The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (66 page)

“Well, let me tell you something about your
precious Brother Ramsay! I was there!” Her face went dark red with
anger as she spoke through clenched teeth.

“Are you accusing Mark Ramsay of raping you,
mademoiselle?” he asked and his heart sank, but his face betrayed
nothing.

“I am,” she said defiantly.

“Your credibility leaves something to be
desired,” he smiled at her. “I would have to hear his side of the
story. You did, after all, from what I understand, kidnap him and
assault him, so to speak, when he was debilitated.”

“You have some of the facts skewed, sir. I
doubt you will hear anything from him about the events occurring
prior to your arrival,” she told him as she regained her composure.
“He has taken my… friend and left with her. I don’t know if she
left willingly or if he abducted her.”

D’Brouchart’s face finally betrayed him as he
studied her face intensely. He felt that what she was saying was at
least partially true. So there was another woman! Von Hetz had not
recognized the fact that he was receiving emanations from two
different women. Two different sets of emotions.

“If that is the case, you may rest assured
that he will be caught and dealt with accordingly,” he told her.
“But it must be part of the agreement that you will not press
charges against Sir Ramsay or any of my Knights for real or
imagined indiscretions. You will allow the Order to handle it. You
would be spared the trouble of a public trial and you can know that
justice in the Order is much swifter and, in most cases, much more
severe than what I hear the courts are handing out these days.
Especially in America.”

“And what of my friend?” She eyed him
suspiciously, but with interest. “Will she be returned to me?”

“She will be returned to you… if she wishes
it,” he told her.

“Will I be allowed to witness the punishment
of Sir Ramsay?” she asked point blank.

“No,” he answered simply.

She pursed her lips and seemed to be
repressing an outburst.

“So you will give me what I want?” she asked
quickly. “The Tree of Life?”

“I must think on it,” he told her. “You would
be immortal? Are you requesting to become one of my Knights? Are
you willing to take the vows of the Temple? Are you willing to pass
through the Initiation and accept the burden that goes with the
Mystery? Is this what you are seeking?”

“You do not allow women in the order. Don’t
be absurd.” She laughed at him. “What was it Ramsay said? The
company of women is a dangerous thing? You and your Knights are
afraid of women. You go about waging war and hacking each other to
bits, murdering and being murdered, even facing the Inquisition,
but you are afraid of women and you know why?” She leaned toward
him with an evil smile on her face.

“Enlighten me, please, mademoiselle,” he said
without flinching.

“Because you know that God is a woman,” she
said and then leaned back, crossing her arms over her stomach in
smug satisfaction.

“We are not afraid of women. The words of the
Ancient Rule of Order are the company of women is a dangerous
thing, and the devil has turned many men from the path to Paradise
by providing female company. This is not anything to do with fear.
Wives and lovers produce children… love and jealousy… lust and all
sorts of distractions too numerous to list. If a man is to devote
his life to the service of God, he must put aside things that are
distracting to his purpose. The love of women or of a woman is one
of the most powerfully distracting forces in this world. A man in
love or even in lust will stop at nothing to protect what he feels
is his or to get what he would desire to be his. This is a fact you
cannot deny. Look at Sir Ramsay. He has lived for almost nine
hundred years and he is not inexperienced in the matters of the
female psyche, but now he is lost, perhaps permanently, because of
the company of two women. Two women and he has known thousands,
perhaps millions, yet it takes only two to bring about his fall.
Besides many people including my Knights overlook the obvious. The
Rule says the company of women, not the love of a wife or mother,
is a dangerous thing. Perhaps our Brother should propose to her.
But you have not answered my question, Chevaliere Valentino. Do you
want to be a Templar?”

“No! I do not. I want to be immortal. I am
perfectly happy with my life as it is. I enjoy my freedom and my
position as High Priestess of the local chapter of Order of the
Rose. I don’t have to go around being all secret and bound up by
vows and such,” she told him adamantly. “Besides, after I am
immortal, I will most likely leave this place and never look back.
I should think that immortals would have better things to do than
hang out in petty little cowtowns like Waco, Texas. I can do
whatever I please and I don’t have to answer to anyone.”

“You will answer to God whether He is male or
female or both,” he told her and smiled slightly. “So you just want
to be immortal and that is all? Then why not allow me to bestow the
Mystery upon you and you alone in return for my Knights?”

Valentino narrowed her eyes. That was not a
bad offer. But what about Merry? But then, what about Merry? Merry
was not upstairs in her bedroom. She didn’t know where Merry was at
the moment and she was almost positive that Miss Meredith Sinclair
could be found in the company of the venerable Mark Andrew Ramsay,
wherever he might be. Even though she had been denying it, she had
almost given up on Merry already. Where had Merry been while she
had almost been killed the night before? Merry had fallen in love
with the Knight of Death. Of all things! She might as well be
sleeping with the grim reaper. And it was all for naught.

These men would not allow Merry to keep her
precious Mark Andrew. They would haul him away kicking and
screaming and there was nothing that he or Merry could do about it.
But she, Cecile, would live forever. And she could replace Merry a
dozen times… a thousand times! One thing she had no intention of
doing was spending eternity alone. Hell, she might even go straight
for a while. The Golden Eagle had been very pleasant company after
her experience with Mark. Much better than Mark ‘Precious’ Andrew
Ramsay indeed. He was as brutal as she had expected him to be and
she regretted losing her virginity to him. But Lucio... ahhh, now
that was another story altogether. She could hardly believe the
difference between the two of them. She might just find herself
another Italian lover for a while, live in Rome or maybe on the
French Riviera…

“Agreed,” she said with finality. Her greed
had won over her fleeting love for Meredith.

“I would like to see one of my Knights at
least… alone, before we consummate the arrangement,” he told
her.

She smiled at him. She could do that. She
just happened to have one available for viewing.

Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full
of heaviness. Broken hearted

Mark Andrew stood quietly looking down at Merry in the strange
little observatory with his arms crossed over his chest while
tapping one thumbnail against his bottom teeth. She looked
innocent, beautiful and his heart leapt just to see her again. It
was hard to believe that she had ever been touched by the hand of
man. She seemed ephemeral somehow, like a dragonfly’s wings or a
faery creature. Even after a night spent in the pouring rain,
tramping through the mud and now sleeping on a bare wooden floor,
she was lovely to look at. Mud was spattered on her face and her
hair was tangled with bits and pieces of twigs, leaves and grass in
her curly locks. Her eye make-up was smeared under her eyes, but
only added to her spritely beauty. In spite of her beauty, he could
not get two very vivid thoughts out of his mind. She had been in
the room with Lucio when Maxie had pinned the Knight to the
bedpost, the same bed that he had shared with her on several
occasions. What had Merry been doing there with the Italian and had
she not been gone long enough for him to become worried? She had
been gone a long time after he had fallen asleep. The memory of
Maxie bursting into that very same room to find her with him raced
through his mind. Had Maxie also found Merry there with Lucio in a
similar arrangement?

Was she so desperate for a child that any man
would do as long as it was one of them? He went over the entire
sequence of events in his mind. Had she been with Lucio Dambretti
all that time?

Your woman is very pleasant. We had a nice,
long visit. Why had Lucio said that? Dambretti was murderous when
his temper was up and certainly, the man had lost his temper, but
he had never lied to him. Lucio was many things, but he was not a
liar. But then of course, he had not said anything outright. He had
only said that they had a long talk and Merry was pleasant, no? She
was certainly pleasant and extremely talkative. He could attest to
the truth of the statement, but it had been a remark fraught with
implications.

Mark pressed one hand against his forehead
and frowned down at her. It hadn’t been Lucio’s words, but the
tone, the inference. It was entirely possible that the Italian had
simply used a small truth in such a way as to instill suspicion.
Ramsay had no experience with this kind of thing. He had no frame
of reference other than his past dealings with Lucio and that was
not promising. Of course he had entertained a few passing fancies
and there had been plenty of trouble because of them. None had ever
had the chance to bloom into actual love, but Lucio had been there.
It was in truth no wonder that the Rule said the company of women
is a dangerous thing. How could one woman so complicate his life?
Water dripped from his clothes and his hair onto the floor forming
puddles around his boots.

He suddenly wanted to go back down the hill,
find Lucio and cut out his heart for having put such conflicting
thoughts in his head. But that would not be a very good idea under
the circumstances. He wanted to yank Merry up by her hair and
demand to know what had Lucio had been talking about. But that
would not be very good either. He was stuck. Go? Stay? Kill her?
Kill Lucio? It didn’t make any sense. What did he care? She was
nothing but sin and trouble for him. Lucio had been his Brother
long before she had been his lover and the company of women is a
dangerous thing.

A streamer of water suddenly broke from the
puddle around his feet and ran under Merry’s shoulder. She flinched
as the cold liquid soaked through her blouse and then opened her
eyes. The black boots in front of her face brought her wide awake
and she looked up only far enough to see the blade of the sword and
the dagger Mark held in his hands. Without waiting to see who had
come to be in the little room with her, she let out a short,
terrified shriek and scrambled away from him across the floor of
the building on her hands and knees.

Her reaction startled Mark and triggered an
instinctual reaction in his brain.

He went after her automatically.

She covered her head with her arms and
screamed incoherently, begging him not to hurt her.

He didn’t know what had happened. Her actions
instantly angered him. Such a reaction would certainly fit the
suspicions in his mind, if she thought he had found out… found out
what? What was she doing? Did she expect him to murder her? He
grasped her arm and dragged her roughly to her feet. She jerked
away from him and flattened herself against the wall of the
observatory staring at him as if he were a demon straight from
hell.

“Mark!” Her expression changed as she
realized who he was. She ran to him and virtually leaped into his
arms. He caught her from the air, pressing the hilts of the weapons
to the small of her back. She held his face between her hands and
kissed him again and again. The sword and the dagger clattered to
the floor behind her as he relinquished his grip on the weapons and
held her close while she cried against his wet shirt. She told him
tearfully how worried she had been and how she had thought she
would never see him again and how she thought he had been killed or
had left her without saying goodbye and on and on.

The only thing he could think of was Lucio
Dambretti! He had to know the truth.

“Merry,” he said gently and tried to
disengage her arms from around his neck. “Merry!”

She let go of him and stepped back, smiling
at him through her tears.

“Merry,” he began again and her smile faded
as the expression on his face registered on her mind. “I have to
know.”

“Know what?” she asked suspiciously.

“About Lucio,” he said simply.

“It was awful!” she said, misinterpreting the
meaning of his question. “Maxie is a horrid, horrid man. I told
Cecile to get rid of him a long time ago, but he was cheap. Room
and board and a couple hundred bucks a month, cash. You can’t get
round the clock security cheaper than that, she told me. I knew I
should have put my foot down long ago and got rid of him myself,
but I was a little bit scared myself living out here with just us
two women in that big house. I’m really sorry for what he did to
you and to your friend.”

“That’s not what I mean, Meredith,” he said
and closed his eyes. How could she? How could Lucio do this to him?
“I mean what were you doing in the room with them? How long were
there before Maxie came?”

“Whaaat?” Her eyes widened. “What do you
mean?”

“You were with him... upstairs,” he said
again too simply. He didn’t know any other way to broach the
subject. “I waited for you a long time.”

“When?” she asked, frowning at him, disbelief
written on her face.

“Last evening,” he told her. “When you left
me in your room. You were gone a long time.”

“My God! What are you asking me, Mark
Andrew?” Her face contorted in anger and she no longer looked
innocent. “Are you accusing me of sleeping with him? You saw him!
You pulled the knives from his hands! What are you saying?”