by Nicole Locke
She nodded.
‘Does he know?’ Louve said, his voice heated with urgency. ‘Does he know there are others, that there’s a...boy, too?’
She shook her head.
Louve whistled low. ‘Oh, this will be interesting.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Where does she go?’ Reynold said, welcoming Louve’s swift turning.
‘Finally you arrive,’ Louve said. ‘I expected you days ago.’
Reynold had kept to himself over the last few days. Didn’t dare look out the window when Aliette left in the mornings. He knew his obsession with her was mounting, knew he had to be more careful or his men would know he had taken on two vulnerabilities.
Aliette. She’d been different these past days since he allowed her freedom, which was more for him than her.
She’d kissed him. Her hands circling his wrists was such exquisite pleasure he hadn’t reacted swiftly enough to avoid the tenderness of her lips. She might not understand it, but there was no returning to any life she had before. When the game was done, she would be truly his.
Even so, he wondered if he could wait to the end of this game. He had never shown weakness before, but teaching her to read and relocating the thief and Grace in his room were weaknesses. Wanting them closer was stupidity.
Surprisingly, the move from her room to his eased some tension between himself and his men...as if they approved. He didn’t care if they approved, he cared about her comfort.
Certainly not his own. Knowing she was sleeping in his bed tormented his body in ways he never knew it could be. Not even the pain his mother subjected him to, to cleanse weaknesses, burned worse.
In the meantime, he read with Aliette in the afternoons, watched how the burden on her shoulders lifted and her longing looks to the doors eased. He thought it was merely her being outside, that she could see that though he’d kidnapped her, he wouldn’t limit her life. But everything about her was different. Playing with Grace, singing to herself, not skittering past dark corners.
Too many changes. Too obvious. She was happy and it made him suspicious.
‘You did not expect my arrival,’ he said. They were in the middle of a square, people conducting business, greeting each other. Louve looked for all the world like a traveller resting and Aliette was nowhere in sight.
‘You ordered protection, trusted me enough to look after those you care about,’ Louve said.
‘I don’t trust you. I pay you.’
‘Do you?’ Louve replied. ‘I think we both know why I’m with you.’
‘You’re not spying for him. If you were sending messages on my deeds, you’d be dead.’
‘I’m an observer, nothing else. Thus far I see nothing of your deeds that jeopardise his interests.’
‘You are too loyal to your childhood friend.’
‘You can never have too much loyalty, Reynold. Something you should learn about.’
He hated the use of his name in public. Reynold glanced around. More people filled the square, two women were walking entirely too close, but there was no sign of Aliette. ‘Loyalty to him, yet you work for me.’
‘The work is not why I stay. I find our late-night chats over wine enlightening. I have no intention of jeopardising such camaraderie.’
‘Why do you continue talking as if we have a friendship? We are not friends.’
Louve’s lips curved. ‘I think that has something to do with your learning loyalty.’
‘I learned there is no such thing as loyalty before you were born.’ Reynold rolled his shoulders. ‘Talking about enemies is wasting my time, tell me where she goes.’
‘Nicholas isn’t your enemy.’
‘Don’t say his name out loud.’
Louve flashed a smile. Louve found every moment humorous. Reynold didn’t, especially if Warstones’ spies heard Nicholas’s name. That would be enough to jeopardise his game. Nicholas was a knight who owed him a life favour and he was repaying that debt by hiding considerable amounts of Reynold’s coin deep in the bowels of his estate.
If Reynold needed to disappear, or have access to his wealth, an enemy’s land was the very best of hiding spots. Though there was a risk if his family discovered this, Nicholas took the chance. After all, Nicholas helped kill his brother, Guy, and Reynold had let him live. Hiding coin was a fair exchange.
The only hardship was that Louve had been with him since.
‘You’ll tell me what you’re so worried about someday,’ Louve said. ‘Or am I not to have already guessed your family is involved?’
Cracks in his game. No one was to know about his family. And worried was not an emotion he felt when it came to them. Rage was more accurate. ‘I’m done with this conversation.’
‘Well, you should improve your conversations with Aliette. You’re not leaving a very good impression of yourself.’
Reynold took the bait this time. Any information he gathered could only protect his daughter. ‘What was spoken of?’
‘You can’t threaten me for answers,’ Louve said. ‘You also can’t keep hiding your true self from her in some vague idea to protect her.’
‘Tell me what she’s doing.’ At Louve’s closed expression, he continued, ‘I will punish her when she returns.’
Louve canted his head. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t profess to know what I am capable of. I surprise even myself.’
Louve pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Reynold, there’s more. I don’t think she means you harm. You took her off the streets and she had a life before you. She doesn’t understand what—’
Enough. ‘Tell me where she’s gone.’
Exhaling, Louve indicated with his chin. ‘She’s gone that way. I promised not to follow her, but I do wait here for her return to bring her back to you.’
‘Promises? Waiting? You’re loyal to her as well. It’s a wonder all of your promises do not conflict.’
‘She’ll return soon,’ Louve said. ‘Let her explain first. Talk to her properly. Tell her.’
Reynold didn’t like that this man knew more of his thief than he. Not. At. All. Leaning in, just enough for his intent to be clear, he said, ‘Remember, mercenary, I made no promises to her and know no loyalty.’
* * *
It was the prickling on the back of Aliette’s neck, the frisson of awareness that always accompanied the presence of her captor, that warned her. Not the sudden dimming of sunlight, as she imagined.
Though Darkness was here. She saw it in the face of Gabriel as he looked over her shoulder before giving a squeak of alarm. She witnessed it when Vernon and Helewise stilled like mice caught in a predator’s gaze.
For her, she merely needed to stand from her crouch and turn. To see her kidnapper, in all his dark glory, before her.
‘Well, my little thief, who have we here?’
Her captor’s sweeping gaze took in her derelict surroundings, her threadbare family. No doubt assessing how easily it would be to kill them. They shouldn’t be worth his notice. She knew the destruction Darkness wrought, yet she risked it anyway. It was she who had brought this danger to them and she who must draw him away.
Praying he would follow, she marched away from her family, through the few rooms on the ground floor and carefully up a rickety staircase to a landing. She chose the only room with a door.
His steps were unnaturally sure. He had no fear the broken stairs would fail him as he strode in front of her again. A mistake to enter as she did. The door was behind him and she had no access to close it. To give them privacy, to give her family time to flee.
She hoped they’d disappear by the time he came down again, but she couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in her ears.
‘Grace is well cared for,’ she said. ‘I returned every day.’
Watch him, Louve had said, but what did she see?
He simply kept his grey unwavering gaze on her. His slow blinks, the rise and fall of his chest the only movement. It didn’t matter, she knew his intent.
‘I took fewer meals for myself to atone for the difference in what I stole.’
His brows lowered; brackets framed his lips as he clenched his teeth.
The longer he stood there, the more nervous she became. She swallowed.
His eyes deliberately tracked that movement.
The roaring in her ears died out. She knew better than to show such weakness. Either her family stayed quiet to hear what would happen to her, or the floors were thick enough and this exchange wouldn’t be heard.
But they would hear her body fall should he slit her throat. There was no one to help her now. And he waited.
‘Just get it over with, whatever it is you want to do.’
A quirk to the corner of his lips. ‘Such haste and this time with your life.’
‘It’s mine to do with as I please.’ As long as he didn’t harm them she could take anything. ‘But theirs isn’t.’
‘Who are they?’
Everything. ‘No one. Fellow people I housed with.’
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ he said in that voice that constantly tested her awareness of him.
He stood in the squalor of her home, but he might as well be surrounded by his gold, books and fine furnishings. Darkness’s domain held no bounds, but did she know who he was?
‘No,’ she said.
‘Despite my wealth, my men, the way the villagers fear me?’
‘None of that tells me who you are.’
A frown. ‘You are aware I can send you to gaol. Have my men take you out of the city and break your legs...kill you.’
These were his threats? Her need to survive gave her fear, her need to protect Gabriel made her strong. She would take whatever punishment he met. ‘Do you think you can do more to me than anyone else? I’ve lived on the streets all my life. Everyone can send me to gaol, break my legs or kill me. You are no different.’
Stillness. A canting of his head. Assessing her as if she was someone he hadn’t sat next to for hours every day.
‘There you are wrong, thief.’ He paused and she heard the weight of it as if he was to reveal a burden he carried. ‘My name is Reynold. And I am one of the four sons of Warstone.’
She couldn’t hide her reaction.
‘You know my family,’ he said.
‘I know the name of the English king and the name of his English sword, Warstone. There are stories everyone tells. It does explain your accent.’
‘My mother’s French and my father... So now you know who I am.’
She didn’t. It explained the books, the gold and silk. But a man who had castles shouldn’t be living in a derelict house in France. Grace shouldn’t have been starving and her snatched off the streets to pretend she was her mother. Especially, when everyone he surrounded himself with knew the truth.
She knew nothing. Nothing, and felt like laughing. She was in great danger. But it had nothing to do with his name and everything to do with him.
And the longer she stood there in utter inability to explain this, the more Reynold lost the superior menace he mantled himself with. For once, he seemed unsure. As if her reaction to his name shocked him. Did he expect grovelling? Gratitude she’d shared his company? Fear because his family was powerful?
Where he came from didn’t make a difference to her. And it surprised her that he didn’t understand this. But his amazement slipped through the slivers she’d made in her own defences. Though it made her vulnerable to him to reveal why she didn’t care, she told him anyway.
‘Kings mean nothing to me. Warstone means nothing to me,’ she said.
His eyes narrowed, his lashes shading any further emotion, but the suspicion was there in his voice. ‘You live on the land they own. Eat food people pay taxes to consume. They might mean less to a homeless poor thief, but even you are touched by their power. No one can escape them.’
She’d brought him up the stairs to protect her family. She stood before him offering reasons not to kill her. Now...now she didn’t care. Because he stood there and she could see that disappointing look on his face, as if she was beneath him. Which changed her emotions from apprehension on what he would do to rage. Because he simply didn’t get it.
Kings. Warstone. Kidnappers didn’t have power over her. Only Darkness had power over her. Just Darkness—which wasn’t this man. No matter her imagination or how he appeared, her captor was merely a son of some family. He’d never starved or begged for his life. He’d never cried in the middle of a square and had no one come to his aid.
He was a man who was born to privilege and thought he was entitled to snatching people off the streets to play some game she knew nothing about. He had no right over her. None! And if it took cutting her heart out and throwing it at his feet so he could gape at all her pain and agony, she would do it. She would and then he could get out of her life.
‘I don’t fear you, your family—kings.’ She pointed at him, pointed at her own chest. At her own useless nothing self. ‘Because you could do no more harm to me than my family did when they abandoned me!’
Utter silence. Utter stillness. A storm suddenly died; Darkness’s turbulent rage was subdued. ‘How old?’
‘What does it matter?’ She waved her hand impatiently. ‘They left. In the middle of the night, while I slept, they left. I’ve been alone ever since.’
‘How old?’ he bit out.
He sounded as though he wanted to know. She knew better. ‘Five. It’s been fifteen winters since.’
He waited. She wouldn’t. In many ways, she was better off without her family who thought they knew better. Now she could live her life the way she wanted. Pick her own family, her own house. As long as she didn’t trust or depend on anyone, as long as she ignored the jagged pieces inside her, she could survive very well on her own. ‘So now you know who I am and we can forget whatever this is that you—’
‘They come with us,’ he said.
‘What?’
He took a step towards her, the floor creaked ominously, and he shifted his stance wide. ‘Those people downstairs aren’t no one to you. You risked my wrath. You brought them food, you starved yourself to make it happen. You, the frail couple and that twig of a boy will return to my fortress now. They come to my house because they mean something to you.’
Darkness cared for no one. This was about something else. ‘Whether that child is yours or not doesn’t matter to me. And I have no intention of telling anyone your house is a fortress and you have a hundred men there. I don’t care what you’re doing here.’
‘Your concern is taking care of Grace, that is all. She needs a mother and that is what I expect. If her mother has...relations so be it.’
This couldn’t be true. He must not understand. ‘You know my own family found me worthless and I am no carer for a child. Downstairs are people I vowed I’d take care of and I won’t abandon them. Ever.’
‘You’re simply telling me what I already surmise, Aliette. You’re not uncomplicated after all.’
She wasn’t—Ah. That word he used on their first day. He said her agreement to taking care of Grace was easy. Intending to escape, she held to her secrets. Now she’d revealed all to him.
‘No,’ she answered.
His eyes swept the empty broken room. ‘There’s nothing else here worth saving. I also expect them to be bathed, clothed and fed within hours. I won’t have them staying in my home in their present condition.’
He meant to take all of them. Darkness was truly a madman. ‘You can’t mean this.’
‘They left you with no blankets, didn’t they? Unlike that frozen babe you found, your parents left you with nothing.’ At her nod, he continued. ‘And at night, when it was dark? You woke up and t
hey were gone?’
She didn’t need to repeat it.
His frown deepened. ‘You will all go. Don’t question me again. I can and will do this.’
And he had every means of disposal to do it. ‘You’d force us.’
‘You care for the child, and I won’t force or harm them if you come willingly. Furthermore, they will have the same privileges you have had these last weeks.’
Aliette’s umbrage over his arrogance vanished. It was she who was stunned by his reaction. She who probably gaped at him now. No one took in people such as them and didn’t expect something, especially Warstones, and yet, he didn’t ask for a thing. ‘I don’t understand.’
He stared at her for so long, she felt Darkness enclosing her, wiping out all sight and muffling sound. ‘It’s better that way.’
If it was her alone, she’d refuse. Staying with this man was complicated and made her think of things she shouldn’t. But if he gave her a day of unlimited food, shelter, clothing, for Gabriel’s sake she’d take it.
‘How long?’ she said through the closure of her throat. Dots were swarming before her eyes. She was about to faint.
‘For as long as you are with me.’ Pivoting away, he added, ‘We leave Paris in three days. This location has been compromised.’
He left, his steps as sure and determined as when he followed her in here. She waited to hear something from downstairs—nothing—and she crumpled to the ground. It eased the spots, but not her breath.
Gabriel’s light bounding steps before he was immediately at her side.
‘Does he mean it?’ he asked, a gleefulness to his voice that underscored the fact she hadn’t been dreaming. Reynold had just offered shelter, food, clothing to her family. ‘Does he mean it like you meant it when you said you’d return to me? Is it that kind of promise?’
‘He meant it.’ Reynold never said anything he didn’t mean. Why he offered his help, she didn’t know. Except Darkness guarded and cared for his child. Was it possible, for the first time in her life, to trust?
She descended the staircase, her eyes met Vernon and Helewise, who looked a mix of her shock and Gabriel’s joy.