

“Who was he?” he finally asked. “The first?”

“It hardly matters now. He is long since gone. A naval hero. Died in sea battle. Enormously wealthy but not even a lord in his own right. A second son. How do you like that for irony, young demi-­princeling?”