The Highwayman (17 page)

Alex had never been this deep into the castle before, and as they went lower the walls became slimy, covered with moss and lichen. The dampness was pervasive. They passed the kitchen level and still kept going down, the stairwell narrowing, until the tidal smell of the moat was overwhelming and the low ceiling pressing in on them fairly dripped moisture. Alex’s stomach clenched. Burke had been in this fearful place for how long? One night would be enough to break her spirit. At least the guards could leave it when they went off duty; for Burke, it was home.

Harker stopped short as they came to a level spot and turned a corner, where an open room was divided into a guard post and three barred cells. A torch fitted into a wall sconce showed that two of them were empty. Harker nodded toward the last one, where she could barely see a dim figure prone on a bed of filthy straw.

Harker held out his palm once more, and Alex dropped the necklace into it.

“I’ll wait at the foot of the stairs, there,” Harker said. “If you hear me speak up, hide around the bend until I come for you.”

Alex nodded distractedly, her gaze still on the farthest cell. She walked toward it slowly, wanting to run but alerted by some inner instinct that told her she’d better see him before he knew she was there.

Once outside his cell, she was glad she had been quiet. He was lying full length facing away from her, his wrists manacled and held close together by a length of chain fixed to a peg in the floor. His broad back was striped with whip marks, some of them dried and black, some still oozing. Even in the uncertain torchlight she could see the blue bruises on his arms, the gash on the back of his head that matted and darkened his fair hair.

Alex sank back against the wall, her hand to her throat, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t speak. She knew he would never want her to see him like this. They had obviously been tying him up and holding him defenseless while they whipped and abused him. He was a man they could never have defeated in a fair fight.

She felt a surge of cold hatred for her uncle, yet it was mixed with a terrible sense of responsibility on her part for what had happened to Burke. He had come back to the castle for her, and if it hadn’t been for her, he would be safe now, with his men, plotting the destruction of his enemies, and blessedly free.

Alex knew what she had to do. She turned and walked back to Harker’s station.

“I’m ready to go up to my room now,” she said.

Harker looked at her, puzzled. He had heard no conversation, and her payment had been beyond extravagant for a visit so brief. The upper classes had always been a mystery to him, and this lady was no exception. He turned and led the way up the stairs.

When they reached Alex’s room, she said to him, “Mr. Harker, I would take it as a favor if you’d leave word for my uncle that I wish to speak to him most urgently when he returns.”

Harker looked alarmed.

“Not about you. Our business is done and remains between us. And one thing more. Pray do not tell the prisoner I came to see him.”

“I’ll say nothing, miss.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

He waited until the door closed behind her and then hurried down the stairs, fingering the locket in his vest.

* * * *

Alex waited five more days for her uncle’s return, and by then her resolve was firmer than it had been in the dungeon. She looked up from her needlework one afternoon to see him stride into her chamber, fresh from the road, stripping off his riding gloves.

“I’ve been told you wish to see me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

Alex stood and shook out her skirt, putting the embroidery hoop on her chair. “I wanted to tell you that you’ve won. I know what’s been happening to Burke, I’ve heard the servants talking. I can’t let him be tortured any longer because of me. If you let him go, I’ll return to England whenever you like and do whatever you require.”

“Tortured?” Cummings said, raising a brow.

“What would you call it?”

“Burke has been interrogated concerning his treasonous activities, which is our practice with any captive rebel. I would encourage you not to dramatize his injuries, or your role in his current situation. Though you will certainly go back to England and obey me in all things, you have no power to bargain for your lover, my dear. You value yourself much too highly. He’s been persuaded with the lash because he will not part with information we need. It has little to do with you.”

“It doesn’t matter what methods you use on him. He will tell you nothing.”

“He is human. He will break.”

“Why bother to question him at all?” Alex burst out, unable to control herself. “Your cause is lost, Uncle. Lord Essex has forfeited the queen’s support, and nothing Burke could tell you will help you at this point.”

“What do you know about it?” Cummings demanded, walking toward her and grasping her shoulders. She squirmed under his painful grip. When he released her suddenly, the room seemed to spin, and she sat down hard on the edge of the bed, almost swooning. When her vision cleared she saw her uncle’s boots planted a few inches from her feet. He was staring down at her pensively.

“Feeling poorly?” he asked.

“A bit dizzy.”

“I see.” He strode away from her and then turned to face her with his arms folded and his legs apart, like a judge at a fencing match.

“The servants tell me that you are often unwell at mornings and have had no flux since you returned from your time among the rebels,” Cummings said. “Is this true?”

Watched so closely as she was, it had only been a matter of time before the servants got together and reached the obvious conclusion.

“Your silence is eloquent,” her uncle said, when she did not reply.

“What do you wish me to say?”

“You are with child,” Cummings stated.

“I know not.” She paused. “It may be so.”

“By that same august personage who now enjoys the hospitality of Carberry’s keep.”

Alex said nothing.

“A fine choice for your child’s father. Or do you know he’s the father? Were you servicing the whole lice-ridden lot of them?”

Alex gave him a look of icy contempt and then stared away from him deliberately. How could she ever have felt sorry for him for being saddled with her? He was as mean as a viper, and she hated him.

“I know better than to ask if he forced you,” Cummings observed, disgust plain in his voice. “Christ’s sacred blood, Alexandra, I could skin you alive. You are a disgrace, quite beyond hope. You have dishonored me, the memory of your parents, the name of our entire family.”

“And you’re covering our name with glory, I suppose, slogging through the bogs after Essex, chasing phantoms? You have pistols and gunpowder, men and supplies, the whole might of England behind you, and you still can’t put the rebels down. They’ll go on fighting even if they’re reduced to throwing rocks, don’t you see that? Burke would rather die than help you. Punishing him because I love him, or because your gamble in coming here was a bad choice, will not change the outcome of your benighted campaign or make me into the niece you think you deserve.”

“I see you have adopted the quaint Irish custom of making boring speeches.”

Alex fell silent. She would have to keep reminding herself that talking to him was wasted effort.

“It is clear that I must expedite the plans I had in mind for you,” Cummings said.

Alex’s heart sank. What did he have in mind?

“I have written recently to my good friend, Lord James Selby of Hampden Manor in Surrey, to offer him your hand in marriage. Do you recall him?”

Alex had a vague impression of an older man, her uncle’s contemporary, with grown children and substantial holdings in the county that had been mentioned. More important, though close to the queen, Selby was not an intimate of the Essex contingent and had taken no sides in that group’s constant struggle with Cecil’s faction. Cummings was clearly carving an alternate route for himself if things continued to deteriorate along their current course.

“What would induce Lord Selby to take me off your loving hands?” she asked.

“A substantial dowry and the promise of my influence at court with Lord Essex.”

“Then you’d better step smartly before the Essex influence wanes further,” Alex said.

“I wouldn’t be so flip if I were you, Alexandra. My letter did not include the news that you would be coming to the marriage bed with a bastard in your belly.”

“Perhaps he’ll call it off, then.”

“We shall see.”

“Are you suggesting I should deceive him?”

Cummings gave her a look of mock horror. “You? Practice deception? Perish the thought! In any event, you’d best marry somebody before that brat begins to swell your stomach, and it might as well be Selby. You could do worse.”

“I insist that he know about my condition.”

“You are not in a position to insist on anything.”

“If what he wants is my dowry and your good offices with the queen, he may not care about the child. It is merely that I remember him to be a decent, kindly man and do not wish to see him misled.”

“You’ve acquired a tender conscience? A recent addition, I assume. It did not trouble you while you were consorting with known criminals in defiance of
my
express commands.”

“If you don’t tell Lord Selby, I will.”

“Enough!” Cummings exploded, slamming his fist down on the fireside table so hard that the crockery rattled. Clearly he would not allow Alex’s scruples to interfere with his neatly formulated plan to transform her into a respectable country matron and make a valuable political connection at the same time.

“By your leave, sir,” a nervous page said from the doorway.

They both looked at the boy, conscious for the first time that Cummings had not closed the bedroom door on his arrival.

“Captain of the guard requests your immediate presence, sir,” the page said.

“Bother,” Cummings muttered under his breath. In a louder voice he said, “Tell the captain I am now detained and will see him at my first leisure.”

The boy hesitated.

“Well?” Cummings said.

The page glanced at Alex, then at her uncle.

Cummings made a sound of exasperation and stalked over to the boy. They conversed in a low tone and then the page hurried off. Cummings turned to look at Alexandra, his expression grim.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Apparently we didn’t ‘torture’ your paramour quite enough. He’s escaped.”

Alex couldn’t control the joyous glow that suffused her countenance.

“You are not heartbroken by this intelligence, I see,” Cummings said.

Alex made no reply.

“You realize, of course, that he’s deserted you,” her uncle added spitefully.

“It gladdens my heart that he is free.”

“He’s left you with his by-blow and will now return to pursuing the same type of low woman who betrayed him to us. He cares nothing for you, he never did. Despoiling you was part of his revenge on his hated overlords. He played you like a lute, my girl.”

Alex sighed and folded her hands, fixing her gaze on the wall behind his head.

“I hope you’re not entertaining any notions of his returning here for you. He knows what it would mean for him to do so. He’ll forget you and disappear into the fens forever. You should accustom yourself to that notion and arrange your future accordingly.”

Cummings whirled about and strode purposefully from the room. Alex ran to the window and looked down at the trees, praying that they would conceal her lover and silently wishing him the choicest of luck.

* * * *

Burke slid from his stolen horse and hit the ground hard, reaching for a tree trunk to steady himself against it. The world swam for a moment. He pulled the hood from his head and discarded the peasant’s cowl on the ground. The man he’d taken it from was lying unconscious with a welt on his brow and would have a thick head in the morning, but Burke was pleased that it had not been necessary to kill him.

He tethered the horse to a low branch by a stream. He wasn’t sure how far he’d come from Inverary, but he thought it was safe to take a brief rest. If he tried to push on, he could pass out, and then Carberry’s men might come across him. He was unable, to tell if he was being pursued, but he thought it likely. They knew he was injured and would therefore expect his progress to be slow.

His back felt as if it were being raked with fingers of fire. His thin tunic was stuck to the oozing wounds, and his flayed skin came away with the cloth when he took off the shift and sank gratefully into the stream.

The cool water eased the burning, and he closed his eyes, thinking about the woman he had left behind at the castle. If only he had been able to take her with him. Getting this far himself had been difficult enough and had taken weeks of planning. Trying to include her would have made the whole scheme impossible. The only way was to go back for her with a force of men when the time was right. In his mind he knew he’d made the only choice, but in his heart he felt that he had abandoned her.