The Captive Bride. Susan Paul Spencer
door.
Breathing hard, he took in the sight before him. It was exactly as Clarise had described it. There were clothes everywhere. Fine clothes, and shoes, too, as if the women had been in far too much of a hurry to hide their escape.
“Where could they have gone?”Aric said, surveying the chamber through steely eyes.
“They can’t have left the castle,”Kayne muttered. “There were guards at every door. It would have been impossible for that many women to slip out And certainly not Lady Katharine, with her great beauty. There is no place where she might go unnoticed.”
Senet walked slowly across the room, to a tapestry that covered one wall. Reaching up with both hands, he yanked the elegant cloth from the wall, exposing the hidden door.
“Lomas is ridden with tunnels, secret and mazelike,”he said in a low voice. “She must have forgotten that I know this castle far better than she, or anyone else, could.”He turned to look at his friends. “Tell Sir Alain to get the horses and men ready, Aric.”A hard, grim smile that they knew well formed on his lips. “We’re going hunting.”
The Bull and Dog was, to Katharine’s mind, a thotoughly sorry refuge, but it was likely the only roof they’d be able to buy to cover their heads for the night. She’d paid the innkeeper dearly to give them the lone private room the dwelling possessed, as well as to put a guard over their horses until morning. It was small comfort set against the smells and vulgar sounds the inn’s patrons filled the place with, but it was better than sleeping in the rain, which had begun to pour an hour earlier.
In the filthy, tiny chamber that the inn’s only whore had vacated for their use, Katharine and her ladies sat on a single pallet and tried mightily to eat, but the greasy stew the innkeeper’s wife had brought them was difficult to identify and harder to stomach.
“Is it squirrel, perhaps?”Magan asked, lifting out of her bowl a hunk of something that still had hair on it.
“Let us pray that it is,”Dorothea replied. “Squirrel would be far preferable to what I think it is.”
Ariette let out a sudden scream and threw her bowl across the room, splaying the contents across the wall and floor.
“What in the name of all heaven—!”Katharine was across the room at once, peering at the discarded bowl and its spilled contents in the dim candlelight light before lifting a foot to squash what was crawling about among the stew’s other, more lifeless ingredients.
“I’m sorry!”Ariette cried, clutching her cloak tightly about herself. “It was moving.”
“’Twas only a roach,”Katharine said calmly, returning to sit beside the other women. “I’ve killed it, though God knows what good it will do us. The room is crawling with them. And other vermin.”
Exchanging glances, Magan and Dorothea put their bowls aside and discreetly scooted away from them.
Katharine set her hands on her indrawn knees and leaned her head against the wall. “How weary I am,”she murmured. “I realize this is no fine place, but at least we are dry, and so are the horses.”
“Yes,”Magan said, “we must be thankful for that.”
“Yes,”Ariette agreed quietly, without enthusiasm. “Although ‘tis cold in here as it is out of doors.”
“We’ll be fortunate if those leering brutes in the tavern don’t come bursting in all together, intent upon the most lecherous sort of evil,”Dorothea said. “They were loud enough in their thoughts when we entered this place.”
“Oh, my lady, will they?”Magan asked with open fear. “They did seem so very rough and crude.”
“If they do,”Katharine said from behind hands that rubbed at her face, “we’ll fend them off. You have your daggers, do you not? Don’t hesitate. to make use of them, for I assure you I’ll have mine well blooded before one of the wretches can so much as set a finger to me. And if they do attempt to enter this chamber, ‘twill be for our gold, most like, rather than our persons.”
“That is even worse,”Dorothea said dryly. “We need our gold far more dearly than we need our virtue. If we’re to make our way without starving to death,”she added when her companions looked at her.
“I think this a complete madness,”Ariette stated, drawing her cloak still more about her. “We’ll never find Kieran FitzAllen, and if Sir Senet should find us.”She left the dire thought unfinished.
“We will find Kieran,”Katharine said insistently. “If not us, then the messenger who left Lomas will do so, and then Kie will come looking for us. Somehow we’ll come across each other. It must be so.”
“You try to convince yourself, my lady,”Dorothea said, “but if Sir Senet finds us first, we’ll be fortunate to live through the beatings we’ll be given.”
“I know,”Katharine admitted morosely. The idea of running away from Lomas had seemed such a good one earlier, in the light of day and in the face of her fury at Senet Gaillard, but now, sitting in this dank hovel with the prospect of a long and sleepless night looming ahead—and a longer, difficult journey, as well—it wasn’t quite so appealing. “But that son of a traitor—that usurper—will not find us so easily. The feast will delay him from discovering that we’ve gone, and the rainthank a merciful God for it—will wash away the tracks we’ve made.”
Dorothea shook her head. “That won’t stop a man like Senet Gaillard.”
Katharine thought of the man, of his ice—blue eyes and black hair. Of the hard face that had been without emotion after the victory he’d won at Lomas.
“No,”she said softly, “I cannot think it will. I admit that my scheme to get away from him is perhaps a foolish one. I should never have let you all come with me.”
“We would never have let you go alone,”Ariette told her.
“Oh, no, dear lady,”Magan agreed. “How could we forsake you in such a desperate time? I do not care what Sir Senet may do to us. Truly.”
Poor little Magan, Katharine thought with affection, setting an arm about the trembling girl’s shoulders. She was far too young for such a frightening adventure.
“But I care, Magan,”she said. “And if, may God forbid it, he should find us, you must be obedient to his command and let me draw his wrath down upon my own head.”
“No,”Dorothea said firmly. “We are not such poor friends as to desert you.”
“’Tis not right, Doro, for any of you to suffer for my sake. I am older and stronger, and the lady of Lomas, besides. You will do as I say and let me handle Senet Gaillard in my own manner. I do not ask it. I command it. But we will have no worry for that now. Let us rest as we may this night and pray that our journey to discover Kieran FitzAllen finds success.”
They huddled together, sitting upon the pallet with their backs against the wall, and fell silent, not daring to lie down for fear of the vermin that crawled about the place. The loud din made by the patrons in the tavern continued unabated for hours, eventually lulling them to sleep. Katharine struggled to remain awake, to make some kind of guard for them against intrusion, but exhaustion overtook her and she drifted into uneasy dreams of Lomas, and of cold blue eyes in a hard, starkly handsome face.
His voice brought her awake with a start and a gasp. She flung her head up too quickly, striking the mortared wall and sending a shock of pain all the way down to her sleep—numbed toes.
“Search the tavern.”The command was loud against the clattering of boots and swords, of tables being overturned and dishes breaking on the floor.
It was yet dark outside, and so cold that Katharine’s skin burned with it. The lone candle that had earlier given them light had long since burned to naught, but the moment the door was flung open they would be discovered.
“Up!”she