“Kill as many as we can while we wait for our own troops to arrive.”
“Maybe you should talk to them,” I said hoarsely. “Negotiate. For your wife’s sake.”
He glanced at me as though I’d grown horns but otherwise ignored me.
A peremptory knock sounded. At almost the same time, the door flew open and Colonel Friedrich strode in with two armed soldiers behind him.
“Apologies for the intrusion, ladies,” Friedrich said with unexpected civility, his eyes scanning the room. “Gentlemen, please lower your arms.”
Since the two soldiers had their rifles trained, I wasn’t altogether surprised when the duke silently set down his sword against the table, and Heribert dropped the pistol on the floor at his feet.
Augusta whimpered and clutched me around the waist. I pushed in front of her and since no one else spoke, I said, “Colonel Friedrich, what’s going on?”
“Lady Guin.” He actually smiled faintly. “Perhaps you remember I was looking for someone.”
At last.
From this unexpected source came my justification, my truth. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Neither would have been appropriate, though I couldn’t quite contain my smile as I said hoarsely, “At the Blue Lamp.”
“Precisely,” he said, taking something from his pocket. It looked rather like the crumpled piece of paper he’d been showing in the tavern. He unfolded it and handed it to me. A smile flickered across his face. “I found him. The man who saved my life in the revolution.”
I glanced down at the paper in my hands and saw a rough yet accurate sketch of a young man with wild hair, deep, intense eyes and a winning smile. His features, his fine bone structure, and the almost sculpted lips, looked exactly like Kasimir.
Another man strolled through the open door between the two armed soldiers, and the paper fluttered out of my nerveless hands.
Chapter Fourteen
I’d seen him naked. I’d seen him in a dirty, tattered shirt and torn trousers. I’d seen him in a domino cloak. Now he wore a perfectly tailored dark coat with shining silver buttons over a burgundy, embroidered silk waistcoat. A travelling cloak hung negligently off one shoulder. The effect was both splendid and disarming. Only the charming smile was missing.
Blood was singing in my ears. My knees felt suddenly weak and yet exhilaration surged through me, making me feel ready for anything when in fact I was stunned, dizzy and useless for more than dropping Augusta into a chair before she fell over.
Kasimir’s gaze had flickered around the room. I don’t know how much he observed before Leopold, with a cry of pure, almost childish rage, snatched up the sword and flew at his nephew.
For a heart-stopping instant, I thought it was all over after all. My mouth fell open in a silent cry of grief. Friedrich was already rushing towards them, but Kasimir simply side-stepped the wild thrust, and Leopold’s sword buried itself in the closed door.
When Friedrich leapt between them, Kasimir shook his head, waving the colonel back. But Leopold wasn’t finished yet. His face purple with fury, he yanked his sword free and again lunged at his unarmed opponent, who seemed remarkably calm about the whole thing.
Whipping his cloak around his left arm, Kasimir knocked up the sword. Leopold slashed the weapon down at his nephew’s neck, and again Kasimir caught it on his padded arm. The next sweeping cut aimed at his stomach, with so much force that I heard the zing of the sword through the air.
“Enough! Stop it,” I cried in distress, unable to see why Heribert didn’t drag his brother away, why Friedrich didn’t help Kasimir.
But for the third time, Kasimir took the sword on his arm, and with a sudden twist, tangled the blade in the cloak’s voluminous fabric. Panting, Leopold tried to tug it free, straining in a struggle I couldn’t make out, but he was only drawn inexorably closer to his nephew.
Kasimir pushed once, and Leopold stumbled back empty-handed, glaring into the younger man’s face with naked hatred.
Kasimir didn’t even glance at the sword before he threw it, point downwards, to Friedrich. He pushed his tattered cloak behind his shoulder. “What now, uncle Leopold?”
They were the first words he’d said in that room, and they thrilled through me with emotions I had no name for. Relief was in there and sudden new fear and uncertainty, because although the voice was familiar to me, this new, terse, totally in command tone was not.
“Where did you learn that girl’s trick?” Leopold demanded, still trying to scoff.
“In my cell. Tangling Dieter’s whip in the sheet from my bed. It made him furious too.”
I had no time to deal with the lump in my throat. My eyes were distracted by a movement on the edge of my vision as Heribert bent and picked up the fallen pistol. I’d already learned not to rely on the men, so I lifted the vase beside me. It was full of red roses.
“You have a lot to answer for, Prince Leopold,” Friedrich said grimly. No longer Duke Leopold, as that gentleman clearly noted, jerking his head around to glare.
“I raised you from a mutinous nonentity!” Leopold shouted. “I promoted you, made you colonel of the Silberwald guard, and this is how you repay me?”
Heribert raised the pistol, pointing it straight at Kasimir’s head. Kasimir and Friedrich noticed it at the same time. Friedrich’s eyes widened in sudden terror as he lunged futilely towards Heribert.
“Drop to the floor!” he yelled, though whether at Kasimir or at Heribert wasn’t clear and didn’t actually matter, since I took matters into my own hand, crashing the vase, roses and all, into the side of Heribert’s head.
I used all the force I could muster, and he fell like a stone to the carpet, where he lay unmoving, pieces of broken glass in his hair and rose petals drifting down around his person.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze from this rather poetic figure to Kasimir. For an instant, his gaze held mine and my heart stood still. His lips quirked upwards.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Leopold demanded, glaring at me.
“Many reasons,” I said vaguely. “Maybe because there should be no killing if we can avoid it. Maybe because he got drunk and tried to maul me at the masquerade ball you said never happened.”
Leopold’s mouth fell open.
Kasimir said, “Colonel, please take my uncles into custody.” His unquiet eyes fell on the duchess’s ladies, who sat rigidly upright on the sofa. The baroness’s eyes glittered but were otherwise unreadable. She didn’t look at Kasimir. “And the baroness here. They all have charges to answer to. The British subjects should be confined to their own quarters, with guards for their protection, until everything is secure. No one and nothing is to leave the castle before we do.” He jerked around to the door as two more soldiers appeared, escorting Barbara and Patrick. “Absconding?” he enquired.
“Never heard it called that before,” the soldier said cheerfully.
Kasimir let out of a breath of laughter, and while his prisoners, including the regal but unnaturally silent baroness, were taken from the room, he regarded the newcomers. Patrick gazed back at him without fear, and he moved on to Barbara.
His lips curved. “Ah.”
“Ah indeed,” Barbara murmured. “Now I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Why, yes, I think so. You can travel outside your body. It’s a rare gift, rarer still to control it as you do.” She glanced at me. “That’s why you saw him as a ghost, why I did last night, and yet couldn’t speak to him.”
“I couldn’t see him last night,” I objected.
“I suspect the baroness’s much-reviled tea had something to do with your seeing him before. Opium alters the mind, opens it.” She turned back to Kasimir. “You see the dead too, don’t you? And you talked about it. That’s why people thought you were mad. Well, that and knowing things you could only have discovered from travelling outside your body.”
Kasimir regarded her thoughtfully, his head slightly on one side, the way I remembered. “I like you,” he said at last. “But I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” His glance took in the whole room. “I don’t want to imprison anyone else. Don’t make me.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left the room.
I felt as if he’d slapped me in the face. After everything that had happened, with my soul about to explode with happiness, he’d ignored me.
I’d always known he wouldn’t marry me. I wouldn’t let him. Still. I blinked rapidly. A little sign of affection would have been nice.
Gradually, I became aware that Augusta was tugging at my hand. When I glanced down at her, she said plaintively, “Am I not the duchess anymore?”
“Leopold may no longer be the duke,” I said wryly, “but I suspect you will always be the duchess.”
* * * * *
So, Kasimir was free—although I hadn’t quite discovered how yet—and all my memories were real, not the subject of my fevered imagination. I appeared to be in the middle of a coup d’état, with the rightful ruler of Silberwald displacing the usurper. My brother-in-law was under arrest and could face the death penalty for treason.
Contrasting, contradictory emotions seemed to boil just under the surface of my consciousness, bound by one very fine thread of silk that was all that prevented them from bursting out.
As soon as I was allowed to walk from Augusta’s apartments, I did, grateful for the sheer size of the castle that let me stretch my legs. Kasimir’s people were all over the duke’s apartments, so I went in the opposite direction, away from my new bedroom and towards my old one. I wondered if I could simply walk out of the castle, follow the wind wherever I wanted to go, be whoever I wanted to be. I was bored being Guin. I could stay at some country inn, or in one of the picturesque towns near the border, and write the novel which had been forming in my head for weeks. It would be better than my other silly stories, more adult, more like life…
There was rubble at my feet. For a moment, I thought I’d missed something vital, that Kasimir’s soldiers were destroying the castle after all. There was, after all, a man-sized hole in the wall.
Then I realized where I stood. At the entrance to the passage into the old part of the castle, where my old bedroom had been, and Kasimir’s cell. The wall Leopold had had built to block it off had been knocked in.
I gazed at the uneven hole, considering, trying to talk myself out of it. But the sensible part of me never really stood a chance. I’d spent too long believing this place didn’t exist, or at least not as I remembered it from my supposed fevered dreams.
I stepped over the fallen bricks and through the hole, waiting while my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and then I walked on. Since the door to my old bedroom stood open, I looked in. The bed was no longer made up, and the shutters were closed. There was no sign of me left here, and yet the memories of the time I did spend here folded around me like a warm, if slightly rough shawl. I returned to the passage and walked on, my footsteps following that old, well-remembered path. By the time I reached the ancient hall, my skin prickled with memory and awareness. Someone was near.
I clutched my shawl tighter. This was where the baroness had found me, set her men on me, and forced the hideous concoction down my throat. I wondered if she’d meant to kill me, or just hadn’t greatly cared. Whose idea had it been to convince me that none of my memories were real? On the face of it, such a stupid idea, and yet it had almost worked. When everyone around one says the same thing, especially when it sounds more reasonable than the bizarre truth, it’s scarily easy to be convinced. I’d almost been there. I would have gone home with Barbara and Patrick, and the duke’s secret would have remained intact.
My stomach twisted at the memory of that terrifying assault in the gloom, of choking and drowning in the potion I’d been sure would kill me. For a moment, I couldn’t make myself walk any farther. I felt dizzy and sick, and had to hold on to the wall for support.
Determinedly, I forced myself to breath evenly and deeply. It couldn’t happen again. The baroness was in custody. The castle was in Kasimir’s hands.
Only…what if Kasimir’s men hadn’t broken the wall? What if the duke’s inner circle had done it and gathered here to escape or to plot? They’d nothing to lose now, and I’d been the enemy since I’d been here the last time.
I clutched my shawl around me, knowing I should go back, that I should learn from my previous mistakes. But in the end, I just couldn’t live with not knowing. So I walked across the hall and began to climb the spiral stairs that led eventually to the prisoner’s cell.
Someone was up there. I could sense them, although I wasn’t sure how. I couldn’t hear movement or even breathing. There was no distinct body smell over the mustiness of the stone walls. But as I climbed on, past the open door on the first landing, the feeling grew stronger.
The room with the table was still empty. But no one had swept it recently. Pressing my fingers over the unruly pulse in my throat, I climbed the narrower steps to the cell.
Kasimir, still somehow shocking in his smart clothes, stood in the open doorway, gazing into his late prison. A pale, narrow beam of sunlight shone through from the cell window directly onto his still figure, like a halo.
Without turning, he said, “I knew you’d come here.”
“Because I always did?”
“It’s the only place we have privacy.”
“For what?” I demanded.
He turned his head slowly, as if he wasn’t quite ready to see me. “Talking. It’s difficult with everyone there, and we mustn’t destroy your reputation. Your brutally honest friend almost did that without our help.”
I lifted my chin. “Barbara doesn’t know anything detrimental to my reputation.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You mean she doesn’t know I made love to you in my cell?”
His words and the memory they inspired sent heat spiralling through my body. I hoped the gloom of the stair well was enough to hide the flush of my skin.
“Of course not,” I managed.
“But I’ll bet she knows you were locked in my cell all that day. That you visited me here more than once alone. Those things are enough to damn you in the eyes of the world. It isn’t really to my credit that I took advantage of them.”
A pain seemed to have formed somewhere in the region of my stomach and was spreading outward. “Are you apologising?” I asked.
A smile flickered across his face. “No. But I wouldn’t cause you any more pain than I already have. Were you really ill?”
“No. The baroness found me—here, in fact—and drugged me. They tried to make me believe the last two weeks had been a dream, that you were never here and really had died eight years ago.”
“But you remembered me.” Although I hadn’t registered his movement, he was closer now. A ray of dangerous hope sprang up in my heart, because although I knew we couldn’t be together, I did want him to care for me. Just a little. And his intense eyes were soft and warm as they gazed into mine. His words reminded me of the soothing dreams. I wondered if Barbara had been right, if his spirit really could travel outside his body.
I said, “I imagine you’re hard to forget under even ordinary circumstances.” I swallowed. “Why weren’t you there in the cell when I came back from Rundberg?”
In one of his quick, startling movements, he jerked towards the steps, grabbing my hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
“I don’t want to talk here,” he said, tugging me down the steps. I found myself following him through the open door on the first landing and down to the fresh air of the overgrown garden below.
He halted just outside the door and drew in a deep breath, gazing up at the blue sky with its light fluffy clouds drifting lazily over the hills.
“I used to live fo
r moments out here. Thank you for reminding me those weren’t enough, that it was never just about me.”
I blinked. “Did I?”
“You brought back reality,” he said simply.
“Then I’m glad.”
His fingers stroked mine, and I let him draw me onward through some overgrown bushes into a small area of long grass, recently trampled. He unfastened his cloak and spread it on the ground. I knelt on it without further invitation, and he sat down beside me, stretching his long legs out in front, as if admiring his shining new boots.
He said, “Early on the day you left for Rundberg, Leopold himself came to the tower and gave Dieter the order to kill me. He was to wait three days—I suppose so that if my identity ever came out, Leopold would be too far away to be implicated.”
“So you had to escape,” I breathed.
“At least I had the means in your fine supply of pins.”
“And Dieter?”
“I overpowered him,” Kasimir said vaguely. “If you wanted to be very kind, you could bring me a file instead. One of those sharp, narrow ones I could use to kill my gaoler.” I didn’t suppose you could kill anyone with a hairpin, but all the same, the memory of his words made me shiver. Not that I would mourn Dieter. He’d been a cruel, abusive man.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“To Rundberg. I was relying on you and Dr. Alcuin having set things in motion.”
“I brought him and his wife back here!”
“I know. But fortunately, they saw the arrival of the duke—who’d come tearing back here to deal with my escape, not knowing I was already close to the city—and knew they were in danger. So they fled back to Rundberg, assuming you, as the duchess’s sister would be safe. By the time Alcuin returned to the city, I’d managed to gather the opposition support and contact Friedrich. Alcuin and another doctor attested to my identity—and my sanity—and I issued the decree deposing Leopold as a usurper. We secured the city and marched here with all haste to capture Leopold and make sure of the castle. But I have to go back at once to set up government and elections and a million and one other things.”
The Prisoner of Silverwood Castle Page 17