Keeper of the Dream (61 page)

Slowly, he came to stand before her, and she watched him with eyes that were the dark green of a forest at night and just as empty. He wondered what she saw as she looked at him.

He brought his hand up to track the curve of her neck. He saw the effort it took her to keep from shuddering, and he admired her for it. She and his brother were really well suited, he thought, both so damn brave and honorable. He doubted Sybil would ever make such a sacrifice for a man, even one she claimed to love.

He let his hand drift downward, to brush across the peaks of her breasts, back and forth, back and forth, and after a moment her nipples began to harden. But he saw no pleasure on her face. “Do you think you could try to enjoy this?” he said, an edge to his voice.

Her lips curled into a sneer. “Enjoying this was no part of our bargain, my lord earl.”

He turned away from her, went to the table and poured himself some wine. He studied her while he drank. Clouds had shrouded the moon and now her skin glowed golden
in the soft candlelight, like honey. Only a faint band of color across her sharp cheekbones betrayed her embarrassment to be standing naked in front of him.

“You don’t have to go through with it, you know,” he said. “You could take your chances with King Henry—he’s always had a weakness for a pretty face. Or you could try to buy your husband’s freedom yourself. Raine hardly appears filled with gratitude for this grand sacrifice you’re all set to make on his behalf.”

“Raine is being a fool,” she said, her voice low. “For it is not so unforgivable a thing, what I do. I would sleep with the devil, I would whore in the streets, I would spread my legs for every man in England, to save his life.”

“And his pride would never forgive you for it.”

Her head came up. “It matters not. I would do it anyway. I
am
doing it.”

“No …” He set the wine cup on the table with a sharp click. “No, I do believe that you are not.”

He picked up the discarded robe and held it out to her.

She didn’t take it. Her breath rasped in her chest as she sucked it in. “Please, you cannot renege on our agreement now. Please … I will try to pretend that you pleasure me. I—”

He laughed. Even Sybil had never bothered to pretend. He pushed the robe into her hands. “Nay, girl, it isn’t you. I’ve thought about it, you see, and I’ve discovered there are certain flaws in my logic. If you lie with me out of love for Raine, it can hardly be equated to my wife lying with me while she dreams of my brother. In both instances, I’m only getting another man’s leavings.”

There was another reason, too, although he would never say it aloud. Raine, with his easy courage; Raine, with his arrogant knight’s code that he pretended to scoff at, but in truth would have died for; Raine, with his hopeless, naive yearning to believe that there really was truth and goodness in this God-rotted world—Raine had always been the man Hugh wished that he could be. There
had been many times over the years when he had hated his brother. But there were other times when he had never loved anyone more.

Hugh shook his head, laughing at himself.

Arianna held the robe in her hands, her fingers clenched white in the deep red cloth. “Do … do you mean still to go through with the escape?”

Hugh poked his tongue into his cheek and cocked his head. “Well, I can hardly watch my poor brother come to a bad end on Tyburn Hill. It would be a blot on our father’s good name.” He picked up the cup of wine again to study it. “You know, I never understood why Raine always tried so hard to earn the old earl’s respect and love.” His lips curled slightly. “He was the true bastard in our family.”

He looked up. Arianna still stood with the robe clutched in her hands, her eyes on his face, wide and desperate. “I do suggest you put that back on,” he drawled, “before I’m moved to change my mind.”

When she had covered herself he came again to stand before her. To his own surprise he bent over and dropped a brotherly-like kiss on the end of her nose. “Stay here the night. Bolt the door if you’ll feel the better for it, though on my honor, miserable as it is, your virtue is safe from me.”

He turned quickly away from her before he changed his mind.

At the door he paused. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands holding the edge of the robe together at her breasts, her lips parted slightly open, in surprise still, or perhaps relief. She really was quite lovely. For a moment he cursed his conscience, which had at this belated time in his life suddenly decided to make an appearance. The trouble was, lovely as she was, she wasn’t Sybil. It was really ironic when you thought about it. Here he was, handsome as sin, richer than the Pope, a damned earl, for Christ’s sake—he could command any woman to spread
her legs for him with but a snap of his fingers. Even Sybil, the bitch, had to open her legs for him.

But she wouldn’t open her heart. And that was where the irony came in. Because if she would have loved him, even just a little, he never would have had any desire to bed any others.

If she loved him, even just a little, he could have forgiven her for Raine.

He bowed farewell to his brother’s wife, his mouth jerking into a mocking smile. “Behold, villainy is redeemed.”

The king’s gaoler groaned at the sight of the elegant earl sauntering toward him down the length of the White Tower’s great hall. This time the man had a priest in tow instead of a woman.

What now? the gaoler thought. What bloody now?

“Ye can’t see the prisoner,” the gaoler said as the earl came up to him, all sleek smiles on his fair and handsome face. “It’s near curfew time.”

“But this was the soonest I could get the priest,” the earl said, looking disappointed. “The prisoner informed me yesterday that he sought the comfort of a man of God.”

“He can seek all he wants, but he won’t be gettin’. It’s worth my life, it is, to be lettin’ all of cursed London in and out his cell like it were a bloody toll gate.”

The earl leaned forward and the gaoler caught a whiff of some spicy perfume. “I spoke to the king this morning, do you understand me,” the earl said, his voice low and confidential. “The king does not want his prisoner denied the absolution of God. The man is close to confessing.” One of the earl’s lids closed in a sly wink. “A confession
might be very useful to the king when the issue comes to trial. Eh?”

The gaoler’s gaze wandered over to the man in a grease-stained black cassock who stood beside the earl. The gaoler knew this priest—he was cure at All Hallow’s Barking, and he was supposed to be ministering to the souls within the Tower as well, although in the gaoler’s opinion he ministered more often to a bread trencher and an ale cup.

“Oh, very well,” the gaoler said in a petulant whine. “Come along, come along. I’ll take him his bloody priest. Christ bejesus …”

Raine lay on the straw in the crushing darkness, waiting. With his iron will he did not let himself think, he simply waited.

The door grated open, and the gaoler entered, holding aloft a torch. A fat man in a black cassock followed on his heels. “Here’s yer priest,” the gaoler said. “Take all the comfort ye want, but be quick about it.”

There was a flicker of movement behind him and the gaoler half turned … to be struck in the back of the head by the hilt of a gem-studded dagger.

“Hullo, big brother,” Hugh said, with a flash of white teeth. He bent over and fished the keys off the gaoler’s inert body, tossing them at Raine.

“What are you
doing?”
the priest squealed.

“Escaping,” Hugh said. “Take off your cassock, Father.”

The priest thrust a dimpled chin into the air. “I will not.”

Hugh jabbed the fat man in the stomach with the point of his dagger. “Take it off before I poke a hole in your belly and let out some of the hot air.”

Whimpering, the priest pulled his cassock off over his head. He wore nothing underneath and his flesh looked like whale blubber in the flickering torchlight. Raine
snatched the garment from the priest’s hands. Christ, he felt so weak and dizzy, and even this little bit of light was stabbing at his eyes.

Hugh took Raine’s chains and fastened them around the priest’s plump wrists, threatening to break the man’s teeth with the dagger’s hilt if he didn’t quit his bawling. He looked down at the gap between Raine’s dirty bare feet and the hem of the cassock and his mouth curved into one of his mocking smiles. “I should have picked a taller priest. Don’t you want to know how Arianna is? How we passed the night together?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Raine said.

“Well, you can do that later. Right now we have to get out of here.”

“You can’t leave me down here like this!” the priest cried. “I’ll freeze.”

“Pray then for the heat of hell,” Hugh said, and pushed Raine out the door, laughing.

They were crossing the Tower courtyard when the curfew bells began to ring. And then they heard the shouts of alarm.

“Hell,” Hugh said, picking up his pace into a quick walk for they did not want to attract attention. “That gaoler must have a head harder than a Yule log. We’re going to have to run once we get out the gate. Are you up to it?”

Raine glowered at him. “I can still beat you in a race, brother.”

Hugh grinned at him. “You’re on.”

The guards, still confused over what the commotion was about, had started to shut the gate, but their attention was on the men spilling out the doors of the hall. Raine and Hugh slipped beneath the falling portcullis and disappeared into the dark labyrinth of London’s narrow lanes and crooked alleys.

Because it was after curfew, the streets were nearly empty. The roofs of the tightly packed houses met together
overhead, shutting out the night’s faint bit of moonlight. Without torches to light their way it was difficult to see where they were going, but the darkness was a blessing as well, for pounding feet and hoarse shouts followed after them.

When Raine began to doubt if he could run much farther, they pulled up within the deep shadows cast by the portal of a church.

“We wait here,” Hugh panted into the sudden silence. For a moment at least they had eluded pursuit. “That redheaded squire of yours is bringing a cart. Arianna claims he’s reliable. We’d better pray that she’s right.”

The blood rushed in Raine’s ears, and his heart pounded. He was amazed and frightened at how much two months in prison had weakened him. He wanted to ask if Arianna would be with the cart, but he didn’t.

But Hugh, as he so often could, read his thoughts. “She’s waiting for us in that old abandoned mill on the road to Chester.”

Us.

Hot and bitter jealousy seared the back of Raine’s throat, nearly making him choke, and his vision blurred with rage. He squeezed his eyes shut, drawing in a deep breath, and he saw Arianna’s face—so proud, so defiant … so full of love for him. He knew his wife, knew that she would have taken no pleasure in Hugh’s bed. Instead she had allowed herself to be degraded, used, broken, and she had done it for him.

Slowly, Raine opened his eyes and looked at his brother and in that single moment, though Hugh didn’t know it, he was close enough to death to feel the heat of the devil’s breath.

Hugh pressed his fist against his chest. “Christ, my heart feels like it’s about to burst. I must be getting old.”

Raine pulled his lips back in a sharp smile. “You always were soft, little brother.

“And you’ve always been an ungrateful bastard. In
case you haven’t noticed, I just saved your neck from a very nasty predicament.”

“Aye, and Henry will not be pleased with you.”

“Henry be buggered. He’ll have to bend over and take it. The kings of England have always needed the earls of Chester much more than we have needed any cursed king. Here’s the cart.”

Iron wheels rattled on stones. A cart rounded the corner and pulled up to the church and Taliesin’s querulous voice floated to them out of the darkness. “Couldn’t you do a simple thing like escape from the Tower without rousing all of London in the process? Goddess preserve me—”

“Halt in the king’s name!”

A pair of archers burst out of the alley. One carried a torch, casting a light that splashed onto the church’s stone wall and bounced off Taliesin’s golden helmet, blinding Raine’s eyes. He heard the
whoosh
of an arrow. Then Hugh cried out, sagging against him.

Raine staggered a moment under Hugh’s sudden dead weight. He still couldn’t see, but he managed somehow to heave Hugh into the bed of the cart, which seemed to be filled with some kind of straw. Taliesin snapped the reins and the cart jerked forward. With a running step, Raine grabbed the tailboard and pulled himself on board.

As the cart rattled at breakneck speed through the black, deserted streets, Raine ran his hands over his brother’s body, searching for the wound. He felt the wet stickiness of blood, but no arrow. Then in the intermittent flickers of moonlight, he saw that, while the shaft had been broken off, the arrowhead was still deeply imbedded in Hugh’s left buttock.

It seemed Taliesin sent the cart at random down whatever street or alley looked the darkest and most impassible. Then he made a sharp turn and drove through a crumbling stone arch and into the burned-out shell of an abandoned slaughterhouse.