Marissa Day (32 page)

“We must get word to Smith. Someone needs to get out to Kensington House at once.”

Still she should make an effort. She had the feeling it was important. She should open her eyes.

“Help,” said someone thickly.

Her. That muffled, sloppy voice was hers like the pain was hers, and the nightmare dash through the early morning streets had been hers. The dash to warn, to save . . .

Memory dropped down like a stone and Jane gasped in shock. She struggled to sit, but a woman’s arms wrapped around her shoulders.

“Gently, gently, Lady Jane,” the woman said. “Where’s that brandy? Here, drink this. Slowly now.” A glass was put to her lips. She smelled the brandy fumes and sipped. The heat was a shock to her sore throat, but a welcome one. It jolted her eyesight back into focus and gave her the strength to sit up.

She was on her back in a bed hung with red draperies. Red silk covered the walls and upholstered much of the carved furniture. The window drapes were closed so she couldn’t tell what time of day it was. Mrs. Corwin Rathe stood beside the bed wearing an autumn brown night-robe.

“Corwin Rathe!” Jane clutched the woman’s hand. “I must speak to your husband at once!”

“At your service, madame.” A black-haired man stepped into her field of vision. He’d dressed hastily, with only a rumpled blue coat over his shirt and breeches.

“What is it you want with us, Lady Jane?” growled another voice. A second man came into view and Jane recognized Darius Marlowe. His gold hair was tousled and, like Rathe, he’d clearly thrown on his shirt and maroon jacket after being hastily summoned from sleep.

“I have to tell you, they’ve broken in. . . .”

“Who has?” barked Marlowe.

“Them. The f-f . . . the fair . . .”

“The Fae?” said Mrs. Rathe in a low voice.

Jane nodded. The three of them exchanged a long look, all their faces going taut with a mix of anger and pure fear.

“What are they after?” Mr. Rathe asked Jane. “Do you know?”

She nodded, but had to take another swallow of brandy before she could speak. “The baby.”

Mrs. Rathe clapped her hand over her mouth.

“I’ll alert Smith.” Marlowe strode out of the room.

As soon as the door swung shut behind him, Rathe turned back to Jane. “How do you know about the Fae?” he demanded.

“Corwin, let her rest.” Mrs. Rathe laid her hand on Jane’s forehead. The light touch seemed very soothing, and Jane longed to slump back against her pillows. But she could not. There was no time.

“I’m all right. Please.” She shook off the other woman’s hand. “I know because Thomas told me. Sir Thomas Lynne.”

She spoke his name and her vision blurred. It was as if she could see him in front of her, slumped in the corner, his knees drawn up and his chained hands resting limp on them. Resignation settled deep into him. It was the end, the end, but Jane was safe, and that was what mattered . . .

“What have you to do with Thomas Lynne?” Rathe’s voice snapped her out of her strange reverie. Jane shook her head and tried to focus on what had been said. Mr. Rathe’s tone said he already knew Thomas was her paramour. He just wanted to see if she’d admit it.

But she couldn’t. Not yet. “They’ve taken him,” she told them instead. “They took me too. There’s a . . . a . . . woman who looks like me in the house now.”

“A double?” asked Mrs. Rathe. “A doppelganger?”

Jane had heard that word while in Saxe-Coburg and nodded.

“When?” demanded Rathe. “How? How long have they . . . ?”

The woman shot Rathe a quelling glance. “Corwin, have Jacobs wake Cook. Lady Jane needs food. And send in Martha. Tell her what’s happened. We need to get Lady Jane’s feet cleaned before they start to fester.”

Rathe bridled for a moment, but then nodded and left the room.

“Now, Lady Jane. . . .”

“Jane.” She slumped back onto the pillows. Her head ached horribly, but not as badly as her feet. Her feet burned. “Just Jane.”

“And I’m Miranda, Jane. I think you’d better tell me what’s happened, from the beginning.” Jane heard the mix of sympathy and practicality in her calm words. This was not a woman who would judge, or disbelieve.

If anything less than Thomas’s life had been at stake, Jane never would have been able to make herself speak. As it was, she stumbled over her words and had to take several more sips of the brandy to gather enough strength and nerve to keep going. When the maid arrived with a tray containing plain toast, a soft boiled egg and hot milk posset, Jane could have kissed the girl. Miranda insisted she eat, and waited calmly while she did, although Jane could see the tension in her shoulders.

At last, Jane finished the tale. “Please,” she whispered. “You must help him. They’re going to kill him. Or worse. I don’t even know what they’re capable of . . .”

“None of us knows all they’re capable of,” said Miranda grimly. “But it will not be good.”

The door opened again to admit Rathe, Marlowe and another maid carrying another tray. This one held a steaming basin, bandages and scissors and a series of bottles.

“Smith’s on his way to Kensington House,” reported the blond man. “Apparently we’ve had word from our people there. The duchess is in labor.”

Jane’s throat constricted. The baby was on the way. Frau Seibold would be issuing orders, the doctors would be called. And there would be Mrs. Beauchamp, all eagerness to help. Ready to harm the innocent child, the duchess . . .

“You must do something.”

“Everything’s being done that can be.” Miranda dismissed the maid and set the tray on a table and began opening bottles. Jane smelled herbs and strong alcohol. “What we need to do now is get these feet seen to.”

Miranda moved around the foot of the bed, laying out towels. She began bathing Jane’s feet in the hot water. It stung like fire, but Miranda held Jane firmly as she washed away the blood and dirt. The men watched her and moved not a muscle. Something crackled in the air, something familiar yet terribly strange.

It came to Jane in a flash.
They’re in each other’s minds, the way Thomas was in mine.

“I know you’re talking to each other,” she said out loud. “Can you find Thomas? Can you free him?”

All three of them turned to stare at her. A ripple of shock ran between them.

“Stop,” Jane snapped. “I am not entirely ignorant, and you know that by now.”

“No, you are not entirely ignorant,” drawled Marlowe. “What we do not know is whether you are entirely innocent.”

His words hit Jane hard, pushing her back onto the pillows. She had been so intent on giving them her message and on saving Thomas that she had not stopped to consider how the story of her actions would appear to others.

“You have helped breach the defenses of a royal residence,” Marlowe paced the room slowly, one fist knotted behind his back. “Perhaps it is as you say, and you played your part unwittingly. But we need to be sure before we go any further, especially when you’re begging us to rescue the captain of the Fae queen’s knights.”

“He sent me to warn you,” Jane fought to keep her voice level. Her feet throbbed under Miranda’s ministrations, and found an answering pain in her head. “He risked everything to do that much.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” said Rathe. “The Fae are masters of manipulating appearances, something I’m sure you have realized by now.”

“All right, all right,” cut in Miranda. “We can sort all this out later. But right now, since she knows so much of magic, there’s no reason to leave her feet in this condition, is there?” She glowered at both men. “Come here, Corwin. Help me. Hold still, Jane.”

Miranda laid her hand on Corwin Rathe’s shoulder and the prickling Jane had felt before filled the air. The Sorcerer reached out and wrapped his broad hand around Jane’s ankle. Before she could protest the familiarity, a harsh itching dug deep into skin and bone and Jane hissed.

The world around her blurred again, and Jane thought she might be fainting. She couldn’t see the red room or the Sorcerers anymore.

She saw Thomas. No. She saw Thomas’s hands, with the silver bar between them, she saw his legs and battered boots.

She saw not Thomas, but what Thomas saw. She felt the cold air scrape against his lungs and the throbbing pain in every joint.

Jane?
Thomas lifted his head.

Yes!
She cried.
It’s me, Thomas. I’m here!

But darkness fell like a hand had been clapped over her eyes. Jane cried out, but she was back in the red room, with the Sorcerers clustered at the foot of her bed, all of them staring at her. It was almost as an afterthought she noticed the pain in her feet had vanished entirely.

“What have you done!” she shouted at the pale trio.

“More to the point,” said Rathe slowly. “What have you done, Lady Jane, to permit yourself to become so bonded to the captain of the Fae Queen’s mortal knights?”

Jane pressed her lips tightly together and turned her face away. These people had been supposed to help her, but they acted as if she was some kind of criminal.

“If you saw what was in my mind, you see that Sir Thomas is a prisoner. He has risked everything to get word to you. There must be something you can do for him.”

“The question is not what can be done, but what should be done,” said Marlowe. “You forget, madame, we have no reason to trust you or this story you tell.”

“But you saw . . .” she began, but Marlowe cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand.

“It could be an illusion. Even here, even now, you could be but a cat’s-paw for Their Glorious Majesties.”

Which was true, however little she wanted to admit it. Jane swallowed her panic. In order to get help for Thomas, she needed these people. Unlike her, they had power. She must be calm, no matter how strong the fear that circled the back of her mind. She must think clearly. “What must I do to convince you? Please. A good man is going to die at the hands of these . . . creatures.”

The three looked at each other. It was Rathe who answered.

“There is nothing to be done until we have word from Kensington House. Until then, I advise you to rest and get your strength back. One way or another you will need it. Miranda, you stay with her.”

With that, the men left the room. Miranda made sure the door shut securely and then seated herself by the window, as if doing nothing more than visiting the invalid.

“Am I a prisoner?” asked Jane.

“Yes.” Which was at least a commendably direct answer.

“On whose authority am I held?”

“That’s a more complex question, but ultimately, our authority comes from the Crown.”

Jane knotted her fists in the down coverlet, trying to set aside the anger and fear and think. It was impossible. All she could see was Thomas chained in the marble cell that was also the cellar of Fiora Beauchamp’s house.

I will not cry,
Jane insisted to herself, even as one hot tear trickled down her cheek. She batted at it furiously.
I will not cry in front of this woman.

“I know this is difficult, Jane,” said Miranda quietly. “But please believe, we are not your enemies.”

“Then why won’t you help him?”

Miranda looked at her hands folded in her lap for a long time, considering carefully before she spoke. “Because we have been deceived before,” she said. “And the consequences were terrible.” Her face was taut, and Jane sensed a formidable control being exercised to keep her emotions from showing through. “In a way the queen has done us a great favor. By giving so much attention to the duchess and the duchess’s child, we know she did not accomplish her ultimate end with the death of Princess Charlotte.” The woman spoke the words calmly, but a lifetime of watching people’s faces showed Jane what that calm cost her.

“God in Heaven . . . they killed the princess?”

“They did. And they used a ruse much like this situation you present us to do it.” For the first time, Miranda’s voice faltered. “There was a defector, a trusted attendant, and three magic workers who thought they were being very clever . . . So you see, we have reason to be cautious.”

Did Thomas know about this? Why hadn’t he told her? He had set out to use her, what if he was using her now? That creature, that thing she had thought of as Mrs. Beauchamp, she could be doing anything at all in Kensington House while Jane was safely out of the way.

What if that was all part of the plan?
Jane closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said Miranda, and Jane was sure she meant it. “But we are fighting a war for survival in which we are outnumbered and badly outgunned. We cannot take any chances that you may have been deceived.”

“Why do they bother?” she asked miserably. “If they’re so strong, what do they need with someone like me?” Or like Thomas?

Miranda smiled grimly. “As powerful as they may be, this world is not theirs. There are limits to what they can do here.”

“Cold iron, salt, running water,” said Jane softly.

“Among other things. But that is why they have always needed the help of human beings to conquer. That’s why they have recruited a cadre of human soldiers and need the help of human Sorcerers.” She paused. “And why they have always sought to sway human hearts.”

There was no answer Jane could make. She could not explain the love in her. None of these people would believe what she saw in Thomas’s eyes. They had a single answer for all she had seen and all she had felt. It was all illusion. She had no proof to offer them, for the only proof was held tightly within her heart.

Miranda sighed. “I am going to say this, although I know you do not want to listen. The Fae queen’s glamour is the strongest there is. To look at her is to fall in love, and there are very few that are strong enough to break that spell once it has taken root. They will serve her until death, and beyond if she calls them. And all who serve the queen seek to subvert the prophecy. Whatever else they may do, or even feel, that will be their goal.”