Princess Annie (33 page)

With a reluctance Annie knew went soul deep, Rafael raised a hand to signal his men, and they trained their rifles on the rebels and began to shoot. The men on the drawbridge never even got off one round of cannon fire before they were driven into retreat.

Annie felt sick, thinking of the bodies that were surely lying at the castle gates, and her knees buckled. Kathleen, ever-ready to lend a hand, took her arm and ushered her away toward the chapel.

“Come along, miss,” she commanded, in a brisk whisper. “We’re only in the way out here, and there are still those who need us inside.”

It was true. The chapel was packed with moaning, dehydrated villagers, and the few servants who were willing or able to help with the nursing were skittish with fear. Everyone was well aware that there would be other onslaughts, and even the sick clutched at Annie’s skirts and wrists and begged to be hidden from the invaders.

She crouched beside one old man, who lay fretting on a pallet in the corner, to bathe his gaunt and grizzled face with cool water. “Hush,” Annie admonished gently. “No one is going to hurt you. The walls of St. James Keep are thick.” She remembered the secret gate and pushed the thought out of her mind again as the elderly peasant fretted. “You’re safe here,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re inside—the rebels are—they’re in the walls and under the floors—”

Delirium, Annie thought. She offered up a silent prayer that the fever wasn’t taking on new dimensions. “Please rest,” she replied, stroking the man’s burning forehead.

He subsided into a fitful sleep, finally, but there were others who were afraid. Annie thought their whimpers and muffled sobs would haunt her forever, and she was practically stumbling with weariness when Kathleen finally dragged her out of the chapel at moonrise.

The great hall was bright with the lights of many candles and lamps, and when Annie saw the line of wounded men lying on the floor, she gave a small gasp and put one hand to her mouth. They were rebels, judging by their hodgepodge clothes, which had probably been scavenged from houses in Morovia. It was plain that they were all dying, with only awkward young soldiers to tend them.

Annie started in their direction, but Kathleen tightened her grasp on her mistress’s arm and stopped her.

“No, miss,” she whispered sharply. “There’s no saving any of these, and I won’t let you waste yourself trying.”

Too exhausted and dispirited to argue, Annie swallowed hard, nodded, and allowed Kathleen to lead her toward the stairs.

Annie had every intention of asking to see Rafael, so that she could make sure he knew about the secret gate, but her weariness was consuming, and she was asleep before she’d finished the light supper Kathleen brought up from the kitchen. Somehow, Annie got into her bed and collapsed onto the mattress with her arms spread wide and her mouth open.

Several hours must have passed before she stirred from dark dreams and tried to raise her eyelids.

At first, Annie thought she was imagining the cold, sharp edge of the blade pressed against her throat. She stiffened in reaction, and a broad masculine hand covered her mouth, stifling the scream that had risen automatically from her diaphragm. She was awake now, but all she could see was a looming shadow and a thatch of fair hair.

Her heart clenched painfully, like a fist, as she realized what was happening.

“You’re right to be afraid,” Jeremy Covington said, in a hoarse, moist whisper. She felt the blade shift against the delicate flesh of her neck, and her whole body broke out in a cold sweat.

Covington sighed and, with his free hand, stroked her hair back from her face with an eerie tenderness, as if they’d been lovers. “It’s not going to be easy to kill you, though,” he lamented. “You’re such a beautiful creature, tawny and wild like a lioness—”

Annie fought a primitive urge to squirm and flail—her shock had abated a little, and she knew her only chance lay in keeping calm.

The lieutenant suddenly knotted his fingers in her hair and pulled and Annie closed her eyes against the pain. Sourness burned at the back of her throat, and her heart was racing so that she thought it would finally outdistance itself and burst.

“Damnable little bitch,” Covington hissed, bending so that his face was close to hers. She smelled madness on his breath and in his sweat, and she felt a new surge of terror when he forced one knee between her legs. “If only you’d kept that sweet mouth closed …” He lifted the blade from her throat and traced both her eyebrows and the length of her nose with its tip. “But, no. You couldn’t do that, could you? And now, thanks to you, I’ll have to live out the rest of my life as a criminal, and all the doors that once were open to me will close in my face!”

Annie struggled, not against Jeremy Covington, but against her own fear. She stared up at him and waited.

Without removing his hand from her mouth, Covington traced the outer perimeters of Annie’s breasts with the point of his knife. Even through the thick fabric of her nightgown, she felt the deadly sharpness of it, and terror threatened to swamp her again.

Show me what to do,
she prayed, in frantic silence.
I don’t want to die!

Covington pressed the blade to her throat again and shifted his weight, so that he straddled her. “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth for a moment,” he said, in a horribly reasonable tone. “But I warn you, Annie. If you scream, I’ll drive this knife right through your lovely neck.” He shook his head, making a
tsk-tsk
sound. “What a shock it will be to poor Rafael, when he finds his little American mistress awash in her own blood.”

Annie held onto her courage with the last of her strength.
Rafael,
she called from deep within herself.
Help me!
But when Covington took his hand away, she didn’t scream.

“Don’t do this, Lieutenant,” she said, in a voice so calm and detached that she wondered how it could have come from her mouth. Inside, Annie was shrieking. “It will only make things worse for you. You’ll be a murderer. How many doors will be open to you then?”

Annie realized too late that she had made a grave error of judgment. Even in the gloom, she saw Covington’s face contort, and she felt his terrible rage in the pressure of his thighs against her hips. Clasping the dagger’s handle in both hands, he raised the weapon high and was poised for the downward thrust when suddenly he grunted and the point of a rapier came through his chest from behind.

Annie watched in horror as crimson spread around the small wound, and Covington stiffened in the shock of instantaneous death. The dagger dropped from his fingers, the handle striking the side of Annie’s head.

She screamed at last, a shrill, piercing, catlike cry, and raised both hands to push the lieutenant off her. He fell heavily to the floor and there, at the side of the bed, staring blankly and clad in a plain brown robe with a hood, stood Felicia Covington. Her hands extended, fingers interlaced, as though she still held the rapier that was now lodged in her brother’s body.

The door of Annie’s chamber flew open and there were people all around. Annie saw Phaedra among them, and Chandler Haslett, and Lucian, and she didn’t move or speak. But when Rafael strode over the threshold, his shirt untucked and his hair rumpled, the dam burst and she let out a loud wail, followed by a series of plaintive sobs.

The prince didn’t bother with the steps; he vaulted onto the dais and gathered Annie’s trembling body into his arms. She clung to him, unashamed of her need, and the contact calmed her as quickly and effectively as a shot of whiskey would have done.

Over Rafael’s shoulder, Annie saw Lucian crouch beside Covington’s corpse. “Good Christ,” he rasped, before raising his gaze to poor, stricken Felicia, who had not, in all this time, moved a muscle. “She’s killed him.”

Annie heard grief in Rafael’s voice when he responded, and she knew he was not mourning Jeremy Covington, but his murderess. “Barrett,” he said gruffly, his embrace as tight and protective as before. “Take Miss Covington somewhere safe, and see that she’s looked after.”

Only then did Felicia lower her arms. She smiled angelically at Rafael, and went without protest when Mr. Barrett put his hands on her waist and lifted her down from the dais.

CHAPTER 17
 

“M
iss Trevarren will be all right, then?” Barrett asked, in a quiet voice, when Rafael met him outside the study door, an hour after the incident in Annie’s bedchamber.

Rafael nodded. He’d carried Annie to his own quarters, where the maid, Kathleen, had given her a strong sleeping draught. Only after Annie had tumbled into a shallow slumber had he left her side, and even then a part of him had remained behind.

“What have you learned?” he asked. “Did Felicia free Jeremy?”

Barrett sighed and leaned back against the stone wall of the passage, his arms folded. “Yes,” he admitted. “She’s been in the keep for several days as it happens, sleeping in one of the tower rooms and eating with the villagers.”

Rafael shoved a hand through his hair, thinking of the robed figure he’d glimpsed in the great hall, the day the jurors were selected. He’d believed, until that night, that Felicia was safe in France. Obviously, she’d made her way back. It was even possible, of course, that she never left Bavia in the first place, but had disguised herself as a peasant and entered the castle in the midst of the stream of refugees.

“How the devil did the woman manage to get by your guards?”

Barrett’s tone was rueful. “Only too easily, I’m afraid. While they were sleeping, she must have walked right past them, taken the key from the wall and released Covington. He unlocked the other cells.”

Rafael closed his eyes for a moment. “Have the other men been captured?”

“Most of them stayed right where they were—in fact, they kept Covington from killing the guards.”

“
Most
of them stayed,” Rafael prompted.

“Peter Maitland escaped. My men are looking for him now.”

Rafael swore, then reached reluctantly for the latch on his study door. Felicia, he knew, was waiting inside. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered.

She sat in a wing-backed chair, near the fire, her lovely face translucent with madness, holding a wine goblet in her hands. Seeing Rafael, she smiled.

“Hello, Your Highness.”

Although Rafael wanted to weep for Felicia, he kept his emotions under strict control. In a way, he’d driven her to this himself by refusing to grant her beloved brother clemency, and while he didn’t regret that decision itself, he did wish he’d found some way to shield her from it.

He approached her chair and she offered her hand, as though greeting a guest at a tea party. Rafael bent and brushed her knuckles with his lips. “Hello, Felicia,” he replied. Then he crouched beside her chair, still holding her hand. “What happened tonight?” he asked gently.

She favored him with a bright, chillingly vacant smile. “I saved my brother from the gallows,” she said. The smile faded. “But then, I had to kill him. I couldn’t let him hurt Annie—that wasn’t part of our agreement.”

Rafael reached out and lightly touched the soft, fair hair. “Of course not. You never meant to hurt anyone, did you, sweet?”

Tears filled Felicia’s brown eyes, made them luminous. “No. But it all went wrong, Rafael—such dreadful things have happened. I wish I’d never let Jeremy out of that cell, but he was so persuasive when I sneaked in to visit him. He said you wouldn’t rest until he’d been hanged or even drawn and quartered.”

Covington had not been sentenced to the noose, and torture of any sort had always been strictly out of the question, but Rafael did not point these things out. Felicia’s state of mind was obviously an irrational one.

He patted her hand but said nothing for he was too overcome to speak.

“I’m so tired,” Felicia said, and gave a delicate yawn. She was flushed and rumpled, more resembling a weary child than a woman who’d just run her beloved brother through with a rapier. “Do you suppose I could go to sleep now?”

“Yes,” Rafael replied hoarsely, rising and then helping Felicia to her feet as well. “I think that would be a very good idea.”

She stood before him, gazing up into his eyes. “Will you put me in the dungeon, Rafael?” she asked simply, without rancor or guile. “Am I to be hanged for what I’ve done?”

Rafael looked away, struggling, once again, with a wellspring of emotion. “No,” he said presently. “Whatever happens, you’ll be kept safe. I promise you that.” He flung an appealing glance at Barrett, who read it correctly and stepped forward to take Felicia’s arm in a gentle hold.

“Come along, m’lady,” the soldier said quietly. Over the fair head, Barrett met Rafael’s gaze and, although neither man spoke again, much was communicated. Rafael knew Barrett would see Felicia installed in comfortable quarters with guards at the entrance and then report back to him.

Annie awakened early the next morning, shaken by an immediate flood of memories of her near-death the previous night and groggy from the sleeping medicine she’d been given. She wanted nothing so much as to cower in bed, but she’d long since decided that any desire to retreat from life was unhealthy, so she got up.