Linda Barlow (43 page)

Where was Alan now? No doubt he'd been flung into a worse prison than this one, she thought as she walked across the luxurious bedchamber and flung the curtain back from the large diamond-paned window. It was dark outside. The hour was past midnight, she estimated.

Throwing open the window, she looked out over the roofs of London, trying to get her bearings. She didn't know the city well enough to pinpoint her location, but the surrounding buildings were stately and elegant, and she thought she could smell the river. She turned back for another look around the ornate bedchamber, decorated with finely embroidered wall hangings, a silken bed canopy, and several Venetian-glass mirrors mounted at eye level. It was a flamboyant room, thoroughly in keeping with Geoffrey's character. His room, clearly. She gasped as it sank in that she was probably inside the official residence of the diplomats from France. The gall of the man! Torturing and raping one of the queen's ladies within the confines of the French residence. Attempting to rape, she corrected herself.

One who cannot, one who will not, one who dares not, one who dies. Geoffrey de Montreau, to her immense relief, had turned out to be the first. So far, at least. No doubt he'd be back to try to prove that the desperate last-minute witch's spells against his potency were not going to work twice, and that despite her insults, he was capable of sexual relations with women.

She shuddered once again at the thought of Geoffrey returning to finish what he'd started. His kisses and caresses had filled her with revulsion. How strange that the same acts that with one man could be so tender and passionate should, with another, be the source of nothing but disgust.

"I am going to vomit," she had informed him, as she had once told Roger. This time it was no lie, as he must have recognized from the expression on her face. Furious, he had left her, frustrated and clearly disconcerted because his enthusiasm had been insufficient to carry out his intent.

"I grant you respite then, mademoiselle, but I advise you to learn quickly how to control your stomach, and your manners."

"My manners? In no conduct book is it set down that a woman must be courteous to her rapist!"

Geoffrey had stalked out without troubling to reply, locking the door behind him with a loud scrape of iron keys.

The memory of that sound set her thinking about escape. Although the door was secured, the window was not. She stuck her head out. Her prison was three stories off the ground, but there were windows aplenty, and they all appeared to have wide ledges.

A heady excitement seized her. Was it possible? It had been a while since she had attempted any feats of climbing, but back at Westmor she'd been undaunted by trees, roofs, towers, castle walls. Leaning out farther, she considered the problems. There was a ledge to her left, about six feet down; and just below it, the top of a second-story window. If she could reach that, lower herself down to the sill, then attempt the same maneuver on a first-story window, she could escape. Provided nobody saw what she was doing.

There was a light in one of the second-story windows to her right, but the left side of the house was dark. She took a deep breath, experimentally raising her arms over her head. They hurt, but they had not yet stiffened. Tomorrow she would probably be unable to use them. But that didn't matter. By tomorrow it would all be over, anyway.

There was really no choice. If she wanted to save Roger and his heretics, she had to make it down this wall. She yanked a cord from the bed hangings and used it to bind up her skirts, pantaloon-style. Stripping the sheets and blankets off the bed, she wound them together to make a rope of sorts, one end of which she secured to the foot of Geoffrey's heavy bedstead. Then, with a breath and a prayer, she stepped out onto the ledge.

* * *

The black water flowed over the tops of Roger Trevor's boots, chilling his legs as he helped one after another of the frightened refugees onto the barge that would take them downriver to where the Argo awaited them. All was quiet at this hour on the river. There was no moon, which was a mercy. Deeds like this one were meant to be carried out in the dark.

"Hurry," Roger said to Francis, who was accompanying the last batch of fugitives. "There's room for everyone," he told a woman who was hesitating beside the barge. "Be quick. Your life depends upon your speed and silence."

The wind was sharp, so the water was rough; the passengers huddled together against the spray as Roger helped the oarsmen push off from the riverbank. So far everything had gone according to plan. He and Francis had shepherded their little group through the old passage used by his smuggler ancestors and reached the Thames at a spot where the river curved away from the main buildings of the city. The area was sheltered, frequented by no one except an occasional fisherman by day and a rare drunkard by night. Tonight it had been deserted; no one had witnessed their escape.

Standing well back in the stern, Roger seemed to be surveying his charges, but in fact he was taking stock of himself. His heart was beating strongly and steadily, but overly fast; a bad sign, he thought. In the past when he'd engaged in this sort of dangerous activity, he had always felt a certain elation combined with his apprehension, a joy at living his life so close to the line that divided security from recklessness. It was a feeling all adventuresome souls could recognize—the thrill of defying fate, of shaking one's fist at the gods. Tonight, however, Roger knew no elation; all he felt was weariness and dread.

He couldn't rid himself of the fear that Alix was in some sort of trouble. He had the uncanny sense that his mind was open to hers, and that his unease was somehow linked with hers. He had awoken abruptly from the short sleep he had tried to snatch after her departure, his body sweating, his ears ringing with what he would have sworn was her voice screaming in pain. It was only a nightmare, his rational self assured his emotional self. Alix was safe in her bed at Westminster. It was only because he knew now that he loved her that he was so unaccountably frightened about her welfare. Alix had proved on numerous occasions that she was capable of looking after herself.

Still, I shouldn't have let her go, he cursed himself. I should have stolen her away aboard the Argo, abandoning everything I'm supposed to be doing here in England. I should have abducted the vixen, made her mine forever. Damnation! Why did I let her leave?

"I don't like it," Francis had said when he returned after dark to begin the transfer of the refugees. "I thought we'd agreed to hold her for the night."

"And risk a search by Sir Charles Douglas? On further consideration, I had no choice but to send her back to her bed at Westminster. She'll not betray us."

"I don’t know why you’re so certain of that. She is Douglas' daughter, she waits upon the Queen, and she has been seen on several occasions tète a tète with de Montreau."

"Leave it, Francis. I trust her."

"If you prove wrong on this one, it will break you, I fear."

Roger raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

"There's something between you and that girl. I don't know why you bother to deny it. I think you're in love with her."

"You're imagining things."

"Am I?" There was a pause; then Francis asked the question he never asked about Roger's women: "Have you bedded her?"

"That's none of your concern. May we drop the subject, please?"

"You desire her, of that I have no doubt. But do you love her? Can you love her? What will become of her if you do?"

Roger was in no mood to have his feelings for Alix analyzed by Francis. Neither did he wish his friend to be so certain of the truth. In the most basic and direct terms, he feared Francis' jealousy. So far, the older man had ignored his various women, knowing perhaps that none of them had ever been closer in spirit to him than Francis was himself. But now that had changed. Now he would put her first, before anyone or anything. That was a fact he preferred Francis not know.

And so he said callously, "Your brain's rotting with all this talk of love. I'm fond of the chit, but I'm not in love with her. As for lusting after her, the thought has occasionally crossed my mind. She is female, after all. But I've no great yearning for a skinny, red-haired harridan in my bed."

Francis had dropped the matter then, but Roger sensed he hadn't convinced him. Now, huddling with his charges in the cold of a June night that felt more like chill October, Roger wished he had taken Alix to bed. Just once. He wanted to know what it would have been like to lie with a woman he truly cared for, a woman who loved him too, a woman with whom he felt at peace. Once, just once, in his life.

* * *

The climb down was easier than it had looked. Within ten minutes Alexandra was on the ground, her legs scratched and her hands scraped, her shoulder and thigh joints aching, but otherwise in fine spirits. Hands on hips, she looked back up at the wall she had scaled and congratulated herself. "So there, you scurvy blackguard," she said out loud, with an accompanying obscene gesture in the direction of Geoffrey's window.

A bark of laughter greeted her as she turned toward the cobbled streets. The bright light of a torch blinded her, and applause sounded in her ears.

"Bravo!" said the scurvy blackguard himself. "I thought for a few minutes that I might have to pick up the pieces."

Alexandra sagged against the stone wall of the house. Geoffrey and six horsemen surrounded her, all of them staring insolently at her hiked-up skirts. I will not cry, she reminded herself, only just managing to stop the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. Fortune was certainly working against her tonight.

"Come, amazing lady," said her nemesis, bending over, and with little apparent effort, lifting her up in front of him against the horse's neck. "Let me assist you, since you're obviously so determined to be in on the capture. We've just missed your lover at the quayside, but the wind is against him, and with swift horses we can ride to his rendezvous spot before he can make it by water. I've notified the queen's guard. He won’t get away."

"He will get away," she said, shivering as Geoffrey's arms came around her body. "Despite you, despite everything. And when her Grace learns what you've done to me, she'll have you disemboweled!"

"On the contrary, your mistress will reward me for having saved her from a vicious little witch who's in league with the heretics. I'm not the first person you've tried your diabolical hexes on, am I? 'Tis common knowledge that you've fed the queen your evil concoctions, pretending they had the power to restore her beauty. She'll be most distressed to learn that you were actually trying to poison her."

Alexandra opened her mouth to protest, then abruptly shut it again. Despite all that had happened tonight, she found she was too awestruck by this further evidence of Geoffrey's malice to be capable of uttering a word.

* * *

The Argo lay at anchor, a dark shadow against a dark sky. It had been a slow journey downriver. The stiff wind had buffeted the overcrowded barge almost to the point of foundering. But at last they had reached the agreed-upon meeting place on a stretch of deserted riverbank, where, Roger was thankful to see, the longboat awaited them. They couldn't all fit into the longboat, though. He and Francis quickly divided the passengers into two groups, sending the larger group, including mothers with young children, the sick, and the elderly, off first with two sturdy oarsmen rowing. The remainder of the bedraggled band huddled on the bank among the cover of a few shrubs and boulders, staring out across the foggy river and listening for the sound of the longboat returning.

It was not the first sound they heard.

"Horses," Francis said in a deceptively calm voice. "Somebody's coming."

Roger blasphemed, to the dismay of several of his more devout charges. "How many?" he asked as they both craned their necks to see.

"Five or six, maybe more."

There was the splash of an oar. The longboat had returned. "Hurry," Roger ordered. "With the fog, we might just have a chance. Get the rest of the people into the boat, Francis. I'll hold them off." He drew his sword from its scabbard. "Run!"

There was no time to think, no time even to be afraid. "Keep your heads down and jump into the boat," Francis directed the eight or nine souls who were left on the riverbank. "The oarsmen will row you to the ship and to freedom." His tone was bracing, his face grim as, with sword drawn, he took up a position a few yards from Roger, poised to fend off their attackers. The dissidents were already running.

"Go with them. They need you."

"And leave you? Never."

"Francis, for the love of God—"

"Don't argue. Even you, my friend, might find it difficult to deal with five or six armed men. But between the two of us, we'll easily manage it."

Roger laughed with the strange euphoria that sometimes came just before battle. "We will, I think, at that," he said, and then the riders were upon them.

Chapter 24