Scoundrel's Kiss (32 page)

Her limbs stiffened, limbs that wanted
to fall into him, made molten by him. "What has changed?" He began to
shake his head, denying her yet again. "This is my command," she
said, "Tell me."

Gavriel watched her for a long,
lingering moment, his lips parted as if the words waited just inside, sitting
atop his tongue. She would dive in after them if she could, enjoying his taste
along the way.

"I cannot," he said at last
He stepped out of their embrace and placed the softest kiss on the back of her
hand. "But believe me, I'll know. Soon. And then we will..."

"What?"

"We will talk. I'm through making
vows I cannot keep, vows that are not my own."

A pounding knock rattled the door on
its hinges. Ada jumped from her skin. Gavriel tossed a quick look around the
room, finding what she did: a shambles coated in drying wine.

He pulled the door ajar, just enough to
let Blanca enter. Her eyes widened at the sight of his chamber in such a
disarray, but he breathed easier with the moment's distraction from Ada, her
body, and the embrace they had shared—one that had nearly felt easy.
Right.

Although knowledge of Pacheco's manipulations
might excuse him from his vows, he had not decided where that left him. The
Order was no longer the safe haven he had imagined, which meant his future
gaped like a wound. He would not permit Ada to accompany him down a dark path
when he had no notion of its destination.

But the expression on Blanca's face set
the issues aside.

Ada stepped clear of the mess on the
floor and took the younger woman's hands. "What is it, Blanca?"

"Someone has pillaged our
room," she said, her voice tremulous.

"Our room? I only left it but an
hour ago."

"I returned from the gardens and
found it a disaster." Her dark eyes roamed over the disorder in Gavriel's
chamber. "Did the same happen to yours?"

"No, this was our fault,"
Gavriel said. "Have you told anyone?"

Blanca eyed them both and took note of
the shattered bowl but said nothing. Gavriel appreciated her reserve.
"Fernan was with me when I discovered the crime. He advised me say
nothing, merely to find you both."

Icy stiffness wrapped around his arms,
his legs. "Does he have an explanation as to where he was?"

"When the room would have been
raided?" She lifted her chin and met his gaze directly, wrapping a light
woolen shawl more tightly around her shoulders. "You suspect him,
perhaps?"

Gavriel pushed a fist into his palm,
squeezing until two knuckles popped. "I have no reason to exonerate
him."

"You do if you believe me. He was
with me in the gardens. Forgive me for saying, but he seemed a man in need of a
considerate ear."

Ada touched Blanca on the forearm.
"You said yourself he is not a man to be trusted. He was the one who gave
me opium last night."

"That he did," Blanca said
quietly. "But if you knew his reasons, you might... understand. You might
even forgive him." She sniffed, loud and exaggerated. "Seems someone
else has made a similar offer since."

"This was different," Ada
began.

With a wave of his hand, Gavriel
interrupted whatever Ada's explanation would have been. “Let us see your
quarters."

Chapter 25

Ada studied the damage, having yet to
recover from the terrors of her morning. Only standing within the warm circle
of Gavriel's arms had calmed the dread, but then her heart had pounded for an
altogether different reason.

Now she stared at the upended ruin of
the chamber she shared with Blanca. Nothing remained untouched. Their cots had
been overturned Straw poked out from the woolen ticking. Their washing stand
lay tipped on its side. Her tortoise-shell comb lay among the ruins of straw,
as did her scattered chess set

Blanca searched but found her
possessions as well. "But why would anyone want to merely...
rummage?"

Ada looked to Gavriel for answers, as
if belonging to the Order, to that strange and confining place, qualified him
to set her confusion to rights.

"And everything you had is
here?" he asked. "Intact?"

"Yes, except for the
scrolls."

"How do you mean?"

"They're safe, just not here. I
hid them."

"Why?"

She rubbed her face and exhaled,
feeling a hot blush beneath her fingers.

"Ada?"

"The scrolls are vellum
parchment," she said. "I'd stolen them from my mentor, Daniel of
Morley, with the intention of selling them. They can be stripped of their ink
and used again, making them valuable."

His expression darkened. "You were
keeping them to sell."

"For when I returned to Toledo,
yes."

Her cheeks heated, looking across the
distance between the respectable scholar she had been and the struggling woman
she had become. Day and night. Only now she had sense enough to recognize the
vast difference. Until Gavriel's intervention, the creeping sadness of who she
had been and what she lost had never touched her. She had merely drowned in it.

"But that decision seems a long
time ago," she said.

He held her gaze for another moment,
assessing, looking deeper. "I'm glad to hear that,
inglesa."

She gestured to their wreck of a room.
"But what do you know of this?"

"Only that Fernan was right in
suggesting Blanca keep this a secret. The rest is simple speculation. For
now." He looked around as if expecting to find someone watching. And
perhaps he was right The walls seemed to listen and wait for their next move,
the most patient of opponents. "Where is Fernan?"

Blanca pressed her lips together.
"I cannot say. My guess is that he would want to return to town."

"But why? You said something about
his motives for offering Ada the poppies. Do you know what information Pacheco
used to earn his cooperation?"

"I am not at liberty,
senor.
Understand
that, please."

Ada lifted the tortoiseshell comb and
squeezed its teeth into her palm. The tugging pain kept her mind from spinning
too far afield. "What has Pacheco to do with this?"

"We may not have time enough to
explain fully," Gavriel said.

"You wanted me to tell you what to
do. Now try."

A single nod and he stood up, away from
her. Arms crossed, he stared out the window as he spoke. "Pacheco vouched
for me when I came to the Order. He knew some of my past and played on my
eagerness to start afresh. In exchange for his support, I was to follow his
instructions."

Ada frowned and broached the scant
distance between them. "Instructions?"

"For cleansing myself. For
becoming pure and worthy of the Order." A shuddering breath escaped his
body, revealing his distress more plainly than the monotone of his voice.
"He was the one who insisted on my three vows, the ones in excess of the
Order's requirements. If I failed to keep them or revealed his requisites to
other members of the Council, I would be expelled. He insisted everyone had
secret vows, sworn tests between them and God. I believed him."

The expression on Blanca's face matched
the feelings coursing through Ada's body. Confusion, yes, but also indignation.
The unfairness of it all.

Ada touched his back. Beneath the robes
and the tunic he wore was the skin he had so abraded and abused. "Did he
do this as well?" she asked in a whisper. "He asked you to hurt
yourself?"

Gavriel's head jerked down, humiliation
rippling through his warrior's muscles. "I felt I had to ... to start
again. To be rid of what I'd done."

She wanted to close her arms around him
and touch a flaming torch to his past, their past—and to anyone who
caused him pain.

"And he held Fernan to unusual
expectations as well? Some knowledge of his past?" She looked to Blanca
for confirmation.

"He gave you poppies under
Pacheco's orders. That was all he revealed." Blanca picked up the bit of
straw and pulled it in two, lengthwise. "I suspect it has to do with a
woman he knows in town. I saw him with a dark-skinned woman last week when I
went to market."

'Ada narrowed her eyes. "He
protects her?"

"Or their connection, perhaps.
Their bodies together... they were on intimate terms."

"But Gavriel, why would Pacheco
want to punish you like this?"

Standing taller, he seemed to pull
himself out of a well and shake free of his confession. "I know not. I
never assumed he did so for his own benefit, but to aid my penance. Only this
morning did Fernan reveal Pacheco's hand in providing you with opium. Ada,
these scrolls—may I see them?"

"Of course. What do you
suspect?"

"Blanca, do you remember the guard
at the bathhouse? The one you stabbed?"

She nodded.

"Yes," he said, his eyes
harder and more like himself. More in control. "He said he wanted scrolls.
I had no notion of what he meant."

"Mine?" Ada asked.

"He said he wanted 'the scrolls
the Jew stole.'"

"Jacob?"

He nodded, the grim set of his mouth
never changing.

Jacob had worked for Dona Valdedrona in
the realm of espionage, never confiding his missions or discoveries to Ada. She
had been, hurt by his reticence, but only when his visits coincided with her
temperance. Other times ... well, she never would have confided in herself
either.

What had he discovered? She searched
her memory for reminders, clues, anything to solve the mystery of Jacob's
mission before he had relinquished her to Gavriel. But all she remembered was
the bitter pain of his betrayal. So enveloped by her own suffering, she had
been blind to the dangers and deaf to the secrets he bore without fanfare.

Gavriel returned to Ada's room with her
satchel, retrieved from a weapons cache where she had hidden it among
antiquated shields the knights no longer used. He had no time to ponder the
events he had shared with Ada in his chambers: her refusal of the opium, his
powerful, last-minute desire to try the foul stuff, and her rescue of sorts.
Until they discovered what motives and trickery lurked in the shadows of the
monastery, they were in danger. But the victory she had won over her need gave him
hope. If nothing else came of their acquaintance, she might yet crawl to the
freedom of a new life.

Where that would leave him, standing on
the edge of exile from the Order, he did not know.

Every minute they spent within the
walls of the monastery scratched at his nerves. Every moment that passed
without Ada at his side left him a useless wreck. And now that he knew enemies
were gathering, the fact he wore no weapon had never seemed more senseless.

The women had righted their chamber, he
could see no evidence of a raid. Ada had changed clothes splattered by the
spilled tincture, now wearing a borrowed brown gown. The deep color warmed her
complexion. She had gained weight at the monastery, barely rounding the sharp
angles of her hollow cheeks, and if she continued to win her fight against the
opium, that push toward health would only gain momentum.

He nodded a greeting and closed the
door before handing the satchel to Ada. She rummaged through the well-worn
Cordovan leather, then tipped its contents onto her cot Rolls of parchment,
some sealed and some unraveling, spilled over the simple woolen mantel. Blanca
sat on her cot just opposite, elbows on her knees, her expression one of a
child expecting a treat.

Gavriel felt nothing so childish or
innocent about his anticipation. If Ada possessed scrolls from the de Silva
family, he would hear the words of ghosts. The monastery had been his refuge
from sacrifice and evil deeds, from those men who had warped his life. But now
they invaded what he had hoped would be his home and refuge.

Violence simmered in his body, coiled,
awaiting a release.

"These are cheaper parchment
filled with samples of various local dialects. Portuguese. Mozarabic," Ada
said, indicating the papers that had unrolled, unsealed. She rubbed a thumb
over one crest, a frown marring the smooth line of her brow. "These are
the ones I took from Daniel, these with the eagle crest seal."

"That's the seal of the de Silva
family." Gavriel took the scroll from her. He wanted to ruin that hated
symbol. Bend it. Break it. Burn it.

She loosened the seal and unrolled the
stiff, thick parchment Gavriel and Blanca moved around the bed to secure the
edges while Ada leaned close. Indecipherable scribbles of ink lined the entire
sheet, close enough to make Gavriel's eyes cross. Individual marks blurred. But
she read it with apparent ease. One slender finger traced from right to left.

While Gavriel's ignorance kept him
silent, watching, waiting, Blanca found no shame in asking questions.
"I've never seen so many symbols on a single sheet," she said.
"Most times a merchant will write there bits on scraps. What language is
that?"