Suzanne Robinson (34 page)

“Dammit, Fulke, you’re going to have to stop protecting me. I’m not a child anymore, and Kate could have been killed.”

“And me too,” Val said.

Kate interfered before Fulke could answer. “Can we get out of this place?”

Alexis put his arm around her and led her to the stairs. He asked Fulke to precede them with the lantern, and Val was instructed to seal the trapdoor until a party could return for Juliana’s body. Noting the grim whiteness of Alexis’s face and the tense strength he exerted to keep himself erect, Kate didn’t bother him with questions.

Once outside, Alexis helped her mount Theseus. Clutching at the stallion’s mane, she settled into the saddle. Alexis mounted behind her.

Fulke came up to them with Alexis’s jacket. Alexis started to take it, but Kate stopped him.

“You can’t,” she said. “You won’t like taking it off.”

He nodded and kicked gently at Theseus. The stallion set off at a gentle walk. Kate tried to sit straight and hold herself away from Alexis so that he wouldn’t have to support her body. His two arms crossed in front of her, though, and pulled her backward. She sank against Alexis’s chest and sighed.

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Kate chewed on her lower lip. “You know you’ve been innocent all along.”

“Be quiet, my love. I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

As far as she could see, that was the trouble with the de Granville family in the first place. All the wrong people got to do the talking, and the innocent ones kept their mouths shut.

In his bedchamber, Alexis lay on his stomach with his face resting on his forearm. His body burned with fever, and the lacerations on his back stung and throbbed. Kate held a cold, wet cloth to his cheek while he tried to forget his mother’s death. Had it only been that night? It seemed he’d been on fire forever. Yet the writhing of his soul caused greater pain than any wounds or fever.

Kate pitied him, and he couldn’t bear her pity. Every time he looked at her she smiled and said something kind. He’d rather she hated him.

“Kate, get some rest.”

“I’m not tired,” she said. “I want to be with you. I want to take care of you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not. Don’t you think I can see that your mother’s treachery is eating at your gut? Talk about it, share the pain with me.”

He curled his fingers into the bed sheets and turned his face away from the cloth she held to his cheek.

“Can’t you understand that I need to be alone? Please. Don’t argue with me. I need to be alone.”

He heard her dress rustle as she stood up. “All right. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning, and I’m sending someone to check on you once in a while. The doctor said I should.”

He waited until she was gone before he lifted his head. Slowly he raised up and took a glass of water from the table beside the bed. Draining it, he put it back, then eased down again. It was late, past twelve, and everyone else had gone to bed.

He’d relived the horrors at Thyme Hall until he was drained of emotion. There was no hate any longer, no revulsion or remorse. The only feelings left were shame and fear. He experienced both when Kate was with him—shame that she knew what his mother was, what he came from, and fear that she would pity him.

God, he was tired. He shifted so that his arms were spread out. His face was turned to the side. With Kate gone, he could sleep.

Grateful for the lassitude that crept over him, Alexis drifted into a state of half-sleep. As he lay there, tendrils of memory curled around his brain until he found himself standing in the woods watching a boy run past a headless corpse and a struggling horse. The boy threw himself down beside a man. His father. It was as if Alexis was looking over the boy’s shoulder. The youth lifted the man’s head, and for the first time since the day he died, Alexis saw his father’s face.

Alexis was jolted into the body of the boy, and they became one. He struggled with the weight of his father’s body as he called to the man. Phillipe de Granville opened his eyes. They were green, like his own, but full of pain.

“Alexis … Why?”

Alexis lurched with the sudden shift of weight as his father’s head fell back. “Father, no. Wait. It wasn’t me. Father?” The body was too heavy, and it was slipping from his grasp. Alexis screamed. “Father, no, listen to me! You have to listen. Father, I didn’t do it. Father!” He gripped his father’s coat and shook the limp body while he wept. “Come back. You can’t go away. Do you hear me? I didn’t do it.”

Alexis’s eyes flew open and he shoved himself up off the bed. “Come back!”

Someone grabbed his arms and turned him, and Alexis stared at his cousin. Fulke had one knee on the bed and gripped his upper arms. Alexis kept still while he fought his way back to the present.

“It was only a dream,” Fulke said.

“It was a memory.” Alexis fastened his hands on Fulke’s arms. “I remembered Father’s death. Fulke, he died thinking I’d set that trap. He asked me why.”

Alexis squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head. Fulke shook him.

“That can’t be. What did he say? Exactly.”

“Only that one word,” Alexis said. “Why.”

“Then you’re wrong. Look at me, Alexis. I knew your father. Phillipe loved you, and he knew you loved him. You’ve always made more of that little squabble with your sister than there actually was. It was a quarrel between brother and sister. All brothers and sisters fight. Phillipe knew you’d both outgrow your differences. He told me so. He would never believe jealousy would make you harm him or Thalia.”

“But he asked me why.”

Fulke shook him again. “It’s time you looked at what happened with the eyes of an adult. Phillipe was dying. Suddenly, without warning, when he was still young. He knew he was dying. He knew he was leaving you alone.
Don’t you see, Alexis. He wasn’t asking you why you killed him. He was asking God why he had to die.”

Alexis gazed into his cousin’s eyes until his own blurred. Tears overflowed and spilled. He stiffened and tried to pull away from Fulke, but his cousin held onto him.

“Give in,” Fulke said. “You haven’t let go since she died. How much can you take before you rip apart? Give in, Alexis, before you break.”

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Alexis buried his head in his arms and tried to stifle a sob. It was no use. The strain, the fever, the pain, they all combined and fed each other. Another sob threatened to explode his chest. This time he released it and surrendered to the tears.

When he was able to lift his head, Fulke was still with him. The older man was sitting beside the bed pouring a glass of water. He held it out. Alexis ignored it.

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Fulke said.

“Does madness run in families?”

Fulke sighed and shoved the glass at Alexis. “Don’t be absurd. You’re as sane as I am.”

Alexis tilted his head to the side and regarded Fulke with a faint smile.

“Don’t,” Fulke said. “Don’t smile and let those silly ideas rattle about in that head. Here, drink this. I put laudanum in it.”

Alexis shook his head and laughed. His skin was burning, and there was a fire in his mind as well. He jumped when Fulke’s fingers curled around the back of his neck. The cold edge of the glass touched his lips.

“Drink. You’re a stubborn boy, and you need rest.”

The tainted water rushed into his mouth, and Alexis swallowed. He finished the whole glass because Fulke kept it pressed to his lips until all the liquid was gone. When he was released, he lowered himself onto his stomach,
his burning cheek pressed to the mattress, and gazed at his hand as it lay beside his head. Fulke sat down again.

“Fulke.”

“Be quiet and don’t torture yourself.”

“I couldn’t have survived without you. I want you to know that. You took Father’s place, cared for me when she wouldn’t, made me study, go to church, helped me grow up. I’ll never forget.”

“You were my son.”

Alexis glanced at Fulke, understanding what neither of them could put into words. He smoothed his hand over the sheet that covered the mattress.

“Still,” he continued, “I have to face the past, and the truth.”

“But not tonight.”

“Maybe not.”

Alexis closed his eyes and listened to his own breathing and Fulke’s. Facing the past was something he might be able to do. Facing Kate was another matter altogether.

Kate paced up and down the wall walk. Three weeks. Three whole weeks of being avoided as if she were one of the Dinkle sisters. It was going to stop. Alexis de Granville was going to learn that he couldn’t deal with problems by not dealing with them.

First there had been his fever. He hadn’t wanted to talk, and he’d been ill. Then there were what he referred to as “the formalities.” As far as Kate could determine, “the formalities” included using the de Granville influence to conceal Lady Juliana’s crimes. The woman had murdered Ophelia and Hannah, and had tried to kill Kate and Alexis. Still, a public revelation would have done no one any good.

Other formalities were Juliana’s quiet funeral and Val’s exoneration. Two endless duties were accepting visits of condolence and corresponding with Sovereign,
family, and friends. All these kept Alexis busy from sunrise until midnight. To Kate and Val had fallen the responsibility of the Dower House soldiers and the continuing renovation of Maitland House.

Kate hadn’t realized Alexis was trying to elude her for almost a week, for she could understand that he would be grief-stricken and bewildered at the revelation of his mother’s sickness. After another week, her patience ebbed. She knew Alexis had never been close to Juliana; his grief was for a love of which he’d been robbed. She didn’t see why he couldn’t console himself with the love he did have.

For three days now she’d been trying to talk to the man. He wiggled out of her grasp each time and vanished into the bowels of the castle. But she’d found his lair. He’d made the Ghost Tower his refuge, and she was about to invade it. How dare he hide from her in the room where they first made love?

Kate pounded her fist on an embrasure and winced. The flesh of her hands was still tender from beating at her cell door under Thyme Hall. She turned when she heard a man chuckle and saw Val walking toward her from the direction of the Ghost Tower. His health was improving fast. His step was swift and loose-limbed, and he was carrying a full wineglass.

“He is exasperating, my dear,” Val said as he neared. “It comes from holding the title from such an early age, I fear.”

“Hellfire.”

Val laughed and offered her the wineglass. “Fulke will tell you how difficult it was to control him. Half the time he was trying to ride himself to death, and the other half he spent charming anyone who came near.”

“He hasn’t spent too much time trying to charm me lately.” Kate took the offered glass and set it in the embrasure.

“Ah, but you’re the only one of whom he is afraid.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Me?”

“Indeed. I find you quite scary myself.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Kate eyed Val. He gazed back at her without smiling, but when she continued to stare at him, his lip curled, and his throat muscles convulsed.

“You inane puppy.” She snatched up the wineglass and took a sip. “Never mind. Did you lock the door?”

“Of course. I got most of a bottle of Bordeaux down him. He was jousting with the cork of a new bottle when I slipped out.”

“I hope he’s not asleep when I get there.”

“Not a chance. A cavalry officer isn’t allowed to join a regiment unless he proves he can hold at least three bottles and still perform in a dress parade.”

Kate grinned and kissed Val on the cheek. He took her hand.

“
Bon chance, ma petite.
He needs you so very much.”

“Thank you.”

She squeezed Val’s hand, then walked on to the Ghost Tower. She tiptoed the last few steps and listened for sounds of an angry nobleman. There weren’t any. Turning the key in the lock, she let herself in and relocked the door from the inside.

Alexis was standing in the window embrasure. One arm was draped on the open window, and his head was resting against the glass of another.

With his eyes shut, he spoke. “You shrank with fear at the thought of my anger and thus came to release me. That was well done, Val.”

“I didn’t come to let you out,” Kate said. “I came to let myself in.”

His eyelids rose slowly, and Alexis gazed at her with a lazy detachment. “Begone from my presence, devilish sprite.”

“Alexis, watch.”

She held up the key so that he could see it. Then she pulled at the neck of her gown and dropped the key inside. Alexis abandoned his relaxed posture. He flew from the window and landed before her bristling like a harassed falcon.

“A much-used trick, unoriginal and useless. Hand me that key.”

“It may be an old trick, but I happen to value some traditions.”

“If you don’t give me the key, I’ll take it.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I thought you might.”

He cursed and put his own hands behind his back as he moved away from her.

“You’re going to weasel out of our engagement,” she said. She began walking toward him, and he eased away from her again.

“Haven’t you seen enough of my family to know why?”

“I love you.”

“My mother was insane.”

“I love you.”

“Then there’s Fulke.”

“I love you.”

Alexis shook his head. “I couldn’t bear waking up one day and seeing hatred in your eyes.”

“Coward. Alexis, you are a brilliant man, but you are set in your ways.” She scooted around a chair and followed him to the window.

He dodged away when she reached for him. Walking over to the portrait of Lettice, he touched it with the tips of his fingers. “Brilliant, you say. Then you agree with me. ‘Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d,/ And thin partitions do their bounds divide.’ ”

“Nonsense,” Kate said. She joined him by the portrait. “You’re as sane as I am.”

She gasped as he grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her until her hair came loose from its pins.