Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 (36 page)

She turned to leave, then called over her shoulder, “I hope you enjoy your meal.”

As she disappeared around the corner of the house, Lem said to Al, “What was all that about? The old bitch has hardly spoken a word to us since we got here, except to gripe about something.”

Grunting agreement, the other man lifted the white linen cover and inspected the offering. “All I know is, this looks damn good, and the thought of some wine is even better.”

Al started toward the rear of the house, where the porch was. “Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, and bring the tray. Nobody will ever know if we take a break for fifteen minutes, for chrissakes.”

Lem followed hesitantly.

Ten minutes later, Alaina stepped around the corner of the house and hurried to stand before the hatchway, darting an anxious glance in the direction of the arbor.

What Colt had just witnessed did nothing to assuage his suspicion of treachery. But at that point, he had no choice except to go through with the rendezvous.

He stepped toward her, and Alaina gasped, her hand fluttering to her throat. “Oh! You startled me.” She motioned to the hatchway. “She’s down there. Hurry. We don’t have a lot of time before the guards come back. Gavin keeps a tight rein on everybody.”

Colt opened the hatchway and stared down into the dark pit. Beside him, Alaina whispered, “I couldn’t risk bringing any light. We’ll have to feel our way down. Follow me.”

Knowing that Branch was close by and watching, his hand close to his gun, Colt stepped into the void.

“Be very careful,” Alaina whispered nervously. “The steps are narrow and curving. Just put your hands on the wall and feel ahead with your feet. You may feel something scurrying around. The mice are terrible down here.”

They made their way downstairs very slowly. Around the last curve in the stairway, Colt could see a glow of light just ahead. From directly in front of him, Alaina explained sarcastically, “Gavin sends someone down here regularly to make sure the torch is burning. I suppose he doesn’t want her to hate him
too
much, not if he’s planning to make her his mistress.”

Colt decided the whole pack of them were crazy. He didn’t give a damn about Alaina’s resentments over her lover, but the intricacies of these relationships might explain how he and his family had been swindled.

Alaina stepped into the cellar, Colt right behind her. As he took in the ghastly sight before him, he gave a low growl and sprang forward.

Briana lay on a pallet on the rough floor, ankles bound with rope, arms stretched above her head and tied. A kerchief was wrapped tightly around the lower part of her face, muffling her cries. Above the kerchief, her eyes were wide with shock at the sight of Colt kneeling before her.

He jerked the kerchief away, demanding, “What in hell’s going on? Are you all right?” He slipped his knife from inside his boot and cut her ropes.

As soon as her hands were freed, Briana began to massage her sore wrists to start the blood flowing.

Tears shimmering in her eyes, presenting a misty image of his beloved face, Briana could only shake her head and whisper, “Not now. We must get away from here. Gavin’s a madman, and this one”—she nodded toward Alaina—“is his lover and just as mad.”

With Colt’s help, Briana struggled to stand. Her legs were cramped from enduring her position on the floor for so long. “Believe me,” she told Colt, looking into his eyes and shuddering at the loathing she saw there, “I will tell you everything once we’re out of here.”

He nodded curtly. “Let’s move.”

“Wait.” She stepped away on stiff legs toward Alaina. “I’m taking my brother with me,” she declared staunchly. “Where is he? Is he at our cottage?”

“No,” Alaina said impatiently. “Get out of here now, before Gavin catches you.”

“Where is Charles?” Briana demanded.

“You didn’t think
I
was going to tend to a crippled child, did you?” Alaina asked, exasperated. “I had him taken to an orphanage near Paris. Find him yourself.”

Briana lunged at her, but Colt grabbed her. “There’s no time for this, God damn it.”

He slung the sobbing Briana aside, then grabbed Alaina by the arm and threw her to the floor, in the place where Briana had been tied. He yanked her hands up and tied them.

“What are you doing?” she screamed.

Colt put the kerchief over her mouth, saying, “Sorry to have to do this, Alaina, but I’m not sure this isn’t a trick. If it is a trick, I can’t worry about you sounding an alarm.

“If it isn’t”—he paused and winked—“then Gavin won’t know you betrayed him. He’ll think I forced you to take me to Dani, then tied you up. You see, I’m only helping you.

“Let’s go,” he commanded.

Briana gestured toward the shadowy area beyond the wine kegs. “There! The gold Gavin got for selling your property. It’s all there. I watched his men bring down the crates.”

Colt decided to take a moment and check. Grabbing the torch, he carried it to where wooden crates were stacked. It took him a moment to examine the contents of one and see that it did, indeed, contain gold—his family’s fortune.

He went back to face Briana. “So Mason double-crossed you and decided to keep all the money for himself. I’ve got a lot of questions, and you’d better come up with some damn good answers.” He pushed her toward the stairway. “Move!”

Briana said nothing as they made their way up the stairs, taking the torch with them, leaving Alaina in darkness. Her muffled cries faded as they moved toward the top of the hatchway.

Colt extinguished the torch, whispering to Briana to wait. Then he slowly lifted the heavy wooden door and carefully peered out into the night. There was no sign of the guards. He reached for Briana’s arm and gave a tug, signaling that she should follow.

They ran through the night into the sheltering vines of the grape arbor, the decaying foliage rustling in the breeze.

Colt gripped Briana’s wrist as he led her all the way through the arbor and out the other side. When they reached a small stone wall that stood between the arbor and a road, she pulled back.

Colt jerked around to stare at her.

Quietly she said, “I must tell you something. Now.”

Colt eyed her warily. “I imagine, dear
Sister,”
he said in a voice that chilled her to the marrow, “that you have plenty to tell me. And I want to hear all of it. But I want to put a little distance between me and Mason before we talk. There’s no need for anybody to get killed over this.”

They jumped over the wall and ran a good distance down the road before he said, “Tomorrow, you and I and the local law will come back and get my share of the gold. Then you and Mason and Charles, whoever he is, can all go straight to hell.”

“Charles is my brother.”

Colt’s hand fell from her wrist. He blinked.

“I said, Charles is my brother,” she repeated.

Colt laughed harshly. “Maybe you’d better tell me the rest of it.”

Dear God
she cried silently,
help me.

She took a deep breath and then said simply, “I am not your sister.” As he stared down at her, his face unreadable, she rushed on. “Your sister, Dani, is in a convent in the mountains. She became a nun. And I…” She couldn’t go on.

Colt closed his eyes momentarily.

“As I said,” he told her in the coldest voice she had ever heard, “I imagine you have a lot to tell me. And I want to hear every goddamn word…”

He jerked her along behind him, pulling viciously as they ran down the dirt road.

Gavin finally extricated himself from the fleshy woman who had been clinging to him for the past half hour. Lord, how he hated fawning females, especially blubbery ones. But it was important, for now, that he make a good impression on the locals.

For that reason, too, he had ordered Delia to remain upstairs during the party. She was furious, but he was getting better and better at handling women’s tantrums. A rough hand once in a while did its share of good, he mused. That brought Alaina to mind. Where the hell was she?
She’d better not be off someplace getting drunk,
he thought furiously.

He left the smoke-filled parlor and made his way down the long hallway to the kitchen, where he found the three women cooks he had engaged for the evening, the deBonnett servants having all been let go when the Count’s money ran out. The women were sitting at the long wooden worktable. Kettles of food sat on the big black coal-burning stove, and the air was pungent with the odor of many delicacies. “Where is the Countess?” he demanded, speaking in French.

The two younger women looked to the older one, who was apparently in charge. She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. She was here about an hour ago, but I haven’t seen her since.”

“Well”—he glared—“did she tell you when to serve dinner? It’s getting late.”

“She took a tray of food and a bottle of wine and left, saying she would return soon, and that dinner would be served when she got back.”

Gavin was getting angrier with each moment. “What the hell do you mean? Who did she take the tray to?” Damn, but he was mad. The servants were not to know about Briana being held prisoner in the cellar. Alaina knew that—just as she knew that he, himself, took care of feeding Briana. Twice a day he sent food down, and a guard untied Briana while she ate.

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know who she took it to,
monsieur
.”

Gavin strode out the back door and onto the porch. There, on the stone steps leading into the rear courtyard, was a tray with two empty plates on it, and a wine bottle.

What in hell was going on? He hadn’t told Alaina to feed anyone, and Alaina never did anything on her own initiative.

He rounded the corner of the house, breathing furiously. Ahead, in the faint
light from the windows, he saw the two guards leaning against the hatchway, giggling. Al was picking his teeth with the tip of a knife.

“God damn you,” Gavin bellowed, “you aren’t getting paid to have a party when you’re standing watch. Where’s the Countess?”

The two men straightened, exchanging nervous glances: They had heard stories about “the Snake’s” temper, and neither wanted to see it. Al spoke first. “We didn’t ask for nothing. She came out here with a tray for us and told us to go eat on the back porch, so we did.”

“No harm done,” Lem assured him anxiously. “We weren’t gone over fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Gavin was ready to explode. What was Alaina up to? He knew how angry she was with him lately—over Delia, and his plan to leave for Greece without her. He’d tried to coddle her in other ways, such as not raising hell when he found out she’d sent Charles to an orphanage without asking his permission.

His gaze went to the hatchway.
Briana.
Alaina hated Briana almost as much as she hated Delia. “Open it!” he commanded, and the men rushed to obey.

Gavin did not like making his way down the narrow steps without light, but there was no time to stop and get a torch. Just as that thought went through his mind, his foot touched something solid. He bent and retrieved the burned-out torch. He tossed it aside, suddenly terribly anxious. “Hurry up,” he urged Lem and Al.

The three took the stairs as fast as they dared. Before reaching the cellar, Gavin heard the muffled sounds.

He groped in the dark, found the struggling woman, found her face, the kerchief that silenced her, knew before he even yanked it away that he would hear Alaina’s voice in the black pit…not Briana’s.

She gasped, then cried hoarsely, “Colt! He took Briana!”

Gavin’s scream of rage reverberated along the stone walls like the cries of a hundred demons.

He whirled around, toward the stairs.

“Don’t leave me!” Alaina screamed. “Don’t leave me down here, Gavin, please—”

But Gavin was scrambling up the steps as fast as he could, his men right behind him.

Panting, he gave them orders. “Round up the others, and tell them to meet Hollister at the stable as fast as they can get there. He will give them further instructions.”

Al reminded him, “Hollister never comes out of that shack…not since that wildcat burned him.”

“Let me worry about that,” Gavin roared. “Do as I say!”

He started toward the little cottage where Hollister lived, Briana’s family’s house. But then he turned back toward the big house. There were guests to be taken care of, and he didn’t want them to hear the commotion. How he wished now he had never given the party, had not yielded to the desire to let everyone know the family was no longer destitute.

He called to Al, telling him quietly to return to the cellar and free Alaina and tell her to go to the kitchen
at once.

He returned, briefly, to the party and apologized to his guests, telling them that something had gone very wrong in the kitchen. Hoping they were all too drunk to care about the delay or his absence, he went to the kitchen where he was relieved to find Alaina. She was terribly shaken, but he calmed her quickly enough to keep her from babbling in front of the servants.

He dragged her into an empty room and then, stammering with shock, she sobbed out her story. She’d felt sorry for the guards, and taken them a tray. On her way back inside, Coltrane had assaulted her, threatening to slash her throat if she made a sound. He made her show him where Briana was, and he’d tied her up so she couldn’t sound an alarm when he made off with Briana.