Wild and Wicked (7 page)

So where was Apryll of Serennog? If she had not escaped with the men who had taken his boy, was she still trapped within the keep? Or had she escaped alone? He searched the eyes of the men and women in the bailey. Could she still be hiding within these very walls? Two men, maybe more, had taken his son, but what of the woman?

His jaw grew tight as he thought of how easily she’d deceived him, how he’d been drawn to her beauty and wit, how warm and supple her body had felt against his, how boldly she’d kissed him. “An angel,” Aunt Violet had called her, but the old lady had been sadly mistaken, for Apryll of Serennog was far from holy. If anything, she was Lucifer’s mistress.

Jaw tight, he strode to the stables which smoldered from the fire damage. Lanterns glowed. Men barked orders. Horses shifted nervously as saddles were strapped to their broad backs.

Two soldiers were carrying the body of the dead stable master outside. The man’s young widow, Grace, clutching her three-year-old son, followed after them, shivering and wailing and trying to cling to a body that would never move again. “Nooo,” she cried, over and over again, though Father Luke, a short, squat man, was following after her, offering a weary shoulder and hollow words of consolation.

From the kennels the dogs began to bay.

Soldiers amassed. Nervous horses reared and snorted as they were harnessed to heavy carts laden with supplies and weapons.

Two men dead. Mayhap more.

The treasury robbed.

The stables burned and the best horses taken.

And Yale missing.

Because he was foolish enough to be enraptured by a woman.

A Jezebel.

He strode into the long, low building and stopped at the empty, burned stall where his steed had been stabled. The gray. Gone. Phantom’s box empty.

“God’s teeth, there will be vengeance,” he growled under his breath.

One person knew the truth and that one person was a woman, a beauty, an “angel,” Aunt Violet had called her. Aye, the angel of death and deception. Apryll of Serennog.

He yanked a pitchfork from a smoldering haystack and hurled it like a spear into the wall. A horse tethered nearby started and snorted. Devlynn barely noticed. His thoughts were centered on the traitorous, seductive, bold woman.

By the gods, he wouldn’t rest. He’d hunt her to the ground. When he caught up with her, he’d take great and slow satisfaction in wringing her pretty, lying neck.

Right after he bedded her.

 

Apryll watched the lord’s fury from the safety of the chapel window. As soon as she’d seen that the fire would die, she’d slipped through the garden and hurried along a well-trodden path to the first place of refuge she’d found and this was it, a wide room lit by a few dying candles. She’d crossed herself, then stared through the window, spying the lord easily. He was not what she had expected, given his dark reputation.

Aye, he was tall, but there were others who were taller, and he was broad-shouldered, yet lean, but it was his commanding attitude that caught her attention. Others, though larger than he, seemed to shrink in his presence. He spoke to several of the men, strode into the stables, returned to the outer bailey and was giving orders that she could not hear, could only imagine. But even in his fury she could not imagine him capable of the cold-blooded murder the rumors accused him of. Especially of his own child. Not after she had seen how much his son meant to the lord. But killing someone who caused his child harm? Aye, perhaps he could. She would not stay to find out first-hand.

How could she escape? The portcullis had rattled shut, the gates to the keep closed, and Apryll would be an idiot to think that the baron would not search every nook and cranny within the walls. There were escape routes within the castle, she was certain of it; every fortress had them, secret passages and sally ports, back doors mounted high on the exterior walls where soldiers could sneak out unobserved, but she knew not where they were. She could tempt the fates and face Devlynn, approach him and beg his forgiveness, offer to help him find his son, but she knew her efforts would only be met with cold, cruel disgust. Damn Payton, why had he left her here? Had it been intentional?

“God help me,” she whispered, glancing at the crucifix mounted over the altar. She could not hide here forever, for certainly she would be discovered, and she knew so little of Black Thorn, she knew not where a good hiding spot might be. One way or another she had to escape, chase down her brother and somehow free the boy. Only then would she be able to face Lord Devlynn again.

She spied a heavyset man, the priest, leading a woman to the chapel and her heart sank. Quickly she looked for a place to hide. Certainly not at the altar. Stealthily, she crept into an adjoining chamber wherein she spied a single pallet and small table. There was a curtain covering an alcove. Quickly, Apryll swept the drape aside and found herself in a small passageway only a few feet square with another door on the other side. That door was locked. Though she pressed her shoulder against the thick panels and tugged on the handle, it didn’t budge. She was trapped.

Her only hope was to hide within this closet of sorts, wait for the priest to fall asleep and sneak past him.

She heard him enter and, over a woman’s sobbing, listened to him chant a prayer, offer condolences, speak of the husband being now in heaven and a son who would not know his father. The woman’s sobs softened but reverberated through Apryll’s heart. This was only one widow, one child left fatherless. How many other lives had Payton taken?

Apryll had known there were risks, of course, that some lives might be sacrificed, but Payton had assured her that there was little chance of death, that unless something went terribly wrong with his plan, no one would be seriously injured. He’d been certain that most of the inhabitants of Black Thorn would be a part of the celebration and those left to guard the keep would be drunk or listless and that he would easily subdue them. “’Twill be easy to take their weapons and bind and gag them,” he’d said when she’d asked how he intended to get past the guards. “I have people within the keep, yes, sister, spies who know where the sentries will be, and they are certain that they will be able to offer the guards ale and mead and wine, enough that our small party will pass by unnoticed.”

What a ninny she’d been to believe him. Now, sitting in this cobweb-infested closet, listening to a grieving widow’s moans and a child’s innocent, troubled questions she felt a horrid sense of guilt. She would never be able to make things right. Not since lives had been lost. She ventured a peek through the crack between curtain and doorjamb and her heart twisted when she saw, in the flickering candlelight, the portly priest softly praying, one fleshy hand upon a woman’s dark crown, a child of two or three hanging onto his mother’s skirts. His eyes were smudged from lack of sleep and he sucked his thumb anxiously.

Soon she heard the woman and child leave, the shuffling of feet, then the quiet . . . as if the chamber were empty. She’d been certain the priest would enter his bedchamber, but she heard nothing save for the scratch of claws, mice scurrying behind the walls of her self-imposed prison.

Should she brave it?

Tentatively, she edged the drape aside, carefully peering past the edge of the curtain. She stepped into the priest’s bedchamber, her ears straining. The chapel was empty. She made two steps toward the door when she heard footsteps on the path. Quickly she withdrew, through the bedchamber and into the cursed closet again. She swiped the curtain closed and stepped back, to rest against the door, but when she placed her hand behind her to feel for the hard oaken planks, her wrist was caught by a hand with fingers like steel.

“Oh!” she whirled, but the manacle only tightened.

“Who the devil are you—?” Lord Devlynn demanded in the darkness and her knees nearly crumpled. He dragged her through the open doorway and up a flight of curved stairs, yanking on her arm, forcing her to follow him ever upward until at last he pushed open another door and yanked her into a wide chamber where a fire glowed and candles burned bright. Tapestries and weapons decorated the walls and a huge bed sat squarely before the grate. Her heart sank, for she knew she was in the baron’s private chamber.

This was it.

There was no escape.

Her destiny, was that not what the sorceress, Geneva, had proclaimed?

Gritting her teeth and squaring her shoulders she inched her chin upward to stare into the furious gray eyes of the beast of Black Thorn. The fingers around her wrist nearly crushed her bones.

“Lady Apryll,” he whispered harshly, his lips thinning in dangerous recognition. “Well, well, well, as luck would have it I’ve been looking for you.” He kicked the door shut with a resonant thud. His lips barely moved and his jaw was set in pure hatred when he said, “Tell me and tell me quickly, where the devil is my boy?”

It was all he could do not to shake the life from her. Devlynn’s hands clenched and released as he paced in front of the fire. He thought of the lies, the deception, the way she’d played him for a fool in front of all his guests, and beneath all that was the deep, underlying fear that harm had come to his boy.

“Your son is with my brother,” she said, pushing herself up from the bed and lifting a haughty brow. Oh, she was a prideful one, and her tongue rolled easily over the lie. “They are on the way to Serennog. It was not part of the plan to steal him, at least I thought not, but apparently my brother had other plans.”

“Your brother?”

“Payton.”

The name was familiar and distasteful, but he didn’t know why, nor did he care.

“It matters not who has taken him, nor why, only that he is returned.”

“That I vow.”

“
You
vow?” he scoffed, surprised at her nerve. “You cannot vow anything,
lady.
You cannot
do
anything. You are a prisoner of Black Thorn.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head as if she had some say in the matter and her cap fell off, letting that flaxen hair tumble free to her shoulders. “’Tis true that I cannot do anything from here, but if you would allow me to ride this night, I swear I’ll catch up with Payton. I will persuade him to release the boy.” She said the words with such conviction he was tempted to believe her, liar that she was. Her gold eyes were round with promise, her hands reaching outward.

“You think I would ever trust you?” ’Twould have been laughable if the situation were not so dire. “Lest you’ve forgotten, two men are dead, mayhap more, my son is missing, my horses and treasury stolen, the stable nearly burned to the ground, all because of you.” He glowered down at that upturned face with its smudges of soot and dirt and something else . . . a welt upon her cheek.

“How did you get that?” he asked and touched the tip of a finger to her cheek.

She winced but didn’t draw back. “’Tis of no matter.”

“Tell me.”

“An argument.”

“With?”

“My brother. About the boy. When I discovered that he intended to take him as a hostage we quarreled.”

“And he struck you?” Devlynn demanded, wanting at that moment to tear Payton of Serennog limb from miserable limb.
And now the bastard had Yale.

“You are a very convincing liar,” he said, eyeing her and well aware that time was ticking fast away. Each second the men who had taken his son were gaining greater distance from Black Thorn. “You could have received the welt when you were attempting escape.”

“But I did not,” she said, her spine stiff, her expression hard with conviction as if she meant every word she spoke. “I promise you if you let me go, I will hunt down your son and bring him back.”

“And I think I will have better luck if I hold you prisoner.” He stepped nearer to her and grabbed her upper arm, drawing her so close that he caught the faint scent of lavender, the fragrance she’d worn when she’d bewitched him but a few hours earlier. Even in his anger, he remembered kissing her and the feel of her body molding close to his, the view of soft breasts that now were covered with coarse russet.

“But I can help.”

“I think you ‘helped’ enough already.” He glanced over his shoulder to the open doorway. “Guard!”

“Nay, please, Lord Devlynn, you must trust me, I can help.”

“Trust you?” he repeated. “Never.”

Jamison appeared in the doorway to the great hall and Devlynn cast the woman at him. “This is Lady Apryll of Serennog. She is an enemy to Black Thorn and my prisoner. She is to be kept in the dungeon—”

“Nay, I can do naught if I am locked away.”

Devlynn glanced down at the innocence in her eyes. For the love of God, why did he still find her attractive? He thought of her in the dungeons with the rats, filth and other prisoners, where no light reached and the guards were randy and crude. It would be but hours before they would make sport of her, each of them mounting her in turn; though he loathed the situation and had tried to curb it, punishing those he caught, he was certain Apryll wouldn’t last an hour before she was ravished for sport—rutted upon on a dare. Not that he should care, he reminded himself, but he said to the guard, “Take her to the empty hermit’s cell in the north tower. And guard her yourself. No one is to see her but me.”

“Aye, m’lord.”

She wrested her way free of the guard to stand in front of him and beg. “Please, let me go. I will return with your son, I vow it! I can do nothing here.”