Shana Abe (27 page)

Roland sat down on the edge of the bed, watching her sip the brew, watching the way the sunlight made her hair almost shimmer with colors, a long fall of darkest red to curl past her shoulders.

When she had finished, Marla took the cup away again and left the room, only the sound of her skirts swishing marking her passing at all. She shut the door.

He had come up here with no real thought except to see Kyla again, to satisfy the underlying anxiety that still lived in him. Now that he was here he seemed to lose his tongue, all he wanted to do was look at her. He thought he could do that forever.

She met his look with a hint of defiance, still smarting from the restriction on her, he knew. After a moment, that melted away—he could see it go, could almost mark the exact second when it turned into something else—and she looked down at the layers of blankets, a troubled curve to her lips.

“I must teach you how to swim,” he tried.

She looked up in an instant. “I can swim,” she said disdainfully.

He took one of her hands between his. Her fingers were cold.

“Then I must teach you not to let people hit you over the head when your back is turned.”

The troubled curve of lips turned into, amazingly, a reluctant smile. He felt something in him dissolve with it. He took a deeper breath than he had been able to before.

“Perhaps you could grant me eyes in the back of my head, my lord,” she suggested courteously.

He gave an exaggerated shudder. “I think not. You will give me chills of horror.”

She relaxed a little against the pillows. He seemed so quiet now, so thoughtful and considerate, lost in contemplation of their intertwined fingers. She didn’t know what to make of him.
As usual
, she thought with a sort of helplessness.

“Don’t leave the castle without an escort,” he said to their hands.

She thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. “Don’t leave …?”

“Without an escort.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“In fact, I don’t want you going off alone anywhere, not even within Lorlmar. There will be someone with you at all times.”

Kyla let out a huff of air. “I am not your serf, my lord!”

He looked determined. “No. But you will do as I say.”

She tried to snatch her hand back but his fingers tightened, keeping her immobile. He lifted his gaze to meet hers, brilliant blue-green, intent, unyielding. She saw him take in her face, lingering a moment on her lips, then down again.

“I am not jesting, Kyla. You are not to be alone, even within these walls, save our chambers here. If you wish to leave the castle you must come to me first and ask.” He spoke over her gasp. “And I will determine if it is feasible.”

“You cannot be serious!”

“I think you know me better than that.”

“It was,” she groped for words, “an accident! Or some strange chance. A stranger, a thief, perhaps.”

“There are no strangers on Lorlreau. And this was no accident. No one accidentally picked up a beam of wood and clubbed the Countess of Lorlreau.”

It was so obviously true that she had nothing to say, try as she might to think of another plausible excuse.

“We don’t know how or why this happened, Kyla. Until this person”—he allowed himself the slightest sneer—“is apprehended, you will follow my orders. Your safety is my responsibility. I needn’t remind you of what happened to your mother.”

He let that hang vaguely in the air, having no idea what he meant by it but knowing it would affect her.

Emotions slammed through her, she couldn’t find the words for them:
No, no, I won’t be stifled like this, I won’t live in fear like this
.

“You cannot make me,” she finally said, her voice flat.

He lifted his brows, amusement and arrogance.

“Yes, I can.” As simple as that.

“But what if you never find this person? What then?” Desperation lent her voice a sharper edge than she intended.

“Well, then. I would hope you may grow to like the company you will be keeping.”

Roland let go of her hand and stood, once more kissing her forehead before she could react. She sat back, mute, thunderclouds gathering in her eyes. He left before she could put voice to them.

She heard him confer with the guard outside their door—there must have been a guard all along, she hadn’t noticed—and then there was silence. She was alone.

Marla’s tea was making her sleepy again. She devoutly wished she had not drunk it. There was too much to think about to fall asleep. She wanted to be angry now! She wanted to be resentful!

Roland still controlled her, still exerted his will upon her with effortless ease—a command here, an order there. He was used to it, no doubt; indeed, she could not imagine him without that invisible mantle of power he seemed to carry. He was the overlord of a remote island fortress, and even on the mainland he had an influence with the king that left common people bowing and scraping in fear.

She was not common. She didn’t fear him. And he was not her master, no matter what the law or the church or even
he
said.

As the languid haze of sleep crept up on her, though, Kyla had a last thought, one that overrode all the others: Roland wanted to keep her safe. He was concerned for her. There was worry in his look, she was certain of it. Genuine worry.

He cared about her, even if it was just a little.

A part of her felt lighter for it.

Chapter Twelve

T
he armoire turned out to be much heavier than it looked, so much so that Kyla had to shift it in tiny increments, grunting with the effort, pulling with all her might, taking frequent breaks to let her head stop spinning.

Fortunately, it turned out she didn’t need to pull it out far at all in order for the hinges in the wall to spring open, aided by Elysia and Matilda on the other side of the tunnel.

The panel opened not quite smoothly, more with a grinding noise and a shudder from years of disuse. Kyla paused, listening carefully for any sounds of alarm from the guard standing outside the main door.

After four days of confinement to the chambers she was ready to leave. She didn’t care where, it didn’t matter, she just wanted out. Marla had finally allowed that she was ready to leave her bed—two days after Kyla had been secretly stumbling around the room to practice her normal walk—but Roland had shaken his head, scowling, declaring her unfit yet to leave even the bed. The bed!

It was intolerable. They treated her like a child, a simpleton unfit to see to her own well-being, while she had crossed mountains and rivers on her own, had watched the magnificence of the sunrise over the Highlands in lasting solitude for weeks, had hunted and fished and survived without help from anyone.

Now they thought to hold her down with sheets and furs,
with fine linen nightgowns and long ruffled cuffs, tisanes swimming with sleeping potions.

And Roland at night, holding her close, holding her gently, as if he feared the slightest move would shatter her like a glass figurine.

The guard beyond the door was silent, apparently unaware of the mutiny taking place inside his lord’s rooms.

“Are you there, Auntie?” Elysia’s voice crept out of the darkness of the open panel. “Can you fit through?”

Her only visitors had been Marla and some of the children, and once Seena and Harrick. Roland thought it too early to subject her person to the well-wishes of his people, even though at this point Kyla would have welcomed a conversation with the devil himself to relieve her boredom. Elysia had come every day, at least twice a day, and when she had expressed a wish to come more often Roland had forbidden it, declaring he didn’t want his wife tired out from childish antics.

Kyla had a very good idea about who was being childish, and it certainly wasn’t Elysia.

He would come into the room with distraction hovering around him, his gaze wandering above and below and all around her, seldom straight to her. He questioned her about that day at the cove until she threw up her hands in exasperation: No, she really did not remember anything further. She had already told him everything she could recall at least thrice over, and she truly wished he would just leave her alone!

That, of course, was not what she wished at all, but it was too late to take it back. She watched as he turned away from her again, frozen silence.

Last night, late, late into the night, as he had held her in the bed, he had begun to kiss her slowly, with drowsy warmth, cupping her chin with his fingers, holding her still for each slumbrous kiss, waking that fire in her that lived for him. She had turned into him, enraptured by his touch, the way his leg slid over both of hers, hooking behind her knees to pull her closer to him.

He was heated and solid, a fragment of a dream made suddenly
real for her, that he was kissing her again, that he was leaning over her with mounting intensity, an increasing purpose to the pressure of his mouth against her, his hands skimming her breasts.

She had arched into him, wanting more, knowing now what would come after and wanting even that, the pain through the enchantment. He moved down to take her nipple in his mouth through the cloth of her gown and she had tilted her head back and given a soft cry of pleasure.

And then he had stopped.

As if the sound of her voice had shattered the dream, he had stopped, lifting his head, staring down at her as if he had never seen her before, faintly puzzled. She stared back at him, her breath coming in staccato bursts, unwilling to believe that the moment had ended. But it had.

Roland had shaken his head—an answer to some unspoken question in his own mind, perhaps—then released her, rolling over and onto his side, keeping a civil distance between them.

She was too proud to ask him to continue. And she was too miserable to forget everything she had felt with him. Eventually, after a long night of stifling stillness beside him, she had fallen asleep once more.

It had been this morning that he had ordered in that remote voice that she should not yet attempt to leave the bed, right before he left the room, gone for the day to whatever he pursued out there, in the normal world. If anything on this island could be called normal.

Marla, who was there at the time, merely looked down at Kyla and shrugged.

So, this afternoon when she lay in the bed and stared in frustration for the thousandth or millionth time at the wall across from her, counting seashells, Elysia had come and patted her on the hand and said that Eleanor had told her that Auntie wanted to have an adventure just now. She then whispered an invitation to join her band of outlaws behind the walls of the castle.

And Matilda, on the blind girls other side, mentioned
quite nonchalantly that the armoire didn’t look nearly so big as she had thought before. In her desire to do something—anything!—Kyla had to agree.

Both she and Matilda had been wrong; it took her a good half hour just to shift the armoire the few inches she needed. But now it was done.

“Auntie?” Elysia’s voice was thin and spectral, floating out of the blackness.

“Yes,” Kyla replied, low. “I’m coming in now.”

She gathered her skirts and squeezed behind the wood backing of the wardrobe, realizing that if—when—the next person came into the room it would be the first thing they would notice amiss. Fine. Let them wonder. She wasn’t actually running away. In fact, she technically wasn’t even going to be by herself; so there, that was at least one of her husband’s irrational edicts she would manage to meet.

She made it through the opening in the wall and almost fell on top of her rescuers, both of them standing too close as she popped through.

All three of them collapsed against the farthest wall a few feet away and then burst into smothered giggles.

“Let’s go,” said Matilda.

The thin flame from a tarnished brazier lit the narrow, crawling path of the tunnel, held aloft by Matilda with practiced ease. Elysia took Kyla’s hand.

“I’ll guide you,” she said.

The stones were cold to the touch, the ones making up the top of the tunnel blackened with years of soot from torches. Yet there were no cobwebs, no dust. Of course not, Kyla realized. The tunnels appeared to be in full use.

In fact, she could almost make out the sound of voices up ahead, adult voices, echoing against the stones.

Elysia and Matilda heard them as well, pausing uncertainly. “Urn, this way,” said Matilda, taking a sudden turn.

The walls got, if possible, even closer, forcing Kyla to walk with a stoop so as not to hit her head. The smell was damp and musty; beyond the light from the lamp there was infinite
darkness. The children seemed completely unafraid, both still smiling, Matilda often turning around and checking to make sure she was still enjoying the adventure.

“Where are we going?” Kyla finally felt forced to ask, after the fifth turnoff into the bowels of the castle.

“To the nursery, of course,” Elysia responded. “Almost there.”

They still heard voices, but now they were muffled, not echoing; they were coming from beyond the walls. A man and a woman, the woman bursting into laughter; a chorus of women, teasing one another over someone called either Hamish or Hamlet. Men, arguing. They said her name.…