The Windflower (62 page)

"Why is it so cold?" she whispered.

"I don't know. It would seem to be coming from down the stairs." His voice was muffled as he bent over the tinder. He added hopefully, "If you're beginning to take fright, we can leave. No telling what's down there, I'm sorry to say. Ghoulies, belike, and werefolk and devilkins that chew the flesh of ladies. I shouldn't wonder if we'll run in upon all manner of spookish things. We'd better give it up."

"That's not going to work!" she retorted with dignity, though her knees were no longer offering her firm support. The frigid air was crawling over her skin like the expelled breath of a winter cloud; her eyelashes were soft cold threads against her cheeks. As a thimble of flame grew inside the tin lantern her spirit for this adventure plummeted like the dipping shadows around her. But she said, "If you're frightened, then I'll go to the front."

Pale light fell on Raven's suddenly laughing eyes. "Are you all in a rush, then, to be et? Well, all right, paladin. To the stair! But side by side, if you please, and catch hold of my hand.
You
may be a lion, but I'm every bit aquiver."

The steps led down a short tunnel that opened dramatically into a monstrous abysm. Raven's tiny light left most of its great size undiscovered, but the giant stone walls dwarfed Merry and Raven. Immense sheer cliffs burgeoned from the floor. Their lamplight caught in thousands of glittering facets in these colossal structures of ice, giving them a fantastical grandeur. The motionless air was dry and arctic.

"An icehouse! Isn't that what it is, Raven? A vault where they store commercial ice?"

"It looks like," Raven said, tilting the lantern in a way that sent light spraying deeper into the pit. "I'd heard these places were big, but I didn't realize the half of it. Cold enough to freeze two dry rags together, ain't it? One thing's sure—Michael Granville couldn't've been making this his safe house from Devon, or the chill would have—Stay! Did you hear that? It sounded as if a man cried out. Merry! Lovey, no!"

But fear had clamped without mercy on her senses, and she had grabbed up her skirts in a rude arrangement, her running footsteps pattering on the shallow steps. Her blood was as cold as the air | without. She arrived fighting for breath at the stair foot, with Raven I just behind. He tried to catch her arm, but his care to keep the lantern intact hampered him, and she wrenched free, running forward around the thick retaining wall, the sand floor sucking at her | boots.

Behind the wall a solitary figure lay in a frost-riven clearing. The stretching oval of light fell on red-gold hair, a dusty and torn buff coat. Sinking to her knees beside the shining head, Merry turned the -| still figure with hands that quavered. The face was young and
^;
marred by premature lining and a ragged growth of beard. Damp sand clung in a paste over the closed lids and parched, gasping lips. She could feel the man's blazing fever through her gloves. Behind her shoulder she heard Raven speak.

"Is it your brother?"

"Yes," she answered numbly. "It's Carl." Tears came to her eyes in a sudden rush. "Help me. Raven, I can't think."

His hand rested briefly on her arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Steady, then, Merry. He's alive, and that's the prime thing." He had set the lantern into the sand and was beginning to strip off his greatcoat. "The thing to do is to see what kind of hurt he's taken and then get him out of here."

The words, sympathetic and practical, stayed with her as she helped Raven carefully move and lift her brother, looking for wounds and shattered bones. They released the rope around his knees and wrists and discovered the bruise on his temple that accounted for the hazed state of his brain. It was hard to tell how long he'd been thus, but cold had descended to his lungs. His breath had a rattling sound.

Yanking the satin loop of the muff impatiently off her wrist, she laid it under his head as Raven wrapped him in his own greatcoat, and she was gently brushing the sand from his face with her bare fingers when she saw Carl's eyelids move. He moaned.

"Carl? It's Merry. Can you see? Here I am," she said softly.

"Mer—ry?" The word was no more than a rasp.

"Yes, dear. I'm here."

"Where? Yes, icehouse . . . few weeks, he's kept me upstairs. Upstairs . . . there's a small room . . . contraband. Merry—" The disjointed murmur dissolved in a harsh fit of coughing. She held him until it subsided. "Came for you when we heard the
Guinevere
had docked in England without you. . . . Father sick with worry . . . affection . . . never showed it enough, e-either of us."

Again and again she had to lift her hands from his face to strike the running tears from her cheeks with the back of her wrist. "Carl, you shouldn't try to talk. You'll need your strength. This is my friend Raven, and he's going to help me take you away from this terrible place—"

As though she hadn't spoken, he murmured, "Were afraid Gran-ville might have harmed you. Dishonorable . . . Father says. Gran-ville told me you've married St. Cyr. H-he's good man. Opposed Orders in Council." With the shadow of a grin, "Too bad . . . British." The amusement faded into confusion. Then, "Have to leave . . . quickly."

"So we will, matey," Raven said in a low, soothing voice. "You can nod right off again, old fellow, and leave the matter to us." The assurance in the persuasive drawl, combined perhaps with Cart's exhaustion, made the eyes that were so like Merry's drift slowly shut. For Merry's ears alone Raven said in hushed tones, "Can you take the lantern? I'll have to carry him. There's not a chance he'll be able to walk in this con—'' A noise from the staircase brought him urgently to his feet, dragging his pistol from his belt. With Merry a rigid gold statue at his feet, he leveled his pistol at the edge of the retaining wall and snarled, "Come forward. But throw your weapon out first or be prepared to be fired on."

A pleasant voice emanated from the stair, its tone chiding. "If this is an example of the kind of hospitality you offer, don't be! surprised if 1 make this my last visit." Devon stepped from the shadows, his cool gaze assessing the clearing and then moving beyond to the mammoth structures of ice. To Raven, "Uncock your pistol. You really don't want to fire it here. Look at the slant of the central stack where the tiers lean into the drain path. Moisture must be seeping up from the floor, melting the base along one edge. I don't know how stable it is, especially if there's a fault in the: mass."'

Obeying the polite command, Raven started joyously forward, relief brightening his eyes, but another voice, behind him, behind them all, brought his striae to a halt.

"Desolated as I a i to contradict you, my dear, the pleasure of the host is mine. And let me assure you, I don't share your qualms about firing in these circumstances. In fact, I see a charming set of? nodding plumes that make a delightful target."

Frozen in a protective posture over her brother. Merry found her voice enough to breathe the word
"Granville,"
Holding a pistol, he stood twenty feet above tiicm on
n
heavy shelf of ice that led backward into a black void. The ice around him took the lamplight in an arc of carnclian glimmers; wolfish shadows danced with subtle violence across his mien. A Corinthian's unfitted driving coat with many capes gave him the illusion of being overpoweringly tall.

Merry heard Raven's pistol thud into the sand. A slight twist of her head showed her that Raven was looking apologetically at Devon.

"I ought to have hit hei over the head," he said regretfully.' "Sorry."

Devon had lounged back against the retaining wall. "Take my word on it, it wouldn't have served. No good ever came from hitting her on the head. Myself, I've eschewed the practice. Merry pet, is the gentleman at your knee someone we ought to be interested in?"

"It's my brother, Carl." She turned fully to him, finding something infinitely sustaining in the pensive golden gaze. Whatever fears she had nourished that his hatred for Granville would lead him to act rashly were quieted. Whatever his thoughts, his surface was relaxed to the tips of his fingers. Anxiously she said, "You'll say, I suppose, that I should have trusted you."

The warmth of his smile brought flutters to her heart. He said, "No, I won't scold, sweetheart. But maybe you could explain what we're all doing here?"

"Enjoying a respite from the heat," Granville murmured. "The handsome youth on the floor fell into my hands some little time ago. As for the other two, at last night's ball I came to your oh-so-charming bride—"

"Spouting melodrama," Merry finished for him with a mocking glare worthy of Rand Morgan himself. And she held that glare without a flinch, even while Granville brought his hand higher and made his aim on her heart exact. She felt no trace of fear for herself; Granville would have had to be a madman to squeeze that trigger and destroy his insurance.

Raven, who was watching, however, felt as if the frigid air had penetrated to his bones. He was glad Merry couldn't see Devon's face. If she had, it would certainly have shattered her faith in Devon's objective calm.

Granville's heavy shoulders seemed to relax. "A solid departure from what she was in New York. Rand Morgan, I suppose, deserves the honors. One wishes he'd alter his curriculum with females. Do you know, when I left her last night in the garden, there was never any question in my mind that I'd be followed. All that remained to be seen was just which of Morgan's pretty-boy pirates she sent after me. My only task was to move neither so quickly nor so slowly that anyone would suspect I knew. In the general run of things, of course, I come and go through a more private entrance. Mind you, I hadn't planned on having the honor of your companionship also, St. Cyr. It changes my ideas, I think."

"If your new idea includes killing us all"—Devon's tone was unrevealing—"it has a hitch that I should probably explain. I followed Merry into London when I heard she'd left, and met her carriage on its way home. The coachman said she was with Cathcart. She was not. The next step was obviously to question Cat, who was visiting Morgan, but on the way to the inn we chanced into one of Morgan's men coming for Morgan at a gallop. Last night after Raven—as you say, one of Rand's boy pirates—began asking some pointed questions about you, Morgan felt it would be safer to have him watched also." A groan from Raven. "The point,
my dear,
is that I came ahead while Cathcart and Rand's hireling have gone to fetch Morgan to this spot. If you think Morgan will let you live after you kill me, I'd strongly advise you to do it."

Granville had absorbed a hiss of air. His exhalation made a swirling mist of breath vapor play over the flesh of his mouth and nose. "Run back to Morgan, then. You chose him years ago, when you might have had me. My feelings for you—"

"Have always been anathema to me, even before your men killed Leonie. Don't force these children to listen to you profess them." Devon's tone was no longer mild. "Stay awake and you'll see how far I'd go to protect them."

"Oh, no, let's have no heroics," Granville said. He was beginning to respire quickly. "Leave me and take the boy with you. I'll keep the girl and her brother. Collateral, shall we say? And if you make me a settlement I like the looks of, I may let you have them, back intact. You know I mean my words. Get out."

In a stream of motion that began as a blur, Merry saw Devon's hand fly for his pocket as though to extract a weapon. The barrel of Granville's pistol took a rapid mark and roared, the report shatteringly loud. Blue flame and a wisp of spent smoke trembled in the raw air as a staccato of ear-splitting cracks rent the enormous vault from floor to ceiling. The icy plain under Granville seemed to bubble, and he fell and began to slide as the packing of straw and sawdust began to shower from the ledge. A shifting chasm yawned under him, swallowing him. Harsh fingers grabbed Merry, and she was half running, half being dragged across the sand. At the wall she hesitated, crying out, until she saw that Raven had her brother on his shoulder, and then they were scrambling up the stairs, Devon yanking her with him much faster than she would have ever believed it was possible to move. Like the crash of a hundred thunderclaps the shattering avalanche of hurtling ice wrenched the great warehouse with earthquakelike shocks. Only an arm's length behind them the retaining wall bulged as though it were only matting and then burst, ton on ton of ice exploding over its collapsing fabric. Rocketing chips and icy zephyrs foamed at their heels, and the stair swayed like a half liquid. They were met and pulled up the last quarter of the way by Morgan's men. It wasn't until Merry was standing outside in the startling daylight of the dockyard that she realized Granville's final bullet had struck home. With blood saturating his immaculate shirtfront Devon gave her a smile of friendly whimsy and said, "You bring the fresh strawberries, love, and I'll get the sugar. We'll make ice cream to last till Easter." He seemed surprised when Morgan gently took his shoulders and said, "Easy, lad" because he really had no idea how unsteady he looked. He might have spoken again, in protest perhaps, but instead he closed his lips and fainted into his half brother's arms.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The rain came at dusk in lively drops that gave a mossy scent to the ivy outside the inn window. Inside, sea coal glowed in the grate. A moist warmth crept through the light chintz hangings to the bed where Devon was sleeping and where Merry sat barefoot and cross-legged waiting for him to wake up.

It would have been reasonable to suppose that any young man as popular as Devon was with Morgan's crew would receive a great deal of sympathy for a bullet wound instead of having it treated as a very good joke. One would further have thought that his gently reared and loving spouse would take exception to such heartless revelry. Instead Merry was reassured because it told her more powerfully than condolences wouid have done that Devon's condition wasn't serious, though she was far from agreeing that a wound requiring the extraction of a bullet from one's shoulder deserved to be pretty generally referred to"as "just a scratch, by all that's holy.*' It seemed like half of Morgan's crew had managed to stuff itself into the cozy bedroom as Devon was put to bed, brought by the jocular intelligence that Devon had put himself in front of someone's pistol, and then damned if he hadn't fainted like a girl. Merry's indignant protest that having suffered such a series of mental and physical shocks was enough to make
anyone
faint drew fresh guffaws.