Heather Graham (42 page)

They reached Dover in record time, racing past the castle, riding straight for the docks. Geoffrey made the discovery that no ships had left in the last few hours; indeed, none had set sail since that morning. Two ships were due to leave with the morning tide; they would be boarding their passengers within the next few hours. The ships were the
Blue Hawk
and the Frenchman the
Bonjour.

“That’s her!” Pierce said softly. “A French ship! Jerome would definitely choose a foreign vessel, for he now knows himself to be an English renegade.”

“So we wait?” Geoffrey said.

Pierce, as still as the dark night, shook his head slowly. “I cannot wait. God alone knows what he will do to Rose, for she was the one to unmask him!”

“Then—”

“We search!”

And so they began a ride through the streets of the port town, stopping at each tavern, offering gold pieces for the information that they craved.

Time was ticking away. Time was his enemy. And they were getting nowhere at the establishments where they had stopped thus far.

He urged Beowulf out in the street. It was such a very still night. So very black, with dark clouds covering the moon. He stared up at the sky. There must be a storm brewing. A storm that made the air hover around them, thick and heavy, and covered the moon and stars. The ships might well be delayed in crossing. Perhaps the wretched night was buying him more time …

But what was happening with Jerome and Rose?

His heart catapulted and constricted in his chest so that he could scarcely breathe. He turned to Geoffrey. “We have to find her. Now! We go back to his last scurvy hideout, and search for him there!”

It had been so long since he had come there …

Tonight, he had to return.

Rose! Her name pounded in his heart and mind. Rose, take care, my beloved. I am coming …

And he fought that awful image of finding Anne, all those many months ago. When he got his hands on Jerome …

Pray God. It wouldn’t matter.

Not unless he found Rose.

She came to very slowly. For the first several seconds, small things registered in her mind. Her fingers lay on rough material. There was an unclean scent in the air. There were cracks in the walls that she saw around her.

She tried to focus, tried to remember. She was alive! Her throat hurt. It pained her terribly. Swallowing was an awful effort, one she couldn’t quite manage yet. But she was alive. He had not strangled her to death. He had brought her somewhere …

Here. Here to this little room with the cracked white walls, the rough-covered bed beneath her, the odious scent in the air. Where were they?

And oh, God, what of Pierce? What would he think? She had simply disappeared, vanished. Her father, her poor father! Oh, God, Woody …

She blinked, trying hard to focus in the dimly lit room. Then she would have screamed, except that she realized that a gag was soundly stuffed in her mouth and that her hands were bound tightly together. She lay on her side on the rough sheets, and now she was staring into Jerome’s leering face. It was so very close to hers. The watery blue eyes with their cast of evil. The lank blond hair clinging to his forehead.

“Ah, my Lady! You’re back with us! I’m so glad. I was afraid for a moment that I had killed you. And mercy, I wouldn’t want that. Not yet. You see, milady Rose, I’m taking you to France. I’ve good friends there. And relations. We’ll enjoy a little time together. We’ll enjoy it so much that you just might perish there, life will be so wonderful.”

There were so many things that she wanted to say to him. She couldn’t speak because of the gag that bit cruelly into her flesh.

“What is that, milady?” Jerome mocked her. “You are awash with anticipation? Ah, so am I!”

She tried to shout back to him, but only muffled sounds escaped the gag.

Apparently he wanted to hear her words. He leaned down very close to her and loosened the gag. “I beg your pardon, milady?”

“You stupid, treacherous bastard!” she hissed to him. “Do you truly think that you will ever leave here alive? You will never be able to take me from here. Pierce lives—”

“And I have seen to it that the king has been informed that he is alive. He will not follow us, lady!”

“You sent a message to the king!” she exclaimed. “Just as you once sent a message to the lord constable in my name, telling him where he might find Pierce on the night when you murdered your best friend.”

“Messages are very easy to send,” he told her blithely.
“
A pity for you that your husband didn’t die. You might have married anew in the colonies and lived happily ever after!”

She shook her head, her eyes were on his. “I’d have pursued you until the day I die.”

“Take care, my fair lady, for that may be very soon!”

She gritted her teeth, wishing away the sting of desolate tears. He was not a powerful man, not like many of the king’s guards, not like Geoffrey, and certainly not like her husband. But that hadn’t mattered. He had been stronger than she, and he had nearly killed her already. She could threaten as she pleased, but she was bound here in some tavern, and he needed only to slip the gag back over her face to silence her once again.

“You were seen! You were seen murdering poor Beth!” she reminded him.

“Ah, yes, well, that was a pity!” he agreed.

“You’ll never be able to walk about England without constant fear. You’ll—”

“Dear Rose! I don’t intend to walk around England! I’m going to France—
we’re
going to France—just as soon as the ship sails.”

Her heart sank. Never, except when she had believed Pierce to be dead, had she ever known a deeper feeling of desolation. France! Pierce, the king, and all his men might not be able to find her once she had been taken to a foreign shore! She couldn’t let it happen! She couldn’t.

He was touching her cheek. Stroking it with mock tenderness. It made her feel as if her flesh crawled with vermin. “I never intended it should be this way, lovely Rose!” he told her softly, then shrugged. “I really didn’t kill Anne. Can you believe it? She slipped! And then, Jamison Bryant was always such a fool. He would have wound up betraying us both! And really, if he hadn’t been such a fool, none of this would have ever come about! Anne would have never died.”

“I’m sure you were terribly concerned on that point!” Rose spat out.

He shrugged. “Well, obviously not, not when her holdings fell so sweetly into my hands. You see, I’ve a dozen mercenaries in my employ this very moment, the best that my sister’s money could buy. They will protect us until we reach the ship, my love. And then we will be Normandy-bound. It is a pity about Jamison. He and Anne might still be man and wife, happily raising their own brood, and you and your dear Pierce would be raising a passel of brats of your own. Alas, now there is all this tempest in a teapot to get away with!”

“You’re wrong,” she told him earnestly. “You’ll not get away with anything like this again. I don’t care if you run to France. Or to Spain. Or to deepest Africa. He will come after you. I know he will. He will come after you tonight, I swear it!”

“Do you think so, little flower? How will he find me?”

Rose shifted away from him, her hair falling over her face. She couldn’t say anything more to him, not until she had found a way to force him to release her.

He came closer, his fingers moving over her face, threading into her hair to clear her eyes. “How will he find me?”

She stared at him, pretending that she didn’t really hear what he was saying. “I’m going to be sick!” she whispered.

“What?”

“I can’t—breathe. Please … you’ve got to let me up. Just for a moment. I need air.”

“I don’t care if you’re sick. I nearly strangled you, and if I had, well, things would have been different.”

“If you’re going to be with me and take me with you in a small ship’s cabin,” she warned, “you should care!”

He paused. “All right, little flower.” He wrenched the gag completely from her mouth and eased off the ties around her wrists. Rose sat, looking at him while he straightened, smiled, and warned her, “I have men below, Rose. Well-paid men. If you scream, I might kill you myself. If you run, I need only give the order, and one of them will catch you, wrap his arms tenderly around you—and slit your throat. Do you understand?”

She didn’t reply. She stood quickly, walking to the latticed Tudor window, and breathing deeply while looking down into the street. “Why?” she asked him.

“Why what?” he demanded.

“Why take me?”

His nearly colorless blue eyes fastened upon her. “Alas, my lady! You are appealing baggage, as you must know.”

“And you are simply smitten with love?”

He shook his head. “I am smitten with the idea of escaping your husband. Then there is the fact of knowing that he suffers, of course.”

“You hate him so very much!”

He strode to the window to join her. Rose clenched her fists to remain still, to endure his being so close. She couldn’t bear it when he reached out to touch her, lifting her chin. But she knew this man now. Knew that blood ran like ice in his body, that he thought no more of killing a man or a woman than he did of swatting a fly. She had to take the greatest care.

“Hate my good Lord DeForte! Lady, half of the nobility of England hated him for one reason or another. My Lord Perfection, he has been called. The king’s favorite.”

“For good reason,” Rose reminded him. “He did ride with the king, endure exile with him, and fight at his back!”

“The valiant warrior! The perfect knight! Oh, indeed. But he had no power when he lost Anne. And he now has no power as he loses you!”

She couldn’t let it happen. But how to escape him? The answer eluded her no matter how swiftly her mind raced, no matter how desperate she became with each passing moment. The time to escape would be when he moved her to a ship, she thought. But would he allow her to see or move—or even breathe—when that time came?

She idly touched the lattice on the window. What if she screamed now? If she called to the cutthroats and thieves below her, no one would notice, no one would care. But if she broke open the window, and screamed into the street …?

Riders were coming even now.

Perhaps he would kill her. But he intended to kill her eventually anyway, she was certain. She meant nothing to him, except as a weapon against Pierce.

Yes …

Her decision was made. Her heart trembled with the terror as she slammed at the lattices with all her strength and determination. They broke and splintered, pieces flying into the street below. She stuck her head out the window, screaming. “Help! Please, God, help me! I’m being kidnapped! The king himself will—”

His hands were on her, wrenching her back. There was such a look of black fury on his lean face that she thought she was dead. He swirled her around violently, sending her flying back across the small room. He started to stride toward her, the evil and fury in his soul twisting his features. Then he stopped dead still as they both heard a cry in the night.

“Rose! Rose!”

She stared at Jerome. Incredibly, the voice in the night was Pierce’s. The riders below …

Pierce. He had been coming for her!

She leapt up with an incredible speed, determined that she had to elude Jerome, if only for split seconds. She managed to reach the window. To look down to the street. To see him there …

On Beowulf. His ruggedly handsome face tense with anguish, staring up at her.

Dear God, but she loved him!

“Pierce! He has men scattered throughout the tavern below. Take care! He’ll mur—”

She let off with a screech, for Jerome caught her again. His hold was a death grip about her ribs, cutting off her breath.

“I’ll kill her, DeForte, before your very eyes. Turn around and ride away!”

Rose managed to bash her elbow against his chin. Hard. His hold eased for one second. “Get the king’s men, Pierce. He’ll kill me anyway. Don’t let him sail, don’t let him escape—!”

She gasped out, for his hands were around her nape, fingers crawling around her throat, cutting off the flow of her air to her lungs. And he was expert at this. She already knew that.

“You’re the dead man!” Pierce raged from the street.

Then Rose heard him no more. She was struggling too fiercely against Jerome, trying with all her strength to break his death hold. She kicked, swirled, flailed. He had already robbed her of so much strength. She couldn’t beat him, and she knew it. Unless …

She ceased to struggle. She went limp in his hold, falling.

He came down to the floor with her. His fingers remained knotted around her neck and he shook her several times. She was dying, she thought again. She couldn’t see, the world was black. She couldn’t breathe …

She had tricked him into believing that she was already unconscious if not dead, but he meant to be thorough. And now she really was dying, and she hadn’t the strength to move.

The world went black again.

Jerome, satisfied, stood. He heard the shouting from below. He reached to the door for his scabbard and sword, convinced that he could flee the establishment while his hired army took on Pierce.

Pierce burst through the doors of the tavern he had come to so long ago, that same wretched tavern where he had come to try to discover where Jamison had taken Anne.

Where Jerome had now brought Rose …

For a moment, as Pierce burst through the doors of the tavern, he was blinded. Hazy smoke from the hearth rose all around him, and the creatures within the tavern were all somehow enwrapped in that haze. Barmaids, sailors, drunkards, pirates, and thieves, all alike.

Then his eyes focused, and he saw the rickety stairs that led to the rooms above. He started across the room toward them, but had barely taken a stride before two men sprang before him, their swords bared. One of them was a bearded, husky fellow. The other was taller and leaner. Both had deadly intent in their eyes.

Dear God! He didn’t have the time for this!

But the silver blade of a sword was swinging his way. He had no choice but to fight.

“To the devil with you, then!” he cried. He raised his own blade with such a vengeance that his first opponent’s sword met his, clashed, and cracked. With the thrust of his body against the bulk of the bearded fellow’s, he sent the man flying backward and over one of the tavern’s planked tables. He spun just in time to catch the leaner man across his sword arm with a serious slash. The man screamed and fell back, and Pierce stepped forward swiftly again.