It would have been easy to stumble, though Vivienne did not ask either man for aid. If anything, they were more concerned than she. Ruari mumbled his paternoster over and over again, the sound more reassuring than Vivienne would have cared to admit. Erik was as taut as a drawn bowstring, though he said nothing at all.
They made their way ever downward, the chill of the earth enfolding them. Erik held his blade high as well as his torch, and the men halted at each opening before they passed it by. Both were vigilant in watching their surroundings, as if they too expected an unpleasant surprise. Vivienne felt Erik’s distrust, though she did not wish to argue with him before the others.
And she knew that a deed would go further to regain his trust than any pledge she might make. Once he was freed of Ravensmuir with her aid, she could better explain her innocence to him.
“Why, for the love of God, would a man suffer such a warren beneath his keep?” Ruari demanded finally.
“My family traded in religious relics for years,” Vivienne said, well aware that that was no honorable credential. “My great grandfather, who built Ravensmuir, began the trade. He claimed this site, it is told, because of its natural caverns, then had them enlarged into a labyrinth.”
“Claimed or stole?” Erik asked softly, and Vivienne flushed at the condemnation in his tone. She supposed that no honest man would find merit in her family’s history and source of wealth.
“Stole, no doubt,” Ruari said. “One has always heard tales of the Lammergeier and their disreputable trade. Such caverns as these would well suit a family needing to hide dark deeds and plunder.” He snorted. “No honest man would have need of them.”
“Do you call yourself dishonest?” Vivienne asked, well aware that her family had a tainted history but protective of her kin all the same. “For you clearly have need of them on this night.”
The men exchanged a glance but said nothing.
Vivienne continued with her tale, for she ached to fill the oppressive silence. “My grandfather had no desire to continue the trade and used his ship to trade in cloth instead. He brought silk and cloth-of-gold from Araby, as well as gems which were coveted at the courts of kings and barons.”
“Which explains your family’s uncommon affluence,” Ruari muttered. “Though it is ill-gotten, at root.”
“My grandfather’s brother secretly pursued the trade for some years before abandoning it,” Vivienne said, ignoring this charge.
“How could he do so secretly?” Ruari asked. They caught up with Elizabeth then, who was deliberating between the two choices offered by a fork in the path. She nodded and strode to the right, which again led downward, her hem flying behind her.
“There were many ways into the labyrinth and Gawain knew them all,” Vivienne said, hoping that her sister truly did follow a good course. “He came without his brother’s knowledge and took what he desired from the horde here. There were many relics remaining even after he abandoned the trade, so many that the last of them were only auctioned this very year.”
Elizabeth continued the tale. “They were auctioned because our Uncle Tynan, who is Laird of Ravensmuir now, decided to be finally rid of the relics. They were a cause of a dispute between himself and his cousin.”
“What manner of dispute?” Ruari asked, clearly as anxious for the conversation to continue as Vivienne.
“I would expect that the cousin wished to have the relics, for they are valuable even in these times,” Erik said grimly.
“Indeed, she did,” Vivienne agreed.
“She?” the men asked in unison.
“Our Aunt Rosamunde continued the family trade, for she was taught well by her foster father Gawain.”
Ruari whistled through his teeth. “A woman, trading in religious relics. She must have been intrepid, indeed.”
“That she is.” Vivienne frowned. “We have always called her aunt, though in truth she shares no blood with any of us. My grandfather’s brother Gawain adopted her when she was abandoned as a babe. He and his wife raised her as his own child.”
“The same brother who pursued the trade in relics?” Ruari asked.
Vivienne nodded, feeling the weight of Erik’s disapproving silence. She knew theirs was no respectable family history. In contrast, she was very aware of the weight of his family blade, still hidden in her belt, and had no doubt that the Sinclairs had a more illustrious and valiant past. “The very same.”
“And it is Rosamunde whom Darg hates beyond all,” Elizabeth contributed. “The spriggan,” she clarified when Ruari looked confused. “Darg came to think that the abandoned hoard of relics was her own treasure, so when Rosamunde came to take any of it, Darg believed herself to have been robbed. She is determined to avenge herself, though I have told her time and again that Rosamunde will never return to Ravensmuir.”
“Because of that dispute with the laird,” Ruari said, nodding grimly. “If he auctioned the relics, he would be rid of her thievery for good. I find myself agreeing with your uncle, for a man cannot suffer infamy in his hall so readily as that.”
Vivienne bit her tongue. Though there was far more to the tale, it was not hers to share -- nor would an admission of the long standing intimacy between Tynan and Rosamunde improve Erik’s view of her family’s moral measure.
“Should we not be ascending already?” she asked of Elizabeth instead. “Surely we make for the stables? We cannot go ever downward without reaching the large cavern that grants access to the sea.”
“Or the sea itself,” Ruari said grimly.
“I told Darg as much,” Elizabeth said, then peered upward once again. She took a deep breath. “She keeps such a pace this night! We shall be winded indeed by the time we reach our destination.”
“This makes little sense,” Erik said, coming to a halt. “If we continue to descend, we shall land in the sea itself.”
“Or be trapped in some corner when the tide rises,” Ruari muttered, stopping beside the younger man.
Vivienne looked their way in alarm. “I had not thought of that.”
“Perhaps your sister does not truly know the way,” Erik said, his gaze filled with accusation.
“She does not,” Vivienne admitted. “But the fairy knows the labyrinth well.”
Erik arched a brow. “If, indeed, there is a fairy.” It was clear that he did not believe as much. He paused and looked about himself, eying the half dozen portals that opened from the corridor in their vicinity. “I suggest that we break into groups to seek a path that returns upward.”
“A sound scheme!” Ruari said.
“But we will become lost if separated.” Vivienne argued, echoing the reasoning she had been taught all her life. In truth, she was terrified of wandering alone in this labyrinth. “How will we find each other once again?”
“Darg!” Elizabeth cried and, oblivious to Vivienne’s concerns, dashed down the stairs in apparent pursuit of the fairy.
Vivienne took half a dozen steps after her sister, halting when she could still see the men. “Elizabeth!” she shouted. “Await us!” But Elizabeth raced onward, the light of her torch diminishing with alarming speed.
“Ruari and I will seek our own way, while you and your sister follow the fairy,” Erik said as Vivienne fought the urge to follow her sister.
“We must remain together,” she said, even as Ruari peered into an opening to the left. “We must!”
“This one takes an upward course,” Ruari said, then beckoned to Erik. “I would wager that wherever it erupts is better than what we have left behind. There is only space for improvement, after all.” Ruari strode into the passageway, his boots grinding on the stone and his torch burnishing the stone.
“Ruari, no!” Vivienne cried. “We must remain together.”
“Nay, there is no need of that any longer,” Erik said quietly.
His tone prompted Vivienne to look at him, and his stony expression fairly tore her heart in two. “You mean to abandon me here,” she charged, dismayed when
Erik did not deny it. “But we have a handfast! And I promised to try to bear your son.”
“And I tire of your deception,” he said. “You ensured that we were not only pursued but found by urging an early halt last evening.”
“I did no such thing. You were injured! To ride further would have injured you more.”
“Then how did your kin find us?”
“It was the fairy, Darg, who granted them direction.”
Erik passed a hand over his eyes and looked away. “There is no fairy, Vivienne. Perhaps you did not contrive to be found, perhaps you did not lie to me fully. Perhaps your family only hunted us with hounds. It matters little. We part ways now, before whatever treachery your family has planned is sprung upon us.”
“What treachery? I have just aided your escape!”
“To what end?”
Vivienne gasped at the condemnation in his expression. “You cannot imagine that I have aided you to escape only to cast you in greater peril. You cannot believe that I have betrayed you!”
He granted her a cool glance. “Have you not? When we were surrounded, I was captured and beaten, all because you denied any bond with me...”
“No! I lied so that Alexander would not ensure that you could never conceive a son,” Vivienne explained, her words tumbling over each other in her haste to be understood. Erik regarded her so dispassionately that she knew she did not persuade him of her innocence. “Alexander might have unmanned you then and there, so angry was he.”
“He is vengeful, your brother.”
“He is protective.” Vivienne took a steadying breath. “I fear the responsibility for four virgins weighs too heavily upon his shoulders.”
“He is responsible for merely three virgins, by my reckoning, though your count appears to differ from mine,” he said, his tone hard. “For you have insisted to your brother that you are yet a maiden.”
“What else could I have done? Would you have preferred that I had let him do his worst?”
Erik regarded her, as if considering whether she spoke the truth. “You profess concern for me, yet you refused to wed me.”
The true reason for her refusal rose to Vivienne’s lips, but she did not want to speak of love in this moment, when Erik seemed to not even to like her. “Because you argued in favor of a handfast,” she said instead, forcing herself to sound calm, as if she had been persuaded by logic alone.
In truth, she thought of beauteous Beatrice and how poorly she must compare with that wifely paragon who had defended his rights to her own death.
“Your reasoning for a handfast is sound,” she said with care when he said nothing. “For you will have need of another maiden if your seed does not bear fruit in my womb. I would not tempt failure by demanding that you cede to my family’s expectations. I would not risk your daughters so readily.”
“And what do you gain in this?”
“The chance to aid two young girls.”
Erik frowned and turned abruptly away. Vivienne thought he might leave, but he only peered down the passage into which Ruari had disappeared.
Apparently reassured, he turned back to her, his gaze bright. He spoke more slowly now, his condemnation seeming to lose its vigor. “Doubtless I would have faced some more dire fate on the morrow, rather than simple abuse, courtesy of your kin.”
“Perhaps so, if I had not ensured your escape.”
Erik watched her so keenly, though, that Vivienne imagined that he tried to read her very thoughts. She returned his regard steadily, hoping he would see the honesty of her intent.
“Perhaps this feat is intended to provide some amusement for your family,” he suggested softly. “There is much interest in hawks and horses and hounds in this hall, after all. Perhaps I am to be hunted anew.” He took a backward step. “Perhaps I but leap from the fat to the fire.”
“My family would not do such a horrific deed!” Vivienne cried. “How can you be so certain that I mean you ill?”
“How could I trust you, after all that has occurred?” he demanded in his turn, his voice rising. “All has gone awry since I came to Kinfairlie...”
“It went awry long before that.”
Erik shoved a hand through his hair, then spoke with determination. “All was to change with this plan, and yet it does not. Clearly I have erred yet again. Since Fortune offers me a chance to survive, I mean to seize it. I will follow you and your sister no longer. It would be folly to sacrifice what slender advantage I have in this moment.”
They stared at each other in silence in the flickering light. Vivienne did not know what to say, just as she knew she could not let him leave her behind. She knew that she could be of aid to him, she knew that she must hold a key to his ultimate success for she had a sense that their partnership was no mere coincidence. She did not know how to persuade him, a man so dubious of the unseen, of such a conviction.
“Come along, lad!” Ruari roared from some distance. “I make ready progress here, and soon will not be able to retrace my steps back to you. I can fairly smell the stables, upon that you can rely!”
Erik held Vivienne’s gaze, unswayed. “What has been between us will remain our secret for so long as I draw breath,” he vowed with such intensity that she believed him. “You need fear no repercussions from a loose tongue of mine.” She made to speak but he held up his hand. “And I shall ensure that Ruari holds his peace, as well. Wed well, trusting that none will reveal that you are maiden no longer. Farewell, Vivienne.”
Vivienne stared at him, shocked to her toes that he would truly leave her side, dismayed beyond belief to hear the clamor of her heart. He stood so resolute, so certain that he could triumph alone, so noble that he would die in the attempt to save his daughters.
She knew then that, against all odds, she had lost her heart to Erik Sinclair. She might never be able to claim his affections, but she could not let him walk away. Love, Vivienne Lammergeier knew, was too uncommon and of too great a value to be discarded.
It was love that would ensure Erik’s victory in the end.
But she dared not argue as much, not yet.
So she shook her head and argued otherwise. “Erik, you cannot do this. If you leave us and Darg, you will only become lost. You will imperil yourself and your daughters in truth! I swear to you, I mean you no ill. I swear to you that I knew nothing of my family’s pursuit and I only try to set matters aright.”
“Vivienne...”
“Erik, I would accompany you. I would yet try to bear your son. I would keep every pledge I have made to you.”
“But why?”
Vivienne dared not utter the truth, so fresh and fragile to her, so she impulsively offered another more earthy explanation.
She closed the distance between them with a quick step, reached up and touched her lips to his.
Erik did not move. Indeed, he stood so utterly still that she feared he would reject her again. Undaunted, Vivienne slipped her hand into the hair at his nape and slanted her mouth across his. She kissed him with a gentle ardor, coaxing his response.
Erik remained motionless while she kissed him, and she might have thought her efforts futile had she not let her hand slide around his neck. She felt the thunder of his pulse beneath her palm and knew then that he was not so immune to her caress as he would have her believe.
He felt the link between them, as well, though still he denied its potency.
Reassured, Vivienne cast aside her torch then and cupped his face in her hands, straining to her toes to sample him fully. She kissed him again and again, urging him to join her. She heard him catch his breath, she felt his erection, she did not cease her kisses. Indeed, she slipped her tongue between his lips and was rewarded with his gasp.
And then, his resistance crumbled with astonishing speed. His arm locked around her waist and he lifted her against his chest, his kiss plundering her mouth with unmistakable fervor, as if he would devour her whole. Vivienne kissed him back with joy, knowing she had swayed his choice, knowi
ng she could win his love.
Erik abruptly broke their kiss and put distance between them, his eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “It is a more common sorcery that you command,” he said. “But one that no sensible man would trust, all the same. Turn back and return to all you know. Farewell, Vivienne.”
With that, Erik turned to pursue his companion, raising his voice to call to the older man. “Ruari! Shout directions to me that I might find you.”
“No!” Vivienne cried and lunged after him. She took a deep breath, knowing that a confession would not improve Erik’s view of her but it was the sole way to keep him from abandoning her. “I lied about my courses,” she admitted and he froze.
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed. “What is this?”
“I had to stop Alexander, so I lied. I do not bleed as yet. I have not bled in over two weeks. You cannot leave me, as your seed might be well be taking root within my womb.”
Erik swore and his brow darkened. Vivienne held her breath, for she could see that he did not truly believe her, yet was tempted by the possibility.
Before he could reply, Elizabeth screamed from some point far below.
“Darg!” she cried then, apparently in anguish. “No, Darg, no!”
There was a resounding splash that made Vivienne freeze in terror. A woman screamed.
“Elizabeth!” Vivienne cried, though no one answered her.
A mere heartbeat later, Ruari swore with gusto, his exclamation echoing through the passageway he had followed. There was a crash, as if someone had fallen, and a tumbling of stone. A fierce wind surged up the stairway with sudden force, extinguishing Erik’s blazing torch as readily as a puff of breath will douse a candle.
Vivienne was cloaked in darkness, utterly uncertain of where she stood, much less where her companions might be found. “Erik?” she whispered, her mouth dry in fear.
She could hear him breathing, but he did not answer, and that was no good portent at all.
The Rose Red Bride JK2 Page 21