Her Every Pleasure (19 page)

He did not move back as she had half expected. “I’ll be right beside you,” he whispered, holding her gaze.

She tweaked a brass button on his smart red coat and grinned. “Then let’s go.”

CHAPTER
         TEN         

A
n eerie stillness hung over the bend in the road where her guards had led them. The sunlit canopy of the autumn trees joined overhead to form a tunnel of their boughs, like a colored-glass mosaic.

Here and there, falling leaves cascaded down to a packed earth road still scored and stained by the skirmish that had taken place there.

Gabriel glanced at Sophia, making sure she was all right. Beneath the brown net veil that draped her riding hat, her smooth, young face bore signs of quiet distress, but she kept any tears she might have wished to shed at bay. He gave her a bolstering nod; she took a deep breath.

He dismounted from his horse for a closer look around. “Stay with her,” he ordered two of the men.

“I’d rather be alone,” she murmured, lowering her gaze and staring blindly at her hands, still clenching the reins as she stayed in the saddle. No doubt she needed a little time to reflect on what had happened here, but Gabriel would not leave her unattended.

“Give her some room,” he told the two guards in a lower tone, then he sent the others off to search the surrounding woods for anything they might find, any possible new evidence.

They proceeded to do so, dismounting and then moving slowly, studying each foot of the mossy ground. Except for the low crunch of their steps over the dry fallen leaves and the occasional snort of a horse, the whole group was very subdued. Gabriel understood why. He was not so long parted from his regiment in India that he could have forgotten this numb, tearless grief after one of their own had been killed in battle.

While the men searched the woods, Gabriel went to inspect the old cart that had been used as a barrier in the attack, forcing Sophia’s entourage to halt. It had been dragged off to the side of the road, and though he examined it thoroughly, it yielded no particular information.

Next, he studied the chaotic pattern of footprints in the road—wagon tracks, hoof prints, a few dark copper stains that told a tale of pain. Blood. His gaze traveled up into the trees, from where several of the attackers not hiding in the old cart had swung down into the fray on ropes, according to Sophia’s bodyguards.

The ropes the brazen bastards had used in launching their attack still dangled from the branches. Gabriel’s gut tightened to see them hanging there like empty nooses.

This ambush, he thought grimly, had been carefully thought out and very well timed. Perhaps the only factor the enemy had failed to take into account was the ferocity with which their intended female target would fight back.

But now, no doubt, they would take that under advisement. Next time, they’d be ready. One look at the scene assured him that there
would
be a next time.

Whoever they were, these boys meant business.

He glanced darkly at Sophia to make sure she was still all right. She remained on horseback and was staring off into the woods. Moving on in his examination of the scene, Gabriel left the road for a closer look at the trees they had used as their hiding places before the attack.

He found a stray bullet lodged in a nearby trunk, pried it out with his knife, and studied it, but it told him little. The ordinary silver ball could have been used with a variety of guns.

He stepped back to assess the big old tree, then grasped hold of it, and began to climb. His efforts cost him a mild twinge in his middle where he had been wounded, but he persisted, wanting to see what the scene had looked like from the attackers’ point of view.

Sophia watched him curiously as he reached the first main bough where two ropes were tied. Among the branches, he found broken twigs and cracked limbs where they had crouched, waiting for their moment. He inspected the knots they had tied. The ropes themselves were ordinary hempen lines available anywhere. From his perch on the thick branch, he surveyed the lay of the land. He realized the villains would have seen her party coming for at least a quarter mile through the trees.

Below, Sophia finally dismounted from her horse. With an instinctive urge to stay near her, he lowered himself from the thick bough and dropped to earth, striding over to her.

Wanting to hear her side of the story in private, he dismissed the two men guarding her and sent them off to join the others in the search for evidence. Then he asked Sophia to recount the exact order of events that night, as best she could remember them.

She did so, describing the assault on the carriage—which side the attackers had tried to come in, what they looked and sounded like, how she had fought them off, and Lady Alexa’s hysterical screaming. Then she explained how Leon had brought her the bay gelding and sent her on her way. She pointed to the stone wall and meadow visible through the narrow patch of woods on the north side of the road and told him she had leapt the wall on horseback in making her escape. Gabriel nodded, easily envisioning the chaos of that night.

“Shall we go and have a look in the field?” Sophia suggested with an admirable show of bravery despite the shadows in her eyes from reliving all the details of that night.

“No.”

She looked at him in question.

The men had told him that the hottest fighting had taken place in that field after she had gone galloping away. The villains had tried to chase her, but under the wounded Leon’s direction, the guards had at least rallied enough to hold the bastards off so she could escape.

Sophia furrowed her brow. “Don’t you think we might find something useful…” she started, but her words trailed off as she read his regretful expression. “I see. That’s where Leon fell?”

He nodded and reached out to give her arm a comforting stroke.

“I want to see the place.”

“Sophia, you’ve already been through enough,” he said with gentle finality. There was no need for her to see the stained patch of tall grasses and bloodied turf where someone dear to her had lost his life.

She looked away but did not argue. Though her cheeks were rosy with the brisk October afternoon, her face was a stark, emotionless mask. As she wrapped her dark cloak a bit more tightly around her slender frame, Gabriel shook his head in self-directed anger.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“I need you to protect me from assassins, Colonel, not from the truth.” She stared off into the field where Leon had fallen. “He didn’t deserve this.”

Gabriel said nothing, standing with her in wooden silence. He could feel her pain as if it was his own and longed to take her into his arms. It seemed inhuman not to, but even aside from the need to maintain a professional distance, he could just imagine the sort of reaction it might get from her Greek guards.

“Colonel!” Over by the stone wall, the men beckoned to them all of a sudden. “Your Highness, we’ve found something!”

As they both hurried over, Timo pointed into the brambles at the foot of the stone fence. “It looks like one of them might have dropped a weapon here! We haven’t touched it yet, so you could see its exact position where it fell.” Timo moved back to give them room and Gabriel leaned closer, narrowing his eyes.

A gleaming dagger with a black handle lay partly concealed inside the leaf-strewn clump of weeds.

Beside him, Sophia stared at the weapon, then she reached gingerly into the bramble-bush without waiting for their advice, and picked it up.

Turning to her to ask for it, Gabriel saw the cold anger that filled her face as she gripped the knife. She cursed under her breath in her native tongue, then swept them all with a glance. “To your horses, quickly!”

“Your Highness?” Gabriel murmured.

“I knew it,” she said fiercely. “Damn him!”

“Damn who?”

“Ali Pasha!”

An angry murmur moved among her fellow Greeks at this name.

“I knew it was him all along!”

“What makes you so sure?” Gabriel asked in a low tone.

“Look!” Ashen-faced, Sophia held up the slightly curved dagger and pointed to the engravings on the black steel hilt. “You see these symbols? This is Arabic!”

“I know what it is,” he replied. Thanks to his boyhood friendship in India with a local nizam’s princely sons, he was quite familiar with the customs of Islam and was well aware it was a common practice amongst Mohammedan warriors to engrave one’s favorite weapons with verses from the Koran. “May I see the blade?”

She handed the weapon over with a wary look. As Gabriel studied it, he noticed some strange markings on it in addition to the Koranic verses.

“Come!” she ordered, whirling away from them and striding back toward her horse.

“Where are we going?” the bulky Niko cried, hastening to follow her.

“Back to the castle!” she ordered in a tone that brooked no argument. “It’s time I had a chat with the Turkish ambassador.”

Gabriel wasn’t so sure. He eyed her Greek guards warily. A more sinister explanation began taking shape in his mind.

How easy would it have been for one of her men to have planted the weapon there just now and only pretended to have found it? Indeed, how else might her enemies have known just where and when to find her on the road?

His heart darkened at the possibility of a traitor in their midst. Mounting up, he noted that it was Timo who had first spotted the knife and called them over to see it.

The man seemed loyal to Sophia, but that could be naught but a mask.

Gabriel stayed close to Sophia and kept his concerns to himself for the moment as they all rode back to the castle, on for miles and miles through the descending twilight.

Full night had fallen by the time they arrived. Cantering past the gatehouse, they continued up the long, winding drive.

Ahead, the castle’s dark medieval hulk loomed against the stars, dim orange lights glowing in the windows. They rode over the bridge, under the portcullis, and into the central courtyard.

In short order, their princess was striding ahead of them down the stone corridors of the castle, her face flushed with the cold, her midnight curls wild from the hard gallop back. She had taken off her hat but still gripped her riding crop in her angry zeal to confront the Turkish ambassador.

Gabriel was beginning to worry a bit about what exactly she intended to do. She ordered Yannis to find out if the Ottoman representative had arrived; the answer came back quickly. Yes, he had, and he was in a meeting now with Lord Griffith in the Map Room.

Sophia nodded and headed for that unusual chamber.

Gabriel jolted into motion. “Your Highness,” he clipped out, keeping pace with her brisk march.

“Yes, Colonel?” She stared straight ahead.

“What do you plan on doing in there?”

She glanced over her shoulder, apparently surprised that she was being asked to explain herself. “I’m going to show the Turkish ambassador what we found.”

“And?” he challenged.

“See what he has to say for his master about it.”

“Wait.” Gabriel captured her forearm in a gentle but unyielding grip, halting her advance. She flicked an indignant glance down to his hand on her arm. “You can’t go in there making accusations,” he warned in a soft but steely tone. “Remember, we discussed the danger of offending the Ottoman Empire?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“So does Lord Griffith. Let him do his job. He’s not going to want you barging in. These are delicate matters—”

“I’m not asking your permission, Colonel,” she interrupted, looking him evenly in the eyes.

Her Greek guards stepped nearer, glancing from Gabriel to Sophia. His hand was still on her arm, and they appeared quite willing to intervene and remove their new commander from her path if Her Royal Loveliness desired.

Sophia eyed him warily, but Gabriel was not about to back down. He was a little surprised at her unabated tenacity, but this was in her best interest.

“As I understand it, my kinsman has been one of your greatest champions within the Foreign Office,” he informed her in a low tone. “Angering him is not going to help your enterprise or your people. Overstep your bounds, and you will make him doubt your readiness for the crown.”

His blunt words seemed to check the anger that had burned in her dark eyes ever since the knife had been found. She lowered her head, pausing for a moment.