shadow and lace (36 page)

She ended up flat on her back, staring up at a creamy belt of stars scattered across a royal blue sky. She remembered a night long ago, when she had lain cradled in the arms of the moor, canopied by just such a sky and blissfully innocent of the lethal charms of knights and their intrigues.

She remembered toddling after the woman she had believed to be her mother. Tugging at her sun-warmed skirts as she bent her slender back over a washtub. A back bred for the comforts of nobility. A back her papa had finally broken spewing out his sons in a desecrated castle while he dabbled with whores like Elayne de Crecy. She closed her eyes briefly.

Suddenly, she wanted nothing more out of life than to lay in the wet grass forever and watch the clouds scuttle across the moon. Folio was doubtlessly gone now, and there was really nothing left to do but lay there until Gareth came and killed them. Papa chuckled.

"There now, Elayne, I'll have none of that teasing and nuzzling. You always were a lusty wench when you caught a man down."

A chill that had nothing to do with the damp grass beneath her shivered through Rowena. She looked over at Papa, expecting to find a half-rotted specter poised over him.

Folio nuzzled his throat, shimmering like mist in the moonlight. Papa shoved his head away with a giggle. The horse looked at her with such a placid expression that Rowena wanted to laugh.

She rolled over on her stomach and crawled on her elbows to her father's side. Folio nuzzled the back of her neck with his velvety muzzle.

"Papa?" she whispered.

"Aye, child?"

"Did you kill my mother?"

"Of course not. Little Freddie killed Althea. 'Twas not his fault. She just wasn't strong enough to bear another birth."

"Not Althea, Papa.
My
mother—Elayne."

His eyes cut to her in a moment of stark sobriety. He gave a defeated sigh. "I should have wrung her comely neck. But I could not. All I could do was shout and mewl and almost break my blasted neck fleeing that fool boy. Who could blame me, though? Lad or not, there was death in those eyes of his."

Rowena rolled to her back. They lay there like longtime companions watching clouds shift across the stars. She felt little surprise. He had only confirmed what she had suspected all along: Lindsey Fordyce hadn't the guts to kill a cockroach.

"What did you expect, Papa? He was in love with her. To walk in on such a tryst…"

Papa sighed. "No tryst. We were quarreling. She refused to come away with me. She saw no reason she could not stay and play lady of Caerleon twice over by marrying her husband's son. So I wanted you. I wanted to take you to Althea. She had longed for a girl child for so long. We were tugging on you like a pair of foul-mouthed harpies when the lad burst in." A long forgotten shame quickened in his eyes. "I dropped you."

"On my head, no doubt."

Her father gave her a reproachful look. "I dove out the window. I thought your cries would haunt me forever."

An idea split the darkness of her thoughts like the moon breaking through the clouds. "Papa, how did you get me? Who brought me to you?"

A slurred murmur was her only answer. Papa had lapsed into semiconsciousness and was softly singing. A cry from the turret over the drawbridge shattered the serenity of the countryside.

Rowena straddled her papa's chest. "Papa, listen to me, I must know. After Elayne was murdered, who brought me to you? Think!"

He winced in remembered pain. "Damned boy broke my leg. Cut my rope while I was still fifteen feet off the ground. I had to crawl to my horse. The farrier broke it again before he set it. The butcher."

She shook him by his tunic. His head bounced on the rich turf. "Papa, please! How did you come to bring me to Revelwood? Who gave me to you?"

The bright clarion note of a trumpet brought Folio's neck up. The stallion tossed his head, his mane rippling like a cascade of satin.

Papa's belly heaved beneath her. Rowena realized with horror that he was crying. "I could not believe my lovely Elayne was dead. Hadn't the strength to get off my pallet. Thrust the child into my arms." His trembling hand sought one of her loose curls to dry his tears with. "I wanted my little Rowena so. Had to take her away before the sins of the mother were visited on the child."

Rowena lifted her head. "Who, Papa? Who told you such a terrible thing?"

She leaned forward, straining to hear his sibilant answer.

The clatter of hoofbeats on wood split the darkness. Folio whinnied shrilly as a dark shape separated itself from the castle above and came hurtling into the night.

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For years Rowena would remember the nightmarish contortions it took to get herself and Papa remounted. Sweat streamed down her face to be joined by tears when, after they were seated at last, Folio balked at her command. His ears pricked toward the approaching rider. His tail twitched. Rowena cursed in frustration and pounded on his back with her fists. The rider came at them, laid low over a charger's back, hell-bent and in no mood for conversation. Rowena knew the life of the limp, pathetic man draped behind her hung in the balance.

The dig of her heels finally set Folio into motion. Some long forgotten memory of a coltish game flickered through his equine brain. He wheeled around and dashed away from his approaching master, swishing his tail in a teasing flash of white. Rowena clung to the reins with one hand, her other arm struggling with her father's dead weight.

Folio's long legs stretched in a gallop. Wind stung Rowena's eyes. She dared a look behind her and saw in amazement that the distance between them and their pursuer was actually growing. Even with the weight of two riders, Folio possessed the speed and strength to fly through the thin spring grasses. As they swept over a ; rolling knoll, Rowena thought the horse would surely soar up and into the sky toward the siren purity of the moon.

A seamless edge of black bordered the meadow. Rowena swung Folio toward the forest, unable to differentiate between the pounding of her heart in her -throat and the pounding of hoofbeats on the turf. They plunged into the shadows. Rowena drew rein and Folio slid to a reluctant halt. ,

From far behind them came the parting of the crackling grasses before a tide as inevitable as the wind. They had very little time. Rowena flung herself off the horse and stayed her father's leg when he would have followed.

"Papa, can you hear me?" I

He slumped over the stallion's neck and opened one bleary eye. "Hmmmmm?"

Rowena grabbed his ears and pushed her face into his. "You must hold on! You must ride! Ride until you reach a castle or a village. Halt for nothing and no one. Do you understand?"

She released him. His head struck the pommel of the saddle. He groaned. "Break my neck," he mumbled.

"You may. But Gareth will sever your head if he catches you."

He made a supreme effort to straighten. Rowena gave his thigh an approving pat. "There now. Make haste, Papa. Ride like the wind."

Lindsey Fordyce's lips curled in an echo of the sunny  smile that must have once charmed Elayne. "I shall be back for you, lass. As soon as I make my fortune. I will bring you ribbons and gold as much as your little paws can carry."

His wispy hair and faded blue eyes swam before Rowena's gaze. "Aye, Papa, I shall be waiting."

Folio was as much in thrall to his master as she was. Rowena knew she must take drastic measures to stop the stallion from simply running in a circle. She fished beneath the tatters of her skirt until she came up with a headless pin, shiny and dangerous in the dappled moonlight. She lay her cheek against Folio's silky hide, snuffled an apology, then jabbed the tapered point in the tender haunch.

The stallion plunged into a rear. Rowena stumbled away from the drumming hooves. Papa clung to the saddle with tenacious strength, caught in the wine-soaked haze of a drama more real than he would ever realize.

"Away, destrier!" he bellowed. "We shall slay those Arab heathens yet and return the Holy Cross to Jerusalem!"

A flash of white and they were gone. The thunder of approaching hoofbeats shook the earth. They slowed as Gareth guided his mount into the forest. Without giving herself time to think, Rowena scrambled up the widely spaced branches of a sturdy elm, wishing wildly for Marlys's helm.

She caught a slender branch in her sweaty palms as a nightmare in black and silver came plunging through the underbrush. She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped, using the force of her swing to slam into the rider. She wrapped her legs around his shoulders as they fell what seemed a hundred feet from the back of a gigantic midnight charger. She kicked at the beast's hooves as they rolled, spooking it into terrified flight back toward the way it had come.

A gauntleted hand caught her by the throat and slammed her to her back. A muscled arm drew back a sword. For one terrible moment, Rowena thought Gareth would not recognize her before that gleaming blade descended. For an even more terrible moment, she saw the cold light of recognition dawn in his eyes without stilling the descent of the blade. Ten inches of steel whistled past her ear as Gareth drove the sword into the mulch beside her cheek with a cry of rage and anguish that threw the night noises of the forest into dead silence.

She lay there in his lethal grip, her fragile pulse cradled by leather-encased fingers stripped of any semblance of mercy. A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and traced a path down her dirt-streaked cheek.

Gareth grabbed her by the bodice of her kirtle and jerked her up. "How could you?" He shook her like a doll, then lowered her back to the ground.

He stood abruptly, his head cocked, listening for any sign of horse and rider. The lonely cry of a nightjar mocked him.

"Gareth?" she whispered to his heaving back.

He silenced her with a ragged gesture of one hand. "For twenty years, I've sought the man who dishonored my name. The man who cast his shadow over my father's every hope, dream, and ambition for me. The man who turned every countenance away from me, slammed every door in my face. I've spent half my life searching for that sniveling coward."

"And his golden-haired babe?"

He whirled around. "Aye. The babe Elayne brought to Caerleon, passing it off to my father as the legitimate offspring of her dead husband. Her lover followed shortly thereafter, offering his services to Caerleon." He took a step toward her. Rowena refused to flinch from the bitter blackness of his gaze. "Marlys thought it would be revenge enough to send that golden-haired babe home to Papa raped and bloated with a bastard of her own."

The wind blew cool against Rowena's heated cheeks. "Too merciful for you, eh? You preferred something far more diabolical," she said.

"All I wanted was the truth. I've lied my whole life to find it."

"Don't speak to me of truth. The word is a mockery on your lips. Nay, Gareth. 'Tis not the truth you seek." She climbed to her feet. "You want your name cleared. You want someone to blame for the murder they condemn you for. You want to punish someone for the pain you've endured."

"I suppose your jovial Papa convinced you he was innocent," he hissed.

"Papa broke his leg when you cut his rope. He could barely crawl to his horse much less return up those stairs to plunge a sword in Elayne's breast."

Gareth snorted. "Another Fordyce family fable. You lie almost as well as your mother." Rowena wouldn't have thought it possible, but his brow darkened further. "Tell me, then, my dear." He took a menacing step toward her."If your precious Papa did not kill Elayne, then who did?"

A shaft of moonlight penetrated the clouds. Rowena had not prepared herself for that question. Gareth must not see her eyes. With the cunning of a trapped animal, she spun around to flee, but his arms circled her before she could take two steps. She made no struggle. Gareth's heart pounded a mad rhythm against her spine.

The silky heat of his voice poured into her ear. "So he has convinced you that I am a murderer."

She leaned her head back against his shoulder, choosing silence for her shield. A hot tear squeezed out from between her eyelids.

His hands slid slowly up her shoulders, gliding beneath the tangled weight of her hair to cup her throat. He curled his leather-clad knuckles inward, trailing them over her smooth skin with unbearable tenderness. Rowena flinched as if he had struck her.

His low chuckle sent fingers of fear skittering down her spine. "Fickle creature. Now you shrink from my touch. Was it so long ago that you received it with eagerness? Was it only two nights ago that you lay beneath me, begging me to—"

"Gareth, don't…"

"Don't what? Don't continue? Or don't stop? Why don't you let me show you what an adoring stepbrother I can be?" His fingers grazed the swell of her breast, then dipped into her kirtle to caress her tender nipple with practiced eroticism. Fear and desire tightened her throat.

"Cease your torment!" she cried, shoving his hand away. "I cannot bear you making sport of me." She twisted out of his grasp and backed away from him.

He followed her step for step, holding his hands out in front of him. "Why do you shy away now, little sister? These murderer's hands pleasured you well enough when it suited you. You cared not if they were dripping blood."