Spectre of the Sword (38 page)

He laughed softly at her
shock. “Truly.”

With a squeal, she
suddenly hurled herself off of the wall and flew into his arms. As Edward
watched, Rhys swallowed her up in his gigantic embrace, smothering her with
flesh and armor and complete, obvious adoration.  Elizabeau wept, her arms
around Rhys’ neck, as he buried his face in her hair.  The emotion between them
was a palpable thing, filling the room like a warm, liquid embrace. The
delirious joy was everywhere. At some point, a soft sob or two filled the air as
Rhys’ emotions got the better of him.  He was weeping with her.  When Edward
realized this, he had to wipe away his own tears.  One could not watch the
reunion and could not help but be deeply touched by it.

“How…,” Elizabeau gasped
as Rhys’ lips found her mouth. “How did you find me? How did you know?”

Rhys had moved beyond
merely embracing her to kissing every piece of flesh his lips could come into
contact with.  “Radcliffe found me,” he whispered in between heated kisses. 
“He has risked much to reunite us.”

Elizabeau burst into
fresh tears, turning to look at Radcliffe even as Rhys smothered the left side
of her head with kisses. “Edward,” she sobbed softly. “You did this for me? 
God knows I can never repay you.”

Edward wiped the tears
from his cheeks, smiling. “You have already paid this debt a thousand times
over, my lady,” he said quietly. “Your kindness and friendship has.”

She smiled at him
through her tears, turning back to Rhys as the man suckled her lips furiously. 
She responded with enthusiasm until she finally had to pull away and take a
breath.

“They are going to kill
me,” she murmured as his lips suckled her jaw. “My uncle sent an execution
order.”

“I know,” he replied,
mouth against her flesh. “I have come to get you out of here.”

“But how?”

“All in good time,
angel.”

She didn’t ask any more
questions; Rhys was a brilliant man and she knew he already had a plan in place
to effectuate her escape.  It was an answer to prayer; days upon days of asking
for God’s good grace.  Somewhere, somehow, He had listened to her.  She found
it rather surprising because He had never listened to her before.  Yet she
would not question Him; she could only be deeply grateful for His mercy. So she
held on to Rhys, arms wrapped around his head, allowing herself to feel the joy
and thrill and love she had for the man. She still could not believe that he
was in her arms.

“I am so glad to see
you.” Nose in his neck, she inhaled his musky scent for the first time in ages
and relished the comforting fragrance. “I’ve missed you more than I could
bear.”

He tried not to squeeze
too tightly and crush her. “And I, you,” he murmured. “I never knew it was
possible to ache for someone as badly as I ached for you.”

She clung to him, beyond
words for the moment.  But eventually her hands found his long, dirty hair and
she pulled her face from the crook of his neck, inspecting the inky strands.

“Why is your hair so
long?” she demanded softly, sounding like a disapproving wife.  Then she looked
at his face, his beard. “Why do you look like a madman?”

He grinned, his straight
white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “I
was
mad,” he muttered, kissing
her in between sentences. “I’ve been mad every day for the past three months
without you.”

“But you are so… hairy,”
she pulled back further to inspect him as if just seeing him for the first
time.  He was broader than she remembered, too. “And big.  What on earth have
you been doing?”

“It would take too long
to explain.  Suffice it to say that I am here, I am real, and I will get you
out of this place, I swear it.”

Her gaze moved to his
face again; it was still Rhys, still with the same brilliant blue eyes and
chiseled features.  But the coating of dark hair was deeply masculine, wild,
and she wasn’t entirely too displeased by it.  Still, she liked him better when
he wasn’t covered up by so much hair. He had such a beautiful face that did not
need to be covered up. Running her hands over his beard, she giggled.

“It is scratchy,” she
commented, watching him laugh in response. “I do not think I like it.  It feels
like sand.”

He laughed again. He
could have laughed all night.  But his joy was short lived when Edward stepped
towards them, holding out his hands in a quelling gesture.

“You must keep quiet,”
he begged softly. “We do not want the guards outside to hear this.  Moreover,
we must make plans and there is little time left.”

Rhys settled down,
knowing he was right.  But it did not prevent him from unwinding one of his
arms from Elizabeau’s body and placing his hand against her belly.  When he
felt the firm roundness beneath his palm, he almost dissolved into tears again.
Elizabeau watched his face, putting her hand over his as he took his first feel
of their child.  There was such reverence in his touch that it took her breath
away.

“Edward told you,” she
whispered.

Rhys nodded, his
brilliant blue eyes finding hers and a thousand unspoken words pouring forth. 
He just stared at her for a moment. “He says you have not been feeling well.”

She shrugged. “It is of
no concern, truly. Besides; I have never felt better than I do at this very
moment. You are a miraculous cure to what ails me.”

Smiling, he kissed her
again and went to the chair nearest the hearth, setting her gently it in. He
treated her like a piece of fragile glass, as if she was going to break at any
second. Then he stood next to her, holding her hand tightly and gathering his
thoughts. Edward pulled up a small stool and deposited his bulk.  As the fire
popped, they huddled in close quarters.

“Now that we are in the
belly of the beast, what is our next step?” Edward asked quietly.

Rhys squeezed
Elizabeau’s hand, inhaling thoughtfully as he did so.  He was still shaking
from the emotion of their reunion, so much so that it was a struggle for him to
focus.  But he forced himself; too much hung in the balance.

“I have mulled several
scenarios over in my mind but the one that seems the most logical to me is to
remove her as quickly as possible,” he said, gazing down at Elizabeau’s pale
face as he spoke. “If we can remove her now, under cover of darkness, it will
give us time to get away.  I fear that if we wait until morning to attempt an
escape, eight hundred of de Lacy’s troops might have something else to say
about it.  I cannot stave off an army alone and I do not want to jeopardize her
further.”

Edward nodded in
agreement. “So what do you have planned?”

“I will need your
assistance.”

“You know that you have
it.”

Rhys looked at Elizabeau
fully in the face. “Are you strong enough to do this, angel?  I need for you to
be strong just a while longer.”

She clutched his hands
fiercely, nodding her head. “I could fly if you wanted me to.  What would you
have me do?”

A short time later, the
door to Lady Elizabeau’s chamber opened and the soldiers on guard watched the
enormous, cloaked French swordsman leave the room and fade into the darkness of
the stairwell.  Sir Edward remained behind in the lady’s chamber, mentioning
that the lady had been overcome with the presentation of the swordsman and now
lay upon her bed in a fitful doze.  When two of the guards looked into the room
and saw a figure covered up upon the mattress, they were no wiser to the ruse.

The figure on the
mattress was pillows and clothing shaped to look like a body.  Beneath Rhys’
great black cloak, a small lady clung to his torso and prayed that they would
not be discovered.  It was the most terrifying thing she had ever done.

She had no idea that the
worst was yet to come.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

From a distance, Ludlow
looked like a great hulking beast crouched against the night sky.  As David
rode up on the bastion from a distance, he could see the towers reaching to the
sky.  Upon the wall walk, a lantern was poised every twenty feet or so to
provide some light for the sentries on guard. He could see the motion on the
wall walk of men on night duty.  Everything looked relatively quiet.

He had followed Conrad’s
man up the road that led to Ludlow but had lost him when they had traveled
through a cluster of trees about a mile from the fortress.  As David pulled up
at the edge of the trees, not wanting to be sighted by the sentries, he felt a
distinct amount of frustration.  There was no other place for Conrad’s knight
to go; he had to have gone into the castle.  David began to feel fury along
with his frustration. He’d long suspected there had been a traitor in their
midst; now, he was coming to see that he had perhaps been right.

In the trees, he
dismounted his charger and let the horse munch on some fat green grass as he
leaned against a tree and plotted his next move.  His instinct was to return to
Lioncross and tell his brother what he had seen and thereby allow Christopher
to make the next move, but the better part of him wanted to track down Conrad’s
man and gut him.  Still, one thought made him run cold; the Teutonic warrior was
more than likely carrying out orders; Conrad’s orders. Which meant that Conrad
was the traitor, a thought that made David’s blood run cold.

He decided right then
that he had to get back to his brother to inform him of what he had
discovered.  Just as he was preparing to mount, and sharp point of a broadsword
jabbed him in the unprotected spot between his backplate and chest armor.  It
was a vulnerable spot and David immediately put up his hands in surrender.

“Keep your hands in the
air,” a heavy Germanic accent commanded softly. “I have seen you fight. I know
what you can do with a sword.”

David knew it was the
man he had trailed and silently cursed himself for being stupid enough to have
gotten caught. “I am at you mercy,” he said steadily. “May I at least turn
around to face you?”

After several long
seconds, David could feel the broadsword removed and he turned to the man.  It
was one of Conrad’s generals, a tall man with long blond hair and a thin face. 
David didn’t even know the man’s name for he had been one of the more silent
men in Conrad’s retinue.   Yet the man was not silent tonight.

“What are you doing
here?” he demanded quietly. “Why did you follow me?”

David, hands still up,
cocked an eyebrow. “That should be obvious. What are you doing riding to Ludlow
in the middle of the night?”

The blond knight raised
both eyebrows in response to David’s somewhat accusing question. “Following the
man you sent to Ludlow. Tell me why you have sent him here.”

David’s brow furrowed.
“Do you mean Rhys? You know very well why the man was sent on ahead.”

The tall knight shook
his head slowly. “Do not take me for an idiot, my lord,” he said. “You know
very well that I speak of the second man.”

“Second man?” David
scowled. “What are you talking about?”

The sword tip was back
in David’s gut. “I told you not to take me for an idiot. I followed your knight
to this place. He rode in less than an hour ago and no one stopped him. So I
stand here and wait for him to come out, eh?”

David eyed the sword in
his belly. “I honestly have no idea what you are talking about,” he said
steadily. “I did not send a second knight to Ludlow tonight. You must be
mistaken.”

“I am not mistaken,” he
replied. “The prince saw him, too.  We want to know what de Lohr is doing and
not telling us.”

An inkling of concern
flickered in David’s eye as he watched the man speak.  He was clearly sincere
with his statement, of that it was certain. He believed what he was saying
which made David entertain the thought that perhaps the man wasn’t mad after all.

“We have not done
anything that the prince has not been fully informed of,” he said, eying the
man for a moment. “This… this second knight. Did you recognize him?”

The tall knight nodded.
“The mean one.”

“Mean one?”

“He is the big man with
white hair. You call him Lawrence.”

David stared at him. 
Then, his brow furrowed with disbelief. “You saw Lawrence ride from Lioncross
tonight?”

The Teutonic knight
nodded. “He went into Ludlow.”

“Are you sure? There is
no mistake?”

“We have served with
this man for three months. We know his horse, his armor. It was him.”

David had to make a
conscious effort to keep his jaw from dropping.  He simply could not believe
what he was hearing.  Lawrence and Christopher had served under King Richard in
The Levant together and had been as close as brothers for years. But Lawrence’s
wife had died in childbirth while he had been on the great quest and Lawrence
had not been the same man since.  He had been quiet, moody, and as the Teutonic
knight said, mean.  And now he was apparently no longer the Lawrence they all
knew.  He was turning.  Perhaps he already had turned.