Lady Of Fire (37 page)

“And Rashid?”

“Two days after you set sail, he came to me—quite angry.” He glanced at the other man who had distanced himself and was now at prayer. “Talk was still fresh of the fiery woman sold at auction. Thus, he learned I had offered you for sale.”

He grimaced, rubbed a hand over his throat. “There was a moment,
cherie
, when I feared my life was over. Then, Blessed Virgin, I remembered something.”

“What?”

He crossed to where a pack sat beside the rock he had earlier perched upon.
 
Shortly, he returned to her and dropped a folded letter in her lap.

Alessandra knew it was the one her mother had written her that she had been forced to leave behind upon being sold into slavery.

“Read it.” He jerked his chin.

“I know what it says.”

“Then you also know it is how Rashid and I discovered your whereabouts. It was—”

Rashid’s wail rent the air.

Jacques rolled his eyes. “It was not so difficult.”

“But the letter said I was to be taken to my aunt and uncle. How did you find me at Corburry?”

He sank to his haunches. “I am not at liberty to say.”

“What do you mean, ‘not at liberty’?”

“Alessandra, you are an intelligent woman. You can figure it out.”

“I would prefer you save me the trouble.”

“My word I have given. I cannot.”

Glowering, she dragged the blanket around her shoulders to ward off the morning cold.

Glasbrook, she thought. Her mother had instructed Lucien to deliver her there, where Sabine’s aunt and uncle—Agnes and Gavin’s parents—lived. Thus, it was to Glasbrook that Rashid and Jacques would have gone first. But who had sent two strangers on to Corburry? The aunt and uncle? Sir Gavin?

Not Sir Gavin. He was too wise to be duped by two of obvious foreign descent. It must have been his unsuspecting parents. Still, it made little sense.

A memory niggled at the back of Alessandra’s mind, but though she tried to pry it free, she lost hold of it.

“I cannot think now,” she said.

“It will come to you.”

She would have pressed him further, but Rashid returned.

“Arise, Alessandra.”

Taking the blanket with her, she stood and was surprised to see his eyes were filled with tears.

“It has been difficult these last months,” he said. “Forgive me.” Then he put his arms around her.

Would he allow her to return to Corburry, then?

“Everything I knew has changed,” he said. “You are all I have left of what was good in my life. I need you.”

His sorrow tugged at her heart, made her wish she could love him as he loved her, but there was Lucien. Only Lucien.

Rashid pulled back. “We will wed as soon as we reach Algiers, then you will become my first wife as you were always meant to be.”

If he was set on returning her to Algiers and she had any hope of escape, she must allow him to believe she would go willingly. Only then might she catch him off guard.

She nodded, leaned in, and over his shoulder, met Jacques’s bewildered gaze.

“We must go.” Rashid set her back from him. “There is a ship that leaves for the Mediterranean in four days. We shall be on it.”

She summoned a smile she hoped revealed none of her true feelings.

Placated, his face once more boyishly handsome, Rashid turned to Jacques. “Clear the camp. I will bring the horses.”

A half hour later, they rode east.

“My lord, the Brevilles ride on Falstaff.”

Lucien’s first thought was that Alessandra had come, but the captain of the guard’s brow was too furrowed. He pushed away the ledger he had been examining. “In peace?”

“Armored, my lord, with knights abounding.”

Lucien surged to his feet. Despite Breville’s talk of goodwill, he intended to continue their feud. Indeed, Lucien would not be surprised if it had been in his mind even as he had signed over the De Gautier lands two days past. And for what? The knave now possessed Dewmoor Pass, and without contest.

“Secure the castle,” Lucien ordered.

“’Tis being done now,” the man said.

Throwing off his fur-lined robe, Lucien called for his squire.

The young man came running. “You would have me arm you, my lord?”

“For now, I require only mail tunic, boots, and sword.”

The squire disappeared and quickly returned. In the center of the great hall, amid knights and family members, Lucien donned the mail, shoved his feet into leather boots, and secured his sword.

“I thought ’twas finally over,” Dorothea said, placing a hand on her eldest son’s arm.

Lucien shifted his jaw to ease its tension. “You are not the only one who was duped, Mother.”

She lowered her head, whispered, “It will never end.”

He tilted her face up, pressed a kiss to her pale cheek, and called for his knights to follow.

On the roof of the gatehouse, Lucien and his brothers stared out at the assembled Breville knights. There was no question they did not come in peace.

“Are the cannons ready?” he asked the captain of the guard.

“They are being loaded now.”

Lucien turned back to contemplate Breville’s first move.

“I cannot believe it,” Vincent said. “It must be a misunderstanding.”

Jervais grunted. “No misunderstanding. Typical Breville trickery.”

James Breville, a knight on either side of him, broke formation and urged his horse forward. “Lucien de Gautier! Where are you, man?”

Lucien moved to the center of the embrasure. “I am here!”

James lifted his visor. “I want her back!”

Lucien narrowed his gaze on him. “Of what do you speak, Breville?”

After some silence, James called, “Very well, I will play your game, but know that you will die on your knees.”

Though Lucien was tempted to return threat for threat, he knew he must not give in to anger—at least, not until it was time to take sword in hand. “I play no game. That I leave to you who professed to want peace and now rides against me without provocation.”

“Without provocation! You De Gautiers steal my daughter as you stole my wife and dare say I am unjustified in seeking your deaths?”

Struck with fear as vicious that felt when he had lost Alessandra to the streets of Tangier, it took Lucien a moment to respond, and when he did, he did not care that his voice was strained as of one not fully in control of his emotions. “She is missing?”

“Missing?” James spat. “Just as your father took Catherine, you took Alessandra, you milk-livered wretch.”

Overlooking the insult, for which he would have once made the man pay dearly, Lucien said, “Your accusation is false, Breville. I am coming down.” He turned and found Jervais in his path, a bow with a nocked arrow at his side.

“Do not trust him, Brother. It may be a trap.”

Realizing he preferred it be that than the jagged-edged truth, Lucien said, “If it is, you need not worry as to whose blood will spill.”

Jervais raised the bow. “I will watch your back.”

Pain at the center of his chest, Lucien descended to the bailey and motioned for the portcullis to be raised. When it was waist high, he ducked beneath it and strode the length of the drawbridge.

“Tell me all of it,” he demanded, halting before James who had the look of a man teetering on an edge he should not go near.

Sword before him, James leaned forward in the saddle. “Where is my daughter?”

Lucien flexed his hand on his sword hilt. Even with Jervais and others on the wall ready to defend him, there was much danger in leaving the blade sheathed where he stood alone before his lifelong enemy, but this time was different from others. This time, there was Alessandra to consider, she who would benefit none from another De Gautier-Breville clash. Indeed, such a delay would surely be to her detriment.

Easing the tension from his jaw, Lucien said, “I did not take Lady Alessandra.”

“You deny sending her a message ere you left Corburry?”

“The message was sent, but that is all.”

“She did not come to you that night?”

“She did not.”

James arced his sword, stopped its point a foot from Lucien’s chest.

Struggling against warrior senses that urged him to return aggression for aggression, Lucien told himself the timing must be right, else all would turn bloody before the walls of Falstaff. And if that happened, Alessandra could as easily be lost to her family—to him—as those whose lives would stain the soil beneath his feet.

“You lie,” James growled. “You took her, likely sold her into slavery as your father sold her mother.” He pressed the sword nearer.

The timing would get no better. Sweeping his dagger from its scabbard, Lucien lunged to the side, gripped James’s arm, and wrenched him out of the saddle. As the Breville knights hastened their mounts forward, Lucien withstood the thrust of the older man’s unbalanced body and forced James's sword down.

Face to face with his old enemy, Lucien pressed his dagger’s blade to Breville’s throat and shot a warning look at the knights, one of whom was Sir Gavin.

“Hear me well,” Lucien rasped. “As my father was not responsible for your wife’s disappearance, neither am I responsible for Alessandra’s.”

James’s eyes bulged. “I am to believe you?”

“Lest you forget, ’twas I who safely delivered her to you.”

“Before you knew what had become of your lands!”

Lucien ground his teeth. “Once I learned she was of your blood, I did think to use her against you, but I could not. I brought her directly to you, my family’s enemy.”

Breathing heavily, James said, “Why did you do it? Why did you leave her untouched and hand her over without a demand for ransom? Through her, you could have had Dewmoor Pass.”

There was no searching for an answer. It was close at hand—rather, close at heart— as it had been for longer than Lucien had realized. But though that did not make it easy to admit, especially now that Alessandra was gone and the words could not first be spoken to her, he put down his pride. “I love your daughter,” he said and thrust James back.

Sword tip raking the packed earth, Breville regained his balance and, a hand to his throat where Lucien’s blade had scored a thin line, said, “If that is true, why did you not accept marriage to her?”

“For De Gautier lands? Two reasons, one being pride.”

“The other?”

“Would you take to wife a woman you loved and have her always believe you did so only for gain?”

Suspicion narrowed James’s lids, but he nodded. “I see.”

“Do you? Then you no longer believe I stole her?”

“At the risk of being made an unpardonable fool, I will take your word you did not.”

Lucien drew a deep breath that did little to ease the strain in his chest. “I am glad to hear it. Now leave your men without, and we will talk in the keep while I make ready to join your search. I would know everything.” Lucien turned away.

Shortly, James appeared in the hall amid the bustle of those of Lucien’s household who made ready for his departure. Accompanied by Sir Gavin, he halted before the dais where Lucien consulted with a senior knight.

Lucien looked around. “When did Alessandra disappear?”

“Melissant discovered her missing yestermorn after the tournament,” James said.

“She should not have ventured out at night,” Sir Gavin said. “It is the same as when her mother was taken.”

Lucien frowned. “You believe she disappeared the night before?”

“It would follow,” Sir Gavin said with a shrug. “You send her a message, and she is gone the next day. Likely, she was caught out in the open as she sought to answer your summons.”

“How did you know the message was from me?” Lucien asked.

Sir Gavin smiled. “The look on her face when she received it. Did you know she loves you?”

Lucien returned his regard to James.

“My men spent all day yesterday scouring the countryside,” James continued, “but without result.”

“Did you set dogs to track her?”

“I would have, but there is malady among them. Too, once I was convinced you were responsible, it seemed an unnecessary exercise.”

Lucien grunted. “And now it may be too late to pick up her scent.”

“Aye, but if her fate is the same as her mother’s, whoever took her is headed for the nearest port.”

Lucien inclined his head. “Then we ride on London.”

“Too obvious,” Sir Gavin said. “More likely, they will go by way of Southampton.”

Lucien considered the older man’s wisdom, nodded. “Still, I would send on to London to be certain.”

“Two parties, then?”

“Two parties,” Lucien agreed. “My men and I will take Southampton. James?”

“I go with you.”

“Then I shall take my men to London,” Sir Gavin said.

Vincent stepped forward. “And I shall accompany you.”

Sir Gavin snorted. “With your dice?”

“With my sword, Crennan,” Vincent growled. “Like it or nay, you will suffer my company.”

Pleased Vincent had not backed down, his determination to redeem himself growing each day, Lucien said, “Let us delay no longer. We will have to ride hard for all the ground that must be covered this day.”

A half hour later, the two parties thundered across the land before Falstaff. One toward London. One toward Southampton.

“It will be good to be back in Algiers,” Rashid said where he lay behind Alessandra, his chest against her back. “This cold is not fit for humans.”

She stared into the fire, reflected that even if she never fully adapted to the climate, the cold of her body was far preferable to the cold of her heart.

Beyond the fire, Jacques lay on his side beneath a blanket, watching her as he had done throughout the day.

He was her hope. In spite of what he had done to her in Tangier, his concern for her welfare seemed genuine. He had truly believed he was making amends by leading Rashid to her. Now that he knew different, it was possible he could be convinced to aid in her escape.

She offered a tentative smile.

His face showed momentary surprise, then he returned the gesture.

“Are you awake, Alessandra?” Rashid asked.