Once Upon a Castle

by Nora Roberts

  “There is only one treacherous soul here, Julian, and that is yours. And it is your days that are numbered.” The brown-haired man spoke with calm dignity through bruised lips. “Nicholas will never allow you to steal the throne or to continue to tyrannize Dinadan. He’ll be back and he’ll have your black heart on a stick for his supper.”

  “Nicholas is dead,” the astrologer crowed. “He walks no more on this earth.”

  “And the last of your line will soon join him,” Julian mocked. “When you’re dead, and then your sister after you, I will become the rightful heir to Galeron as well, and then none of your nobles will dare to oppose me, even in secret.”

  Beneath the bruises on his square, handsome face, Marcus paled and his deepset eyes glistened with anger at his enemy, but he held his tongue.

  Arianne’s heart went out to him, yet she sensed that even Julian’s entourage was struck by his dignity and courage. Pride swelled within her.

  “He is to have no food or drink—not a morsel or a sip—until he hangs!” Julian barked at the dungeon keeper, whose keys rattled on a ring at his belt. The man bowed low.

  As Julian and the entourage moved past, Arianne saw Katerine linger at the rear of the crowd. She brushed past the cell, and only Arianne saw her thrust a parcel through the bars into the prisoner’s hands. Only Arianne saw the longing glances the two exchanged.

  Then the group moved past, Katerine hurrying after them. Arianne followed slowly, her gaze fixed upon the man in the cell. At last, after tearing his eyes away from Katerine’s slight form, Marcus turned and saw her.

  She saw his gaze widen. His deep, weary eyes glittered. For a moment their gazes locked as they reached out to each other in silent love, in fear, in desperate, blind hope. Marcus’s hand trembled as he reached toward her instinctively.

  Without breaking stride, Arianne stuffed a linen-wrapped parcel through the bars. “Nicholas is in the castle,” she whispered with almost no sound.

  The instant Marcus grasped the parcel, she hurried on. Julian had turned back to survey the group, and she reached the others just as his glance fell on her.

  “Behold the gypsy who spoke treason in the streets.” He gestured contemptuously toward the stoop-shouldered woman in the cell. “She will be hanged alongside Count Marcus of Galeron to pay for her perfidy.”

  Arianne’s stomach clenched as the entourage swept on. She was in so much turmoil over what had transpired with Marcus, she didn’t even spare a glance for the scrawny, haggard creature in the cell—until a bony hand grabbed her sleeve as she passed by.

  “The tower room,” the gypsy whispered.

  Arianne froze, staring at her. Through black wisps of strawlike hair, glowing midnight eyes pierced hers. She saw the flash of large white teeth in a saggy, sallow face shining with perspiration.

  “Yes—the blue panel. That’s the one.” The gypsy nodded wildly. “You must find the tower room.”

  The group ahead of Arianne disappeared around the corner. She would be missed if she didn’t hurry. “What tower room?” she asked, her own hand clamping around the gypsy’s for a brief instant. “Please tell me…”

  “Is this old one bothering you?” The dungeon master had returned without Arianne’s noticing him. She paled as she gazed up into his long, cruel face.

  “No, no—she said she was thirsty, that’s all.”

  “Ha! She’ll be worse than thirsty before the duke has finished with her,” he snorted. “Be off with you. Only the duke is allowed to speak with the prisoners.”

  “I didn’t know,” Arianne mumbled, trying to look suitably cowed. She threw the gypsy one last glance before hurrying after Katerine and the others. The woman’s glowing eyes seemed to burn a hole in her brain.

  As did the image of Marcus’s weary ones.

  Where was Nicholas right now? she wondered. She didn’t recall a tower room from her previous visits to Dinadan. She would have to ask him about it. It was impossible to know whether the gypsy was speaking truth or rambling like a madwoman, but Arianne felt in the old woman’s words an import that she couldn’t dismiss.

  She prayed that Nicholas was safe. Somehow the thought of his being captured, the image of him at Julian’s mercy, twisted through her even more painfully than the thought of her own capture.

  Nicholas, she thought, her mind scanning the great height and scope of the castle, searching for him as if she could visualize him somewhere on the grounds. Where are you?

  Please be safe. Stay safe. You are my hope.

  And my heart. It was the first time she had admitted this even to herself.

  When the visitors had left, Marcus set aside the smuggled food from Katerine. He unwrapped the parcel from his sister and smiled for the first time in a long while. Inside the linen was Arianne’s sharp-edged, jeweled dagger.

  Nicholas swept a keen glance around Julian’s apartments. They were the same ones his father had inhabited when Nicholas had last been in the castle. Julian had changed a few things here and there, but most of the rich tapestries, the carved bedposts adorned with circlets of emeralds and rubies, hung with purple satin and gold tassels—were the same. He closed his eyes, almost imagining that he could feel his father’s presence. He saw the archduke’s eyes on the day he’d banished his son. Filled with rage they’d been—rage and something more. Disappointment, pain. So much pain.

  He shook off the heaviness in his heart. The past was dead. He could not change or revive it now. Never would he have the chance to reconcile with his father, to make things right between them, to see love and acceptance once again in his father’s eyes.

  It was too late for that.

  But it was not too late to save others from Julian’s machinations. The fate of many hung in the balance—in particular, and weighing most on Nicholas’s mind, the fate of Arianne.

  She was in dire danger every moment Julian held command of this castle, and Nicholas vowed to himself as he searched through the duke’s private chambers that not another sun would set before his enemy was overthrown.

  He moved swiftly through the antechambers and the bedchamber. His father had kept the dungeon keys in a small chest near the window. When Nicholas looked there today, however, he found not the keys but another treasure.

  The royal medallion of Dinadan.

  The ancient gold gleamed warmly in his hands as he lifted the square medallion out of the chest. Something wrenched inside him as he stared at it.

  The medallion was the symbol of Dinadan peace and unity. It was worn on all state occasions, whenever the archduke appeared before his people—at coronations, celebrations, executions, feasts, and during battle. Nicholas had received it from his father when he turned eighteen, as a sign that he was the one chosen to rule Dinadan when Armand stepped down.

  But he’d been commanded to return it before he left Castle Dinadan and his homeland ten long years ago.

  It scalded his palm. Somehow the medallion felt heavier now than he remembered. Its inscription read, Long Live Dinadan.

  The sound of footsteps in the corridor galvanized him. Quick as a blink he dropped the medallion into his pocket and slipped into the anteroom just as the door opened and Duke Julian strolled in, accompanied by several nobles, Cren the Astrologer, and Baylor, the Captain of Arms.

  “I’ve been pondering the executions of Count Marcus and that gypsy,” Julian informed his captain. Nicholas listened from the anteroom, his fingers clenched around his sword.

  “The stench of their perfidy is rising from the dungeons to pervade the castle. I want them gone, a warning to my people that any opposition to the crown will not be tolerated. I have decided to move up their executions. Baylor, proclaim to all that the traitors will die tomorrow. I expect every noble and merchant and peasant to attend.”

  “My lord, it will be done. When?” Baylor inquired.

  “My subjects are commanded to gather in the courtyard at the stroke of dawn. When first light comes, the prisoners will be brought to the scaffol
d in chains for all to see, and they will be paraded and then hanged before all of Dinadan.”

  Nicholas could hear the smile in Julian’s smug, velvety voice. In the shadows of the anteroom, Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, and tension gripped him like iron chains.

  This was too soon, much too soon. No reinforcements could be expected yet, unless fortune was strongly on his side—and it had not been on his side for a long while now.

  But he couldn’t wait. With or without the soldiers, he needed to retake the castle, and he had to act before dawn.

  6

  Arianne never heard even a footfall behind her before she was roughly grabbed.

  She gasped, but before the scream could form in her throat, Nicholas’s hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Easy—keep quiet,” he warned and pulled her through the door of the duchess’s anteroom and out into the cold stone corridor, up a short flight of stairs, to a low narrow hall. She wasn’t familiar with this part of the castle, but Nicholas yanked her through a door and into a darkened chamber without hesitation. Only when he’d kicked the door shut did he release her.

  Nearly everyone in the castle was at supper in the great hall, dining on eggs in jelly and quince pie. It was the first chance Nicholas had found to catch her alone.

  “We need to talk, and I couldn’t take the chance of being interrupted in the solar,” he informed Arianne curtly, trying not to notice how beautiful she looked tonight, in that flowing sea-green gown, her face flushed, her eyes huge and brilliant in the dusk. He longed to remove that damned wimple and cap and watch her lovely hair float free, cascading down her back like a river of fire. Longed to twine his fingers through the silk of it…

  He snapped his attention back to the business at hand, frowning. This was no time for distractions.

  “What is it?” Arianne asked, her heart still hammering in her throat as he turned away from her and lit candles atop a low chest. The room shimmered with a warm, pale light that flickered eerily across his darkly somber face.

  “Ill news. We must act quickly. There’s no time to wait for your troops to arrive—or mine.”

  Swiftly he explained what he’d overheard in Julian’s chambers.

  “He’s planning to hang Marcus at dawn?” Arianne felt the color draining from her face. Suddenly she sprang forward and grasped his arm. “Let’s go. Right now, Nicholas. We must free him tonight, even if we have to kill all the guards—I’ll need a sword.”

  “Arianne, calm yourself.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “You’ve no need of a sword, for you’re staying far from the fray. The situation is under control.”

  “Under control?” she flashed, her chin flying up. “How can you say that?”

  “Do you want to hear my plan or not?”

  She took a deep breath, summoning calm, and then nodded. Her violet eyes flashed thoughtfully as she listened to him outline how he had already arranged with Sir Castor’s knights—the ones who had entered the castle with them—that they and Nicholas would enter the dungeon shortly before dawn and demand that the prisoners be given over to them. They would say that Julian had ordered them to bring Count Marcus and the gypsy before him for a private exchange before the public hanging.

  “Yes, oh, yes, that’s good.” A smile bloomed across her face. “And once you get him out?”

  “Sir Castor’s men will have horses ready. They’ll make for the drawbridge with him and stop for nothing. I’ll remain here, still in disguise.”

  “No, you must go, too,” Arianne cried, fear bright in her eyes as she stared up at him. “Nicholas, they’ll be hunting for you…”

  “I’m not leaving without you. Or without bringing Julian to his knees,” he replied quietly. His eyes lit with ruthless anticipation. “I’ll wait until Marcus and the others have marshaled our combined forces. When the signal for the attack is given, I’ll be well positioned to draw my sword against Duke Julian.”

  She was silent. The immense danger looming before them lay like a rock upon her heart. Through the flickering candlelight, she studied Nicholas’s face, the fierce scar, the harsh readiness in his gray hawk’s eyes.

  “What can I do?” she asked steadily, suddenly realizing that after this night she might never see him again. Anything might happen once their plan was set in motion. Anything at all…Death could come swiftly to him, to Marcus, even to herself.

  “Keep close to Duchess Katerine. If fighting breaks out, lock yourselves in her rooms and stay there—“He broke off, frowning. “I recognize that look, Arianne. You don’t intend to follow a word of my instructions, do you?”

  Her chin lifted higher. Violet eyes locked with his gray ones, reflecting back an implacability every bit as firm as his. “I promise to look after Katerine as best I can, but if fighting breaks out, I will not hide in a corner. If I have a chance to run Duke Julian through, I’ll seize it!”

  “All hell you will!” Nicholas dragged her to him with a roughness born of alarm. “You stay away from Julian. He’s ruthless and he would cut you down, woman or no, without a second glance.”

  “Not if I drove a blade through his evil heart first!”

  Fury swept across his face and smoldered in his eyes. His fingers tightened around her wrists painfully, but Nicholas didn’t notice how fierce his grip was until she winced. He let her go and stepped back, studying her with a darkening expression that had been known to strike terror into the hearts of armed and helmeted men. But she met his gaze unflinchingly.

  “Arianne, if you don’t give me your word, I’ll have to lock you in the tower room. There’s no way in hell I’ll leave you to get yourself killed while I’m busy breaking Marcus out of the dungeon—“

  “Tower room? What tower room?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” he told her impatiently.

  “I’m not, but…the gypsy said something to me about the tower room today. I’d forgotten about it until just now.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She just whispered something about the tower room. Oh, and something about the blue panel.”

  Nicholas’s mouth tightened. “Now how would she know that? There is a secret door, opened by pressing on the blue panel near the stairway. Few know of the tower room. It is a sort of royal dungeon. My great-grandfather kept his enemy, the Earl of Axwith, a prisoner there for nearly three years until a kingly ransom was paid. One hundred years ago, a royal prisoner went mad after being confined there and threw himself out of the tower window onto the stone courtyard below. I thought at first that perhaps Julian would have kept Marcus there instead of in the dungeon.”

  “He is not so thoughtful.” Arianne paced up and down the length of the small chamber, her feet whispering over the rushes. Candlelight gilded her hair, and the shadows thrown by her delicate strides played across her daintily elegant features. “I wonder why the gypsy told me of it,” she mused.

  “Perhaps she knew that it was your destiny to be shut away there for the duration of this siege, if you will not give me your solemn oath to keep away from the danger.”

  He gripped her around the waist, and without thinking his other hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back. “This is not a game, Arianne, and I won’t be put off. Your word.”

  “I’ll try,” she told him, her voice quavering despite herself. Damn him, the very touch of his hand upon her waist, the sensation of his fingers in her hair, were sending her senses spinning. She fought to regain her equilibrium, but his nearness, the size and power and dark, wild ferocity of him had a dizzying effect that slurred her tongue even as she tried to fire back a sharp retort.

  I’ll try? What kind of a weak, blathering response was that?

  “But I shan’t run from an opportunity to repay Julian for all the suffering he’s brought…”

  Nicholas made a sound like a growl deep in his throat and hauled her closer, holding her so tightly that she thought her ribs would crack.

  “What am I going to do with yo
u, woman?” he snarled, and Arianne, to steady herself from the thunderous emotions whirling through her, grasped his massive shoulders and spoke the first silly words that sprang to her lips.

  “Kiss me as you did Marta!”

  Dead silence shook the chamber. The candles hissed and sputtered. Shadows danced.

  “Do…what? Like I did…who?”

  Now a blush as fiery as a rose swept across her cheeks. “Marta…my mother’s c-cousin. I saw you kiss her at a banquet that last time in Galeron…in the alcove. I was hiding.”

  His eyes darkened, turning the color of night. “And?”

  Staring into those eyes, held in those arms, Arianne felt a compulsion to speak the yearning in her heart, a foolish, idiotic yearning that had been hidden there for ten long years.

  “I always wondered what it would be like were you to kiss me in that way,” she whispered.

  She saw the astonishment cross his face, then a flicker of laughter, immediately followed by an indefinable gleam in those keen eyes. She saw a muscle pulse in his jaw.

  “It is a knight’s duty to oblige a lady.” He shifted her up against him so that her mouth was only a breath away from his.

  She wanted to run. Couldn’t. Wanted to tell him she’d changed her mind. Didn’t dare to. She found herself held in an iron grip, pinned against his towering and hard-muscled body.

  She wanted this kiss. Oh, dear Lord, she wanted this kiss. Yet she feared appearing foolish, young, far too innocent. She didn’t know how to kiss him back. Where to put her hands, how to form her lips.

  No one like Nicholas had ever kissed her before.

  Breathless, she watched his face lower toward hers, felt herself drowning in those cool, oddly intense eyes that seemed to read her very soul.