Linda Barlow (15 page)

"Would you like me to read to you? No? A game of chess, then? I'll surrender a pawn to you at the start."

She smiled faintly. "You don't defeat me that often."

"Where's the chessboard?"

"I'd rather not play, not this morning."

He pulled his stool nearer her bed. "Your mother said your fever was down. Why are you still abed? You're acting damned odd, Alix. Is it to do with Roger?"

Her eyes jerked open. "Why do you think that?"

Alan's eyes had narrowed and his nostrils flared. "What passed between you out there on the moors the other day? If he's hurt you..."

Hurt her? No. She vividly remembered the thrilling caresses he'd subjected her to. She felt a pulse in her loins and cursed her rebellious body, which still seemed to desire Roger, no matter what he'd done.

"He didn't come home until late that night," Alan went on. "He wouldn't have come home at all, I suspect, were it not that Francis Lacklin was leaving the next day. They proved friends, after all, despite their differences."

"So Lacklin's gone?"

"Aye. Father feels the loss of him the most."

"Doubtless. Without him there, Roger will probably have your father in his grave within the month."

Alan looked at her in surprise. "So you've finally stopped defending him?"

Alexandra's fingers worried a long lock of her hair as she avoided Alan's eyes.

"You must have given him a formidable lecture out there," Alan went on slowly. "In spite of Father's best efforts to engage him in verbal combat, Roger hasn't allowed a nasty remark to pass his lips in days."

Alexandra sat up straighter. "I don't believe it."

"'Tis true. He still sharpens his claws on me, but he's been leaving Father alone. Whatever you said must have impressed him."

"You overestimate my powers. He was hostile. I certainly didn't expect him to pay any heed to my words."

Alan shrugged. "Why not? He's not Malice Incarnate, as you said. He doesn't want to be Baron of Whitcombe at the expense of anybody's life."

Alexandra responded with a violent fit of coughing. Ever since recalling the words with which Roger had betrayed his presence in England, she'd been trying with all her heart to smother her suspicions. Over and over, she had assured herself that there was no real evidence against him. There was no proof that the dagger was his. As for Ned's excessive fear of Roger—what could one expect? Roger had threatened the lad with a sword.

She still hadn't talked to Ned. Until she did, she told herself, she shouldn't jump to wild conclusions.

The door to her room opened and Alexandra's mother entered, saying, "The two of you are no longer so young that you can visit indiscriminately in each other's bedchambers. You've been here long enough, Alan. I want her to rest."

"He's doing me good, Mother, and you know full well there's no harm in our being together."

"I know nothing of the sort. Your father will be most displeased to learn of your habitual lack of decorum."

Alexandra noticed the paper in her mother's hands. "My father? Is that a letter from him?"

"He has decided to honor us with a visit. He will arrive within a day or two, he says; my only surprise is that the letter reached us in advance of his own party. He usually employs such incompetent messengers. I certainly hope he doesn't come today. The cooks are ill-prepared for a crowd of travel-starved retainers."

Alexandra clapped her hands in the first gesture of enthusiasm she had shown for days. "Oh, Mother, I'm glad!"

"I thought you might be. Not that Charles deserves your slavish devotion—he never even takes the time to write to you. But perhaps you'll consider rising from your sickbed now and throwing off this unaccountable gloom."

Alexandra reached for the letter and perused it rapidly. "He says nothing about my returning to London with him. I wonder if he's arranged a position at court for me."

Lady Douglas pursed her lips. "He is certainly supposed to have done so. I do hope he's given some thought to your predicament—a woman grown and still unwed. 'Tis a disgrace."

"She's still young," Alan objected. "No one thinks a man must be wed at eighteen. There's been no talk of my marrying."

"I wish there'd been no talk of mine," said Alexandra, blowing her nose. She gave her mother a belligerent look. "You and he ought not to expect me to marry on command. I won't, you know. I intend to have some say in the matter this time."

"Indeed? You are a willful child. Whomever you wed, he'd better have some mettle in him or it will be a most uneven match. Which reminds me, you've had another visitor, but I sent him away. I refuse to permit you to entertain that scapegrace in your bedchamber. Anyway, I didn't suppose you would care to receive him after the way you were raving about him during your fever."

Alexandra's breath caught and she coughed violently. "You mean Roger? He came to see me?"

"Roger, of course. He was annoyed that Alan was allowed in and he was not."

Alan looked smug until Lady Douglas added, "I told him Alan was just leaving."

"What did he want?"

"How do I know? To wish you well, I imagine. I told him you would be quite well as soon as you roused yourself from a fit of black vapors. He looked rather guilty, I fancied. Did you and he quarrel? Is it going to be like the days when he was the only child who could ever make you cry?"

"He never made me cry."

"He most certainly did. I remember the time he knocked you down in the stables because you'd overheated his favorite horse. You hit your head on the stall and ended up with a lump the size of an apple. He gave you a black eye on another occasion."

"I don't remember that."

"You ought to. That boy was a menace. I never liked him."

"Oh, Mother, of course you liked him." She didn't want to think about anything from the past that confirmed Roger's wildness or bad temper. So what if his games had been a little rough? All children were cruel to each other at times.

"He can be obliging when he tries, I'll admit that," Lucy went on. "He was willing to make himself useful by going after Ned."

Alexandra had begun sliding down in bed to a more comfortable position, but now she jerked upright again. "What do you mean, going after Ned?"

"Your precious half-wit friend. He came round to the kitchens again, asking for you. Much against my better judgment, I decided to bring him up, since you'd made such a fuss about it the other day. I'd shown him into the hall while I was talking to Roger, but the ridiculous creature took fright again and ran off. I asked Roger to go after him and bring him back, at sword point if necessary, so you could question him about that wretched dagger you've been sleeping with night and day. What the devil is the matter with you, girl? Are you ill again?"

Alexandra could feel the blood draining from her face and neck. "You told Roger I wanted to question Ned about the dagger?"

"Yes, of course. I was about to let a half-wit in to see you when I had just refused the heir of Whitcombe. I had to tell him something. I explained that the entire business had assumed an undue importance in your mind, and that you were raving about Ned in your fever, Ned and his blasted dagger."

"Oh, Mother!"

Lady Douglas frowned. "I see I've committed some sort of indiscretion. My dear child, I wish you wouldn't make such a secret of your affairs. Is it Roger the boy's afraid of? I thought he was running away from me because of all the times I’ve threatened to have him whipped."

Alexandra had bitten off the tip of one of her nails in her agitation. She could hardly think because of the way her heart was pounding.

"What's this all about?" Alan asked. "What has Ned to do with Roger?"

Alexandra threw back the bedclothes and hopped out of bed, her red hair flowing down her back as she ran to the mullion-paned window. She had a view of the road that led down to the front gates of the manor. "I don't see either of them."

"They'll be in the woods by now. Get back into bed immediately. You're not even decently clad. Alan, please leave us."

But Alan followed Alexandra to the window, where she stood barefoot in her shift. "You're hiding something from me. I want to know what it is. What's this dagger you're talking about? And how does Roger know the village halfwit?"

She turned to him. "I'll explain, but not now. The most important thing is to stop him. Alan, 'tis a long tale, and most of what I know, I've only guessed, but it's possible that Roger means harm to Ned. We've got to go after them. You start. I'll dress and catch up with you."

"What do you mean? What sort of harm?"

"Please, Alan!" She ran to her cupboards and began pulling out a gown, but her mother snatched it away from her.

"Alan may do as he pleases, but you're not going anywhere. I've never heard such folly. One minute you're lying there half-dead, and the next you're proposing to plunge into the damp forest in pursuit of a pirate and a half-wit. No, I said. I'm still your mother, and until you're wed, you're bound to obey me."

As she tried to argue, Alexandra was again seized with a fit of coughing. Her mother pushed her back into bed and said to Alan, "Go on, lad, humor her. You see how distressed she is. I've never known her to behave in such a manner. May the good Lord curse that brother of yours!"

Still looking doubtful, Alan went to the door. "I probably won't be able to find them. Which way did they go?"

"Down the road toward the forest," Lady Douglas answered.

"Take one of the horses," Alexandra ordered. "And be careful, Alan. If you find Roger, don't tell him anything."

"How can I?" Alan sounded disgruntled. "I don't know anything."

As he hurried out, Lady Douglas pulled the bedclothes up around her daughter. "You're still ill. Lie down."

"I'm not still ill. I wish you'd let me go. I don't have fever and I'm not an invalid."

Lucy sighed. "What's he done, I'd like to know. If he's injured you, your father will have his head. Men! They're all alike. He hasn't attempted you honor, I trust?"

"No, Mother, it's nothing like that."

"Then what is it?"

Alexandra was thinking of the foolish way she'd admitted to Roger and Francis Lacklin that it was Ned who had given her the knife. Her words on his first day back now haunted her: If someone did lay an ambush for Will, Ned might have seen it. He's always in the forest, even at night. If it was true, if Roger had ambushed Will, and Ned had witnessed it, then Ned's life might be in danger. A man who could cold-bloodedly murder his own brother would have no qualms about dispatching the one person whose evidence could hang him.

"If you refuse to tell me, I shall have your father get it out of you," Lady Douglas threatened.

"Oh, Mother, if you must know, I had an argument with Roger the other day, and now I've taken it into my head that he bears malice toward everyone. It's silly, I know." A sudden idea struck her and she voiced it immediately, knowing it was the only thing her mother would believe. It might even be true, she realized. "Perhaps I'm just miffed because Will wanted to wed me and Roger doesn't."

"Are you in love with him?"

"No, of course not." But when they were out, the words seemed to hang in the air, heavy as storm clouds. She looked helplessly into her mother's eyes, and, to her very great astonishment, she found herself in tears.

Lucy Douglas put her arms around her while Alexandra sobbed on her shoulder. She gently patted her daughter's head. "It's just as I said. Roger Trevor is the only person I've ever known who could make you cry."

Chapter 8

Late that afternoon, Alexandra was sitting in the library at Westmor Abbey with her feet up on one of Pris Martin's embroidered stool cushions, making notes on the subject of Will Trevor's death. If she wrote it all out, maybe she would be able to make some sense of her suspicions. If she could make sense of them, maybe she would be able to dismiss them from her mind.

She hadn't heard a word from Alan since he'd left to follow Roger and Ned. It had been several hours. If she didn't hear something soon, she intended to defy her mother and ride to Whitcombe Castle to find out what was happening.