Bride (44 page)
“Ye already said as much. Back t'his regiment, he said. Orders came, he said.”
Justine looked as Struan, who narrowed his eyes. “Lord Avenall was recalled to his regiment?”
“Aye. He's left. Went in the night.”
Suddenly weak, Justine sat on the lowest step of the staircase. “Only the servants are in residence at this time?”
“Aye.”
Struan began to pace, his boots echoing in the domed space. “Which night? On which night did Lord Avenall leave? Tonight? Yes, of course, he must have left earlier tonight.”
“He left the night the gir-rel came.”
Struan stopped pacing. He spun toward Justine. She got to her feet and took hold of the old man's arm. “The girl? Was she dark-haired? Wearing green?”
“Came from Kirkcaldy,” Nudge said, his head on one side as if he'd been cuffed. “Wanted to see Lord Avenall. Old friend, so she said. Ella.”
“That's right!” She accepted Struan's steadying hand beneath her elbow with gratitude. “Ella. Did she see Saber?”
“Wasna supposed to,” Nudge muttered. “She was supposed to follow me back here, but she didna come. I was too tired to climb up after her again. She let herself out.”
Justine expelled the breath she'd held. “You saw Ella leave again?”
He blinked slowly. “Aye. Ran out, she did. Wasn't long afterward when Lord Avenall asked for a carriage himself.”
“We're wasting time here,” Struan said. “Come. We'll return to Kirkcaldy. This only becomes more impossible.”
When they emerged into the cool night, Potts had already tethered the black to Justine's carriage and resumed his place atop the box.
“Back to the castle, man,” Struan shouted, helping Justine into the coach. “There's no time to waste.”
Potts made off with one of his bone-jarring bursts of speed, jostling Struan and Justine together. They flew from the Northcliff drive to the straight road home.
“You should not have followed me,” Struan muttered, staring into the mirror-black glass of the windows. “I'd have been faster on my horse.”
“You are a stubborn man, Struan. You are my husband and your concerns are my concerns. I told you from the beginning that it is my mission to help women find equal footing with their husbands.”
“Not
now.”
Justine turned her back and moved as far from him as possible. Argument would accomplish nothing, and they were both deeply fearful for Ella.
An abrupt turn tossed Justine against Struan.
“What the … ?” He wrapped an arm around her waist and held her while the vehicle gathered speed. “Damn it all!
Damn
the man I say. Has he taken leave of his senses?”
Justine clung to Struan's arm while they were jounced wildly. “This isn't the way,” she gasped.
“Don't concern yourself. These coachmen have a nose for short routes.”
“Potts has a nose for nothing but the expected. We have left the road to Kirkcaldy, I tell you.”
Struan reached across the carriage and hammered a fist on the trap.
Another sharp turn sent him sprawling on top of Justine.
“My God!” He tried to brace her safely in a corner, only to slip to the floor when Potts drew the team to a complete halt.
Justine slid down beside him. “Something's wrong.”
Fury strained Struan's features. “Obviously.” He deposited her back on the seat, opened a door, and promptly drew back.
A hunched figure flung itself through the door and the carriage rushed forward before they were completely closed inside again.
The crackle of Pott's whip split across the rushing air, and the crazed protests of abused horses.
Swathed in a hooded black cape, the newcomer knelt on the opposite seat and opened the trap.
“What is happening?” Justine asked, expecting no reply.
Struan squeezed her hands reassuringly.
“Through the trees ahead, Len,” came the interloper's cry.
Justine shifted forward on the seat. A
woman.
“Len? Potts's name is William, not
Len.”
“This is your coach?” Struan asked.
“It's her coach,” the woman shouted without turning around. “I preferred my own coachman, is all. Now, Len, my lover! Yes,
here!
Stop here.”
Once more the carriage slowed down amid the screech of wheel blocks and a deafening chorus from the team.
Another figure in black leaped aboard, this time closing the door tightly.
The woman sat and pushed down her hood.
Glory Smith stared at Justine with unconcealed hatred.
The latest arrival left his cowl draped about his stark face. “A job well done,” he complimented Glory. To Struan he said, “I could not have hoped for more willing cooperation, Viscount Hunsingore. You have followed the trail I prepared to perfection. In fact, you even did what I hardly dared to hope for. And your lady was deliciously predictable. You alone might have been enough. The two of you are a prize beyond compare.”
Justine saw the pistol the instant Struan made to rise from his seat. “He will kill you!” She hung on his arm. “He has a weapon.”
“And you are right, my lady. I will kill him. I'll kill both of you. But not until the moment is right. First you shall have the pleasure of seeing me grow rich from the bounties Stone-haven and Franchot will pay for you.”
Struan pushed Justine behind him on the seat. “Let my wife go. She has no part of this. Your argument is with me.”
The man sneered. “I think not. After all, I warned you what the appropriate retribution for your crime would be.” Cold eyes sought out Justine. “She's a fetching piece, despite her deformity. I'll admit, I'm titillated at the thought of having my first cripple—in front of her husband.”
Justine restrained Struan with both of her hands and her entire weight.
Glory tipped back her head and laughed raucously. She leaned against a window and pulled her skirts up about her hips.
Justine averted her eyes, but not before she saw Brother John Grably slide his fingers into the black curls between Glory's thighs.
T
he pistol, held to Justine's temple by Grably, ensured that Struan held still while his wrists were bound behind him and a blindfold applied by a heavyset, loudly belching coachman he'd never seen before.
“Now you, m'lady,” the man said, his voice heavy with cockney overtones.
“Touch my wife and you'll die,” Struan told him. Thank God they had not noted his knife.
“Keep the coach here, Bottwell,” Grably ordered. “We'll take them the rest of the way on foot.”
“ ‘Ere,” the coachman said in complaining tones. “I was the one what done for the other one. Don't I get to take a turn with the cripple?”
“Later,” Grably promised, shoving Struan ahead of him.
“What have you done with Potts?” Justine demanded.
The cry that followed could only be hers. Pebbles rolled past his feet and he heard breath jarred from lungs.
He jerked around in the blackness. “Justine! Justine!”
“She's all right,” Glory said sweetly. “Had a little fall, is all. You know how it is with the infirm. We'll just have to take her down a bit slower.”
With his entire body, Struan thrashed at the air in impotent rage, only to be sent to his knees with the force of a blow to the back of his neck. Grably's pistol butt shot a shaft of white-hot pain into Struan's head.
“Get up,” Grably demanded. “Try anything else and it'll be the lady's neck next time.”
“Struan! What have they done to you?”
“Nothing.” He stumbled to his feet. “All's well, my love.”
“Free with the love talk, aren't you?” Glory said. “Told her about cold cells and hot bodies, have you? And about red wine and—”
“Enough from you,” Grably snarled. “You can drop your story now. No more need for playacting. We'll get everything we want.”
Slipping, tripping on sliding rock and shale, Struan staggered under the weight of Grably thumping into him. He hit a rock face and felt his sleeve tear.
“Stand there,” Grably told him. “Hold the woman, Glory, while I move this away.”
Grunts accompanied the sound of scratching.
A hand, roughly applied to the top of his head, bent Struan double and he was shoved forward to sprawl on the ground. Old dust and dank air assaulted his nostrils. The blindfold was yanked off in time for him to see Glory push Justine, and trip her as she overbalanced.
Struan fought with the bonds at his wrists—to no avail. Justine fell. Her head smacked a trunk evidently used as a table in the middle of a cave strewn with sheepskins and heaps of tartan.
Blood welled from a gash at Justine's hairline.
“Leave her!” Struan made his way toward her on his knees. “Do not touch her. Either of you.”
“I don't have time for this,” Grably said, hauling Glory back as she would have used her fists to add to Justine's misery. “I have to return to Kirkcaldy and make sure our highborn friends get the messages I intend to send.”
“We'll get there soon enough,” Glory said. “We've matters to deal with here, first.”
Grably smiled, a smile that didn't warm his cold eyes. “Time enough for that when I return in the morning.” He raised the pistol and leveled it at Justine, who lay, her eyes closed, beside the trunk. “Untie their hands.”
“Why?”
“It will not be conventional bonds that keep these two waiting for what we have in store for them. Use the viscount's knife.” He laughed. “Thought I hadn't seen it, didn't you?”
Struan shook his head in frustration.
Glory passed her tongue over her lips.
“Do as I tell you,” Grably ordered her.
She reached beneath Struan's arms and coat to remove the knife, then cut between Justine's wrists with a cruel, twisting stroke. The sight of Justine, slowly moving her arms in front of her and pushing to sit up, was the best Struan ever remembered seeing.
Next Glory freed him, taking much longer over the task and using the opportunity to nibble his earlobe and feel him intimately.
Struan stared straight ahead. His body remained in complete accord with his mind. Neither was aroused.
Temper didn't suit Glory's striking features. She finished freeing his wrists and flung away.
Never taking his eyes from his prisoners, Grably had lighted torches in alcoves around the cave's walls. Then he took a glowing lantern and swung it slowly. “This is how you will die,” he said softly. “The only question is when. If you're very good, it may not happen too soon. If you're bad…”
“Let's get on with it,” Glory demanded.
“The entrance to this cave is hidden by a bale of twigs and dry straw, fashioned for the purpose. When we leave, other bales will be packed about the first. The straw is kept dry because there is a rock overhang above the cave. At the center of each bale are oil-soaked rags. One spark and the bales will ignite. You will not burn; you will choke.”
Struan drew Justine against his chest and sat with her cradled in his arms.
“You are already thinking of trying to run through the bales. If you do, you
will
burn. And should you live to reach the other side, you will be shot as you emerge. Your only hope is that I will change my mind and decide to spare you.”
“Let Justine go.”
“To give our identities away so soon?” Grably snorted with laughter. “I think not. You might try praying, Hunsingore. You were quite good at it once. Ask God to change my heart.”
“Kill us and my brother will never rest until he tracks you down.”
“He will not have to track me. I shall be close at hand, commiserating, advising—and laughing. You should never have stopped the payments you sent to the monastery for Glory.”
“I thought she had married.”
“She was always married—to me.”
“But you were the abbot of—”
“Do not be a fool. Rules are for the weak and the foolish. Men of intellect make their own boundaries. I shall leave you now. There is no need to bind you because there will be a watch outside. One move to leave this place and…” He smiled and swung the lantern afresh. “Well, I need not repeat myself. There is bread and wine. If the night grows too cold, avail yourselves of the skins.”
“If I was to stay with you I'd make sure you were warm,” Glory said, winking at Struan. “Maybe we should tie your wife up again and show her how—”
“Outside,” Grably said calmly. “Glory is a woman of considerable energy. Sometimes she forgets herself in her quest to use that energy.”
“Where is Ella?” Justine asked clearly. “What have you done with her?”
In his concern over present events, Struan had not thought of Ella.
“Ella?” Grably shrugged. “Why should the welfare of the viscount's plaything concern you?”
“How dare you, sir!” Justine tried to evade Struan's restraining grasp. “My husband is an honorable, generous man capable of taking the weak and needy into his care as equals. He is a man who has suffered too long because of your avarice and jealousy. He is a
saint,
sir! A
saint!”
Struan rolled in his lips and frowned to contain himself. In other circumstances, Justine's ire—and her elevation of him—might be exceedingly amusing.
“Where is Ella?” Struan asked, as calmly as possible. “And what is your connection to Avenall? I take it you worked together in this.”
“He served me well. I have nothing more to say to you on the subject.”
“Ella?” Justine cried.
“Rest well,” Grably said. “Until we meet again in the morning.” He waved Glory from the cave and backed out after her. Immediately came the scraping of the promised bales across the entrance.
When the sounds of pyre-building ceased, Struan and Justine continued to sit, side by side, on a sheepskin.
“We should tend to that wound on your head,” Struan said at last.
“It doesn't hurt,” Justine retorted, her chin defiantly raised. “They could be duping us. It's perfectly possible they're not out there at all—or they won't be once they've gone.”
Struan could not help but smile. “You, my dear, are indomitable.”
“Not at all. Merely logical.”
He pointed to the cave entrance. “What do you see?”
She frowned. “Speckles of red light.”