The King's Daughter (37 page)

He grabbed her wrist. “Isabel.”

She blinked at him in surprise. He’d never called her by her name. The intimacy of it caught them both off guard. Carlos hesitated. What could he say? That it was easy for her to talk of choosing sides because her class always stayed on top, whoever won, but if he chose wrong he died?

He kept hold of her wrist, not willing to let her go before he made her understand. That he had nothing, and that was how most mercenaries died—with nothing, died before they were forty, on some muddy battlefield, forgotten. He began haltingly. “This is my chance. I have seen revolts like this before. They are broken fast. The rebels are hanged and the ruler is thankful to all who helped win the victory. I could get …
un indulto
“—he frowned, searching for the word—"a pardon. You see? Even more, I could get a reward. Land. The Queen will give out the lands of dead traitors. I could …” He didn’t finish. There was no way to explain that this was his chance to
be
something. To be the equal of her class. The equal, even, of the man she planned to marry.

And certainly there was no way to tell her about the relief creeping into his heart the longer he held her. For how could he possibly explain that now, with this way out, he did not have to kill her father?

So he merely said again, inadequately, almost pleading, “Isabel.”

But she’d gone very pale. “Lands of dead traitors?” she whispered. She jerked back her hand and stepped away from him. Without another word she hurried upstairs.

Thornleigh’s head slumped back against the alcove wall, jolting him awake. The ward was plunged in sleep, but for hours he’d been fighting sleep, and alternating between sweating with fever and shivering with chills. He licked his swollen lips and tasted salt and longed for water. He knew none would be brought until the morning.

He blinked in the gloom, trying to see. His eyes burned so much that it was hard to focus. Were the children still there? He rubbed his eyes roughly.
Focus!
he told himself.
Concentrate!
Yes, they were still there, hunkered in their half ring like so many shadowy goblins. The oldest one, the hollow-eyed girl who was their leader, sat on her haunches idly picking at a scab on her cheek, watching him. Watching and waiting. Thornleigh felt like a cornered rat, but at least with his back braced against the wall he could see them all. They couldn’t sneak up on his rear. He shook his head hard.
Must not fall asleep!

But the shivering claimed him again. It took him like a kind of paroxysm, shaking him, and when it was over he slumped against the wall again, exhausted. Then, through the slit of his swollen eye, he saw one of the shadowy little figures creep closer. And another. Christ, they were moving in on him!

He sat bolt upright with a loud threatening growl. The children stilled. Thornleigh slumped again, panting. He had stopped them with this brief show of defiance but it was just a standoff. He needed to stay vigilant, needed to concentrate. He looked around for something, anything, to focus his mind, to keep his head above the tide of delirium.

He saw a fist-sized chunk of firewood. It was next to the wall, between him and the child at the edge of the semicircle. He went forward on all fours and snatched it, then retreated to the alcove and sat again, dizzy from the burst of exertion. With shaky hands he felt inside his boot and drew out his knife. He began to whittle the wood.

It was hard work. His hands were unsteady, his palms were slippery with sweat, and his focus wavered as the fever enervated him. But every glance up at the hollow-eyed girl, implacably waiting, reinforced his perseverance.
He must not fall asleep.

* * *

He stalked through the room, the barrel of his pistol glinting. He lifted it and pointed it at her mother’s face and laughed. A fiery detonation … her mother exploded into smoke and blood …

Isabel bolted up in bed, screaming. She tore off the blanket and threw her legs over the side of the bed and lunged for her mother to catch her from falling … but she was so far away! And she was slipping on the blood … her mother’s blood … falling. On all fours she crawled across the floor to her … too slow! …
if she could only catch her mother!

Someone grabbed her. Someone was stopping her … holding her back. She yanked her arms free and beat him with her fists. “Let go, Father!” she cried. “I have to catch her! Let me go!”

But her father did not let go. He gripped her wrists to stop her blows. And though she squirmed and tried with all her might to fight him, he pinned her arms tightly to her sides. The pain of the struggle punctured the nightmare, fracturing the images of pistol, smoke, blood, her mother falling…. Everything splintered and re-formed into a pattern that made no sense … Martin slipping in blood … her father grabbing her wrists to keep her from the mob while the Spanish lords fell from their horses … the Spaniard lowering himself on top of her in the prison … protecting her with his body … blood from his shoulder dripping onto her …

“It is me!” he said … and she realized he’d been saying it over and over … “It is me—Carlos!”

The splintered nightmare vanished.

She realized she was on her knees in the middle of her room. He was on his knees before her, his hands clamped on her wrists. They knelt face to face in the shadows. A shaft of moonlight silvered the room. “You screamed,” he said.

The pain of his grip brought stinging tears to her eyes. He saw that he was hurting her and he let go. “Better?” he asked more quietly.

Better? How could it be! She had not reached her mother in time. Had not stopped her from falling …
would never be able to
…

She felt dizzy, as if she were falling herself. She clutched fistfuls of his shirt and held on tightly. Then something in her gave way. She fell against him. And the tears that had sprung in pain now flowed in grief. She would
never
catch her mother … who would fall in her dreams forever, beyond her reach … just beyond her outstretched arms …

In desolation she threw her arms around his neck and wept. It had been five days since the pistol shot, the sulfurous smoke, the blood, the chaos … and finally she wept.

He said nothing. He held her with her face against his neck as she wept.

And then her tears were spent. But she did not leave his embrace. She could not find the will to do so. His arms held her so firmly, even though her body shuddered with breaths that came in gulps. The heat of his body enveloped her. It was like a haven.

It was more. It was a surging, living heat, and the pressure of his arms was a pulsing strength. She was aware of the hardness of his body … of the leather scent that infused his shirt … of the musky smell of his skin. Aware of her own lips, wet with tears, against his warm neck. She wore only a thin chemise, and the sensation of being nearly naked in his arms made her almost dizzy again. Her quickened pulse thrummed through her veins. She drew back a fraction from him, and her tightened nipples grazed his chest. A jolt of heat flashed from her nipples down to her belly.

Dazzled by the sensation, she pulled back shakily. His hold slackened but his arms did not release her. He was looking straight into her eyes but his breathing was ragged, as if he was forcing his eyes to remain on hers though his mind ranged all over her body.

One of her tears glistened on his chin. It looked so odd—a tear on that rough skin—and she started to wipe it away. He sucked a sharp breath in surprise. Her hand strayed to his open mouth … her fingertips brushed his lips.

He snatched her hand to stop her. “I am only human,” he said, his voice a rough plea.

Hot blood swept her face. What was she doing! Ashamed, she jerked away from him. She half turned, still on her knees. But the overwhelming power of his presence snared her, as if his arms still held her fast. She could not imagine breaking away from him … could only imagine sinking back, yielding to his strength.

Suddenly he was close behind her. Still kneeling, he did not touch her, but she felt the heat of his body over every inch of her back. She heard his breathing, harsh with want. But he was utterly still, as though waiting to gauge her response. She made no move to reject him. A faint voice in her head whispered that she
must,
but the rush of her blood deafened her to it.

And then his hands were on her. Grabbing her shoulders. Sliding up her neck, his fingers raking her hair. Plunging down to her hips, around to her belly, rumpling the chemise, ranging up over her breasts. Her nipples were hard against his palms. His mouth was hot on the back of her neck. He pressed her against his body and she felt the swell of his erection rock-hard against her buttock. Her head lolled on his shoulder.

He groaned and pulled her backward. She sank, unresisting, her every muscle yielding. A universe apart from her defilement by Mosse. She was on the floor on her back and Carlos was over her. They lay in darkness below the shaft of moonlight, and now there was nothing but the sound of his breathing and the feel of him and the yearning of her body. He rested his weight on one arm bent by her head. His mouth covered hers. His hand urgently roamed over her breasts and belly as if he could not get enough of her. Her mouth opened under his. He shoved her chemise up above her breasts, baring all of her. She clutched his shoulders, themuscles hard. His hand slid between her legs, parting them—so easily—moving to the place of her heat, slick with her desire. At the insistent motions of his fingers she gasped, for it seemed that if he continued something inside her would explode, but she arched to meet his hand, for it seemed that if he stopped she would die.

With a groan, he groped to unfasten the ties of his codpiece.

A fist banged the door. “Mistress Thornleigh?” The landlady’s anxious voice. “All right in there? I heard you cry out a few moments ago.”

Isabel could not catch her breath. His tongue was on her neck, her breast….

“Mistress? Shall I come in?”

“No! I’m … fine. Just a … bad dream. It’s nothing!”

“Oh. A dream. Well, I won’t bother you then.” The landlady padded away. “Goodnight.”

His weight was coming down on her … the furnace of his body pressing …

“No!” she whispered fiercely. He froze. But she felt his heart throughout his body pounding with his need. She tried to push him off. It was like pushing at a boulder.

He lifted his head. The dull glint in his eyes showed how far want had overpowered thought. All his strength was channeled into claiming her, and she knew she was asking almost the impossible in asking him to stop. But the landlady’s interruption had brought the real world crashing in on her. Martin. Her betrothal vows to Martin. Her promises.
Promises are all we have
.… She
must
not let this happen!

“Please, oh, please let me go,” she whispered.

He rolled onto his back with a thud, breathing hard. He stared at the ceiling. She quickly covered herself. He lurched up stiffly, sitting, and retied his codpiece. He said nothing, only cast her a glance as he got to his feet. But the glance was eloquent with anger, desire, and bewilderment.

He left her room.

* * *

Thornleigh knew he was hallucinating. Ahead, a small shape quivered like a becalmed ship on a summer horizon, a ship blurred by a blazing sun and shimmering in a haze of heat.

He swallowed, parched with thirst. The whittling knife slipped in his sweaty palm and he almost dropped it. He was soaked in sweat. He stared at the small, shimmering shape ahead and fought to let reason surface through the miasma of his fever. It was no ship, he told himself, it was the boy. Some time ago—was it hours or days?—his attention had been caught by this child hunkered nearest the girl-leader, because this one—a boy no more than five, the smallest among the death watch—had begun to shiver uncontrollably.
Fevered, just like me,
Thornleigh had realized. An odd affinity with the child had grown in him as he continued to whittle, and the little boy and he had gone on shivering together, both afflicted—the hunter and the prey.

Thornleigh forced himself to look down at his whittling. The boat carving was almost finished. But he felt his strength ebbing.

He knew he was going to die.

A wave of fever swamped him and his knife clattered to the floor. He had not been concentrating. The sound rattled him. He hunched over on his knees and groped in the straw, trying to find the knife. The blade sliced the skin between his fingers and he pitched forward onto his elbow at the pain, but his other hand still held up the carved boat as if to keep it safe. But he had not strength enough to stay in this position, and he thudded down on the floor. Lying on his side, he saw the girl, the leader, lift her hand. He knew it was a signal.

The children started to creep in. Thornleigh tried to stagger up, but the fever made the room blur and his muscles quiver beyond his control. One thought surfaced:
This is the end.
He could only watch as the hazy images of the children advanced. But the small boy was not moving with them. He was too weak, Thornleigh thought. It was the end for him, too. And then … Thornleigh did not know what made him do it … a perversion of the fever? Pity? The need to make some final, desperate act of will? Whatever it was, as the other children crept closer he rolled onto his stomach, lifted the carving up high, stretched out his hand, and offered the boat to the boy.

The air around that small shape seemed to quiver with heat again—a blurred ship on the horizon, lit by a glow from behind like some fiery equatorial sunset. Then, with a sudden, bursting clarity of mind, Thornleigh saw that the fire haloing the child was no sun-hazed horizon. It was torchlight across the ward.

The cellarman had brought down the corpse cart to collect the night’s dead.

22
Robin’s Boa

I
t was not yet dawn and the wind was biting cold when Palmer, Edward Sydenham’s steward, trudged toward London Wall and stopped before Newgate. The city gate was closed, and above the gateway arch the prison rose up black against the gloomy sky. Beside Palmer was Giles Sturridge of the Grenville Archers.