Lois Greiman (21 page)

Silence fell again. Her brows lowered slightly and her mouth quirked. “They didn’t…” She paused. “There weren’t nothing bad ’appened to them, were there?”

“What?”

“You said ‘
were
.’ They’re all right, ain’t they? Yer sisters?”

He should correct her, but there was something in her tone. Something intense and deep and strangely wistful.

“Viking?” she said, and tilted her head up to look at him. Her throat seemed as fair as a snowy dell and ran down gently to where her breasts, small and firm, lay barely hidden by her tattered gown. He refused to look past her eyes.

“They’re fine now.”

She scowled. “Now?”

He cleared his throat and called himself a fool. “Rosie’s first husband…” He stopped, remembering. Some men deserved to die. And some did, earlier than they planned. He shrugged, pushing away the memories. “He shouldn’t have struck her. It wasn’t wise.”

She absorbed this news in silence, and he knew that she understood his meaning.

“But they’re safe now?”

“Aye, the three of them,” he said. “All wed and fat and happy with roofs over their heads and babies at their breasts.”

He winced. Damn him. He shouldn’t have said the word “breasts,” but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she pursed her mouth again and faced forward, but the hint of a smile lifted her raspberry-sweet lips. The room fell into silence.

“You found their ’usbands for ’em?”

“
Husbands
,” he corrected. “Nay. You put a bonny lass out in the world, and the laddies’ll find them.”

“But you ’ad to give yer consent since yer father was gone.”

He shrugged. “I was their closest male kin.”

She nodded again and sighed softly as he stroked her hair. It gleamed beneath the boar bristle brush like sunset waves and curled like magic down to her too small waist.

“How many babes do they got?”

She was a baby herself, and yet it was disturbing, being this close to her. “Didn’t I tell you to pipe down?”

“Do they got any girls?”

She’d been afraid of him only days before. He missed that now, for then she was sometimes quiet for whole minutes at a time.

“I’d like to ’ave me a girl someday, but…” She shrugged and let the statement fall into meditative silence. He felt like hitting something.

Damn it to hell! With the course she was on, she’d be lucky to live out the year, much less hold a babe of her own.

“Viking?”

He realized abruptly that she was looking up at him, glancing through her sunlight lashes into his face. For a moment he wondered what she saw there, but he knew the truth. MacTavish had once compared him to a troll. And MacTavish was his best friend, except for his steed, of course. He scowled, which almost certainly didn’t improve his features.

“What do you want?” he growled.

She smiled despite his tone, and in that second she looked younger than ever. “Don’t you want to have yourself no wee ones?”

He held her gaze for an instant longer, than jerked to his feet. “You babble—” he began, but she had already grabbed his arm, and it was strange, for while her skin looked pale as
winter and baby-soft, her fingers felt rough against his wrist.

“No. Don’t quit,” she said. “I’ll shut me trap if’n you—”

The door opened. Cairn stepped inside, and Burr immediately realized how it must look. They were standing mere inches apart. She was holding his arm and gazing into his eyes, while he stood like a great gaping love struck ape.

But Cairn didn’t chuckle.

“I need your help,” he said simply, and that was that.

“B
lindfold me,” Tatiana said.

They sat in an elegant landau. The exterior was polished to a high sheen. The horses wer blooded bays, sleek, fast, and breathtaking. Inside the carriage, the seats were upholstered in plush scarlet velvet, but MacTavish’s knuckles looked white in the deepening darkness. She had been correct. Horses made him nervous, and somehow that knowledge made her want to cry.

“What?” he asked.

“Drake…” she began, though it was hard to speak around the lump in her throat. She swallowed it and concentrated on the mission at hand. She had no choice. She would be free. “’E ’ad me blindfolded.”

“I thought it was dark.”

“I told you ’e was cautious.”

MacTavish leaned forward to request a blindfold, but at the same moment the door opened, and Burr handed in a sash. MacTavish took it without question and tied it around her eyes. She settled back against the cushions.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She counted in silence, listening for the sounds of hoofbeats outside the carriage. There was Burr on his giant polished gray, certainly. Peters, Cormick, and three other men she didn’t know. There was also the driver. That made seven without counting MacTavish himself. Her stomach crunched cruelly. She swallowed her bile and let her hands shake. There was little reason to hide her fear.

“Megs—” he began.

“Aye.” She took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

The team jolted into action, jerking her back against the cushions. She held her breath for a moment and squeezed her hands together. Her stomach quieted a bit. She could do this, for it needed doing. Nicol had told her of a place. An old ramshackle inn where he had first met the girl called Birgit. Despite the poor garments of a common laborer, she had looked so much like Tatiana that for a moment he had thought they were one and the same. It was that girl whom he had trained, that girl who now sat on the throne.

“Head west you said.” MacTavish’s voice was low.

“Yeah. Even through the blindfold I could tell the sun was sinkin’ low ahead of us.”

The iron-rimmed wheels of the landau rattled across cobblestones, then quieted as they finally rolled out of the village. She let the silence surround her, pretending she was listening for every sound. But she did not have to. More than once Nicol had described Portshaven to her. And more times still, he had told her of his meeting with Birgit. It had all been very clear. Clear enough so that Tatiana could have given directions, but of course she would not, for it would do her little good to send MacTavish off by himself. No, she must lead him there, must get free of Westheath and maybe, somehow, if fate was kind, she would escape.

“Water.” She said the word well enough, as if drawn from her reverie. “I remember hearing that before.”

“It’s the mill,” he said. “So you think we’re headed in the right direction?”

“Aye.” She scowled, but the expression might have been wasted beneath the dark fold. “But just after there was…” A sheep bleated, low-voiced and homey. “There it is. I remember sheep.”

He said nothing. They traveled in silence. Once she made them stop and turn back. The night fell dark and heavy around them.

“How much longer?” he asked finally.

Her hands shook again. “Not far.”

“An inn you say?”

“Aye.” The road dipped down rapidly, leaving her stomach behind, and she knew. “It’s just ahead.” She didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice.

MacTavish rapped on the side of the carriage. It jolted to a halt.

Burr came back through the darkness. “This it?”

For a moment MacTavish remained silent, then, “We’ll know soon. Stay with the girl.”

Burr snorted in answer.

Cairn swore at the man’s insubordination, then called for Peters.

Hoofbeats thudded in the darkness. “Yes, my lord.”

“Tie your mount to the carriage and stay with the girl,” MacTavish ordered. “We go in on foot.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Leather creaked as the lieutenant dismounted.

“She’s your responsibility,” MacTavish said, but he was already speaking from a lower point. So he had left the carriage. It was almost time.

Men murmured in the darkness, then footsteps crunched softly into the distance. The landau creaked as Peters entered it. She waited to the count of fifty before speaking.

“Might I remove me blindfold?” she asked softly, and felt Peters’s attention turn toward her. He delayed for a moment.

“My lord didn’t say.”

“It was my idea to have the blindfold at the start.”

She could almost hear him scowl, then, “I suspect it could do no harm.”

She untied the sash herself. Grayness moved in, replacing the blackness.

She realized immediately that Peters’s mind was wholly occupied elsewhere, for he was gazing out the window in the direction his lord had gone.

As for her, her heart was pounding out of control.

She steadied her nerves and remembered to breathe. “Lord MacTavish is brave,” she said.

“I should be at his side.” His tone was rife with excess loyalty.

Her mind was spinning.
Now what?
she wondered frantically. But in that instant, gunshots burst into the night. She gasped. Peters jerked toward the door

From the distant darkness, a man shouted.

“My lord!” Peters rasped and launched himself from the carriage.

For a moment Tatiana was paralyzed, then she moved, throwing herself after him. She hit the ground with a jolt, rolled, scrambled to her feet, and leapt toward his horse.

Gunshots pounded into the darkness. From behind, she heard a gasp, but she already had the reins untied. Her foot was in the stirrup. One glance told her Peters had turned, but she threw herself into the saddle. The gelding was game. He leapt forward like a hare, but a man can beat a horse for a good thirty feet. She knew it, heard Peters’s roar, and then he
was upon her, throwing himself at her back. His fingers snagged her hair, and she was ripped from the horse, falling in a heap on the earth.

“You’ll not betray my liege again. You die now!” he rasped, and suddenly she felt the cold barrel of his pistol against her temple.

Pandemonium seized her brain. Trauma shook her reserves. She’d been close. So very close. Her limbs quaked. She felt the hard bump of Peters’s gun as he cocked it, and she began to babble.

“What the hell happened?” Cairn demanded, rushing up.

“My lord!” Peter’s face looked as white as death in the darkness. “You are well!”

“Aye.”

“But the shooting!” said Peters.

“Damn it, man, I told you to watch her.”

“Yes, my lord. But she fled. Stole my horse. She’s a traitor, delivering you into Wheaton’s hands.”

Burr appeared in the darkness. He’d been running, but his breathing hadn’t escalated a whit. “Wheaton wasn’t there,” he said.

Cairn swore, then glanced down at Megs, who was still babbling incoherently in a seemingly foreign language. “Who was there?” he asked Burr.

He shrugged. “Highwaymen. Brigands. Our sort of folk.”

Cairn cursed again, but silently this time. “You’re certain?”

“Aye. Once they realized who you were they were eager to spill the truth, but they knew of no Wheaton.”

Cairn glanced down at the girl. “Megs.”

She continued to mumble. Her hands were clasped in front of her chest, but even in the darkness, he could see that they were shaking.

“What the hell did you do to her?” he asked, lifting his gaze to Peters.

“Nothing, my lord. She tried to escape. I merely—”

“Let go of her hair.”

“She’s a traitor, my lord. Execution would be too good for her.”

Cairn glanced at Burr. The Norseman shook his head. He, too, failed to understand zealots.

“Let go of her hair,” Cairn repeated.

“Yes, my lord.” Peters did so slowly, but the girl remained exactly as she was, sitting on the earth with her legs spread-eagle in front of her, her hands clasped tightly and her lips moving almost inaudibly.

He scowled. “Stand up, lass.”

She didn’t respond. Cairn shifted his gaze toward Peters. The lieutenant shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

“Did you strike her?”

“No, my lord. Shall I?”

Cairn swore again, more vehemently this time. “Megs, no one’s going hurt you. Stand up.”

Nothing changed.

“What’s she saying?” Cairn asked.

Burr shrugged. Peters shook his head. “I do not speak Sedonian.”

“Sedonian?” Cairn turned to him with a jolt. “She’s Sedonian?”

Peters jerked back a step. “I—I do not know, my lord. I just—I—”

Cairn didn’t wait for an explanation, but bent down. Grasping the girl around her torso, he draped her over his shoulder and rose to his feet. Getting her inside the carriage was not an easy task. But once there, she gave him no trouble. He was barely terrified by the carriage ride on the way back to the castle, for his mind was spinning. The girl seemed all but comatose, though she made it out of the horrific vehicle and into Westheath under her own power. He fol
lowed her up the stairs and into his bedchamber, closing the door behind them.

She walked across the room like one in a trance, but she held her head high and her gait was steady. She went to the window and gazed out on the street below. He waited. But to no avail. Time marched on.

Someone knocked on the door, and in a moment a servant handed in a bottle and two goblets.

Cairn filled them both and handed one to the girl. She took it without a glance and emptied it immediately. He managed to repress his admiration and refilled it.

She took it and drank it without any seeming effects, though he watched her closely.

“Did you intend to have me killed, Megs?” he asked finally.

She said nothing.

“This may surprise you, but it’s frowned on to ambush your sovereign lord, even if he is a barbarian bastard.”

She turned slowly. “Tell me.” Her diction was perfect again, though her words were faint. He would give his Keralan coconut cracker to speak as well as she did. How much easier would it be to influence the noble families? How much easier to make them understand the needs of the poor. “If you were…captured, accused of heinous crimes and imprisoned, would you not try to escape?”

He shrugged. “Yes, but I’m a barbarian bastard.”

“And what would you call me?”

He waited, watching her. Beautiful was the first word that came to mind. He made certain it didn’t reach his lips. “Sedonian?”

She sighed and let her eyes fall closed. “Yes, I lived in Sedonia for a time.”

“Who did? Megs or Widow Linnet or the real you?”

For a moment she paused and for a moment he thought
she might actually spill the truth. But he was to be disappointed again.

“There is only one me,” she said.

“I don’t doubt that.” He almost smiled, for despite the terror she had obviously felt at Peters’s hand, she had recouped. Indeed, he’d seen seasoned sailors who would not rally so quickly. “But who are you?” he asked.

“I only told you I was Megs to gain an opportunity to escape.”

“So you are really…” He paused, waiting for her to complete the thought.

“Lady Linnet. What I told you is true. I was the wife of a tailor, but my mother was a baroness. My family…” She paused. Her expression was tense. “We fell out of favor with the king and lost our property, so it was necessary that I marry wisely.”

He sighed. “I should thank you, I suppose,” he said, and turned toward the window though he could see little in the darkness below. “I was cheated out of the stories a mother might share with her son. But since meeting you…” He shrugged. “You have already given me enough tales to last a lifetime.”

“You are not required to believe me.”

“Thank you. So Wart was a successful tailor?”

She raised her regal little chin, looking disapproving at best. Disdainful at worst. Perhaps he should have been insulted that she showed him such disdain, but he had just seen her subdued and disoriented, and though he knew he was a fool, he found he much preferred her thus.

“William,” she corrected, then, “Yes. It was a bargain of sorts. He got a lady bride, and I got to continue to eat.”

“And where is William now?”

“As I told you before, he died shortly after our marriage.”

“How shortly?”

“What does it matter?”

“I’m wondering if you’re sticking with your tale of virginity.”

She pursed her lips. “I am not the person you think I am, MacTavish. I am not a thief. I am not a traitor. I am a simple lass who wishes for nothing more than to find her way back home.”

“In Sedonia?”

Was there the slightest bit of tension in her stance suddenly?

“As I said, I lived in Sedonia for only a short while.”

“Long enough to learn the language.”

“Yes.”

“Do you speak other languages?”

She hesitated a moment. “Yes, I do.” A pause. “A half dozen or so.”

“A half dozen.” He was lucky to have mastered his mother tongue.

“Aye.”

“
Parlez-vous français?”

“
Oui.
”

He shrugged and glanced at his goblet. It was not yet empty. “That’s all I know,” he admitted.

“I speak French, English, Sedonian, and the Gaelic quite fluently. I am not so accomplished at Italian and Spanish.”

He stared at her.

“I can converse well enough in Norway.”

Triton’s balls.

“And Swedish is similar, of course.”

“Of course.”

“We traveled a good deal when I was a child.”

He had, too, but he doubted they’d shared the same vessel. Possibly not even the same wind.

“Where did you learn to drink?”

Perhaps she looked a bit sheepish when she glanced at the floor. “My father had a small vineyard. He let me sample his wares.”

“Was there any left when you were through?”

She scowled, and he almost smiled despite everything.

“Where do you live now, lass?”

“London.”

The same story with a slightly different twist. “So why are you here?”

She glanced away. “The truth is an embarrassment to me.”