Claire Delacroix (23 page)

I restrained myself with an effort, well aware of Gawain silently stalking me. He exuded exasperation and I feared his thoughts alone would wake those around me.

One man snored and rolled over, flinging his hand across the floor before me. I halted, heart hammering, fearing he was not truly asleep and meant to seize my ankle. A dog rose and shook itself, regarded us with disinterest, then trod circles in the rushes and went back to sleep with a sigh. The man slumbered even as I stepped carefully over his arm.

The sky had lightened and I knew I had not much time. Fiona was not in the hall. I glanced up the stairs, wondering whether she had been so bold as to take my own bed. She had made comments aplenty over the years as to the softness of its mattresses, always compared with the meanness of her straw pallet.

And why not? Who would halt her?

“No,” Gawain whispered urgently, evidently guessing my intent. I felt him snatch at my wrist, but I was gone, dashing up the stairs as quickly and quietly as I could.

I dared to glance back from the summit, and found him fast behind me, eyes flashing with rare anger. He caught me against him from behind and hustled me through the doorway at the top of the stairs, his words against my ear.

“Would you prefer to die?” he demanded. His arms were tight around my waist and we huddled together in the shadows pooled in the corridor. “I cannot believe you are so witless as to not understand the peril of our situation. There will be prices upon our heads as soon as our escape is discovered.”

“I must have the crucifix,” I repeated stubbornly. “I know Fiona will have it and I would wager that she has claimed my bed, too. If she wears the gem, you will have a challenge to steal it.”

“Ah.” Gawain smiled at the prospect, his eyes bright, then held up a finger to caution me.

We stood motionless for what seemed an eternity. Gawain left me, my back chilling with his absence, and moved with silent grace to the portal of what had been Fergus’ solar. He listened intently, then held up two fingers and made a gesture to indicate someone sleeping.

“Alasdair and Ranald?” I mouthed the words, guessing that Fergus’ brother and cousin would have taken his quarters.

Gawain shrugged, indicating with a lewd gesture that he guessed those two occupants to be men. I bit back my laughter and he winked at me.

He was across the hall at the portal to my former chamber in the blink of an eye. I was startled that he could move so quickly, then watched as his eyes narrowed.

He held up one finger, then indicated the occupant’s gender by cupping his hands before his chest.

Fiona. I wondered how he could be certain, then reasoned he had eavesdropped upon many a sleeper over the years. There might be a different timbre to breathing between genders, or simply a greater tendency to snore. I could not say.

But I believed him.

Gawain beckoned me with a flick of his finger, pointing disapprovingly to a floorboard I knew was inclined to squeak. That he remembered such a detail from his last visit impressed me until I realized it was part of his trade. I reached his side so silently that he gave my fingers an approving squeeze as our shadows melded together.

He opened the door as quietly as he had when I had awaited him in my bath. The hair on the back of my neck prickled in recollection of that meeting - and the night that followed - and I wondered whether he savored the sweetness of that memory. I glanced to his expression of concentration and guessed that I would never know.

I further surmised that that might be best. The truth might not please me, not in this case.

The shutters were open, letting the morning’s first light touch the room’s contents with pearly grey. Fiona slept upon her back in my bed, every pillow plumped beneath her head, her mouth open and her chin wobbling. We eased closer, like two malevolent fairies at the crib of a babe in an old tale, then leaned over her.

The amber crucifix glinted upon her chest. She had found a heavy but humble chain of some dull grey metal and used it to hang the jewel around her neck. Her fist was knotted around the lower arm of the cross, as if she guessed that some stalwart soul might covet her pilfered prize. The light danced in the stones, taunting me to reclaim it.

I felt defeated, knowing that it could not be had without awakening Fiona but still not wanting to be without it. I reached out a hand, thinking that I could simply seize it and run for lack of a better plan.

Gawain restrained me with a touch and a disapproving look.

Truly, this was his art. I nodded and hovered closer to watch. He shook a finger in warning and gestured me back to the door, touching his ear so that I knew to listen for any arrivals.

I did as I was bidden, but still I watched him, fascinated.

He stood there, as motionless as a stature, for longer than I could have believed possible. His gaze darted over the room, over Fiona, as if he memorized every detail. He leaned over her, assessing the problem from all sides.

I nigh screamed with impatience. He was the one who counseled that we flee with all haste!

Just when I might have chided him, Gawain bent slowly and pursed his lips. I thought he meant to kiss Fiona, but instead he blew gently upon her cheek. She brushed at the first touch of air with her fingertips, releasing the crucifix as she did so and turning her face toward him. To my surprise, she smiled, perhaps greeting a lover in her dreams.

Then she locked her hand around the ornament again. I frowned in frustration, but Gawain was undeterred. He breathed her name, the sound so low that it seemed to come of another world. He blew again and Fiona’s smile broadened.

“Tarsuinn,” I whispered. Gawain granted me an enquiring glance. I clasped my hands together and tried to look like a besotted maiden dreaming of her lover true, then pointed to Fiona. “She adores Tarsuinn,” I mouthed.

He nodded once, then bent closer. “It is I, Tarsuinn, come to tryst with my lady love,” he whispered and Fiona smiled.

“Tarsuinn?” she mumbled.

“Yes, Tarsuinn.” He blew again, gently, his words a perfect whisper of desire. “Do not reject me, fair Fiona.”

Her fingers unfurled from the crucifix, then she tentatively reached a hand toward Gawain.

He gallantly kissed her fingertips.

Another gentle breath, another lover’s murmur, and Fiona sighed as she turned fully toward Gawain. She rolled from her back to her side, whispered Tarsuinn’s name. She tucked one hand beneath her cheek and left the other upon the mattress, as if she would whisper secrets to another sharing her pillow, then pursed her lips for a kiss.

I clapped my hand over my mouth at Gawain’s chagrined response.

Then I saw that her move had made the crucifix land upon the mattress, the chain coiled in the fold of flesh between her breasts.

Gawain did not look my way, so completely did he concentrate upon his task. He opened the purse that hung from his belt and removed two pieces of metal. I craned my neck to see. They were not quite awls and not quite nails from a horse’s shoe. Indeed, I would not have picked up either from the ground even if I spied them.

But evidently they were sharp upon the sides. He slipped one into a link of the chain, then pressed it together with the second, the link snapping between the two tools.

He bent to touch his lips to Fiona’s puckered mouth, whispering her name for good measure. As she arched toward him, he adeptly slipped the crucifix from the broken chain, increment by increment. He moved so slowly that I feared I would scream with the uncertainty.

“Tarsuinn!” Fiona’s noisy sigh of delight seemed to fill the chamber. My heart pounded so that I could hear nothing else.

Gawain did not appear to breathe, nor did he seem agitated. He moved as languidly as if he had all the time in Christendom. His hands were steady as he coaxed the gem closer and closer to being entirely in his grasp.

It disappeared abruptly into his hand in the same moment that he stepped carefully away.

“Until later, my lady love,” he whispered and blew Fiona a kiss. He turned to me, eyes gleaming in his triumph. I stepped forward, so anxious to claim my prize that I forgot the loose floorboard between myself and the bed.

It groaned so loudly that we both froze in horror. For a moment, I thought it would pass unnoticed. Fiona frowned in her sleep and burrowed deeper into the covers. I dared to exhale in relief.

Then her hand moved to close upon the crucifix and my eyes widened in horror. Gawain glanced over the chamber in haste, and I knew he sought something of roughly the same size and shape to slip into her hand. He seized a small candlestick, but it was too late.

Fiona’s hand closed upon nothing. Her eyes flew open. Her shock was evident when she spied us, but she bellowed with alarming speed and volume.

“Thieves!” She bounded from the bed, and screamed loudly enough to wake Fergus himself. “Thieves, scoundrels, and criminals! The murderers have escaped!”

Then she screamed fit to shatter glass.

* * *

The door of Fergus’ chamber banged upon the wall of the corridor and boots thundered upon the stairs. Fiona screamed and screamed.

“Fool woman,” I muttered.

Gawain winked at me, such a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that I knew he enjoyed the challenge before us. We lunged as one for the connected door to the last chamber on this level of the keep. We barricaded it behind us, dropping the latch, then slid the sole trunk in the room against it. I was breathless, but Gawain surveyed the small chamber.

The men burst audibly into the room behind us. The sounds of shouting and stamping and a woman raging carried easily through the door. I had a fleeting hope that we might make the stairs while the men were occupied with Fiona and reached for the door to the corridor.

“No,” Gawain said in a tone that told me it was pointless to argue the matter. He tightened his grip upon my hand and kicked open the shutters over the window.

I recalled all too well that he had once been cast through this very opening, and at my command. The lake glistened far below, looking cold and deep.

Was this his vengeance?

“No!” I cried, pulling back and fighting his grip.

Gawain released me readily. He stepped to the lip of the chamber and balanced on the balls of his feet, unafraid as he assessed the drop before him. The green forest canopy stretched into the distance, uncommonly vivid in first leaf of spring. He glanced back and the light of the dawn touched his features with silver.

He might have been of the fey, gifted with the ability to fly.

Gawain offered his hand to me without a word. He proposed that we leap together. He would not cast me into the abyss alone. But still, I quailed with fear.

“There must be another way.” Even as I said the words, I knew my hope was not to be. Blows hammered on the wooden door behind us, then footsteps sounded in the corridor.

We were surrounded.

Gawain’s gaze flicked to the lake once again, impatience touching his expression. “Now!”

“But…” The door began to splinter behind me. I caught a glimpse of Alasdair’s fury through a widening crack and my heart nigh stopped.

I would never leave this room alive, if we did not flee.

I leapt toward Gawain as the men kicked the door with unexpected strength. His arm locked around my waist in the same moment that he stepped off into the void. The men burst into the chamber with a shout and Alasdair snatched at the air behind us.

Gawain spared Alasdair a jaunty wave of farewell.

I could not have cared. I screamed with terror as we fell, my arms locked around Gawain’s neck. We fell and fell and fell, certainly to a fate far worse than the one that might have met us above. I knew we would perish immediately, rather than sometime this day. I screamed with all my might, screamed with the vigor of what was certainly my last breath.

* * *

XII

It was only when the cold water closed over us that I realized Gawain had been laughing as we fell. I was outraged by his cavalier manner.

I was more indignant that, not only did I not die, I was utterly graceless in the cold water. I began to sink, despite my struggles to reach the surface. To my relief and disgust, Gawain seized me by the back of my chemise - much as one would seize a wet cat - and hauled me toward the light.

I came up sputtering, cold, embarrassed and flustered. I spied the merry sparkle in his eyes and could have spit sparks.

“Do not laugh at me!” I huffed. “There is nothing amusing about our predicament!”

“Trust me, it is easier the second time,” Gawain asserted with disgusting composure. His arms moved powerfully beneath the surface of the water and kept him afloat. His hair was dark gold, slicked back against his head, and he looked so at ease that he might have preferred to be in such a dilemma.

That was the sum of what I saw before I slipped under the water again. I fought for my survival and came up, gulping for air and probably looking like a landed fish as I did so. I took a great swallow of lake water for my trouble and nigh coughed up my innards trying to take a simple breath. In the meantime, I sank lower again, despite my wild attempts to keep my face above water.