by Gaelen Foley
Doubtless, as soon as he found her missing, he would send his minions out to hunt her. She backed out of the alcove, her heart in her throat. Speed was everything now.
As soon as they had passed, she whirled out of the alcove and bolted down the shadowy mezzanine corridor in the opposite direction, her sock-clad feet padding silently over the smooth stone floors.
She had to find a way out. She passed several rooms, but none of them seemed to offer any route of egress.
Slipping around the corner ahead, she entered a long, cloisterlike gallery lined with a row of life-sized statues: snow-white ladies, bygone Warrington duchesses carved from alabaster.
At the end of the statue gallery, however, she spied a small, arched, unobtrusive door. That has to lead somewhere, she thought, hurrying toward it at once. The life-sized figures gave her an eerie feeling, almost as if they were living beings watching in silence as she sped past.
She glanced over her shoulder, still dashing toward the door ahead. When she reached it, she had to shake her hands free from the overlong sleeves of the duke’s jacket, then she grasped the latch.
Pulling it up, she swung the door open just a crack, with no idea what she might find on the other side.
At once, the wind caught at the door and the cold rushed in, enveloping her; but she drew in her breath, for the door opened onto the walkway atop the castle walls!
Now she would not have to cross the open courtyard—she could follow this high walkway all the way around to the upper floor of the gatehouse. This put her closer to her goal than she had dared to hope. Her heart beat faster with this unexpected encouragement.
As soon as she stepped out into the foul weather and shut the door behind her, she crouched down, using the parapets to shield her from view.
The wind shoved at her from every direction, while the freezing rain drenched her hair. In a trice, it had her shivering violently, but her more pressing concern was the thin layer of ice that coated the stone wall-walk.
Her lack of shoes made the footing even more treacherous—added to that, the frigid breeze continually tried to knock her off balance.
Already dizzy with the aftereffects of the laudanum, she swallowed hard, but she steadied herself and refused to be daunted. Staying hunched down, she began stealing down the long, windy walkway.
Her head throbbed, but she ignored the pain. Escape was everything, the only thing. This was her chance to take back control of her life.
If she failed, heaven only knew what fate might still befall her at the hands of the Beast.
Chapter 4
While Eldred stood by with breakfast for Kate on a tray, Rohan rapped on his bedchamber door and waited a moment for courtesy’s sake.
Last night, after such extreme temptation, he had tossed and turned and lain awake for restless hours alone in the other room; this morning, he wanted answers—namely, confirmation of his suspicions that she had been sent to spy on him for the smugglers.
Admittedly, part of his impatience to wake up his “present” today came from his frank desire to finish what they had started. He was well aware that the little drunkard must feel like the very devil this morning, but no matter. He was fully prepared to give her some time to recover.
Today was a new day—and tonight would be a new night.
Savoring the memory of her sweetness in his arms, Rohan quit waiting for an invitation and opened the door, taking the initiative, as he was wont to do.
Before going in, he accepted the tray from Eldred, nodding the butler’s dismissal. He would deliver her breakfast personally, always happy to play the lover when it came to a woman he had decided would be his next conquest. As he walked in, he masked his genuine eagerness to see her again behind a tone of sardonic amusement. “Rise and shine, my blossom.”
He nudged the door shut behind him with his foot, then eyed the rumpled bed in heated anticipation.
Kate was not in it. Ah. She must be behind the folded screen in the corner, he thought, making use of the necessary. Lud, he hoped she wasn’t back there casting up her accounts.
“How are you this morning?” As he set the tray on the dresser, he noticed one of the drawers hanging open. Odd. He shut it. “You may not feel up to eating yet, but I brought you something for the headache.”
No answer was returned to him: No sound came from behind the screen.
“Kate? ”
There wasn’t a sound in his chamber. He suddenly realized that he sensed no other presence in the room. “Kate,” he said more firmly, furrowing his brow. He glanced behind the screen, but no one was there.
He walked out into the hallway, resting his hands on his waist. Where the deuce was she?
Perhaps she was hungry and had made her way downstairs to find the kitchens on her own—but he had not passed her on his way up. His frown deepened. He did not like the thought of her wandering around the castle unescorted. Some of the oldest parts of the compound were dangerous. Moreover, there were areas of his home he’d rather a stranger not see.
He suddenly wondered if he should have locked her in last night. After what had happened between them, it had not seemed necessary. True, a tipsy young harlot was not exactly a paragon of virtue, but having met the alluring Kate for himself, and having found her to be not precisely what he’d call a threat, he would’ve felt like a Beast, indeed, to have locked the girl in his chamber as if she were some sort of prisoner.
He did not want any woman to view him as a monster.
Only the Order’s enemies need think that.
He started to walk away to search for her downstairs, but he suddenly paused. She wouldn’t have tried to leave the building for some strange reason, would she?
Something made him stop, walk back into the solar, and go to look out the bay window, which offered an excellent view of all the castle grounds.
There! He spotted her at once and narrowed his eyes, leaning closer. I’ll be damned.
She was sneaking along the walkway atop the castle walls. What the devil—?
She’s stolen something, he thought at once. The open drawer. She must have taken something from the room.
Well, she wouldn’t have found much more than perhaps a gold watch or a jeweled cravat pin, he thought with a quick glance over his shoulder at his bedchamber.
He certainly did not keep any type of sensitive information in the room. So what was her game? Probably petty thieving, considering where she had come from. Well! How dare she show him such disrespect, raiding his chamber, then sneaking off without so much as a by-your-leave? With whom did she think she was dealing?
With a scowl, he grasped the latch on the ancient window, intent on shouting down to her to stop. It had not been opened in ages, however, considering his usual absence from the castle. Today’s freezing rain had further sealed it with a layer of ice.
The thing did not want to open, and he did not want to break the ancient glass panes by using too much brute strength. Growling under his breath, he restrained his frustration, jiggling the stupid latch while Kate made her way stealthily toward the gatehouse tower.
Truly, he could not believe his eyes. Her furtive exit seemed dangerously close to a rejection by a female, an experience almost wholly beyond his understanding of reality. With an indignant bang on the window’s frozen seam with the heel of his fist, he dislodged the ice.
The jammed window popped free; he pushed both sides outward. At once, the cold swept in, and the loud clatter of the freezing rain filled the room. Daft little hellion, what was she thinking, going out half-naked in this weather? Was his company so very objectionable? She wasn’t even wearing any shoes! She had wrapped herself in one of his coats, which hung down to her knees, but he could see she was already soaked to the skin.
Well, she might have decided that she didn’t like him, but he was not about to let the little henwit catch her death running away in this cold, gray, miserable slop. He leaned out the window a bit, cupping his mouth to be heard above the clat
ter of the ice pellets bulleting out of the sky.
“Kate!” he bellowed. “Halt!”
The wind made sport of his command, snatching at his words and tossing them away toward the sea, but she had heard him, all right. She skidded to a precarious halt on the icy flagstones of the walkway, looked over her shoulder, spied him in the window, and blanched as she met his matter-of-fact stare.
“Going somewhere?” he inquired loudly as he rested his hands on the window ledge and raised an eyebrow at her.
She shot back a glare in answer, then she simply ran, no longer bothering to crouch down behind the parapets.
If actions spoke louder than words, her answer was clear, and once more, Rohan was astonished. The saucy tart wanted no part of him. We’ll just see about that! Noting the way she was headed, he realized her destination was probably the little door still several yards ahead of her, which opened into the upper story of the gatehouse tower.
He took it as confirmation that her goal was to get back to the smugglers’ village with whatever booty she had managed to lift from his chamber.
“Findlay!” he shouted, waving his arm to attract the attention of one of the guards on duty. He could see a few of his men staying out of the weather as best they could while keeping their posts at the gatehouse.
It took a moment for one of the men to hear his shout above the constant loud splatter of the rain.
“Sir?” Findlay shouted back, coming out of their shelter toward him. The men’s black cloaks blew every which way as they approached across the inner courtyard.
Shielding their eyes from the needling rain, they gazed up at the window at Rohan.
“The girl! She’s coming your way! Stop her!”
“Pardon, Your Grace?”
He pointed angrily at the wall, but even as they followed his gesture and turned to look, Kate slipped into the little side door on the upper story of the gatehouse.
Findlay turned back to him, raising his hands in an eloquent shrug.
Rohan cursed, realizing he had only served to distract the guards, thus making it all the easier for Kate to sneak out the front.
“Get the girl!” he boomed, pointing to the castle gates. “She’s getting away!”
Bloody hell.
In the blink of an eye, he abandoned the window, bolted out his chamber door, and went rushing down the stairs to go after the little hoyden himself.
“Sir! What is the matter?” Eldred surged toward him in surprise as Rohan came barreling down the steps.
“The girl’s run off. I don’t think she likes me,” he said wryly, then he dashed down the corridor and pushed the massive door aside.
Without his greatcoat, he was instantly drenched by the pelting rain, though its prickly ice edges melted on contact. Striding out into the courtyard, he saw that his men had finally caught on and now gave chase; Kate raced ahead of the pack like a fox, her short lead already diminishing.
Rohan followed as the whole group moved out of sight beyond the castle walls. The light crusting of ice on the dead winter grass made every step crunch as he jogged after them, wondering what he would say once they’d caught her.
Obviously, she had changed her mind about trying to join the London demimonde. Did she think he’d object? It was all the same to him. Let her do as she pleased.
In the next instant, however, his heart skipped a beat, every protective male instinct in his blood summoned when he suddenly heard her scream.
He sprinted automatically, speeding to the scene as fast as his body could move.
About thirty yards beyond the castle gates, he saw a standoff that made his blood run cold.
His men had cornered the girl on the edge of a hundred-foot cliff overlooking the sea.
The salt wind buffeted her, whipping the dark, wet cords of her hair around her pale face, while under her sock-clad feet, the weather had slicked the rough folds of rock, making her perch on the cliffside all the more perilous.
He slowed his pace as he approached, his forceful heartbeat easing, his breathing deepening as his training took over, his mind locking into emergency mode.
Details of the whole scene before him sharpened, his men’s agitation, yelling at her as if they could not see her vulnerability, or how scared and small she looked in his oversized coat, drooping in the rain.
Behind her, the cold, indifferent, pewter sea stretched to the horizon.
Kate was holding out her cold-reddened hands, warning his men back in fury as Rohan strode into their midst, with one goal—to defuse the situation. She needed to be calmed, and she had to be protected, if only from herself.
She could so easily fall from the precipice, and that spelled certain death. In a most unhurried fashion, Rohan walked past the bristling line of guards, all his focus taking her in.
“What’s going on, Kate?” he asked softly.
“Stay back!” she screamed. “I swear I’ll jump if you come any closer, I’ll do it.”
He obeyed, at least for the moment. He stopped about ten feet away, but stared at her intensely, as if he could slow time and the wind itself to keep her secure.
“Easy, now. Come away from there, Kate,” he cajoled her as gently as possible.
“Go to Hell!”
“No one is going to hurt you, sweet. I just want to help.”
“Oh, really?” Her voice was shaky, but her incredulous glare was fraught with rage. “Then call off your dogs!”
“Fall back!” he commanded at once. He looked over his shoulder to make sure his men backed off far enough to satisfy her. He did not want them frightening her any further. He gazed at her again, wondering if Caleb had saddled him with a madwoman. “All right? You’re in control now. We’ll do as you say.”
She shook her head at him with an angry scoff. “Right!”
“Kate: Listen to me. Come away from the edge. You mustn’t stand there. These cliffs are very unstable. They crumble all the time without any warning. This rain has probably weakened them more. It’s not safe.”
“Safe?” she echoed miserably. “I don’t even know what that word means anymore.”
Training or no, his heart pounded at the prospect of this beautiful girl with the tragic green eyes killing herself right in front of him. He could not allow it to happen. He just wished he had some idea of what demon was driving her.
Something was obviously very wrong, beyond his earlier assumptions. “Kate. Please.” He clenched his jaw, inching forward ever so slightly, but taking pains not to make any sudden moves. “Tell me what is the matter.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“What is it you want?”
“I want to go home!” she wailed.
“Then you shall,” he promised softly. “But come away from there, my dear. It isn’t worth it. Those rocks are icy. You’re soaking wet. Come in and have breakfast—”
“Don’t toy with me!” she wrenched out. “God, I can’t bear any more cruelty.”
“What cruelty?” he asked in amazement. “Has someone on my staff been unkind to you?”
She laughed at him and turned away in disgust, shaking her head.
His heart leaped into his throat because he thought at that moment she was going to do it—going to jump.
His glance homed in, swiftly calculating the distance between them—seven or eight feet, now that he had moved closer—but before he could spring, she looked at him again, this time with hopeless tears in her eyes.
“Please, Your Grace. Just let me go. I swear, I won’t tell anyone. But I’m not going back in that cellar,” she whispered barely audibly. “And I’d rather die than live as any man’s slave.”
Rohan stared at her in shock. “What cellar?”
“As if you don’t know!” she screamed at him in sudden fury.
“Kate—I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about!”
At that moment, a loud crack and rumble split the air.
She glanced around wildly and started t
o rush forward, but she was too late—before his horrified eyes, the ledge crumbled under her weight like a trapdoor.
Before the shriek had even left her lips, he dove forward onto his stomach with a lightninglike move, grabbing her arm as she fell. Flat on his belly at the edge of the broken cliff, he pulled back, counterbalancing his weight, while dimly aware of his men’s wild shouts.
In that instant, plagues, fires, wars—all the terrible things he had seen in his thirty-four years flashed through his mind like a deck of cards being expertly shuffled in the hands of a cardsharp . . . all the things that had nearly stripped him of his humanity.
Time bowed, taut with the echo of the various targets he had been sent to kill for the Order. He could still hear them begging in vain for their lives.
Somehow, all of it paled in comparison to the sight of Kate dangling off the cliff’s edge—and the prospect of losing his grip on her rain-slicked arm.
His heart slammed as the seconds dripped like the rain off the tip of his nose.
A hundred feet below, the fiercely churning sea yawned, waiting to swallow her. The white waves broke with violent sprays of foam over the jagged boulders.
Gritting his teeth, he clasped her left arm with his right hand, taking a stronger hold.
“Hold on to my arm,” he ground out.
She obeyed, her right hand clawing onto his forearm; he braced himself on the ledge with his left hand as Kate looked up into his eyes with a pleading, panicked stare that begged him not to let her go.
“Help me,” she choked out.
With a heave of furious strength, Rohan pulled her up, dragging her higher until he was on his knees. She gained the ledge. He fell back, hugging her to him.
She collapsed on his heaving chest, shaking, soaked, and panting. Her slim body felt frozen to the bone atop him; she choked on a sob.
He rolled her onto the wet, frigid, hopefully solid earth beside him, and took approximately three seconds to catch his breath. But years of survival training had begun to drive him now. He stood up, scooping Kate into his arms.
She let out a small cry as he slung her over his shoulder and strode at a swift pace past Eldred and his men, who were standing by to help.