The Highwayman (14 page)

“I’ve set the time for tomorrow morning at dawn.”

Alex felt as if he had punched her. “You don’t mean you’re going through with it?” she finally managed to say.

“I can do no other,” he replied, staring at a point in the middle of her forehead, refusing to meet her eyes.

Alex was stunned into silence. And in the silence her anger grew, like a sleeping animal uncoiling and gathering strength to spring.

“What do you mean?” she finally burst out, standing and facing him, her fists clenching and unclenching as if she might strike him. “Tell them you’ve changed your mind, tell them they’ve accepted too late, tell them anything!”

Burke was silent as her furious words rained on him.

“You’re actually planning to hand me over to them like some plaything which no longer amuses you?”

“Alex, listen to me,” he began.

“Are you going to tell me that I’ve misunderstood, that you have no intention of giving me back?”

He looked away.

“I see,” she said quietly. She began to pace. “You knew this all along, didn’t you? You returned from your trip to parade that woman under my nose, knowing that this deal had been fixed. You went with me last night anyway, to have your amusement before the chance for it was gone, and all along my replacement was here, waiting for my imminent departure.”

It wasn’t true, it wasn’t fair, but she was past the point where he could reason with her.

“I’ll come back later and—” he started to say, but she cut him off in midsentence.

“Don’t bother. I have no desire to see you again before I have to. When you come for me in the morning I’ll be ready.”

He stared at her a long moment and then walked through the tent flap as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Alex sank to the floor, covering her face with her hands. She felt too numb to cry and resolved then and there that she would not. If Burke could hand her over to her uncle with a stone face and nary a loving word, then she could act the same way.

She was awake the night through, but Burke did not come to the tent to attempt another conversation. When dawn began to streak the sky, she washed her face in the pot of cold water Burke kept in the tent, tidied her hair with her hands, and changed into a clean tunic of Rory’s. She stepped through the flap into a chilly, misty morning and saw that Rory and Burke were dressed and ready, waiting for her.

Rory was untethering two horses from a tree, Burke’s sorrel and his own dappled gray. Burke watched her progress toward them and then mounted his horse. He took the reins from Rory and extended his hand down to Alex.

Alex had no choice but to grasp his hand. He hauled her onto the horse in front of him, where she sat turned into the hollow of his shoulder, her legs draped over one side of the horse. As they trotted slowly out of the camp, Rory falling in behind them, the men emerged from their tents to see them pass, watching their departure in silence.

The trip through the woods was agony for Alex. Burke’s physical closeness made the fact that they would soon be parting even more poignant. She closed her eyes and savored the pressure of his arms around her, trying to remember it forever. The rising sun filtered through the trees, dappling the leaves and creating shafts of light that pierced through the foliage to the ground. No one said a word until they were within sight of the castle and could make out the trio on horseback waiting there, the last wisps of the lifting fog swirling about them.

Alex turned to look up at Burke, but his gaze was trained ahead, on the men.

“That’s Aidan,” Rory confirmed behind them, and Alex looked at the man in the middle, between Lord Carberry and her uncle. He was as big as Burke, but slightly heavier and darker, his wavy hair the color of roasted chestnuts.

“Come up by me,” Burke said to Rory.

They came to a halt about fifty feet away from the three men. Aidan was dressed plainly, like his brother, but Carberry was outfitted in dandyish fashion, with a purple doublet and hose and a matching cap trimmed with gold thread perched on his graying hair. Alex’s uncle wore his usual sober clothing, but cut from the finest materials. His fingers were heavy with rings, and the Cummings ancestral sword was sheathed at his side.

There was a long silence.

“Well, Burke,” Carberry finally said, his voice ringing out in the early morning stillness, “is this how you repay my wife’s kindness to your mother?”

“My mother was your wife’s chambermaid, for which service she was paid, not well, but very meanly,” Burke replied. “And that was the end of it.”

Carberry shook his head. “You always were an arrogant pup, and you have grown into a most noisome man. You spent time under my roof, you were my sainted daughter’s childhood friend. Well, she is gone to God”—he crossed himself— “and so much the better to avoid what you’ve become. Have you no memory of those days?

Have you forgotten entirely the regard of my family for yours?”

“My quarrel is not with your lost ladies, but with you,” Burke replied.

“Alexandra, are you well?” Philip Cummings called out to her, ignoring this frosty exchange.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You’ve not been harmed?”

She felt Burke stiffen behind her. “No,” she said. “I’ve not been harmed.”

“Let her down,” Cummings ordered Burke.

“When my brother’s by my side.”

Carberry and Cummings exchanged glances. This testy meeting could erupt into dangerous hostility at any moment; it behooved them to cooperate. Cummings nodded at Carberry, who unsheathed his knife and leaned over to Aidan, slicing through the rope binding his hands. Aidan nudged his horse and it trotted forward until he brought it around to stand next to Burke.

“A bheil thu math?”
Burke asked him. Are you all right?

“Tha,
” Aidan replied. I am.

“I’ll take my niece now,” Cummings announced.

Burke jumped off his horse, held his hand up to Alex, and lifted her to the ground. For just an instant, his hands lingered on her waist, and Alex wanted to fling her arms around his neck and beg for him to keep her. But the moment passed and she turned away, glancing briefly at Rory before facing her uncle.

“Come here,” he said, and she obeyed, taking up her position next to his horse.

“I trust I’ll see no more of you,” Carberry said contemptuously to Burke.

“You’ll see no more of me when you’ve left Ireland to the Irish,” Burke replied. He looked at Alex a final time, his eyes very blue in the morning sunlight. Then he kicked his horse and galloped for the trees, his brother and Rory following him.

Alex watched them until they had disappeared completely into the forest.

* * * *

Alex stared down from her tower room at the moat below, the brackish water ruffled by the evening breeze. Sentries patrolled the entrance to the drawbridge, which was down now to receive a contingent of riders. At their head she spotted Lord Essex, his magnificent apparel bedraggled and stained from travel; even from such a distance she could see the dried mud clinging to his clothes and boots. She studied the scene for a moment and then turned away with a sigh. Both she and the queen’s favorite had come to grief in Ireland.

Once she’d had time to think about it, she knew she could not blame Burke for what he had done. He had behaved according to his own code of ethics, which was as strict in its way as the lord privy seal’s. He had made an offer to his enemy, and when it was accepted he had no choice but to go through with his part of the bargain. He simply could not make his feelings for her more important. An English gentleman would have done the same.

Alex heard the rattle of a key in the lock and braced herself for another interview with her uncle.

He was preceded into the tower room by one of Carberry’s servants, who deposited a tray on the serving table near the fire and then scurried out again. Philip Cummings waited until the woman was gone, his hands clasped behind his back in an attitude of forbearance, and then turned to confront Alex when the door closed.

“Well?” he said. “Have you anything more to say?”

Alex looked at him in silence.

“I find it incredible that you could spend such a length of time in the company of that rabble and then have nothing to report about the experience.”

“Uncle, would you have me invent some horrifying tale of abuse that you can use for political purposes? As I’ve already told you, I was well treated, I came to no harm, and now I’m back with you. There’s little else to say.”

His annoyance with her was apparent. “I hope you understand that all this befell you simply because you defied the rules set out for where you could walk about the grounds.”

“I understand that.”

“I was humiliated before Carberry and Lord Essex,” he said, beginning a familiar diatribe. He went on to describe his humiliation in detail, but she wasn’t listening. Rather, she was staring out the window once more at the scene below. The drawbridge was now being raised.

Her view was obstructed when her uncle stepped in front of her and slammed the shutters closed.

“I’ll thank you for your attention,” he snapped. “You don’t seem to realize fully the position your extraordinary behavior has resulted in for me. We’ve lost a valuable hostage because of you, one that we might have used to better purpose.”

“Then why did you redeem me?” she asked.

He pursed his lips, not answering.

“Oh, it’s not necessary to reply,” she said. “I know how strongly you feel your responsibility concerning me.”

“And thankful you should be for my family feeling, else you would still be languishing among those ruffians, little girl.”

“They’re not ruffians,” she said, trying to suppress her anger.

He stared at her, astonished. “That Burke is no better than a highwayman! It’s well known that he and his men ambush travelers to the castle and rob them, cutting their purses and stripping their horses.”

“He practices robbery on occasion to arm his men, to free their country.”

“He practices robbery to line his pockets! His spurious patriotism is an excuse for brigandry of the worst sort.”

Alex had seen firsthand how humbly the rebels lived and was tempted to protest, but she realized that perpetuating this argument would only enrage Cummings further and reveal to him where her true feelings lay.

“I can’t believe you would defend that gang of hooligans to me,” he said.

“I was not defending them,” Alex replied, now sorry she had spoken, “merely stating a truth. If they were as bad as you say, I’d be dead or worse, and well you know it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Alexandra, you have always baffled me, but never more than at this moment. You were spared in order to trade you for that bandit’s brother, and for no other reason. I hope you harbor no romantic ideas about their treasonous rebellion against their lawful queen, and ours.”

Alex fell silent again.

“That Burke is well set up, is he not?” he said.

Alex maintained her composure with an effort.

“A handsome man, you might say. Young, and apart from his rebel’s rags, quite comely?”

“Elevate your mind, dear uncle,” Alex replied, determined to drive him off this dangerous track. “He saw me as a trading chit, nothing more.”

Cummings seemed to accept this, probably because he did not want to consider anything else. “You’d best eat that meal,” he said. “From the look of your thinly covered bones you’ve lost a stone since you were gone.”

She was surprised he noticed. As he turned to go out she stopped him.

“Uncle Philip? When did you send the message to the rebels holding me that you agreed to the trade?”

He seemed surprised at the question. “Just the day before the trade was made. Why do you ask?”

Alex closed her eyes. So Burke had
not
known he was giving her back when he spent the night with her by the brook. It was something, anyway. She had little enough to hang on to now.

“Alexandra, are you sure you are well?” There was a genuine note of concern in his voice, and Alex felt a sudden stab of sympathy for him. What a curse she must seem, visited upon his late middle age: headstrong, impulsive, and a general bother, she was a blight upon his well-ordered bachelor’s life. Yet he clung to his duty, unable to abandon his late brother’s child no matter how much he might want to do so.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve been to you, Uncle,” she said quietly. “It was never my intention to disrupt your life.”

“Eat your dinner,” he said, and swept from the room. She heard the key turn in the lock after he left.

Alex walked over to the tray and glanced without interest at its contents. The succory pottage was unappetizing, smelling strongly of woad, and the chop looked greasy. She took a sip from the pewter flagon of malmsey and its sticky sweetness almost gagged her. Sighing, she picked up the small loaf of manchet bread and went back to the window and opened the shutters. She nibbled the crust as she peered through the gathering dark at the world of freedom that lay below.

There must be a way out of the tower room.