My Ruthless Prince (3 page)

She cursed herself for the haze of desire he cast over her, for her beloved spy was only putting on a show to deceive the others.
Don't get so excited,
she told herself. This was just a ruse.

After all, it had long been established that the wild rogue Inferno Club member Lord Westwood would happily dally with any woman in England.

Except for her.

She huffed and looked away, blushing. Half of her wanted to throttle him for thwarting her perfectly sensible plan to get him out of here, while the other half wanted these onlookers to leave so the two of them could finish the game they had just started, right here on the soft forest floor.

Her pulse raced as he held her against his muscled body. No wonder the men appeared to believe their charade.

She could feel Drake's heart pounding in response to her, as well, and the thickening swell of his nether regions against her navel.

"I was beginning to think he didn't like women," one of the soldiers muttered.

"No, he just likes the wrong women," Emily tossed out with a cheeky sideward glance. "Mind your own business, anyway. I didn't come here for you."

"Oho! She told
you
!"

The men guffawed at her impertinence.

"I wish," another opined under his breath.

She dismissed them with a queenly toss of her head while Drake watched her with a serene smile. She returned her full attention to him, running her hand up his chest in playful chiding. "As for you, sir, if you didn't want me to come, you should've been more convincing in your good-bye. It was quite halfhearted, as I recall."

Drake laughed softly and captured her chin, lifting her face to his. "Well, you're here now, you cheeky little minx, so you might as well come in. I'm sure I can find a few uses for you when I get off duty."

"What do you mean to do with her,
Capitaine
?" the weathered fellow clipped out in a businesslike tone.

"Good God, Jacques, use your imagination," he retorted with a scoff. "And you call yourself a Frenchman."

The others laughed.

"That's not what I meant, as you well know," Jacques answered impatiently. "What is Falkirk going to say about this?"

Drake shrugged, sliding his arm more snugly around Emily's waist as he inspected her curves at closer range. "Nothing, likely. Whatever modest amenities I require for my personal comfort are of no interest to the Council."

"Well, you had better ask him. He's the one who pays us, not you."

"True. But I'm the one who hired you sorry bastards. And I can get rid of you just as easily, don't forget it. Falkirk would not have made me the head of his security if he did not trust my discretion. Besides, she won't be any trouble, will you, sugarplum?" With an indulgent half smile, he tapped her fondly on the nose. "You promise to be a good girl for me?"

Emily managed an obliging smile, but the look in her eyes was a glare.
Now you're pushing your luck.
"Aye, milord."

"See? She's very obedient." He was deliberately goading her.

Just you wait.

"She'll stay out of the way, so don't you mind her. She'll share my room," Drake added. "That way she'll be close to hand whenever I have need of her."

Her pulse raced at the heated promise in his eyes.

But then, one of the younger soldiers made the mistake of an ill-timed jest. "Eh, I have a few tasks in mind the chit could do for me when you're done with her,
Capitaine.
"

"
Ja,
why don't you pass her around when you're through?" a tall, strapping German rumbled with a grin.

All humor vanishing, Drake slowly turned to the mercenaries, his stare icy. "What did you say?"

The feckless French lad started to repeat himself, but the older, leathery Jacques held up his arm. "Shut up, Gustave."

Gustave looked confused. "What? Ah, come, she's just a servant."

"
My
servant. My property." Drake said something to them in French that immediately silenced their jokes and wilted their wolfish grins.

Emily did not understand the words, but Drake's murderous snarl was that of the pack's dominant male warning his underlings away from a choice piece of meat. His tone of voice matched the bristling tension in his body, and his hand drifted down to the weapon at his side, as if he was quite prepared to back up the verbal rebuke with any degree of violence necessary.

She had also tensed, rather frightened. She lowered her head.

"
Comprenez?
" he barked.

The men mumbled in assent, shrinking from the challenge.

"Good." He returned to English so she could understand, too, and kept his arm around her shoulders, a visible declaration of his protection--and apparent ownership. "Then let's get back to the castle. Return to your posts and stay alert. Next time, it might not be a false alarm."

The chastened men mumbled agreement, following the second-in-command, Jacques, out of the grove.

Furtively, Emily sent her fierce protector an anxious glance. He was still in a bristling stance as he watched them walk ahead, indeed, he was watching their every move.

When he relaxed slightly, he looked down at her with an inquiry in his dark eyes.
You all right?

She nodded, but then glanced toward the fortress in distress.
To the castle, really? Must we?

You only have yourself to thank,
his dark smirk replied, but his eyes were grim. "Come on." He kept his arm draped across her shoulders, emphasizing his proprietary claim on her to the other soldiers, who caught up with them as they came back out onto the dusty mountain road.

Glancing around at all the armed mercenaries cowering from Drake, Emily saw no choice but to go along with the charade. He was clearly all that stood between her and an unspeakable fate.

Perhaps you should have thought of that earlier,
she chided herself, her emotions in an angry tumult at this unexpected turn of events. She was furious at him for thwarting her rescue plan, and, besides that, her pride still smarted from his rude reminder of her lower status.

Well, she might be a servant, but she was nobody's "wench." How depressing, that after a lifetime's daydreams, her idol had only kissed her at last for the sake of a ruse.

Her frustration climbed with every step they took up the winding road toward the Promethean stronghold.
Blast it, this was not supposed to happen!
She had not tracked him for hundreds of miles and crossed the Alps to join the madman in whatever game he was playing.

If it was a game.

A chill ran down her spine at the darkest possibility, the one she'd been refusing to consider.

Maybe he
hadn't
come for revenge.

Dread gripped her at the thought, but could it be possible that old James Falkirk really
had
succeeded in turning him, as Drake's fellow agents feared?

After all the years that Drake had devoted himself to the Order, it seemed completely counter to reason. But the mind was a mysterious thing, and for a time, the wounded Earl of Westwood had forgotten everything, even who he was.

If the Prometheans could do
that
to him, why
couldn't
they persuade him to renounce his old life and join their dark cult?

Maybe the months of torture had broken him so deeply inside that the Drake she knew and loved was truly gone, replaced by someone else, as he had tried to warn her back in England. A mindless slave with all the lethal skills of a top Order agent. Someone willing to do the enemy's bidding without hesitation.

Someone evil.

Emily looked askance at him . . . and wondered.

Chapter 2

V
ery much on guard, Emily determined to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut until she had a better idea of what was going on around here, and where Drake's loyalties actually lay at the moment.

Waldfort Castle loomed ahead, its stone bulk rising through the trees. Its mighty footprint in the mountainous terrain formed an uneven quadrangle with pointed turrets at the irregular corners.

Dark gray roofs topped timeworn walls hewn from rugged, golden brown stone. It had a center tower that was square-shaped halfway up its length, but a second cylindrical layer on top of it extended even farther skyward. The keep's many narrow mullioned windows glittered in the sun.

Below the castle, green woods embraced the walls; behind it, white mountains, and above it, blue skies. It did not look at all like a place where sinister things could happen.

But looks could be deceiving.

As they approached the gatehouse, Emily noted the coat of arms engraved atop the barrel vault at the entrance to the bristling fortress. The hairs on her nape stood on end when she saw the torch symbol in the center of the crest--a favorite insignia of the Prometheans, as Drake had told her long ago.

Her heart thumped as she walked by his side under the spiked portcullis and through the opening in the castle's massive outer shield wall.

Once inside the fortifications, they passed through a smaller gate in yet another defensive wall.

Emily held her head high though her stomach was in knots. Drake's presence beside her helped her keep up a confident facade, but at the moment, even he seemed like a stranger. Maybe all this had been a very bad idea. But it was far too late to turn back as she was escorted into an arcaded courtyard at the heart of the mighty keep.

Drake kept a steadying hand on the small of her back. But with the other guards around them, he still avoided eye contact with her, staring straight ahead, his chin high. Something about the set of his broad shoulders warned her he was prepared to fight if it came to it.
God.
The last thing he needed for the sake of his dubious sanity was to engage in more violence. In the heart of the Promethean stronghold, however, with guards on every side of them, she realized that what he had said earlier was true--one wrong move, and they both could die.

What on earth was he thinking, coming into the lion's den like this? Why would they even accept him?

How far had he gone to win their trust?

"This way," he urged her, escorting her across the inner courtyard, a steadying hand pressed against her back.

Most of the guards parted ways with them there, splitting up to return to their various posts. Jacques and two others escorted them into the castle proper.

As soon as they stepped inside, Emily faltered, taken aback by a sudden indescribable sensation--a wordless, welling dread--as if she had just walked through an invisible wall of evil upon entering this place.

Gooseflesh rose on her arms at the eerie atmosphere inside the castle, the strange, faint odor on the air.

The smell of death, corruption . . .

"Come along," Drake murmured.

If he noticed her instinctual revulsion, like a horse balking before a road where danger lurked that the rider could not see, he gave no sign.

She told herself she was being silly. The sudden drop in temperature was merely the result of their having passed into the cooler shadow of the building.

Yet the kindly German peasants in the outlying farms had warned her not to come here when she had stopped to buy supplies and ask for information. She had only picked up a few basic words in their tongue along the way, but from their gestures, their hasty signs of the Cross, and the grim shaking of their heads, she gathered that the locals considered Waldfort Castle cursed. "
Nein, fraulein.
Do not go there.
Sehr gefahrlich.
"

Very dangerous.

But for her loyalty to Drake, here she was. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and walked in.

On the ground floor, the first area they entered was the Guards' Hall, a vast, vaulted dining room, long and narrow, with giant fireplaces on both ends; it had a stone floor, whitewashed walls, and massive columns joined by Gothic arches. There was not much furniture, just a long, dark table with plain wooden chairs around it.

They marched through it and out the other side, entering a more richly adorned corridor.

Suddenly, a white door opened ahead.

From between the two guards ahead of her, Emily spied a lean, distinguished gentleman, who appeared to be in his sixties, emerging from the room. He pulled the door shut quietly behind him and came toward them, slight of build and elegantly dressed, with patrician features and a shock of pewter hair. Yet as he approached, Emily was struck by the thought that there was something oddly reptilian about his bony face and cold, gray eyes.

"Did you capture the intruder?" he asked Drake at once. As soon as he spoke, she recognized him as a fellow Englishman by the touch of Yorkshire in his accent. "Was it someone from the Order?" he added.

"Er, not exactly, sir." Drake nodded wryly to the guards to step aside.

They parted, revealing Emily in their midst.

"Well." As the old man's shrewd, penetrating gaze narrowed in on her, Emily realized this was the infamous James Falkirk.

Drake's supposed savior.

The Promethean magnate was the one who had finally ordered Drake freed from the dungeons, not out of any particular concern for his well-being, of course, but merely as a change in tactics, since the brutal daily beatings weren't producing the desired results.

When the others had failed to break the captured agent through cruelty, Falkirk had hoped to manipulate Drake through kindness instead, promising him protection from the torturers, winning his trust, all in an effort to turn him to the dark side.

Emily was not sure if she should regard the old man with gratitude or an even deeper hatred. True, Falkirk had probably saved his life, but Drake's confusion about whose side he was on at present--his loss, essentially, of himself--was due to this old schemer and his mind games.

Falkirk's cold stare probed her. "And who might this be?"

Drake cleared his throat slightly. "This is the girl I told you about, sir."

Falkirk arched a silvery brow at him. "Indeed?" He dismissed Jacques and the others with a glance.

They bowed briefly and retreated, leaving the three of them alone. Emily waited tensely, ready to follow Drake's lead, as before.

"Do you remember in London, sir, when we were confronted outside the Pulteney Hotel? She was the one who threw the rock at that Order agent who held us at gunpoint and tried to stop us from escaping."

"Ah, yes, your little servant girl." Falkirk turned back to stare at Emily in amazement. "You mean to say this slip of a girl followed you all the way from London?"

Emily pressed her lips together. She did not like being discussed like a piece of furniture.

"Even when we were young, her survival skills were impressive, sir. Her father was the woodsman at my estate. He taught her how to track animals, how to live off the land. That's how she found us."

"All the way from England . . . for love of you?" Falkirk chuckled softly as he scanned her in surprise. "It's a long way to go for a man you can't have, my dear."

His words were so casually cruel, he might as well have run her through. She dropped her gaze with a barely concealed wince. "I know my place, sir. I cannot help the way I feel. Besides, he needs me."

Drake cleared his throat slightly, studying the floor.

"When I was not yet twenty, the owner of a neighboring estate tried to rape the girl. I killed him to protect her. She's been devoted to me ever since."

"Hmm." Falkirk nodded slowly.

Emily stared at the ground, shocked to her core that he had just told Falkirk that.

But it seemed the old man would not be satisfied by anything less than the truth. "I see. So, you love him, do you?"

Emily lifted her chin and met his stare in shock.

Falkirk waited.

She could not bear to glance at Drake. "Yes, sir."

"And does he love you?"

"No, sir. That would not be fitting," she said barely audibly.

"But you share his bed?" He folded his arms across his chest, studying her.

Emily cringed at his interrogation, momentarily tongue-tied, for Drake had never touched her until moments ago, down in the forest. But this was the story they were telling, and the tension she felt emanating from his big body reminded her to stick to it. "Rich girls can afford to keep their morals, I suppose," she forced out obliquely.

Falkirk smiled at last in cynical approval. "That they can," he said indulgently, apparently quite entertained. "What is your name, then?"

"Emily Harper, sir."

"Hmm. Well, you've proved yourself to me already, as I recall. Back in London, it was you who allowed us to get away when that Order agent had us at gunpoint."

"He was going to kill my lord," she murmured with a nod at Drake.

"So, you saved him, and that allowed him to save me, in turn," Falkirk said. "I'm in your debt."

Emily bowed her head.

The old man appeared to accept their explanation for her arrival. Drake spoke up to make sure of it. "I hope you do not mind, sir. I did not foresee her following me, but it isn't safe to send her back alone."

"No, of course not." He shrugged. "You are entitled to a servant if you wish. I'm just a bit puzzled, is all." Falkirk studied him, intrigued. "We offered you a woman before, a thorough voluptuary, but you wanted no part of her or her courtesan's tricks."

Drake dropped his gaze. "No, sir."

"Now I see why. A proper whore isn't quite to your taste. You prefer something a little more . . . innocent. Really, Westwood, dallying with the servants," the old man murmured in amusement, baiting him like a soft-voiced Satan. "I wouldn't have taken you for the type."

Drake smiled almost intimately at him. "We all have our vices, sir. Besides, she's not as innocent as she looks."

Falkirk's lips twisted. "Very well, then. If you are sure she can be trusted. The stakes couldn't be higher, as you know."

"Absolutely."

"Well, have at it, then, if that is your preference. She is pretty enough, I'll grant you that. Fetching creature, underneath all that dust. Clean yourself up, girl. And then look after my head of security well. You may be just what he needs."

"With pleasure, milord." Emily moved closer to Drake.

Falkirk looked warily from one to the other, then dismissed them both with a nod, returning to the room from which he'd come. When the door opened, she glimpsed a richly decorated dining room; a number of older gentlemen were sitting around the table though no food was served.

Some sort of meeting appeared to be in progress.

Then the door closed, and Drake touched her elbow, nodding to her with a cautioning look to go with him.

Emily followed, letting out a low sigh of relief that at least they had cleared that hurdle.

They walked on, but her mind replayed the scene she had just witnessed. Now that she had seen Drake and Falkirk together, she was even more confused about what was going on. Obviously, Falkirk had saved Drake's life by getting him out of the dungeon, but the Order knew that Drake had saved Falkirk's life, in turn.

As the second most powerful of all the Prometheans, James Falkirk had many enemies; but he was a scholar, not a warrior, and in the increasing frailty of his years, he had to rely on younger men for his security.

That was where Drake came in.

After Falkirk had removed the broken Order agent from the dungeon, Drake had become so gratefully devoted to him that, with his warrior skills, he had ended up saving Falkirk's neck on numerous occasions.

An odd bond seemed to have formed between them over the past year or so that all of this had been going on.

Frankly, Emily was amazed at how much influence Drake now seemed to have over the old schemer. Falkirk certainly appeared to trust him. Maybe they really were that close.

Or maybe Drake had played a few mind games of his own on his supposed master.

She could not wait until they were alone so she could ask him about that, and a great deal more.

Going deeper into the castle, she saw that while the Guards' Hall had been left very much in its rugged medieval state, the main floor and the owners' residential quarters had been luxuriously refurbished in the flowery rococo style of the previous century.

They passed grand saloons full of gilding and candy-colored pastels, claw-footed furniture with velvet upholstery, ornate chandeliers, and gleaming white chimneypieces. But the opulence of the State Rooms only sharpened her sense of something evil dwelling within.

At the end of the central hallway, Drake led her up a grand staircase. They bypassed the second and third floors, but on the fourth, they left the stairs and proceeded down a simple hallway where the decor once more abandoned Baroque profusion in favor of the older, plainer style: strong, rustic, German simplicity.