Yet still she continued, “Behind the castle walls, holes gape in the thatch of the kitchen and the stable. Weeds choke the herb garden. The paths are untended.”
“Your Highness, please.”
She turned to face Hubert. “The castle was once beautiful and is now decayed. The servants wander about, stoop-shouldered and dispirited. Everyone hates Count duBelle.”
“Shhh!” Hubert glanced behind him in alarm. Count duBelle always sent Hubert to deliver his messages to her, and Sorcha knew why. Hubert could be trusted to speak and not touch. He was the man who followed Count duBelle’s instructions and planned the daring kidnapping right in the heart of Beaumontagne. He was older, battle-worn, and gray, and he never overstepped his bounds.
“Why don’t you rise against him?” Sorcha asked. “If everyone in the castle joined together—”
Hubert lowered his voice. “We can’t. I can’t. Do you know why I am head of the guard?”
She shook her head.
“The others in the guard... some of them died fighting for the king.” Hubert glanced behind him again and inched into the room. “Some of them died fighting Count duBelle’s little wars. Every year, another war... Last year some of them attempted rebellion. They wanted me to join them, but I’ve got a mother. She’s old. And two daughters. They’re young. I can’t take a chance—”
“I know,” Sorcha said gently. She did know. Every night she’d lain awake, waiting for some man to open the door and drag her into the darkness. Every day she’d listened for footsteps in the corridor and grown faint with fear when they stopped before her door. Yet nothing had happened to her... yet. Icy anticipation held her in its inescapable grip.
“When the rebellion failed, those guards disappeared... into the dungeons.” Hubert wet his lips. “Count duBelle’s dungeon is dark and deep. He’s famous for the tortures. The beatings. Sometimes he goes down to make sure they’re being carried out as he commands. Sometimes the countess goes with him, and when she returns, her eyes... they’re bright like new-minted coins. Every few months there’ll be a new head hanging on a pike at the crossroads. I try not to look, but sometimes I can’t help it. Sometimes I recognize a face, and even if I don’t, I recognize the expression.”
“Terror,” she said.
“No. Relief. Every one of them wanted to die.” Intensely he whispered, “What has to be done to a strong, healthy man to make him welcome death?”
She shivered. Was that what had happened to Rainger?
“Please, Your Highness, please come with me,” Hubert said. “If you don’t, I’ll have to force you.”
“Of course I’ll come with you.” She smiled at the hulking guard. “We don’t want to give them the pleasure of seeing me forcibly subdued, do we?”
“Not yet,” he muttered.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. He opened his hands, palm out. “I’m to tie your wrists.”
“Is the great Count duBelle afraid of a mere princess?” She spoke mildly, but her rage soared.
“I’m to tie your wrists,” Hubert repeated. “Please.”
He was so miserable she extended her hands without argument.
Taking the length of rope from his belt, he tied her wrists together. In a low voice, he said, “There’s a rumor that Prince Rainger escaped from Count duBelle’s dungeon. Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true. You know Count duBelle would never have released him.”
Hubert took a deep breath. A slight smile lifted his lips. “Then there is hope.”
“There’s always hope.”
“No. Not for a long time.” He stepped back. “Is that too tight?”
“It’s fine.” Actually, it was so loose she held it on with her fingers. She had no doubt he knew it, too.
He walked before her down the steep, winding stairs, telling her to avoid the loose boards, catching her when she stumbled. It was a strange, grim walk toward God knows what kind of dreadful fate, yet she was almost glad the waiting was over at last.
From the soaring arch ahead, she heard loud voices and shrill laughter.
“They’re at breakfast,” Hubert told her.
“A little late for a hunt, aren’t they?” she asked.
He hunched his shoulders, took her arm, and led her into the great hall.
The room where Count and Countess duBelle dined glowed with a thousand candles and glittered with the sparkle of gold: on the plates, the tapestries, the jewelry, even the thread on the uniforms of the serving staff. Yet beneath the scent of expensive perfume, a pervasive odor tinted the air, an odor like decaying teeth, like rat-infested walls, like rampant, rotting ambition.
The count and countess glittered, too—the countess wore rings so grand they weighed down her slender fingers. The count wore a gold chain with an ornate pendant and a large sapphire of such fire it glittered in the candlelight. They certainly had the looks and lineage to be royal, yet like the castle, they reeked of hidden rot.
Richarte’s nobility hadn’t joined them in their coup, and that left the count and countess to consort with people of low origins, overweening ambition, and—Grandmamma would say worst of all—poor manners. The count and countess had sunk to the level of their associates.
As Sorcha entered, the countess called, “Here she is. Our little sacrifice.” Julienne laughed as she spoke, a small trilling giggle like a schoolgirl enjoying a guilty pleasure.
Far more than the words, the sound of her merriment drove terror into Sorcha’s heart.
This was no ordinary hunt. Something was planned. Something horrible.
Count duBelle caught sight of her, waved her forward, and called, “Princess Sorcha, I trust you’ve enjoyed your stay at our castle.”
“It’s not what I’m used to.” She lifted her tied hands and showed them. Better to pretend indignation about the knots than to have them checked by another guard.
“It’s necessary. For your own safety.” At the ripple of laughter, Count duBelle shot a knowing smile around the room. “You see, we’re going hunting... for a prince.”
Oh, God. Oh, God. Her heart thumped with increasing speed and vigor. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to get her breath. “And my role is?”
“Why, Your Highness.” His smile chilled to the temperature of a glacial stream. “You’re the bait.”
“He’s going to try to rescue me and you’re going to capture him,” she said.
“I count the first time I captured him as the crowning moment of my life. It’s not often a man has two such”—Count duBelle ran his tongue around his red lips—“climactic experiences.”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of fainting. She would not. But as the blood ebbed from her brain, she looked around her with sharpened focus.
There. At the table. That man. He watched her with avid eyes like a weasel smelling blood.
That woman. As she laughed, it seemed her teeth lengthened and sharpened.
Another man. He watched her as if she were a fox and he a hound.
And the countess... she leaned back in her high-backed chair, toyed with her silverware, and smiled so happily she might have been a child offered a treat. Her blond hair was styled in a fashionable swirl. Her riding costume wrapped her lush figure in glorious blue velvet. Only her avid sapphire eyes showed a knowledge of what would happen to Sorcha. And to Rainger, her former lover.
Sorcha had fallen into a den of beasts and none of the other horrors she faced on the road—not the mean-spirited MacLaren, not the sly MacMurtrae, not the treacherous Godfrey—could ever hope to match these people and their corruption.
“Are you fond of him, your prince?” Count duBelle leaned forward and avidly watched her. “Do you like the scars on his back? I put them there. Did you know he’s afraid of the dark? I taught him that. I made him the sniveling coward he is today.”
“If Prince Rainger is such a coward,” she asked in a clear voice, “then why do you think he’ll take the bait and r
escue me?”
Hubert took her arm and almost jerked her off her feet. “Come on!”
“Where are you taking her, Captain?” Count duBelle’s voice snapped like a whip.
“To the stables, Yer Lordship,” Hubert said, “to wait for yer pleasure.”
A great many of the men snapped their fingers in encouragement.
“Hey, hey, hey, Egidio, she’s going to wait for your pleasure!” one of the men at the high table called. “She’s a pretty tidbit. Your pleasure would be great.”
“His pleasure could be shared.” Julienne flushed a mottled red and the hand that gripped her cup curled into a claw. “Then we’d see how pretty she is.”
Sorcha cast a glance around the room. Handsome men. Pretty women. Vacant eyes. Lascivious smirks.
She looked at Count duBelle. At his sculpted face, his athletic body, his bloodshot eyes filled with the soulless desperate need to prove his domination.
She met the countess’s gaze and saw in her the lethal venom of a woman whose beauty had unfolded as an exotic blossom and now, day by day, withered into the humiliation of old age. In this lawless land ruled by one ruthless man, Julienne would do anything to retain her position as his lover, including flinging Sorcha to the pack.
Hubert jerked her again. “Move,” he growled.
She moved, taking care not to run, not to incite them to give chase.
Outside the great hall, she shuddered.
Hubert took a long breath. “She’s a rabid bitch, that one is.”
Sorcha hurried now, putting distance between herself and the court. “What awful people. They wallow in beauty and don’t know the difference between a palace and a pigpen.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’d help you if I could.” Hubert sounded wretched.
She touched him on the arm. “You did help me. You got me out of there in one piece. I’m grateful.”
“Ye don’t know what they’re going to do to ye.” Hubert’s feet dragged more than hers.
“I have an idea. But don’t worry. My husband will come for me.”
“That’s what he’s supposed to do, and they’re going to—”
“I know, but you don’t understand. He’s a different man than he was when he was your prince. He won’t let anything happen to me.” That she did not doubt. It didn’t matter that Rainger had tricked her or that she despised him or that he used her for her body to bring his heir into the world. Against all logic or hope, she knew Rainger would come to rescue her. Would rescue her. “Rainger will save me.”
“I know he will, Your Highness.” But Hubert’s bleak tone belied his hopeful words.
The stable was a madhouse of activity as the grooms and hostlers saddled the horses. Dust and cursing rose in the air, and Sorcha supposed her equippage would be chosen to ridicule her and her station.
She was right. The rough, humble cart resembled the tumbrel that carried French aristocrats to the guillotine. The horse that pulled it had huge hooves, sturdy legs, and a swayed back—an old, worn-out farm horse.
Nine swordsmen surrounded it, their costumes as elaborate as any cavalier’s and with Count duBelle’s family arms sewn into their sleeves. Two were older men, seasoned and stoic, but the other seven were young and proud, fingering their swords and looking at her with thinly disguised scorn.
“Gentlemen,” she said.
They ignored her. The hunter does not converse with the fox.
She petted the poor horse’s head and told Hubert, “I’m surprised it’s not an ox.”
“That’d take too long, and they need to get ye up there in time for—”
“Hubert, you forget yourself!” one of the swordsmen snapped. He had an aristocratic accent, a fashionable haircut, and a superior sneer.
But Hubert held the senior rank, and he snapped back, “What do ye think she’s going to do, young master? Escape and defeat Count duBelle? She’s naught but a woman, and a skinny one at that. I think I can safely say that we ten men can control her.”
The two older guardsmen laughed.
“You really are insolent, my man.” The young man put his hand on his sword.
The other young men followed suit.
He continued, “When I am master of the guard—”
“What’s your name?” Sorcha infused all Grandmamma’s haughtiness into the question.
The young man jumped. He looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time and his gaze faltered under her gimlet stare. “Baptiste. Baptiste Chapele, son of Comte d’Aubert.”
“You are never going to be master of the guard. When Prince Rainger hears of your impertinence to your leader, he’ll send you home to your father with a note chiding him for raising such a spoiled brat.”
Flushed with mortification, Baptiste said, “Prince Rainger is not in command here.”
“He will be.”
“He’ll be dead,” Baptiste said.
“Are you a betting man?” Sorcha asked. “Because I’ll take that wager.”
The young men exchanged glances, uncertain for the first time.
“Before the year is out, Prince Rainger will be crowned king of Richarte in the cathedral in Bellagrande. I will be crowned queen of Beaumontagne in the cathedral in Beauvallee. And we are married and will be king and queen for each other’s country, also.” She smiled. “Dear foolish lad, you’ve made a serious mistake.”
Hubert made a sound, the slightest wincing noise. Her arrogance alarmed him. But she knew Baptiste’s type: brash, ignorant, and easily swayed.
“Prince Rainger has no chance.” Yet his tone was uncertain.
“Prince Rainger is intelligent, ruthless, and has the power of Beaumontagne’s military at his disposal,” she answered.
“But he’s so soft, he doesn’t want to fight his own people.” Baptiste looked around at his friends for support.
To a man, they nodded.
“How many of the old nobility in Richarte will fight for Count duBelle? How many of the commoners will take up arms for Count duBelle?” Sorcha climbed into the cart and sank down on the straw, her spine braced against the board at the front. “Rainger won’t have to fight them. The people of Richarte will open the gates to him.”
One of the horses shied, and one of the other young men sputtered, “Th-that’s what Father said, Baptiste!”
Ah. Baptiste’s brother. Speaking to him, she added, “Taking me to be bait for a trap is the last act of a desperate man.”
“Father said that, too, Baptiste!” The brother was wide-eyed and nervous.
His bewilderment infected the other youths and they glanced uneasily at each other.
“Ye ought to listen to yer father.” Hubert gathered the reins of her horse. “He’s a wise one.”
Baptiste stared angrily at Hubert. “Oh, shut up.”
“Temper, temper,” Sorcha chided. The whole country was turned inside out. Discipline was needed and Rainger, with his steely gaze and unwavering resolution, was just the man to provide it.
With a jerk, the cart started, rumbling down rutted roads. Five men rode in front, five in back, keeping their hands on their swords. Obviously they’d been warned to watch for a rescue attempt and Sorcha, too, constantly swept the forest with her gaze. The cart turned off onto a track that led up the mountain behind the palace. The fir trees joined branches overhead, providing green dappled shade. Shrubs brushed against the side of the cart. The horse labored, its sides heaving on the uphill trek.
And once she thought she saw... something. She sat straighter and stared hard. A man. It looked like a man dressed in black looking back at her.
In the distance, she heard the blare of hunting horns and the sound of galloping hooves and raucous laughter.
And the illusion faded. No one was there.
“C’mon, lad,” Hubert said to the horse. “Count duBelle wants everything in place when he gets there, and that means we’d best finish the climb. He’s not one to spare the whip and ye’re not one who can bear
it.”
Heavens, no. The poor horse didn’t need the whip to be miserable. It was already miserable enough.
Sorcha rested her arms on her upraised knees. She clenched her fists. She wished... she wished this was over. She wished she knew the best thing to do to help Rainger.
She wished she hadn’t been so unyielding with him. Yes, he’d tricked her and, more to the point, made a fool of her. But he’d had his reasons, and if she thought those reasons were fatuous—well, she was right.
But when he decided on his deception, he didn’t know her. He didn’t know she was meek, obedient, and dutiful.
Indeed, some of her behavior on their trip through Scotland may have given him the impression she had a mind of her own.
But that was simply because the adversity they encountered required ingenuity and intelligence to counter... All right, Rainger had reason to worry about her intentions for the future. She had enjoyed that trip through Scotland more than she’d ever enjoyed anything in her life. The cold, the rain, the mud, the hunger had been nothing compared to the pleasure of meeting challenges and succeeding against all odds. She’d never enjoyed such unimaginable freedom—and she never would again.
She was the crown princess now, with a princess’s duties and a princess’s authority. And using the skills and the wit she’d learned on the roads of Scotland, today she would prove herself worthy to be queen.
Again she flicked a glance around the cart. She had to be alert. She had to be ready to help Rainger. Because, God help her, she still loved him—and if he was killed rescuing her, she would die, too.
“Here we are, Your Highness.” Hubert pulled the horse to a halt. “Please, if ye’d descend from the cart and step over to that tree. Baptiste, help Her Highness out of the cart.” As the court rode nearer, Hubert moved briskly and without any apparent regard for Sorcha.
Baptiste did as he was told; he helped her out of the cart and led her to a stout pine. “Stand there and I’ll get the rope.”
The grove where they’d stopped was perfect for an ambush. The trees stood close together around the edge, then thinned enough to allow a clear view of her from the meadow below—and to allow the court a clear view of the trap. The guards had affixed a net and a blanket in the branches and when Rainger approached from below, they would drop the snare on his head and knock him to the ground. Then, while he struggled, the guards would wrap him up and Count duBelle would order them to take him back to the dungeon, there to rot forever.
The Prince Kidnaps a Bride Page 25