Once she could get out of bed without her knees buckling, she began stealthily to gather supplies. The smith’s dagger remained safely hidden on her bookshelf, thank God. Just thinking of the blade gave her courage and made her feel less alone. Her memories of the man were vague—huge, hulking, with a disquieting, simmering fury, but she recalled also something reassuring about a summer sky. When she’d inquired, none of the servants seemed to know much about the smith. And with the return of Dieter—the castle’s regular blacksmith—from his mother’s funeral, the man had disappeared. She didn’t expect she’d ever see him again.
Odd, the pang at that thought.
She shook off the sense of mystery—and, foolishly, of loss—and set about squirreling away supplies. As part of her act of newly re-formed obedience to the role Kurt wanted her to play, she asked to take on the task of mending the servants’ clothing—contrition for her pride, she murmured to Frieda, eyes cast down. She knew the lady’s maid would report the request to Kurt. When the basket of frayed shirts and ripped breeches arrived in her room, she gloated as she stitched—and surreptitiously stuffed deep under her mattress two mismatched sets of stable boy’s clothing, along with heavy woolen stockings and a warm padded vest.
When several of the oilcloth greatcoats used by the groomsmen arrived for hemming, one of her worst worries was allayed. The problem of the winter temperatures plagued her. Spring was starting to come on, but it still dipped down to near freezing at night. The days weren’t much better, with the drizzling gray weather they’d had the past fortnight. Snow had even fallen last week. Barring a deluge, the greatcoat should keep her fairly dry. With her other layers, she could hope to stay warm enough to survive the voyage to Frankfurt.
Food—some apples, hard cheese, walnuts, and flat bread—proved easy enough to store away in hiding caches as she hobbled about her room. When the maids greeted with skeptical glances her request to the kitchen for dried sausage, she merely lifted her chin. “My mother, the duchess, always recommends dried meat to invalids,” Lenora said imperiously. “It is well known in England as easier on the digestion during periods of recovery from illness or affliction.”
Money posed more of a problem. Kurt had long ago taken away her pin money. And he insisted on keeping her jewels in a locked coffer in his room. He’d given a key to Frieda, but Lenora had learned early on that the woman did nothing without her master’s permission. Frieda wore the key on a chain around her neck, keeping it on even under her nightdress as she slept. “So you needn’t worry your pretty head about losing it, my dear,” Kurt had simpered as he’d explained the arrangement to her. It had taken all of her ingenuity last month to pilfer three of her own gold wrist bangles from the jewelry case when she’d needed them for poor Franz. She still had one of the bracelets left, hidden in safety. For this escape, she doubted she could get ahold of any more of her jewels. She’d have to content herself with scraping together a handful of coins.
Most important, she needed transportation away from the Schloss. Ideally, something fast, discreet, and reliable. She considered somehow buying passage on a coach and train to Frankfurt, but feared she’d be recognized on so public a means of conveyance. With the democracy demonstrations rising up across the German Confederation and, according to reports she’d heard, across much of Europe as well, she feared that transportation had become unpredictable. A horse would be faster and safer—if she could get one. She had no compunctions about stealing a good mare or gelding from Rotenburg. Kurt held enough of her dowry to pay for a stable of fine horses many times over. But the stables were well guarded, and stealing the tack to saddle the horse in silence in the dark posed an insurmountable problem.
She spent a day darning housemaids’ stockings in the window seat of her sitting room before the solution came to her. A sympathetic under-maid, whom Lenora had gifted with some cast-off clothing in the past, agreed to carry a note to young Franz’s father, Herr Steinberg, in the town of Gruselstadt outside the castle. In it, Lenora begged a favor: the purchase of a horse in exchange for the last of her own stolen gold bracelets. Herr Steinberg and his wife had promised her aid in return for having delivered their boy to safety. Franz still tortured her sleep—her worst shame in this whole horror of an engagement. When Kurt had discovered her fondness for children, he’d immediately used it against her. She’d smuggled Franz out of the castle two weeks ago with the wine merchant and the pair of gold bangles, back to some cousins in Imsbach, so Kurt wouldn’t find him at his parents’ lodgings in town. It was that act of rebellion that had cost her the flogging in the castle courtyard. But it had been worth it. She hated having to ask the boy’s parents to take further risks on her behalf, but saw no other way to make good her escape. She needed a horse—nothing fancy that would attract attention on the road, but a beast sturdy and fast enough to get her to Frankfurt before she could be caught.
Her last hurdle involved her guards, as she’d come to think of Frieda and the strapping country girl, Inga, who served as Frieda’s assistant. Early on, Kurt had insisted the two maids sleep in her chambers, “to assist with my betrothed’s every need and keep her company until I myself should have the honor of that task,” he’d said, the lying blackguard. She had to steal a moment of privacy in her water closet to grind sleeping herbs into a fine powder for Frieda and Inga’s small ale. The herbs should keep them soundly slumbering through her escape. Lenora thanked her learned mother for insisting that a lady’s training should include traditional herbal medicines. As the duchess often said, “Modern medical quackery is so often imprecise and ineffective in its treatments.”
Ten days after the flogging, the night of the new moon held the castle and town in deepest dark—perfect cover for an escape. Lenora’s back still ached fiercely, but her broken and bruised skin had healed sufficiently for her to ride. It would have to be enough.
At midnight the Gruselstadt town clocktower beat out its chimes to the pounding of her heart. She crept out of bed and dressed swiftly in the chill, pulling on the men’s clothing she’d stuffed into hiding. The castle lay in deep shadows. The dagger’s location behind the books she knew by quick feel. Strapping the dagger round her waist helped quell some of her fears. Working as silently as she could, she retrieved the sturdy satchel she used to collect herbs and dried flowers and filled it instead with her provisions for escape. After adding a few personal items—her silver comb, the last letter from her parents—she slung the satchel over her shoulder and tied to her belt her meager purse of coins. She wound her night braid around her head, secured it tight with hairpins, and pulled on the boy’s cap she’d filched from the pile of mending. The plainest and smallest of the greatcoats added warmth and camouflage to her ensemble; it would serve as ground cover and blanket as well, for wherever she could find shelter on the road.
If Kurt found her on this escape attempt tonight, he might well kill her. He’d become hard to predict, now with revolution threatening to break out. On his last visit he’d been infuriated with the people’s presumption of daring to ask for freedom and more rights. “Don’t those ingrates know their place?” he’d snarled. His temper rode at hair-trigger levels, but he’d been so busy quelling protests and attending meetings with other worried nobles that his visits had been mercifully few. He seemed content with her act of meek compliance and her claim that she had come to accept his rule. Why shouldn’t he believe her? In his mind, he held absolute rule by right of emperor and God over all souls at Schloss Rotenburg and throughout the rest of his principality.
The conceited fool. One could ride from one end of Rotenburg-Gruselstadt to the other before lunch. Kurt’s territories were miniscule in comparison to the Sherbrooke duchy held by her family. The title of Prinz of which he was so arrogantly proud was far overblown by British standards; in England, his land holdings and status were more on the level with those of an earl. The difference was that Kurt held sovereign power over his subjects. But therein lay the problem as well: Such absolute rule of a
prince over a small division of territory was out of step with modern notions of democracy and the people’s desire for a united Germany. The time when petty tyrants like Prince Kurt could rule was fast coming to an end.
Lenora had no intention of being his last victim.
By the time she’d slipped through the castle halls and down the back stairs to a seldom-used entry onto the kitchen gardens, a nervous sweat dripped down her back. The darkness of the night aided her escape, but also forced her to a painfully slow pace. She slid the heavy door bolt, careful not to make a sound, and thankful for once that Kurt’s ridiculously strict standards meant the bolt slid silently from its latch.
She knew the castle routines well enough to be familiar with the location of the night watchmen. This route, while taking longer to reach the rendezvous point with Franz’s father, was the most deserted. She had only to pass the head gardener’s cottage bordering the orchards to make it to the far gate. The cold night air hit her as she padded by the tidy beds lying fallow and heavily mulched for the winter. But her stomach clenched at the light of the lamps burning in the cottage.
Herr Blumthal, the head gardener, was awake.
A woman’s laughter coming from the stone cottage froze Lenora to the spot. The middle-aged widower had guests as well! And then, by the further sounds coming from the cottage, she realized Herr Blumthal entertained but one guest and that the two of them were involved in an activity more intimate than mere conversation. Even in the dark, Lenora blushed. As she inched around the corner of the ivy-covered building, she distracted herself by the thought that their activity proved an excellent cover. Hopefully the lovers were too otherwise occupied to notice her passage.
But the sounds of their pleasure saddened her as well. She’d come to Germany with a young woman’s hope to find love with her fiancé. She had dreamed of a happy partnership like that shared by her parents—perhaps not a grand passion, but a solid union based on respect and affection.
Yet love had failed her. Now she expected she would never marry. The story of her failed betrothal was bound to leak out back in England, should she ever—God willing—make it home alive. Her reputation would be ruined, even without the full truth of how Kurt had beaten her and forced her into the debasement of his bedroom games.
She paused by the wall, listening despite herself. The woman moaned with obvious delight. Herr Blumthal, whom she knew as an orderly gardener dedicated to his flower beds and topiary, seemed quite the lover.
“Helga, ah, Schöne.” He repeated her name lovingly, even reverently. Lenora’s eyebrows shot up. The only Helga with whom she was acquainted at the castle was Helga Stanfeld—the head upstairs housemaid, a widow whom Lenora had always taken to be a staid and quiet woman.
She blushed again, ashamed with herself for listening, but fascinated all the same. These two good souls had found each other and, by the sound of it, shared great enjoyment together.
What would that be like, to be intimate with someone by choice and with such pleasure as the result? Lenora could no longer imagine anything of the sort forming any part of her fate. She knew no man would ever touch her without her remembering Kurt’s pinching grip, his loathsome sneer as he forced her to her knees, his sick excitement when he’d twist her arm high behind her back. “This is what it means to be a wife, to be my princess,” he’d said, laughing wickedly. “Do you like it?”
The very thought of ever being intimate with another man made her shudder.
And yet . . . here were the good Widow Stanfeld and Herr Blumthal.
He groaned, and Helga matched him with lusty cries of her own, invoking the good Lord and the four Evangelists.
Something else stirred within her, a strange echo of Helga’s pleasure. Curiosity and a peculiar yearning. Not for Herr Blumthal, certainly, but . . . for a man of her own one day? Confused by her feelings, she backed away from the house wall.
And straight into a stack of garden trowels. They clattered noisily as she stumbled and caught herself on a bench.
A dog began to bark from within the cottage’s enclosed yard. “Hush, quiet!” she hissed, fear spiking cold and sharp across her skin.
Another dog in the distance took up the call with a deep growling bark.
She began to run. Around the corner of the garden shed lay the path to the orchard gate. But as she rounded it, the pale blur of a gray dog emerged from the night, closing in fast from the direction of the stables.
She looked around wildly, near blind in the dark. The violent staccato of her heart hammered in time to the dogs’ angry barks. Were she caught now, it could mean her death.
She reached into her satchel, rifling desperately for the dried sausage, but the beast was upon her, jumping up with snarling jaws. Before its teeth could close on her arm, she threw the meat at it. When the dog pushed off her to lunge for the food, her purse strings snapped as the dog’s nails tangled with the leather ties at her waist. Her bag of coins tumbled into a clipped hedge. She froze for one frantic moment. Without her money and only partial food stores, what chance would she have to traverse Germany on her own as revolution raged?
But when she reached into the hedge for the purse, the dog looked up from the meat and snarled.
She took off at a run, sending up a desperate prayer of thanks when the animal didn’t follow.
She made it through the orchard gate just as the barking started up again. Male voices from the direction of the garden and stables began to take up its chorus.
“Meine Dame, are you followed?” The worried whisper came from Herr Steinberg, Franz’s father. He held the reins of a shaggy horse. Her spirits sank at the dim outline of its swayed back, but it had four legs and a saddle. It would have to do.
“Not yet, but I must go quickly, as must you. Here”—she thrust the last gold bracelet at him—“with my thanks.” With a few more hasty words, Herr Steinberg hoisted her into the saddle. She rode off into the night as fast as she dared along the dark forest path.
Her heart beat a panicky accompaniment to the farm horse’s hooves. Her plan was already in jeopardy. The remaining food in the satchel wouldn’t last more than a few days. Without money, she’d have to beg or steal for more. And the alarm might already now be raised about her escape.
But she’d slipped the castle and Kurt’s grip. Not for the world would she go back. She’d die before letting him imprison her again.
Before she let any man have power over her.
A cold rain drizzled down her neck. For days now a steady rainfall had added to her misery on the roads and to the danger of her escape. For despite the drenching skies and frigid temperatures, the countryside seemed on fire.
Everywhere she rode, people gathered at rallies in favor of freedom, civil rights, and unity. From the news she picked up, the trains and mail coach barely ran. The universities and newspapers were shut down or operating under heavy censorship. Skirmishes between revolutionaries and the ruling forces popped up everywhere with gathering speed. Even the small hamlets that she deemed safe enough to enter hosted speeches by local leaders calling for a unified German nation. Flags in the black-red-gold tricolor of the revolution bore the inscription Deutschlands Wiedergeburt—“Germany’s rebirth.” Broadsheets, melting in the rain, covered signposts everywhere. Springtime of the People, they boldly proclaimed, with demands for voting rights and more freedom for the press and the universities. Militiamen galloped past her, shouting at her to join the cause. She yelled back an excuse about being on a commission for her master and trembled with relief when they rode on.
Overall, the commotion provided excellent cover in the long week following her escape. She traveled toward Frankfurt on a crisscrossing path to avoid the worst areas of conflict, as well as to throw off any pursuit. Few people proved curious about a slim boy on a shaggy horse. She bedded down at night where she could, in deserted hunting cabins or under rocky overhangs, keeping the horse with her for warmth. Her biggest problem was food. By the end of four days, the
remaining provisions she’d packed were gone. She risked only quick stops in the smallest villages, bartering for food and asking for directions. She got little enough for her comb on one village baker’s strong suspicions that a messenger boy would have no reason save thievery to carry a lady’s silver comb. She’d accepted the loaf he’d offered and slunk out of town.
And then, posted at a crossroads, she spied another broadside that turned her blood cold. It bore an excellent likeness of her, copied from her engagement portrait, under her name in bold letters: Lady Lenora Trevelyan, British Fiancée of Prinz Kurt Von Rotenburg-Gruselstadt, Kidnapped by Revolutionary Outlaws! And under the drawing, in bolder letters yet: Reward in Gold for the Lady’s Safe Return to Schloss Rotenburg. She looked around furtively, nausea churning her stomach, before ripping down the broadside and stuffing it in her saddlebag.
She rode on, alone, in the freezing rain.
Around noon on another day with nothing to eat save a raw turnip stolen from a bin outside a farmer’s barn, the pounding of hooves came at her fast around the bend ahead. A big cavalry horse passed her on the narrow road before the rider pulled up short. The bay reared and snorted as the officer, wearing the tricolored armband of the revolutionaries, turned his mount back into her path.
“Boy, stop! I would speak with you,” the rider commanded in German.
She tried to rein her horse around him. “Sir, I ride on an urgent matter for my master,” she said over her shoulder, pitching her voice low and mimicking the German diction of the castle servants. “I dare not dally.”
Knight of Love Page 2