Amanda Rose

by Karen Robards

  When at last they reached the round, high-ceilinged cavern that was Amanda’s goal, she let out a sigh of relief. He was swaying, and Amanda knew she wouldn’t have been able to support him much farther.

  “We’re here. You can rest now,” she told him, and gasped as his knees buckled. It was all she could do to prevent him from pitching headfirst onto the stone floor.

  “Sorry,” he muttered as she eased him down and knelt beside him. He lay sprawled on his stomach on the stone with his head cushioned on his bent arm. “I’m just so damned tired.”

  Amanda touched his shoulder anxiously.

  “Just lie still. I’m going to go get you a blanket,” she said, feeling the heat of his skin through the damp shirt. “I’ll be right back. I’ll leave the candle.”

  She left him lying in the flickering pool of light while she groped along the wall to a small passage that led off to the right. Although the candle’s cheerful yellow glow would have been nice, she had no real need of the light. In the almost five years she had been at the convent, she had walked along this passage hundreds of times—to the aged trapdoor that opened right into the convent’s deepest cellar. In the days when the convent had been a castle—sometime in the sixteenth century, she thought—the lower cellar had probably been used as a dungeon. Now it served as an almost forgotten storage room, and Amanda was as certain as it was possible to be that the sisters had no notion of the trapdoor’s existence. Presumably it had been designed as an escape hatch for the castle’s original owner and was forgotten later when the land was confiscated and presented to the Church under James I.

  Amanda had discovered the door and then the cave quite by accident just a few weeks after her arrival at the convent. She had been hiding from Sister Boniface, who was determined to quell the small, red-haired, rebellious Amanda by whatever means were necessary. A lady of good family who had chosen the life of a nun in preference to matrimony and motherhood, Sister Boniface had rigid notions of what constituted correct behavior for schoolroom misses. Being kicked in the shin by a child she had properly been chastising—for swimming in the open bay while clad in only the flimsiest of undergarments—outraged the sister. But the kick had allowed Amanda to escape, at least temporarily. She had fled and eventually found her way to the very darkest corner of the lower cellar, where she had lain hidden beneath a pile of old clothes while the search for her went on above. Lying against the cold stone, shivering as much with fright as with chill, Amanda had felt something hard and even colder than the floor pressing into her stomach. Upon examination, it had turned out to be a circular iron ring attached to a door cunningly fashioned out of flagstones to match the floor. Not without difficulty, she had managed to pry it open. A shallow flight of worn stone stairs led down into darkness. Step by cautious step, she had descended—and found the cave.

  At first its dark, winding passages and echoing caverns had frightened her. But over the years she had grown quite fond of the place and had got in the habit of sneaking out of her bed before anyone else was up and following the passageway down to the beach. Except for the few occasions when the smugglers had used it—and when she had been careful to stay out of the way—no one else had entered the cave since she had first explored it. It should be a safe place for Matthew Grayson to hide and recover his strength in. And after that, she thought, pacifying her unhappy sense of self-preservation, he would be on his own.

  There was an old blanket just inside the trapdoor, and an ancient feather tick. Amanda sometimes wrapped herself in the blanket and curled up on the mattress when it was too cold to go walking along the shore. Even on the iciest winter day the cave never got much colder than it was right now, and it was an ideal place to read or think . . .

  The blanket and the mattress together were awkward to carry, but they weren’t particularly heavy. Amanda lugged them back as quickly as she could. The sun would be up by now, she guessed, and she would be missed if she didn’t get back to her room soon. And then there would be all sorts of questions . . .

  Matthew Grayson was still lying where she had left him; he didn’t appear to have moved so much as a muscle. Amanda felt a sudden spasm of alarm. Had he died? What on earth would she do if he did? But her fear was allayed as she saw his back move slightly. He was still breathing, at least.

  She dragged the mattress until it lay beside him, then knelt to place a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Grayson,” she said urgently, shaking his shoulder just a little. “Mr. Grayson . . .”

  One eye opened blearily. “You’d better call me Matt,” he muttered, his words slurring.

  “Matt,” she repeated obediently. “I’ve brought you a mattress. Can you roll over onto it? You’ll be much more comfortable once you’re off this cold stone, and I have a blanket for you, too.”

  “See? I knew you were an angel,” he said on a note of intense satisfaction, and painfully rolled so that he was lying on his back on the feather tick. He needed to be out of those wet clothes, Amanda knew, but she drew the line at undressing him.

  “You’d better take your clothes off,” she said, fighting hard to sound matter-of-fact. He made a dismissive gesture. “Too tired . . . later,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. Amanda hesitated, then, not knowing what else to do, spread the blanket over him, carefully tucking it in about his shoulders and legs. He didn’t move.

  “I have to go now,” she said. “If the sisters miss me, they’ll ask all kinds of questions and I’m not a very good liar. I won’t be able to come back until tonight, when everyone’s in bed. I’ll bring you some food then. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you now, but . . .”

  He nodded without opening his eyes. Amanda hovered for a moment, staring at him helplessly. There really wasn’t anything more she could do.

  “You’ll stay right here, won’t you?” she felt impelled to ask. “You won’t try to go anywhere? You’ll be perfectly safe here. No one comes here anymore but me.”

  “Where would I go?” he muttered, and Amanda bit her lip at the desolation she thought she detected in his voice.

  “I’ll leave you the candle,” she said softly, standing up. He nodded again, weakly. Amanda looked at him a moment longer, hating to leave him in such a condition, then shook her head. She had to get back to her room . . .

  She almost made it. Without incident, she went through the trapdoor, across both cellars, and up five flights of stairs to the very top of the turret, where her bedroom perched in solitary splendor. The sun was full risen and the nuns must be risen, too. It was not until she actually had her hand on the latch of her chamber door that the voice spoke behind her.

  “Where have you been?”

  chapter five

  Amanda jumped as if the voice had bitten her, then whirled about. The girl on the stairs below her jumped, too, and had to clutch the oak bannister to keep her balance.

  “Oh, Susan, you almost scared me to death,” Amanda gasped, her hand pressed to her frantically pounding heart as she stared at her closest friend. Lady Susan Hartwood was a pretty, dark-haired girl cursed with Amanda’s own lack of inches, but compensated with a pleasingly plump body that made her appear several years older than her actual age of nineteen. She had been a resident of the convent for more than two years now, having been banished from the bosom of her family—and the eyes and, the family hoped, the memories of the denizens of the polite world—after she had had the misfortune to be raped by a gang of highwaymen while on her way to a weekend house party scant weeks after her comeout. From what she had told Amanda—and Amanda believed her, for Susan was not the type to tell a self-serving lie—the fact that she was blameless hadn’t seemed to matter to her family. Her father, the Earl of Kidd, had blamed his daughter for the attack that had taken her virginity; he could no longer bear to have her in his house or to hear her name mentioned. Susan had told her that the Earl and Countess of Kidd felt that it would be best for everyone concerned—except, perhaps, Susan—if their disgraced daughter took h
oly vows and spent the rest of her life behind the convent’s high walls.

  Amanda knew that Susan was profoundly unhappy at that prospect—she had not the least vocation to be a nun—but what else was there for her to do? as Susan frequently asked. Without her family’s support, Susan had no money and nowhere to go. Her eventual fate if she left the protection of the convent would be too hideous to contemplate. Amanda sympathized strongly with Susan’s predicament because it was similar to her own, and the two had become fast friends. Over the years, Amanda had grown to love the other girl like a sister.

  “Well?” Susan interrupted her musings impatiently. Then, looking behind her down the narrow stairs, added under her breath, “We’d better get inside. Quickly.”

  Amanda opened the door and Susan followed her. After closing it behind them, Amanda crossed to the utilitarian washstand that stood against one wall. She had to do something about her appearance before one of the sisters saw her . . .

  “Amanda,” Susan cried, exasperated, and when Amanda turned from sluicing her face with water to eye her blankly, she repeated in a long-suffering tone, “I asked you where you’ve been.”

  “Just . . . walking in the grounds.” Amanda decided in that split second that she would tell no one—not even Susan, whom she knew could be trusted implicitly—about the fantastic events of the previous two hours. For one thing, she was fully aware that she held Matthew Grayson’s life in her hands; she could not jeopardize his safety by letting her tongue wag too freely. For another, although Amanda was not sure of the penalty for concealing an escaped murderer, she was pretty certain it would be severe, to say nothing of the social disgrace that would inevitably accompany discovery. She didn’t want to bring any more of that down on Susan’s undeserving head. Susan had had enough trouble of that kind already. And there was Matthew Grayson himself; he had killed before and, except for his promise, what guarantee did she have that he wouldn’t do so again? She would be no friend if she exposed Susan to a murderer, and one whose wits tended to wander . . .

  “Oh, really?” Susan, who knew her pretty well, looked politely disbelieving. Amanda could feel her cheeks coloring—blushing was the curse of the fair-skinned—but she doggedly returned Susan’s look. “Well, if you don’t choose to tell me . . .”

  “How did you know I was gone?” Amanda asked, hoping to distract her friend, who tended to be scatterbrained at times.

  “Oh, Sister Boniface is looking for you.” Susan threw a scared look over her shoulder at the closed door. “When you weren’t in your room, she came to mine to see if you were with me. I told her you’d probably gone down to the library to get a book. I think that’s where she is now. What are you going to tell her?”

  Amanda felt her heart sink. Sister Boniface was still her nemesis. Charged with maintaining discipline among the convent’s pupils, Sister took her duties seriously. The girls had dealings with her only when they were in trouble, which meant that Amanda knew her rather well. Before she could work out a plausible answer—obviously her tale of a predawn walk in the convent’s nearly nonexistent grounds was not going to do, if even gentle Susan did not believe her—a sharp rap sounded at the door. Both girls jumped and swung alarmed looks toward the door; it was opened with regal disregard for the privacy of anyone within. The tall, thin figure of Sister Boniface stood looking down her rather long and bony nose at them. A simple crucifix was held in her hands, and a severe frown was on her face, lending even more remoteness to a countenance that was unapproachable at best.

  “Amanda,” she said sternly, her eyes passing over Susan to fix on the primary object of her displeasure. “I have been looking for you for the past half hour. Would you care to tell me where you have been?”

  “Did you want me for anything special, Sister?” Amanda asked, desperately hoping that the question would sidetrack the nun while she thought of a believable tale. Sister Boniface, however, was made of sterner stuff than Susan—and Amanda’s brain traitorously refused to function.

  “Certainly I wanted you for a particular reason.” Sister Boniface sniffed. Righteous indignation added a trace of pink to cheeks that were ordinarily as white as her whimple. “I would hardly seek you out otherwise. But we stray from the point: I want to know where you have been. At once, if you please.”

  Amanda knew there was no help for it. She would have to lie, and Sister Boniface, who was nobody’s fool, would know it. But she had no choice.

  “I went walking on the grounds, Sister,” Amanda said miserably.

  “Indeed?” It was amazing how much skepticism Sister Boniface could squeeze into one small word, Amanda thought, and wished she could cover her telltale cheeks with her hands. She could feel them burning with guilty color. But of course that would clearly give her away.

  “You may make your explanation to Mother Superior,” Sister Boniface continued coldly. “It is she, not I, who wants to speak with you. She said immediately you had risen, but I see that we will have to delay her further”—she examined Amanda with distaste, making her cringingly aware of the unconfined masses of her hair and her dirt-and-water-streaked dress—“while you put your person into proper order. You may meet me downstairs in Mother’s office in a quarter of an hour. I trust that will give you time to do something about your appearance—and think well on the sin of lying. I wouldn’t want it on my conscience.”

  She watched Amanda closely as she spoke, looking triumphant as the girl’s color intensified until she was the shade of the cherries that graced the tree in the garden, then turned her austere gaze to Susan, who quaked.

  “Come, Susan, you may assist me with my correspondence this morning before matins,” she said, turning. Her black habit billowed out behind her as she began to descend the stairs. Susan, after one despairing look at Amanda, trailed the nun obediently, closing the door with a gentle click.

  Amanda stared at the closed door miserably for a moment, then allowed her unhappy gaze to wander around the room. Ordinarily her bedchamber, with its funny round shape, whitewashed stone walls, and small, uncurtained windows like portholes overlooking the bay, never failed to please her despite its unconventionality. She knew she was lucky to have this room, which had been used mainly for storage before her arrival. But she had seen it and fallen in love with it at once, both for its quaintness and for its isolation from the rest of the convent. Sister Agnes, sorry for the deeply unhappy child hiding behind a facade of bravado, had interceded for Amanda with Mother Superior. Otherwise, Amanda knew, she would never have been allowed to have a bedroom so far away from the other girls. But this morning was too much of a disaster to allow her to be pleased by anything. Mother Superior wanted to see one of the girls only when she had done something so monstrous that Sister Boniface felt she couldn’t handle it on her own authority.

  For one horrible moment Amanda wondered if the sisters had somehow discovered that she had found and helped Matthew Grayson. But that was impossible, she was almost sure. She would have heard the outcry if he had been discovered. Another possibility was that someone in her family had died. Amanda brightened a little at the thought that Edward might have been called to his just reward. Mother Superior did call the girls into her office to give them such bad news from home. But, Amanda told herself glumly, she couldn’t be that lucky. No, it must be something she had done.

  But time was passing. If she wasn’t downstairs in the allotted fifteen minutes, that would be one more black mark that Sister Boniface would no doubt convey to Mother Superior. Hastily she crossed the bare plank floor—rugs were luxuries the nuns didn’t allow themselves, although winters in Lands End were long and cold—to the wardrobe and pulled it open. She wasted no time contemplating the scanty contents; all her dresses were either gray or black and cut in the same unfashionable, modest mode. Withdrawing a high-necked, long-sleeved gray wool dress that was practically indistinguishable from the one she had on, she laid it across the narrow bed and began to strip off her clothes. The absence of her petticoat bro
ught Matthew Grayson—Matt, she must remember to call him that—forcibly to her mind. She hoped he was all right . . . Shedding her remaining underclothes, she pulled on a fresh chemise and pantalettes, then another petticoat, before pulling the gray dress over her head. She only hoped that Sister Catherine, who did the laundry, would not notice later that one of her few petticoats was mysteriously missing.

  Crossing back to the small mirror that hung from the wall over the washstand, she picked up her brush and began to restore her hair to some sort of order. The nest of tangles where Matt had held her made her grit her teeth as she raked the brush through it. Her hair was being more impossible than usual this morning; she supposed it somehow sensed that she was in a hurry. But at last she had it secured in two long braids, which she wound around the top of her head and anchored with pins. The resulting hairstyle was too dowdy for words, she thought, peering into the somewhat wavery mirror and completely missing the way the severe crown emphasized the delicate perfection of her features. Without her masses of hair to veil them, the jutting angle of her cheekbones and the clean, rounded lines of her forehead and jaw were plainly visible. The silky blackness of her slanting brows and thick lashes added a touch of the exotic to her candid violet eyes; her small, straight nose and tenderly curved lips still retained the innocent sweetness of childhood. Only the barely perceptible firmness of her chin and the deep, glowing red of her hair—a vivid contrast to her milky-white skin—hinted that she might not be as biddable as her age and sex dictated. Dismissing her reflection with a shrug to hurry toward the door, Amanda smiled as she remembered that Matt had called her an angel. If only he were free to repeat that observation to Mother Superior before she was raked over the coals!