DeliveredIntoHisHands (17 page)

“Harm such as a stray mortar falling into
my tent?” Garrick demanded.

“Aye, well, there is that,” Marc replied.
“Mayhap she is better off where she is but at least you should go talk to her,
be with her. This is a mistake, brother. You are courting disaster the longer
you keep away from her.”

“My mistake to make,” Garrick said, lying
down again. He flung an arm over his eyes.

“Another headache?”

“No,” Garrick said quietly. “Just fucking
tiredness.”

Marc dropped the front legs of his chair
back to the ground. “Then try to rest,” he said and started for the door.

“She looked tired too,” Garrick said. “And
much too thin.”

“With the blockade in place, food is hard
to come by,” Marc reminded him. “I’m sure they’re not on the verge of starving
at Blackthorn but they sure as hell aren’t eating as they are accustomed to
doing it.”

“They are housing rebels there,” Garrick
said. “We shouldn’t make life easy for them.”

“You don’t know it for a certainty. We
haven’t been able to prove it,” Marc said. “And you’re punishing your lady-wife
along with the inhabitants of Castle Blackthorn.”

“She made her bed,” he said. “And it just
means the baron is being careful. He’s also trading on the fact his son-in-law
is the invading general. He believes I won’t arrest his ass as a rebel
sympathizer.”

“And you won’t,” Marc said.

After his friend left him, Garrick lay with
his eyes closed, arm over them, and felt every tired muscle, every aching bone
in his body. It always hurt to shape shift but in order to outwit the bounty
hunters, he’d used first his avian then his feline shapes to make the
hundred-mile trip to Blackthorn—a trip he made two and three times a week to
check up on his woman. Tonight was the first time she knew he was close to her
and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had deliberately made it so she would.

Goddess, how he missed her, he thought with
a groan. His treacherous body throbbed with wanting her. His heart ached so
badly he had trouble drawing breath at times. Every time they entered a town or
village in the southern part of Volakis where gardenias were in late bloom, he
felt a lump gathering in his throat. The scent nearly drove him mad. At night,
his nightmares were filled with images of Antonia in the arms of his enemy,
Clay’s mouth fastened to hers. Waking with sweat pouring down his face and
chest, he would spend the interminable daylight hours drenched in heartbreaking
pain.

He loved her. More than anything he’d ever
known.

But he didn’t trust her.

“Did you not hear what she said to you that
night?” Marc had asked a few weeks earlier.

He hadn’t. He had been too enraged that she
had stepped between him and Clay. Paralyzed with fear that she could have been
killed. Hurt that she had chosen his enemy over him.

“The woman said she didn’t want either of
you to die,” Marc stated. “She was trying to save you as much as she was Clay.”

In looking back on that night, Marc was
right. Antonia had been looking at Clay when the blade of Garrick’s dagger
struck her arm. Looking at Clay, preventing him from harming her husband.

A loud groan came from Garrick’s chest.

He had accused her of something she hadn’t
done. Had left her because his pride had been wounded. Had stayed away from her
all this time to punish her yet he was punishing himself, as well.

* * * * *

At first she thought the man who came
rushing toward her was Alyx. He had the same build, the same color hair and he
was wearing a rebel uniform. It was the wide smile, the laughing brown eyes
that were nothing like Alyx’s that set her straight. She didn’t know this man
and the fact that he was coming at her like a freight train made her take a
step back.

“Milady!” he said, laughter rife in the
word. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“Oh, hell’s bells. That’s Thyme’s husband,
Henry,” Cherise said as she spun around. “I’m outta here!”

Antonia glanced with irritation at her maid
but Cherise was walking rapidly away. She sighed. No doubt the man sprinting
across the main hall had known the dubious charms of Cherise Tucker as had so
many men before him.

“Milady, I love you!” Henry Belvoir
proclaimed as he went to one knee before Antonia, grabbing her hand to bring to
his lips. “I love you with all my heart!”

Antonia didn’t know what to say. Before she
could think of something, he shot to his feet, flung his arms around her and
hugged her, lifting her feet from the floor.

“You have made me the happiest man on
Volakis!” he told her. “I love you!”

“Henry,” she said with a squeak for he was
squeezing her so tightly she felt oxygen deprived.

Beyond his shoulder she saw Garrick
suddenly appear, stepping from the shadows and into the light from the
candelabras flanking the entrance to the main hall.

“Henry, put me down!” she hissed urgently
for the look on her husband’s face was miles beyond dangerous and rapidly
approaching the realm of death.

“I love you!” Henry said again and then did
something that would cost him his life. He kissed her.

A roar of rage shattered the quiet of the
keep. In a blur of movement the Crimson Lord sped across the distance and
grabbed the man holding his wife.

“Garrick, no!” Antonia yelled. “It’s not
what you think!”

Garrick Warwyck was beyond thinking. He
flung the rebel warrior all the way across the wide hall, then with jaw tightly
clenched, hands balled into fists, went after him.

“Garrick!” his wife yelled and ran to him,
tried to grab his arm but he was insane with fury.

He didn’t see her. Didn’t attempt to focus
on her as he jerked his arm from her hold. When she tried to halt him again, he
reacted without thinking and backhanded her, knocking her to the floor. She hit
her head on the leg of a table as she went down but he paid no attention to the
sound of the vase atop that table toppling to the floor and shattering.

Antonia was stunned, seeing double. She
struggled to get up but she put her palm down on the broken glass and it cut
deep. Gasping, she jerked her hand away, whimpering with pain. It was the sound
Henry Belvoir made that snapped her head around—vision blurring—as Garrick
grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him from the floor. He spanned the side
of the rebel’s neck with one strong hand—thumb jammed under Henry’s chin—and
lifted him a good foot into the air.

“Milord, please!” Henry pleaded, choking,
his face leached of color, terrified eyes wide. “I meant no—”

Through a haze of pain Antonia saw Garrick’s
fangs descend. She opened her mouth to scream at him to stop but there was no
time. He slammed those fangs into Henry’s neck as deep as they would go and
with the man struggling against him, trying to kick him. As she watched in
utter horror, her husband brought the flailing man’s body tight to his as
though in a lover’s embrace and she knew Henry Belvoir’s life was forfeit. She
also knew there was nothing she could do to stop the carnage. The sound of the
Crimson Lord feeding on the hapless rebel, draining him of his life’s blood was
overly loud in her ears. She felt faint, nauseous but it was the coup de grâce
Garrick exacted upon the dead man that sent her into blackness—taking with her
Henry Belvoir’s head rolling across the floor.

He was sitting in a chair beside her bed
when she came to. A single candle on the night stand cast his face in shadows.
His left elbow rested on the chair arm, his middle and index fingers against
his temple, his thumb under his chin. His other arm lay along the chair rest,
his fingers curled loosely over the edge. He was staring intently at her from
under the curtain of his long lashes and his face was devoid of expression
though his eyes were mean, as cold as the arctic realms. Oddly he was not
wearing the black uniform shirt she was accustomed to seeing him in but a white
button-down, the arms of which were rolled to his elbows. The shirt hung free
of a pair of jeans she’d never seen him wear, either. He was barefoot with one
ankle crooked over his knee. His hair looked wet, slicked straight back from
his forehead. The smell of soap and shampoo clung to the air.

Instinct told her he had bathed the blood
of Henry Belvoir from him and was sitting there dressed in borrowed clothing
for he had taken all of his with him when he left her back in the winter.

She was in her nightgown beneath the sheet
and felt defenseless as he stared at her without blinking.

“It wasn’t what you thought,” she said and
could not stop her bottom lip from quivering.

He didn’t reply, just kept looking at her
with such intensity she felt naked under his stony gaze.

“He was thanking me for—”

“Shut up,” he ordered in a voice was soft
but filled with tightly controlled rage.

Beyond the door to their bedchamber she
could hear commotion, loud voices. She wanted to ask him what was happening but
there was such brutal anger lashing at her from his steady eyes she was afraid
to do so.

He continued to glare at her until there
was a light knock at the door. He angled his head toward the door but kept his
gaze riveted on her.

“What?” he snapped.

The door opened slowly as though the person
behind it was afraid for his or her life. When the young man appeared—a
Modarthan dressed in the uniform of a second lieutenant—he looked frightened of
having intruded on his commanding officer.

“What?” Garrick shouted and both the man at
the door and Antonia jumped.

“Begging your pardon, General, but the
household has been evacuated as you ordered.”

“Evacuated?” Antonia asked.

“The baron and his woman? Their youngest?”
Garrick queried, his eyes still locked on her.

“In chains, Sir, and in the transport.”

Antonia’s mouth dropped open. “You have
arrested my parents and my sister?”

“Take them on to Maechin,” Garrick ordered.
“I’ll be along shortly.”

“Aye, Sir!” the lieutenant acknowledged. He
slapped his doubled right fist to his heart then closed the door behind him.

“Maechin,” she whispered. “The Modartha
stockade?”

Garrick didn’t answer. He had turned his
head toward her once again and she saw his nostrils flare as though he was
breathing in something offensive.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Antonia,”
he said, straightening in the chair, lacing his fingers together and resting
them on his stomach. “I am about to issue the order to bring this wretched pile
of stones to the ground. Every stick of furniture, every drapery, every
painting, everything that remains will be put to the torch. There will not be
one block, one timber, or one girder left standing when I am through.”

“You can’t do that!” she said, horrified.
“This is my home. You can’t destroy it!”

“I can’t?” he asked in a light tone then
his eyes narrowed. The tone became brutally sardonic. “Just watch me!”

“Garrick, please…”

“You have two choices. You can either stay
here or run to safety with the other rats gathered below. It doesn’t matter one
way or the other with me. Castle Blackthorn ends this night.”

He pushed up from the chair and turned away
from her.

“Garrick, I’m begging you!” she pleaded
with him, coming to her knees on the bed. “Please don’t do this!”

He stopped, looked around and swept his
eyes over her—expression as hard as steel—then turned away again, striding
purposefully to the door.

“Garrick!” she called after him.

He opened the door and walked out as she
yelled his name.

From the hillside that overlooked Castle
Blackthorn, Garrick sat on his stallion with his wrists crossed over the pommel
and watched fire leaping from the windows of his wife’s ancestral home. Milling
about in front and to the sides of the blazing inferno were those who had
called the keep their home—some for generations. He could hear the crying,
sobbing and the wails of despair rolling up the hillside but felt curiously
numb to the servants’ plight. They were all rebels—down to the last stable
boy—and the safe haven that had protected them was gone. He could not find it
in his heart to feel sorry for them but he would see they had accommodations
before morning. He owed that much to the woman who had broken his heart.

In the pitch black of the night, the orange
and red and yellow flames leapt to the heavens as sparks flitted on the smoky
air like fireflies. A thick pall of gray smoke hung over the conflagration,
billowing higher as each new section of the keep caved in. The roof was still
standing but it was only a matter of time before the blazing timbers gave way
and the keep was leveled.

“Were there any injuries?” he asked the
young second lieutenant who came riding up the hill to join him.

“No, General.”

“Everything went well, then?”

“Aye, Sir.”

“Everyone accounted for? What of the
lodging?”

“Aye, Sir, and each is being assigned
accommodations as you indicated.”

“Good then fetch Lady Warwyck and bring her
to me,” he ordered. “I’ll be leaving for Maechin.”

The young man looked away from the blaze.
“She isn’t with you?”

Slowly Garrick turned his head toward the
young man. “What?” he asked.

“I thought Lady Warwyck was with you. You
were with her when I—”

Everything around Garrick seemed to come to
a sudden stop. All sound ceased. He saw men paused in mid-walk, horses in
mid-gait. Fiery embers hovered motionless in the air above him. The man sitting
beside him astride the roan mare had his mouth open but it wasn’t moving and
nothing was coming out.

As slowly as he turned his head toward the
lieutenant, he turned it just as slowly to the keep. The flames no longer
licked from the windows. Smoke did not rise, did not billow. No one moved on
the periphery of the fire and the cries and sobbing had gone utterly silent.

“Antonia?” he whispered, his eyes locked on
the window of their bedchamber where flames hung suspended. He called her name
again but it was just his lips moving for no sound came from his suddenly dry
mouth.

He could feel his heart pounding savagely
in his chest but he could not hear the thump of the beat. Fear struck at him
like a sharp lance.

“Antonia?” he questioned the night air in a
voice that was more plea than query.

He shook his head. This wasn’t happening.
She was safe. He knew she was safe. She was down there with the milling crowd,
assuring them, helping them. She was not trapped inside the burning building.
She had not stayed behind when everyone else had gone.

“You have two choices. You can either stay
here or run to safety with the other rats gathered below. It doesn’t matter one
way or the other with me. Castle Blackthorn ends this night.”

His words came back to him like lasers.

“No,” he said. “No. She wouldn’t have
stayed. She didn’t stay.”

He nudged his mount forward and down the
hillside yet nothing else moved around him. The sound had been sucked from the
air as had the stench of burning wood. His hands were tight on the reins as the
stallion picked its way down the incline.

“She’s safe,” he said. “She’s safe. I know
she’s safe. She’s down there with her people.”

The alternative was impossible. It was
unthinkable. It would not be contemplated.

As he cleared the hillside and the horse
trotted across the meadowland that separated the hill from the keep, he kept
his eyes on the bedchamber window. The fire wasn’t burning. It was suspended,
the light in the window bright but unwavering. The people were
stationary—turned toward the keep—and the smoke hung thick but unmoving around
him as he urged the beast to a faster gait.

He passed the inhabitants of Castle
Blackthorn but when he looked at their faces there were no features looking
back at him. No eyes, no noses, no mouths. Only blank ovals perched atop black
silhouettes. Their eerie stillness and shadowy bodies reminded him of vampires
left in the Sun to die.

Reaching a place where a table had been set
up and two of his men were taking names, issuing accommodations, he reined in
his horse and dismounted, letting the leather straps drop as he strode toward
the table. The men sitting there were as motionless as statues, their faces
gone.

Heart trip hammering, he reached for the
papers and began to scan his eyes over the names—looking for that one name he
sought.

But it wasn’t there. He looked around him,
latched his attention on each and every faceless person there but she wasn’t
among them. He would have known if she was.

He looked toward the keep. At the
bedchamber window.

And saw her.

He sucked in a breath for she was standing
at the window with her hands on the panes, looking down at him.

She screamed and her scream unleashed the
terrible force of the keep’s destruction. Sound rushed back like an advancing
tornado. The flames streaked across the lower level and thrust outward from the
windows of the rooms on the floors above. The people around him began to moan
and wail, pointing their fingers at the room where she stood framed in the
window.

“Antonia!” he yelled and started forward,
digging his heels into the earth as he sprinted for the keep.

Someone grabbed him, stopped him and he
fought them, hissing and growling and slashing at them with fangs and claws but
they drew him back away from the blazing inferno.

“Antonia!” he screamed.

There was a horrible cracking sound and he
struggled harder. Five men were holding him, dragging him. She was beating
against the window, trying to break the glass. Behind her, flames undulated.

“Let go of me!” he bellowed.

Another loud crack ricocheted through the
air to signal the roof timbers were giving way.

“Let go of me!” he screamed. “I have to
save her!”

A series of crackling pops.

A loud groan.

And the roof caved in.

The window of the bedchamber dissolved and
the entire level dropped like a rock.

“No!” he shrieked. “No!”

“There’s nothing you can do, General,”
someone said. “She’s gone.”

Though they held his arms, he sank to his
knees, his head raised to look at the destruction he had caused, he had
wrought.

“I am about to issue the order to bring
this wretched pile of stones to the ground. Every stick of furniture, every
drapery, every painting, everything that remains will be put to the torch.
There will not be one block, one timber, or one girder left standing when I am
through.”

And that was what he had done but in the
doing he had destroyed the only good thing he would ever have in his life.