As a traveling companion, Mara could not have asked for better than Juliana. She did not complain or chatter or exclaim at every alarm and she kept to her side of the carriage seat. On the other hand, her ability to sleep under less than ideal situations limited her use as a distraction.
Mara could not sleep, had hardly closed her eyes in the forty-eight hours since the night of the ball. After Roderic had summoned the cadre to outline his plans, she had gone to her room. She had not left it, though she had waited in momentary expectation of a summons from Roderic. It had not come. She had been left alone with her thoughts and her fears.
The first of these was that they would fail. She was terrified that de Landes, anticipating an attempt at rescue, would be before them, that he would remove her grandmother, even kill her; or, failing that, would post a guard impossible to defeat. The second was that they would be successful, that Roderic would return triumphant with her grandmother to Paris, where Grandmère Helene would then be forced to witness in intimate detail the degradation of her granddaughter at the hands of the prince and know herself the cause.
There was a third fear. It caused her to return again and again in her mind's eye to the scene at the house of the Vicomtesse Beausire. She pictured the waiter and the men gathered around him, the sighing thud of the thrown knife. Who had killed the man?
It might have been one of the king's guards overzealous in his protection of the monarch. It might have been a guest enraged by the danger to which the waiter had subjected those present. But, most of all, it could have been the prince and his cadre who had killed him, the men who held him in custody. It might have been Roderic, silencing the man who knew the part he had truly played.
Suspicion. It was a dark and dangerous thing, eating away at the mind. Far better to bring it out into the open. But how could she? The greatest threat of suspicion is the fear that it will be confirmed.
What would it mean if it had been Roderic who had ordered the waiter killed? Would it, could it, mean that it had been Roderic who had planned the assassination? Roderic, who had, with his conspicuous protection of the king, thrown up a screen for the actual deed, then, for reasons of his own, stopped it, removed the instrument of it to protect himself?
She could not forget the terror she had seen in de Landes's face. Had it been for his fear of discovery? Or had it been terror of the men he had unwittingly unleashed upon his country?
And what would happen now? Would the prince keep her near him until he tired of her? Would she be released with a generous stipend as payment, a token of his gratitude? Or would she be found some morning in an alley, stripped of identification, a woman who had found favor with an important man, but one who knew too much?
Ruthless, the prince was ruthless. He had taken her with him to Paris as if she were no more than a stray animal he had found. He had scratched Trude's face with his sword to prove a nebulous point. He used men and women to further his own ends, extracting the information they could give, then sending them on their way. He took their homage, their loyalty, as in the case of Luca, and what did he give in return? Bright, flashing words. The honor of his presence. Excitement. Brief moments of being fully alive, of living on the sharp and dangerous edge of pleasure. Nothing that was solid. Nothing that could last.
The carriage jolted onward. They left Paris behind, heading south. The hills rose and fell away. They passed fields lying fallow and orchards where the last leaves clung to trees of peach and pear and apple. They went through villages with the houses built almost upon the crooked streets, crowding close to one another as if for protection. Dogs barked and cattle lowed. Peasants stared with blank curiosity as they swept past in clouds of dust.
They stayed for the night in some such small place, eating beans and ham and drinking a delicious red wine before tumbling into feather-cushioned beds to sleep dreamlessly. Morning saw them far away.
And finally they came to the Loire Valley where the river wound in wide, lazy, leaf-green curves among its sandbars. Here lay dozens of chateaux, monuments to the tastes and amusements of generations of French nobility, from medieval fortresses to fairy-tale palaces, from hunting lodges and monastic retreats to châteaux de plaisance. Here were the homes of royal mistresses and the great fortresses where once protestants had been hung by the dozens from the battlements. Here were the places where laughter had rung out and tears had been shed, where all the pageantry and glory of living had been played out and then forgotten when that way of life was ended by the revolution.
They rode along the winding roads, passing the gypsies camped beside the river, entering and leaving forests that had once been called royal. They saw the crumbling aqueducts and the roads that were the legacy of ancient Rome, the towns where gothic cathedrals loomed above the river, beautiful in their indifference to time. And in the dark of night, as a round and yellow moon was setting, they came at last to the chateau that had been claimed by de Landes.
It was a tumbledown building of stone, the pride of some architect from some distant year but now crumbling and nearly uninhabitable, with bats flying around its moss-grown towers with their blank windows, carved crosses, and vines making a dark tracery on the walls. Woodland, interspersed with fallow fields, grew up to the doors. The cadre settled down in the shadow of the trees to wait.
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12
Dawn, the time when visibility was most uncertain and men slept the soundest, was chosen for the assault on the chateau. There were a few brief words from the prince before they started out, but they hardly seemed necessary. Each man had his place and his purpose, and knew them well. There was not one among them who did not know that a misstep, a moment of carelessness, could mean death. They were ready, honed by endless training, careful praise, and pithy comments on their few weaknesses. They would not be there if they were not able men eminently suited to the task. This assurance they had in full from their prince, who was not at all easy to please.
Michael had once more been placed in charge of Mara. If it was a duty he found onerous, he did not complain. He guided her as they ghosted through the forest by a touch on the arm, a whispered suggestion. She was grateful for his forebearance, grateful also that it was not Roderic who moved beside her toward the chateau. In these final moments her mind was filled with doubts as to his purpose and his methods of gaining it. She did not question that these doubts would have communicated themselves to him as surely as the growing light of morning would banish the night.
She did not want that. She saw no need to put him on his guard against her any more than he was already, but, just as important, she did not want to jeopardize in any way his attempt to take her grandmother into his own custody. After a careful weighing of the alternatives, she had found that she preferred to be indebted to the prince rather than to de Landes. If there was any other implication to that discovery, she did not care to think about it.
The walls of the chateau loomed gray-beige and solid ahead of them. A short strip of open field lay between them and the woods. One by one the cadre drifted across it to merge with the shadows of the wall. Somewhere an owl called, a mournful sound. A mouse in the rolls of dried grass squeaked and was still.
Then came Michael and Mara's turn. He took her hand. She picked up her skirts with the other. Bending low, they hurried across the clearing on a track that took advantage of every shifting patch of shadow. They drew up against the wall and stood panting, waiting for the others. Around them they could just make out the crouching forms of those who had gone before them.
"Now, my friends,” Estes said softly when they had all gathered beneath the wall. As if at a signal, the cadre moved toward him, grouping, climbing with silent speed one upon the other, forming a human pyramid as effortlessly as if they had been in the long gallery at Ruthenia House.
"Hoopla!” came the suppressed whisper when they stood tall, wavering in the fast-growing dimness.
Roderic, who had been standing to one side, turned.
He took a few swift steps, then swarmed up the convenient ladder they made. They were short of the top of the wall. The prince sprang upward the last few inches, catching the edge of the top of the wall with his hands. With the bunching of taut muscles, he levered himself onto the ledge. Seating himself, he made a quick, hard gesture, then waited.
"Now you, mademoiselle,” the Italian called in a husky whisper.
"What? Surely the prince will be able to open the gate?"
"If he should not, you must go with him to pacify the old one. Hurry. There is no time to lose."
It was true, there was not. Every moment of delay increased their chances of discovery. Exclaiming in a most unladylike manner under her breath, Mara tucked up her skirts and began to climb up the ladder of bodies. Sheer annoyance gave her strength and will enough to reach the shoulders of those on the top row. Then she slowly stood erect. Roderic reached down to her. She hesitated only a moment, then lifted her arms.
Her wrists were grasped in hard hands as merciless in their strength as steel bracelets. She was hoisted upward. An arm went around her waist, holding her until she gained purchase. For a brief moment she was aware of a hard thigh under her and the sharp nudge of the scabbard of the sword Roderic wore, then she was half swung, half pushed over the wall's edge. Before she could protest, before she could guess what he intended, he let her down the length of his arms, holding her dangling for the fraction of a second it took her to stretch downward toward the ground. Then he dropped her.
She landed in an undignified heap. An instant later she rolled, scrambling, to one side as Roderic leaped down beside her. She opened her mouth to make a sharp complaint about his method of scaling walls, then shut it abruptly as a call rang out.
"Who goes there?"
Roderic's only answer was the scrape of his sword blade as he drew it out with one hand, while with the other he swung Mara behind him. The chateau guard, shouting for help and dragging out his own sword, backed away. The prince closed with the man in a few swift strides. Their blades clanged with a shower of sparks as they came together. The encounter was violent, but quickly over. The guard gave a strangled gasp as his sword was sprung from his hand to land quivering and upright in a dung heap. Roderic used the hilt of his own to strike a hard blow to the man's chin. The guard dropped and lay unmoving.
Without pausing, Roderic stepped over the fallen man and ran toward the great iron gates of the château. With a single slash of his sword, he cut the rope that held the counterweight. The weight dropped, and slowly the gates swung open. The cadre, with a ringing yell that echoed from the stone walls, poured through.
They were just in time, for a door opened from somewhere, throwing yellow-orange light into what appeared to be an entrance court. Men, hastily donning their clothes, clattered out. They saw the cadre and stopped, raising their pistols. The flaring explosions of gunpowder blossomed in the gray dawn like short-lived flowers. The cadre flung themselves aside, drawing their own weapons. The concussions of the exchange of shots roared in the enclosed space, sending pigeons whirling up from their roosts in the dovecote off to one side, rising into the shifting pearl-gray sky. Swords were drawn. The dawn light glinted silver along the blades as they tapped and scraped. Men grunted with effort. Oaths rang out. Feet shuffled and stamped back and forth on the uneven cobbles of the courtyard.
The number of guards was small. Within moments, it was over. The men were trussed up and forced to lie on the ground. There was one, a scarred, tough-looking veteran bleeding from a head wound so that he was half-blinded, who appeared to have an air of authority. Roderic turned his attention to this man, dragging him to a sitting position as he knelt over him.
"Where is your master, de Landes?"
"Who wants to know?” the man growled.
Roderic placed his hand on his sword hilt. “The man who will dispatch you to paradise unheralded should you fail to answer—in your next breath."
Mara waited with every muscle tensed, not only for the answer that would tell them whether de Landes had harmed her grandmother, but because she feared she was about to see a man die. If she who knew the prince had no trouble believing the quiet-voiced threat, it was not surprising that the chateau's captain of the guard began to perspire in great, beaded drops.
"Your pardon, Monsieur. We—we haven't seen him in weeks."
"You have with you an elderly woman. Where is she?"
"You speak of Madame Helene? Where else should she be but in bed?"
"She is ill?” Mara asked, her voice strained.
The man looked from her to Roderic, his face puzzled. “She is asleep, so far as I know."
Roderic hauled the man to his feet. “Lead the way."
"You won't harm her?"
At that simple question, the tension that held the cadre ebbed. They looked at one another, and wry smiles etched their faces. It was Juliana who stepped forward from among them then. “Imbecile,” she said without rancor, “take us to her."
With thudding boots and clanking swords, they entered the door of the chateau, kicking aside old and warped saddles, tack, and pieces of uniforms as they crossed a large hall. A spiral stair of white limestone curved upward. They mounted it in procession, with Roderic beside the prisoner and Mara following them and the others close behind. Two floors up, they left the stair to cross another hall hung with deer antlers and furnished with ancient settles holding cushions that were threadbare where they were not moth-eaten. There was a door set in the wall beside the great, soaring fireplace of carved white limestone. The captain of the guard stopped in front of it.
Roderic glanced at the man's face, then lifted his hand to knock. The sound was quiet in the lofty room. There was no answer. He knocked again.
"If this was a lie—” Estes began.
"It's no lie. Let me,” the captain said, and set up a thunderous banging on the door.
The result was the same. Nothing.
"Stand aside,” Roderic said.
"It isn't locked,” the captain said.
Roderic stared at him in disbelief before putting out a hand and trying the handle. It gave readily. He stepped back then, nodding to Mara to indicate that she should enter first.
Mara swallowed. Her hand trembled as she placed it on the door handle. Perhaps her grandmother was too weak to rise, to call out. Perhaps her heart had failed her during the long wait for rescue, and she now lay dead in this great drafty stone mausoleum. There was only one way to find the answer.
The door swung open with ponderous slowness. The room was dim, lit only by the faint daylight falling through uncurtained windows. A huge bed beneath a baldaquin of embroidered satin that was gray with dust and age could be seen. A painted armoire of the type once called a marriage chest sat against one wall, and there was a settle drawn up near the fireplace. These were the only pieces of furniture. There was, however, a trunk and a pristine white nightgown, convent made, with a high neck and long sleeves that Mara recognized as belonging to her grandmother. The nightgown was thrown over the settle as if the elderly woman might have dressed in haste in front of the small fire that burned under the cavernous mantel.
At Mara's call, the others crowded into the room behind her.
The captain licked his lips as he looked from one grim face of the cadre to the other. “She—she must have stepped outside. She rises early, does the Madame."
They trooped outside once more, leaving the building by a rear door that gave on to a narrow back passageway. This was the passage between the kitchens and the servants’ quarters, and led toward the stables and a few other outbuildings, including the privy. They searched the kitchens where a slattern in a greasy apron was just brewing a pot of coffee. The privy was discreetly canvassed. The captain had begun to stammer when Mara, staring at what appeared to be a chicken house, gave a glad cry.
Grandmère Helene came walking toward them. The hood of her cloak was thrown back so that her white hair shone in the light of the rising sun. The hem of her
cloak and her gown dragged where they were wet with dew. In her hand she carried a basket piled high with eggs, while behind her like a tame dog walked a white milk goat with a pair of kids gamboling around her. She lifted her hand in a wave, her lined face creasing in a smile of welcome.
"Good morning,” she called, her voice gaily lilting as she came near. “You are all in time for a breakfast omelette."
As a good Creole housewife, food was one thing Grandmère Helene knew. Though it had been years since she had prepared a meal with her own hands, she had always supervised her own kitchen personally, and the recipes that appeared on her table were her own, copied out in her elegant, flowing script. She had charmed her guards not only by her gracious manners, but by the quality of the meals she had prepared for them, using the wholesome country items that lay near at hand. The goats and the chickens belonged to the caretakers of the chateau, a family of peasants descended from a servant of the aristocratic family who had built the place. They had been encamped in the great house since the revolution. Owners came and went with the many changes of government, but they remained.
The captain of the guard was the elder son of the caretakers, the others were distant cousins. Grandmère was not happy about the injuries they had sustained defending the chateau. They had been good to her, like her own family. She required that they be given medical attention and released for breakfast.
It was kind of Roderic to ride to her rescue, she said; he must not think her ungrateful. He was very like his father, so impetuous, so amazingly able, so handsome. Seeing him brought back such memories. And how thoughtful it had been of him to bring dear Mara; she had worried so about her granddaughter and could now be easy in her mind. He must call her Grandmère, if he pleased. Would he care for a little wild onion and perhaps a bit of goat cheese in his omelette?
Roderic was charmed. He sat in the kitchen talking to the elderly woman as she moved about doing the tasks of cooking. They spoke of his father and the time he had spent in Louisiana, of the things he had done there, and also of Angeline, his mother, who had been well-known to Helene. By degrees he led the conversation to Mara and her father, and listened, absorbed, to everything the older woman had to say about how they lived and where.
Royal 02 - Royal Passion Page 23