Exile’s Bane (16 page)

“Yes, I saw that,” I said with asperity.

“She thinks she loves me,” he said with a little laugh. “I am devoted to her, but I do not love her that way.”

“So you drag her along in the prince’s baggage train?”

“Where else would she go? After the war, it is my hope to find a noble family that will take her in and teach her manners enough that she can attract a respectable husband.”

“Oh.” So, I had been wrong. The girl was simply a problem, not competition. I lifted my chin and gave him my most severe look. “And your name is not Comrie, is it?”

“No,” he said. He lowered his head and his locks, dark russet in the moonlight, tumbled over his shoulders. “If I used my rightful name, I could be slaughtered with impunity, no repercussions, just as my family was slain.”

“You are outlawed?”

“My clan, yes.”

“How did this come to be?”

“Clan Campbell wanted our lands and had the Scottish king’s ear. And so our proscription was decreed. Years ago.”

“Then I suppose I owe you another apology.” He had not offered to tell me his true name, but his fallen face indicated profound unease.

“No.” He looked up and pushed his hair back. “Your reaction was entirely understandable.” He put his arm around my shoulders again and pulled me close. “I am only glad I’ve had a chance to explain the situation to you.”

He nuzzled my cheek, and I leaned in toward him, ignoring the inbred admonition to pull away. He settled his lips on mine, and I jumped back.

“Ow,” I cried, hand to my mouth. “I must have cut my lip.”

“Let me kiss it.” He did so, then licked it tenderly.

“Why do you not wear a mustache?” I ran a hand over his strong cheekbone and the clean-shaven cheek below.

A soft whistle of disparagement came from him. “I have enough problems with the color of my hair. Men assume, as did you when we first met, that red hair denotes a marauding Scot.”

“But I learned better,” I whispered. I rubbed my hands over his broad shoulders, so warm and close under his satin shirt, living the reality of the daydreams I had so often squelched.

He nibbled at my ear, creating a tickle that made me giggle. I twisted my head away and gently brushed my fingers across lush chest hair that lay within the open collar of his shirt. It glinted copper in the moonlight. He took me onto his lap and embraced me, his head on my shoulder. His hands roamed softly over my breasts. Though they resided beneath the thick doublet, I drew back, the memory of Gorgon’s brutal hands still close in my mind.

“I would never hurt you,” he crooned in my ear. He took my face in his hands, rubbed his thumbs across my cheeks, and kissed me deeply. His mouth tasted of tart apple.

I pulled away and smiled at him, wanting more, and so I kissed him, a fire ablaze within me. We crumpled down onto the wide bench.

“I thought you had a cut lip,” he said sometime later.

“Oh, I do.” I put fingertips to my throbbing mouth. “But I wanted to kiss you. I’ve dreamed of it so often.”

“And was it as good as your dreams?”

“Far, far better.”

“For me, too.” He cupped my lower lip with his index finger.

About to roll off the bench, we sat up. I ran my palm over his muscular chest, unable to keep from touching him. He placed a warm hand over mine, held it at his sternum, and gave a small laugh.

“You know, in Bolton, a pike would have gone through here.” He patted my hand. “Right where our hands are, but for an odd happening.”

“Tell me,” I said, stunned. I pulled my hand away, moved to the front edge of the bench, and studied him with anxious intensity.

“It was eerie, as though I had been there before. Have you ever had that feeling? What’s wrong?”

“Go on, please.” I pulled at his sleeve and sucked in a breath. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

He frowned, but continued, involved in his story. “A couple of Roundheads had taken shelter in an old stable.” He shrugged. “But when I got in there, they had fled. I returned to the open door, sword drawn, but something, some inkling in my mind, told me to wait.”

My head shook slowly, unbelieving, back and forth, my fingers pressed to my mouth.

“I stood there a moment.” With a compassionate smile, he pulled me onto the seat and hugged me close. “Then stepped out into the yard, where a pike came down directly in front of me.” He pointed down to his fancy shoes, tied with ribbons. “It was so close the pike notched the tip of my boot. I shall show you later, when I have them on.” With his thumb and forefinger, he demonstrated how desperately close it had come, no more than the width of a small thimble, though I was numb with shock at his continuing words. “If I hadn’t stopped, it would have gone through me, right at the chest. Instead, once I forced him off the adjoining roof, I gave the pike man a sword thrust for his trouble.”

“Oh, Holy Mother,” I cried. The truth thundered within me. I jumped up before him and gasped in disbelief.

“What is it? Your face is scarlet. I did not mean to upset you.”

“Thank God.” I seized his wide shoulders and fell into his lap. “Oh, Duncan, I love you so much.”

My head on his chest, I put my arms around him, squeezed tightly, and took unrestrained pleasure in his strong, steady heartbeat.

“Wait,” he said, a frown, and then all at once, a smile on his face. He dislodged my clinging arms and pushed me back onto his knees so that he could see my face. “I love you too, but why are you so . . . What is it?”

“Oh.” Held at arms length, I wilted. “Well. I suppose you will need to know eventually.” I knitted my fingers together and studied them intensely.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“I have visions.” I ducked my head, unable to look at him. “I foresaw your death in just the manner you described. You stepped out of the stable without hesitation and a pike took you in the chest.”

After a quiet moment, I dared to look up. He stared at me, sober-faced, a questing hand at his chest. “I saw you. . .” Sudden tears rolled down my face. Finally, I collected myself and tried again. “You died at my feet,” I cried, with a wrenching sob.

“But . . .”

“I refused to accept the vision, denied it, refuted it.”

“So you have the sight.”

“No, I have dreams, visions,” I croaked. I pulled away from him and paced to the parapet’s edge. “They are not something I search out. They just happen.”

His scabbard scraped as he rose off the bench.

“Did you have one at dinner?” he whispered. His arm came snugly around me, as though it belonged there.

I nodded. “Gorgon knew what it was. He wanted to use it, but I swore I saw nothing, that I had merely fainted.”

“So he knows, too.”

“He thinks he knows. I never admitted to it.”

“Dreams of the future are not so unusual, you know.”

“I do not wish to burn,” I said, my eyes lowered, avoiding his gaze.

“Can’t say I blame you.” With caressing fingers, he pulled up my chin and turned my face toward him. “I shall be here. No one will touch you.”

“You will not be here when you go to York.” My gaze connected with his, dismay writhing in his eyes. “You are the only person that knows of my visions besides Peg.”

“Your secret is safe with me, sweet Elena.” He touched my temples with blunt fingertips. “Thank God Gorgon has fled.”

“Truly.”

He led me back to the bench and sat close beside me. Gently, he took my frigid hands in his and placed his forehead against mine.

“You have twice this night told me you love me.”

“I do, with all my heart. I need you.”

Bleak despair came over his flushed features. “I have loved you since the moment I first saw you, when you attacked me on the roof.”

I giggled and we embraced.

In one another’s arms, we watched the night sky. Dark clouds crossed the moon’s face, directly above us now, those clouds slowly obscuring the stars. We were as one with ourselves, with our world, with the universe twinkling above us. After some time, I reached over and plaited a few thin locks at his temple, intertwined with blue ribbon from the underside of my dress hem. He felt after the plait with questioning fingers.

“Why the ribbon?”

“It is a love lock. Many cavaliers wear them.”

“Lovelock, aye?”

“Yes. So you will remember me.”

“Love of my life, you are too beautiful to forget.” He caressed my face. “Your ivory skin, your rousing mouth, your amazing eyes.” He reached up to brush away an escaped tendril of hair. He kissed me tenderly, careful not to press too hard on my cut lip.

We sat back, comfortable in one another’s company.

“There is a terrible defeat coming,” I said. Though I clenched my lips so hard it hurt, I had to tell him. I could not leave him without the knowledge.

“You cannot—” He sat up and turned to me, astounded, lips parted, eyes like fire. “—tell me any more than that?”

“No. All I’ve seen has been a general slaughter and retreat of Royalist forces.”

He shot to his feet and strode to the parapet edge, that limit of our private space. “I should go with the prince to Liverpool.”

“And what reason would you give him for this sudden change of heart?”

Long moments passed before he turned back to me. “You are right.” Crest-fallen, he searched the stone beneath his feet, as though he had lost something. “But there has to be something I can do. If I am with the prince—”

“You cannot. By your own admission, you fought for this assignment at Tor House.”

“I did,” he answered. He returned to me, for he needed my embrace as I required his at that moment.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, snuggling into the cocoon of his strong arms.

“What do you mean? I will not tell the prince what I know or how I know it, if that is your question. I will have to find another way.”

“No, I meant that my uncle will not accept our love.”

“I am certain he will not,” he said with a deep, surprising chuckle. “I have fought alongside him for months and find him as unstable as he is uncaring. But I will help you, Elena. If Devlin wants you gone, I cannot think of anything I would like better than to whisk you away.”

“And there is this, too,” he said, rocking me in his arms. “Prince Rupert’s feet are planted on either side of a huge divide, for the King constantly strikes out on his own, causing endless disasters that the prince frequently has to repair by abandoning vital engagements and running to assist him. Could this be the source of the disaster you foresee?”

“I have no way to know, Duncan. Nor do I know when. It could be years or it could be tomorrow.”

For a long moment he struggled with the helplessness I lived with. He ceased rocking and lifted me onto the seat beside him.

“My duty is to the prince, and I must follow him. You understand this.”

“Yes. I admire your loyalty.” I straightened beside him, though I had no idea how I could stand to watch him go. “After the war? Will you return to me then?”

“Yes, I will return.” His smile flashed, then disappeared. “But as much as I love you, I . . . would not mislead you. It has long been my plan to build a new life after the war.”

“We can build a new life here, at Tor House.”

“No, I meant . . .” His lips pressed together in dismay. “Let me hold you, just a little longer.”

What could he have meant? Was there some dark secret he feared to express? He kissed me carefully, with a nudge at my bruised mouth, and the quandary fled my conscious thought.

We snuggled together on the hard stone bench, happy simply being together, the night breeze suddenly cold and painfully brisk around us.

Chapter Thirteen

With an arrogant sniff, the earl took my hand in a hard grip. “Do as you are told,” he demanded in a resentful voice on the stone steps of the inner courtyard’s formal entry, his fly-away hair whipping at the lower edges of his helmet.

He released my hand and bowed before his countess beside me, though he had nothing to say to her, nor to Duncan, in whose care he left Tor House. In fact, he avoided Duncan’s expectant gaze and turned away. The early morning wind lashed the earl’s loose pants with a sharp repetitive crack. With a dismissive wave at the gathered servant staff behind us, he turned away and descended the stone steps to his waiting horse, where he mounted and took his place beside Prince Rupert on his big gray. An excited Boye paced between the two steeds. His heavy neck ruff, clean and puffed out, gave him the look of a young, white lion.

The prince, dressed for war under his red cloak, executed a slow salute at Duncan, who returned it in a similar manner. Prince Rupert then swept off his plumed hat in an elegant arc and bowed his head toward the gathering at the top of the steps. Exceptionally tall and lean in the saddle, he smiled with deference at his cousin, the countess, dressed in pale brown. He gave me a warm nod, and his gaze finally lingered over an unusually demure Peg at the end of our farewell line.

“Fare thee well,” his deep voice rang out.

Behind us, a crowd of servants pressed forward to get a last view of the great general.

“For the King,” he shouted to his mounted lifeguard assembled around him, fist raised high. He settled his hat on his head, flowing locks astir, then spurred his horse. Under the shadow of the tall inner walls, the crowded courtyard fell into motion.

The prince, the earl close behind him, kept his horse to a soft, rattling canter around the circular drive, where green had appeared within the blighted shrubbery. They continued onward toward the open gates. Prince Rupert’s large company of lifeguards followed, the progress of mounts a muffled chorus of moving horse flesh and creaking leather.

Sergeant Burke, who was his company’s acting captain, stood out among the scarlet-cloaked lifeguards in his buff coat, breast plate, blackened bridle gauntlet, sword, and holstered pistols, clearly visible under his cloak. He was equipped no better nor worse than his compatriots. Under his big, plumed hat, head held high, his brilliant eyes sparkled with pride and excitement.

Horse tails whisked in the wind. Hooves splashed through small puddles left by early morning showers. Trumpets flared and a drum beat solemnly. The prince and his lifeguards, Boye, and the earl passed through the inner gates and onward between the outer gate towers to the sound of multitudinous cheers.

None of us in the forward line on the steps moved, though the servants behind drifted back into the house. Shortly, the rumble of thousands of horses beyond the gates shook the ground. Distant trumpets flared. Many drums took up the solemn beat.

Peg rushed away into the house, headed for the watch-tower. She had told me she would do this, wanting to watch the prince from the tower roof until he passed out of sight into the western wood. I followed, aware that Duncan’s molten, gold-flecked gaze tracked me.

Among the unmanned cannon at the watch-tower’s roof parapet, Peg and I pushed together into an open crenellation, pooling our warmth in the cool, whipping wind. Rupert and his lifeguards in their bright cloaks were already small with distance at the head of thousands of mounted cavaliers, musketeers on foot, companies of pike men, the requisite banners and standards sprinkled throughout the colorful force. At the rear, the artillery train squealed into position, horses and men flowing around the transports. The baggage train, I had been told, had left Bolton the night before, as we had banqueted, and awaited the army’s main body at a prearranged point along their path to the sea.

Footsteps ground onto the rooftop. A light touch settled at my waist. I turned and smiled up at Duncan, his hair brilliant in the sunlight and tossed about by the irascible wind. He gave a quick glance and a dip of his head toward the stairs he had just climbed.

Peg nodded at my words of parting, unable to take her eyes away from the departing spectacle. Hand in hand, Duncan and I entered the sudden stillness of the roof stair entry. Midway down the circular stair, he pushed me to the wall, enclosed me in his arms, and studied me as though I might disappear at any moment. His hands roamed down the column of my back and up again, stirring the desire that lay close under my outer calm. I caressed his face and leaned into a consuming kiss, the soft, male smell of his body, his very closeness an aphrodisiac I could not resist. When he pulled away, I nibbled at his lower lip, which made him smile. To lose myself in him was my deepest desire. Ultimately, afraid where the rising heat between us would lead, I started on down the stairs, and he followed. The second floor landing came up to meet us. We took the little turn there, and strode languidly down the wide stair into the empty great hall.

Neither of us had gotten much sleep. Our departure from Amilie’s tower had been uneventful, though Duncan told me he felt a small guiding hand at his back as he descended the stair to the lower entry level. When I found my rooms empty, I had called him back from the end of the hallway, so that I might return his doublet, which gave us the occasion for another quick, intense, parting kiss.

This morning any mention to the countess of Gorgon’s absence had been met with silence and hard stares. So I had gone looking for Thomas, only to find him missing as well. Had he gone with Gorgon?

“Is your cousin still in Bolton?” I asked as Duncan and I stepped off the great stair.

Small and insignificant in the enormity of the hall, we strolled toward the hearth stones, the ash from the prior night’s banquet already removed, the blackened stone of the twin hearths swept and cold. We stayed as close to one another as we dared, our forbidden feelings for one another carefully repressed.

“Yes,” he said abruptly. “I suppose I will have to find a peasant or merchant family that will take her. I had hoped to find a noble family after the war. She desperately needs to learn manners . . . and restraint.”

The chairs on the dais in the dim depths of the hall seemed to watch our progress across the room.

“Neither peasants nor merchants can teach her manners they themselves do not have.” I remembered Annie’s lack of control well enough. “Bring her here. Peg and I will care for her.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, face alight within the frame of his dark copper locks, the thin lovelock carefully tucked away behind his ear. “Would you truly do such a thing?”

“I will.” I did not expect to find the woman I had met in Bolton easy to deal with. But for Duncan and for Annie herself, I would try. “That is how Peg came to us. She had no family, though she is a distant cousin. Besides, I need to make peace with Annie.”

“She is very distrustful,” he murmured, with a doubtful look. “If you will just teach and care for her, that is all I ask.”

The agile movement of his powerful body distracted me. I leaned into him. His arm came around me, and we remained thus, dangerously obvious within the vacant echoes of the massive room.

The comfortable clanks and murmurs of a meal in progress echoed from the gallery above us. The prince had refused breakfast. He would eat on the road with his men, he had insisted to the countess in brisk dismissal just before his departure. There were shadows at the gallery screens. Someone stood there now, watching us.

“You should bring her today, if you can,” I said, with a discreet step away. “I know you have new responsibilities, but the more time that passes the more likely she will get herself in trouble. I can send Wallace for her, if you like.”

“No. I must do it,” he said brusquely. “I shall bring her tonight or tomorrow morning on my return from a reconnaissance of the area.”

“That is just as well. Wallace and Mrs. Deane have asked to see me this morning. Apparently there are problems with the house guard and the kitchens.”

“Under other circumstances, I would tell you to leave it to me, but I suspect you know your own men, your house and the surrounding country better than anyone. Just keep me informed. Find me if you need me.”

“It would be my great pleasure,” I said.

Our gazes locked in longing.

For the benefit of our gallery observer, we parted as though ending a simple social conversation. Though my fingers ached to caress his fine face, I settled for a quick touch on his blousy-shirted midriff.

Unseen between us, his blunt fingertips swept swiftly over the backs of my hands, setting me afire within. He strode confidently away down the central hallway, where his broad-shouldered form quickly disappeared into the inner house.

Left shaking with desire, I composed myself mentally and physically before I crossed the hall and climbed the great stair again, my footsteps echoing softly around the great room. The fragrant smell of fresh-baked bread and hot honey beckoned.

“My lady, thank you for coming” came Captain Wallace’s fine baritone as he stepped out of the deep shadows within the stable entry. “I did not wish to worry you with this, but the house is in need.” His lank frame was taut with anxiety.

“What do you mean?” I asked, a hand on his arm in concern.

“A full half of the guard, one hundred fifty men, went off with Prince Rupert. That leaves us with less than a hundred house guards. We lost five officers, Captains Fox and Helford, and three lieutenants.”

“Then we need to recruit more men, find horses and swords for them. Train them.”

“I hesitate to call on you, my lady, but the earl would let me do nothing to restore the house guard. He ordered me to do what I could with what I have,” he said to the dark earth at his feet. When he looked up at me, his mouth drew down in bitterness. “And we need to keep up our provisions.”

“Of course.” My face assumed a severe look that surely matched the one on Wallace’s face. “Pick fifteen of your strongest, bravest men. You should report this plan to Captain Comrie, in any event. If he approves, we will scour the countryside, as we have had to do in the past, and take what we need from any known Puritan sympathizers.”

“But we stripped the area last summer.” He wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve. The wind had dropped and the summer sun blared down on us out of a merciless sky.

“Yes, I know,” I said, determined to find a way. “Manchester is some ways off and a staunchly Puritan city.”

“Yes?” He frowned in distress.

“You must find and recruit trainable men that we can trust. For that, you will probably do better closer to Wigan.”

He nodded and his fearful look diminished.

“After you gather what men you can find, organize a raid around Manchester for food, dry goods and anything else you think we can use. I will ask Mrs. Deane about her needs. Captain Comrie is planning a reconnaissance this afternoon. I would feel more comfortable if he were with you, in any event. I dare not accompany you, much as I would love to,” I said, with a tug of affection at his sleeve.

Peg had not returned to her bed the night before. I had seen her briefly at the prince’s departure and now, again, she was nowhere to be found. I retraced my steps to the stable and found her mare missing. Where could she have gone? It was unlike her to stay long from my side, but she was a grown woman and appeared to have taken one of the house guard with her, for Bertram was missing as well. Her disappearance without explanation became a nagging worry that shadowed my thoughts as the day wore on.