The Highwayman (16 page)

“I see,” the woman said.

“That will be all, thank you.”

The servant finally left, glancing over her shoulder, and Alex ran to secure the door after her.

“All right,” she whispered, and the gowns cascaded to the floor in a jumble of rich fabrics as Burke’s head appeared, the coverlet draped over it like a nun’s veil.

“Who was that?”

“An informant, carrying milk and honey. My uncle is uneasy about me, so he sends spies bearing gifts. What he thinks I can get into up here in the middle of the night defies understanding.”

Then she realized belatedly what she had said and they both burst out laughing.

“Shh!” Alex said, clapping her hand to her mouth. “Do you want to be taken in my bed?”

“I’d rather take
you
there,” he said, snaking out an arm to pull her down to him.

Alex rolled into his embrace and fitted herself to his naked body.

“What’s all this?” he said, tugging on the nightgown. “Let’s have it off.” It joined the muddle on the floor.

“For two whole weeks I dreamed of you every night, when I slept at all,” Alex murmured, clinging to him, luxuriating in the feel of his muscular limbs. “Such dreams to make a doxy blush. I longed for you. In my whole life I’ve never felt anything so wonderful as your hands on my body. When I thought I would never feel them again I wanted to fling myself from this tower room and splinter to little pieces on the bridge below.”

“Don’t say such things,” he said, pulling her closer. “You tempt the fates.”

“Lord Essex complains that the Irish are a superstitious bunch.”

“We are that, surely.”

“Do you think that an excess of happiness draws the envious attention of heaven?” she asked.

“Hush now, you talk nonsense,” Burke said, trying to soothe her, but she heard the wary note in his voice. He shared her fears.

“I’ll die if I’m parted from you now!” Alex cried, perilously close to tears.

“Who talks of parting?” Burke said. “Not my lovely girl.” He put his hands on either side of her waist and lifted her onto him. Alex closed her eyes and clutched his shoulders, penetrated, sinking, surrounding him with herself.

“Do you love me?” she gasped.

He groaned.

“Say it,” she commanded, moving on him.

“I love you,” he said hoarsely. “How could you doubt it?”

They both fell asleep afterward, and when Alex awoke the sky was ominously lighter.

She shook Burke awake. “You must go,” she said urgently, slipping out of the bed and retrieving his clothes.

He stirred drowsily.

“Now,” she added, thrusting the clothes at him. They were still damp. She should have spread them out by the fire, but it was too late for that. He would have to wear them as they were.

He stood and pulled them on, grimacing at the clammy feel against his skin. He strode to the window and squinted at the horizon, then down at the drawbridge.

“Will you get away safely?” Alex asked, shivering in the predawn chill, wrapping a sheet from the bed around her.

“I’ll be fine, Alex,” he said, embracing her. “If I got up, I’ll get down again.”

“You’ll come again tomorrow night?”

“I will.”

She drew back to examine his face. “Think you that we shall see each other again?”

He kissed her lips to silence her. “I’m certain of it.”

“Go,” she said, pushing him toward the window.

He released her and climbed through it, maneuvering his tall body bit by bit until she heard the thud of his landing on the leads below. She wanted to look after him but was afraid to call attention to his progress, so she went back into the room and sat on the bed disconsolately.

God speed you back to your men, she thought. And then right back to me.

* * * *

When the time came to meet Burke late the next night, Alex dressed as simply as she could, taking nothing to carry, and crept down the narrow spiral stairs leading to the kitchen. The castle was quiet; she could hear the steps of the sentry in the distant great hall echoing as he strolled to and fro, clanking his lance against the paving stones as he completed each round. She ran through the kitchen and the larder and pushed open the heavy outer door that led to the courtyard.

The moat gleamed below her and the night wind ruffled her hair as she stood waiting, praying that Burke was on his way. She should have known better: he was already there. One large hand clutched her shoulder and the other covered her mouth securely as he stepped up behind her.

“Follow me,” he said into her ear.

Alex turned and did so, trailing in his wake. When they reached the edge of the parapet he knelt swiftly and motioned for her to climb onto his back.

She locked her arms around his neck and her legs about his waist. She closed her eyes as they swung over the edge and then swayed free as he went down the wall hand over hand. She didn’t know they had reached level ground until he unlocked her death grip on his neck and said softly, “Get you down.”

They were facing the rippling water, which looked colder and darker at close range than it had from her window. He took her hand and whispered, “Ease yourself in, now. Don’t make a splash.”

Alex climbed over the stone barrier and hung on with her hands, letting her feet touch the water and then lowering herself down the inside surface of the ledge, grabbing for crannies in the rough bricks. She gasped as the cold water closed over her body and then let herself drop, keeping her head above the surface with frantic paddling. Burke joined her seconds later, and then he set off across the water with strong, overarm strokes, slowing his pace to keep Alex with him.

It seemed an eternity before they reached the other side. Alex was freezing cold, her lips blue, as she watched Burke scramble for handholds and climb out, and then stretch flat on the ground to reach down for her.

She was almost out of strength. Burke plucked her from the water as if lifting a doll from the nursery floor to place it on a shelf. When she felt the grass under her feet she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed with relief.

“Isn’t this a charming sight?” said a voice behind her.

The lovers whirled to find Philip Cummings confronting them with a contingent of armed men, some bearing torches.

Cummings strode up to Alex, his hands on his hips.

“So you were nothing to Burke but a trading chit, eh?” he said, throwing her words back at her. “Did you think you deceived me that easily?” He slapped her face smartly.

“Don’t you touch her!” Burke lunged for Cummings and managed to knock him to the ground before Carberry’s men dragged him off the older man. They pinned Burke’s arms behind his back, and a sword was leveled at his throat. It took three soldiers to hold him.

“Get off of him!” Alex cried, her mind barely able to take in what was happening.

“Such touching devotion,” Cummings said. “It seems our Mr. Burke does not lack for female admirers, but he must take care to treat them better.” He smiled unpleasantly at Alex and then at Burke, who glared at him in mute fury.

“It was one of them who told us about this little plan to spirit you away, Alexandra,” Cummings went on. “Your lover’s discarded mistress was only too happy to inform us about an interesting conversation she had overheard in the rebel camp. A buxom lass, frolicsome no doubt, but not too scrupulous. It seems she bears a bitter grudge against your young gallant here for deserting her.” He patted her wet shoulder solicitously. “I’m afraid you are not in very exclusive company, my dear.”

“Let him go,” Alex cried. “I’ll stay here with you, just let him go.”

“Oh, no, it’s much too late for that,” Cummings said as if they were discussing a missed appointment. He turned to the castle guard, who were watching him alertly, awaiting direction.

“Take him,” he said.

Burke was dragged away, bucking and struggling, as Alex stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming.

Chapter 7

I find that I sent wolves and not shepherds to govern Ireland...

—Queen Elizabeth I, upon hearing of massacres conducted there in her name.

Alex was returned to her
tower room and confined there for almost a month, eating from trays brought to her three times a day. She saw no one but servants, who were forbidden to speak to her, and had no news of Burke. She watched spring blooming from her window, the comings and goings of the troops, but nothing disturbed the dull routine of her miserable life. Nothing except the knowledge that she had missed her monthly flux for the first time since it had begun when she was twelve years old.

Of Burke’s fate, she knew nothing.

One day in late May, after she had watched her uncle departing with Lord Carberry and a contingent of men at dawn, she vomited her breakfast. When the charwoman returned to take the tray and saw the mess she looked at Alex through narrowed eyes.

“I couldn’t clean it up myself. I have no washing things here,” Alex said.

The woman departed and came back shortly thereafter with a bucket. Alex saw her opportunity and said, “I wish I could walk outside this room for a bit. I would keenly enjoy the fresh air.”

The woman continued her task without responding.

“Is my lord of Essex still in residence?” Alex asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

The servant glanced at her but still didn’t speak.

“I know you have orders not to converse with me, but if he be here, can you not ask him if I may take some exercise? In my uncle’s absence he is in authority and could give me leave to walk in the courtyard.”

Alex hoped that the woman would be afraid not to convey her request, and that Essex, always partial to ladies, would be a more lenient jailer than her uncle. She was right on both counts. About an hour after the woman had left, a guard came to her door and said he had orders from Essex to take her out for a walk. Apparently, the ban on talking to her had been lifted also; the young man engaged her in conversation, and Alex found that trading pleasantries with him helped to pass the time and keep her mind off other, weightier matters.

Thereafter the guard came every day, and the longer her uncle was gone the higher Alex’s hopes rose. She befriended the boy, an easy enough thing for a pretty girl to do, and on the fifth day she asked him lightly, “Is there an Irish prisoner still in the dungeon, a big man, with hair the color of river rushes?”

“Aye, miss, he’s there,” the guard responded, not knowing he was speaking of her lover. He had been told that Alex was under guard because she’d been kidnapped once and was therefore a vulnerable target for the rebels.

She withdrew her hand from the folds of her skirt and opened it to reveal the gold bauble lying on her palm. It was one of the few relics she had of her mother, and it was very valuable—a year’s wages for this soldier, enough for his greed to overcome his fear.

“I wish to see him,” she said.

The boy’s eyes grew enormous. He looked from the locket to her face and then back to the gleaming object. She could see his conflict in his rapidly changing expression. Under other circumstances it would have been comical.

“There will be little risk for you if you take the night shift and slip me in after dark. Bribe the regular guard to stand his turn; what you give him will be little enough by comparison with this.” She closed her fist and hefted the chain.

“It would be worth my life . . .” the boy began fearfully.

“No one will see us! We will take great care. My uncle is away, and my lord of Essex is preoccupied with greater troubles than my taking a nocturnal stroll.”

He shook his head. “I know not—”

“Come at nine if you decide to be a rich man,” she said impatiently, and went into her room, pulling the door closed behind her. She heard him hesitate a long moment before his footsteps receded down the hall.

Alex was nearly in a fever waiting for the hour of nine to arrive. If she had guessed wrong and the guard reported her offer to Essex, Philip Cummings would probably drown her like a puppy when he returned. Did the boy stand to gain more by taking her bribe or by currying favor with his superiors and turning her in to them? Then again, he might do nothing, just ignore her offer and go on as before. She flattened the rushes on the stone floor with her pacing, trying to anticipate what he would do.

Nine o’ clock came and went, and nothing happened. Alex was almost weeping with frustration when there was a light tap at her door, about ten minutes after she heard the sentry pass below her on his rounds.

“What is it?” she called, putting her ear to the door.

“Tis’ Arker, miss.”

Alex clasped her hands together in gratitude. The guard had come after all.

She opened the door, and he extended his hand to her, palm up and waiting to be filled.

“Not until I’ve reached the dungeon,” she said.

He shrugged, turned, and set off down the stairs without a word. Alex followed, lifting the skirts of Lady Carberry’s old gown clear of the stone steps and descending in a spiral toward the cellars.