The Beloved Scoundrel (36 page)

Ana went pale, her teeth biting into her lower lip.

“Gently,” Gregor said quickly.

“He does not know the meaning of the word,” Ana said. “Every four hours he descends on me and puts me through this torture.”

Alex’s jaw set. “Jordan says it has to be kept clean.”

“I’ve had enough of it.” She glared at him. “Get out of my tent!”

He continued to dab at the wound.

“Gregor, pick him up and carry him out of here.”

Marianna took a protective step forward.

“No.” Jordan placed his hand on her arm, stopping her.

“He appears to be doing no damage,” Gregor said. “Someone must do it, and I do not believe you would strike a child.”

“He is not a child. He’s a demon.” She gasped as the hot water touched the torn flesh. “And he will not
stop.
”

Alex paused a moment in his ministrations and then turned to Jordan. “I think you all should leave. She’s trying not to weep and will be ashamed if you see her weakness.”

Marianna stared at him in astonishment.

“You’re the one who is going to leave,” Ana said.

Alex turned back to her, glaring fiercely into her eyes. “I stay. They go. It has to be clean.”

The ravin’s eyes widened in shock.

“Ana?” Gregor asked.

“Oh, very well,” she said grudgingly. “You might as well leave. He obviously will show me no mercy.” She glanced at Gregor. “You stay. I must have someone to protect me.”

“I am not sure I am in a mood to protect you. Before Alex told me you had been shot, I was ready to do you violence myself. I did not like you going behind my back and putting a price on Costain’s head.”

“They killed him?” she asked eagerly. “Who?”

“Niko.”

She smiled with satisfaction. “Good.”

“Not good. You will not interfere again in my concerns.”

“It was my concern also. You are my subject, and therefore it was my duty to protect you.”

“Ana.”

“Oh very well. What does it matter? He is dead now anyway.” Her glance shifted warily to Alex. “You should take heed, boy. If you hurt me, I may put a price on your head too.”

“No, you won’t,” Alex said as he dipped the cloth back into the hot water.

Jordan nudged Marianna toward the tent entrance. She cast a disbelieving glance over her shoulder at the little boy and the ravin. How odd they looked together, and yet there was an almost visible bond between them.

“I’m not sure we should have left them,” she said as soon as they were outside the tent.

“She won’t hurt him. This battle has been going on since we arrived here yesterday. Alex insisted on being the one to care for her. He even stayed awake all last night so that he could wash the wound.”

“He did?” The image that came to her was ludicrous: a little cub protecting an injured lioness. “You shouldn’t have let him. He needs his rest.”

“I couldn’t have stopped him,” he said dryly. “Besides, it kept him busy. I didn’t want him worrying about you. I was doing quite enough of that for both of us.”

The words were sweet and meant too much. She tried not to dwell on them. “I suppose it will be all right for him to stay with her for now. I’ll go get him later.”

“He might not come.” When he saw her stricken expression, he added harshly, “For God’s sake, don’t look like that. It won’t be because he loves you any less. You haven’t lost him.”

“He might blame me for what happened to him.”

“How could he? It wasn’t your fault.”

“Perhaps it was. You said that I wanted to come to Dalwynd.”

“It wasn’t true. Don’t you know that a man who is seducing a woman will say anything to get his way?”

Not Jordan. Jordan would not lie.

He stopped, and his hands closed on her shoulders. “Listen to me. He doesn’t blame you. If there’s fault, it lies at my door.”

She shook her head. “He’s changed.”

“Life changed him, not you.” He shook her gently. “And for the better. Can’t you see it? It’s not every child who could face down the ravin. Before he was a good lad, but now—” He stopped.

“Now what?”

“He reminds me of you the first time I met you.”

“When I was dirty and hungry and fierce as an animal.”

“None of that mattered.” His hands opened and closed on her shoulders in a curiously yearning manner. “Even in the darkness you served the sunlight.”

She wanted to break away, but she couldn’t move. He had looked at her like this in the tower room when the sunlight had made her dizzy with joy and she had first thought she had seen behind the mask he wore.

“I was cast out also,” Gregor said from behind them. They turned to see him striding toward them. “It seems Alex thought I was a distraction. Ana will have to protect herself.”

Marianna welcomed the interruption that shattered the spell. She glanced away and said quickly, “I need to go to my tent and wash away this dust before I go back to Alex.”

“And rest a little,” Jordan said. “There’s no hurry. You’ve been riding all day.”

“I don’t need to rest. Tell Alex I’ll be with him shortly.”

Not that he needed her, she thought wistfully as she walked away. Jordan said she had not lost him, but what she was feeling at the moment was very much like loss. It was foolish to feel sorry for herself. Alex was safe and Jordan was safe. An hour ago she would have asked nothing more from life. It seemed that as soon as danger faded into the background, greed took hold, and she wanted everything she could not have.

Well, she could have Alex. Jordan might be out of reach, but Alex loved and needed her. He just had to be reminded of the ties between them.

As soon as she arrived at her tent, she took off the jacket of her riding habit and splashed cool water on her face and throat. She had always loved the sensation of water on her body. One of the panels that she had brought with her in the wagon was of a waterfall cascading over moss-covered rocks. She had tried to remember this sensual feeling as she had crafted the pale blue of the water.

The panels.

She wished she had not remembered them. Nebrov had knowledge of the Zavkov, and that meant it was no longer enough for Marianna just to keep her silence. Not if she was to keep her promise to her mother and fulfill the duty she had known she must perform since childhood.

There were no ifs about it, she thought impatiently. The promise must be kept. There was no excuse not to do so now that Alex was safe. The act would drive the final wedge between her and Jordan,
but perhaps that was for the best. Now that she had realized how much she loved him, she was like a hungry child trying to grab every moment, every experience. That first moment she had seen Jordan outside the ravin’s tent had been torture, staring at him, wanting to touch him to make sure he was really safe. She had wanted to step forward and take him, claim him, but therein lay the danger. There was only one way for them to be joined, and that way would eventually destroy her. No, she must be done with him so that she would not be tempted to return to that mindless creature she had been at Dalwynd.

She deliberately blocked the pain the thought brought. Evidently she was not ready to come to grips with leaving him yet, she thought wearily. She would be better able to face these problems after she had rested.

A moment later she was curling up on her pallet and closing her eyes. Darkness was welcome, darkness was safe, darkness brought forgetfulness. She had always loved the light, but she did not want it now.

She would rest for just an hour and then go fetch Alex from the ravin’s tent.

Only an hour …

S
he thinks Alex is rejecting her, dammit.” Jordan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“She cannot turn back the clock,” Gregor said quietly. “She must realize the boy will never be the same.”

“I know. And she will blame me for that too.” “She is not unfair. The change is still new to her,
but her hurt will heal. Who should know better how life can scar?”

Jordan flinched. He had added his measure of cuts to form those scars. “I share this particular blame.” His lips tightened grimly. “I want Nebrov.”

“As do I. He has claimed too much from us.” He paused. “And he is not going to give up. He is not foolish enough to pursue us into Kazan, but he will still try to find a way to find the tunnel.”

“Without the Jedalar?”

“He mentioned something else. Zavkov.”

Jordan frowned. “What the devil is that?”

“I do not know, but Marianna did. He called it the lock for the key. Evidently the Jedalar is only part of the answer.”

It made sense. Though the complete map was contained in the panel, there would have to be someone to interpret it, and the czar had trusted no one. “You say Marianna knows?”

“And was dismayed that Nebrov did. It frightened her.”

“Enough to make her give us the Jedalar?”

Gregor shrugged. “It is possible. I thought I would let you discuss it with her.”

“I will.” He glanced in the direction in which Marianna had vanished. “But not now. We still have time.”

“Not very much.”

“I know that,” he said harshly. “What do you expect me to do? She’s tired and frightened and hurting.”

“When this started, you would not have cared about her, if it meant keeping Kazan safe.”

“Not now!” He turned and stalked away. Gregor
was right, but that did not make the choices easier. He did not want to coerce and use her, and God knows he did not want to hurt her again. Why couldn’t she see that it was better that he find the tunnel rather than Nebrov? Kazan would use it only for its own defense, but it would be a disaster if that map was given to Napoleon.

She would not see because she trusted no one but herself. She had revealed only the details she had been forced to give him to save Alex, and he doubted if she would be willing to confide any more now.

What the devil was Zavkov?

M
arianna did not wake until almost midnight and came back sluggishly to awareness.

Alex … She should not be sleeping. Alex needed her.

Alex was not here! Nebrov had him and—

Panic brought her fully awake, but relief immediately followed as she realized that horror was over. Alex must still be with the ravin, and she had only to fetch him.

She splashed water into her face and made a scanty attempt at tidying her hair before leaving the tent.

The camp was silent, and except for the guards on the perimeter, everyone appeared to be sleeping. Jordan was in one of those tents. A memory came back to her of his lean body sprawled naked next to her on the bed, his arm curved possessively about her.

She veered away from that image. She did not want to think of Jordan and definitely not of those days at Dalwynd. Her body’s response was too ingrained not to—

A lantern still burned in the ravin’s tent.

Had she taken a turn for the worse? Marianna ran the last several yards to the tent and threw up the flap.

She stopped just inside the threshold. Alex was curled up on the pallet beside the ravin, his curly head nestled on her naked shoulder.

A sharp pang pierced her at the sight of them. Even in conflict the bond had been apparent, but now they could be mother and son.

She must have made some noise because the ravin opened her eyes, and her gaze flew to where Marianna stood.

Marianna took another step into the tent. “He must be making you uncomfortable. I’ll take him now.”

“No!” The ravin’s arm tightened around Alex. “It’s my good shoulder. He just fell asleep. Leave him alone.”

“If you are not uncomfortable, then he must be. He needs to go to bed.”

“Does he look uncomfortable?” the ravin challenged. “It is you who are uncomfortable with him being here.” She nodded toward the low stool beside the pallet. “Sit down. We must talk.”

“I don’t wish to talk. We’ll wake Alex.”

“Nothing could wake him but the horn of Gabriel. He was up all of last night tending my wound. Jordan could not get him to rest. He would not be asleep now if he had not dozed off from exhaustion.” She looked at Alex, and her hand gently stroked his curls. “He does not look like you. He is dark, and you are fair.”

Marianna reluctantly moved to the stool and sat down. “He favors my mother.”

“He’s a handsome boy. She must have been beautiful.”

“Yes.”

Her attention shifted to Marianna. “You are jealous. You do not like him being here with me.”

“I’m
not
jealous. I know you’re ill, but he is only a child. He has no business tending—” She broke off and nodded wearily. “He is all I have. I don’t want to lose him.”

“You won’t lose him. You have given him love and performed your duty through all his life. It will bind him to you.” She smiled without mirth. “Believe me. It is a truth I know well.”

“But you chose to cut that tie with Jordan.”

“Because I was young and selfish. I had married a weak man who thought he could steal my strength. When he found I was not going to let him do it, he made my life a misery. I was a stranger and alone in that cold land. I had to escape.”

“And leave your child.”

“Do you think I wished to do it? I loved him. He was my salvation, but I could not bear it there.” She shrugged. “If I had stayed, he would have lost me anyway.”

“I cannot see that.”

“No?” Her eyes glinted. “My husband had started to beat me. I have a terrible temper, and I would not have tolerated that for very long. I would have killed him.” She smiled sardonically. “I preferred fleeing England to being hanged for murder. You, no doubt, would have stayed and meekly borne any abuse for duty’s sake.”

“No, I am not meek, and I probably would have
left Cambaron as you did.” She paused. “But I would have found a way to take my child with me.”

“As I should have done,” the ravin whispered. “I’m not denying my guilt. Do you think I have not regretted it? It seemed impossible at the time, but I should have found a way.” She looked down at Alex. “But I have been punished enough for it. At first I was only happy to be back in Kazan, but then I began to think of Jordan. Every time I saw a child, I realized what I had given up.” Her finger tenderly traced the line of Alex’s brow. “I am not a monster. Even if I could, I would not steal moments like this from you.”