Suzanne Robinson (17 page)

As she breathed hard and stared at the crossbows, a whistle sailed down from the uppermost room. She heard a creak, then a clatter. Her mouth dry, her lungs aching, Prim trudged upstairs once more. There she found another room bare but for wooden racks that had once contained bows, and pegs from which had hung bowstrings. The whistling was coming from the roof. No! It was descending toward her. Luke was coming back.

Prim looked around the tower chamber frantically and spied a shadowed recess that led to a narrow, barred window. Crushing her skirts against her body, she climbed into the recess and pressed as far back into the shadows as she could. As she maneuvered, her foot slipped on a pebble, and her boot scraped against stone. Prim froze. The whistling had stopped.

Footsteps signaled Luke’s approach. She heard the steady, easy rhythm of his walk. It grated on her nerves and made her picture the way his legs separated as he walked, how he seemed more animal than man when he moved toward her. Prim put her fingers over her lips to still her harsh breathing when Luke appeared in the doorway with his lantern. She stopped breathing.

Luke came inside, moving with that provocative gait that caused fiery tendrils of excitement to arc through her body. Prim clenched her teeth and wondered if he walked like that deliberately. As she watched, he raised his lantern and examined the pegs
on the walls. Suddenly he turned and stared at the recess. Her heart almost stopped at the way he lowered his chin and directed a stare of devouring intensity in her direction.

Certain that he had seen her, Prim was about to crawl out of her hiding place with as much dignity as she could summon when Luke turned with facile grace and left the chamber to its dim solitude. Her relief nearly caused her to sigh aloud. Prim clamped her mouth shut and clambered out of the recess. Her hair caught on the stone above her head, pulling free of the pins that held it knotted at the nape of her neck. There was no time to fix it. She scurried up to the roof where Luke had spent so long, but found no trace of her book.

She descended the Lion Tower in time to see Luke disappear up the stairs of the Plantagenet. She trudged after him, but her efforts were fruitless. He ascended to the top of the tower, spent a few minutes surveying the countryside from the turret, then came down again. Prim was beginning to think him mad.

Previous pursuit had informed her that Luke spent time consulting with his estate manager, conferring with Featherstone, and visiting his parents. Yesterday he had introduced a new servant to the Hawthornes, a girl he’d taken in after finding her begging in St. Giles. Prim had even followed him to the suite of rooms he was having prepared for his fiancée, where he consulted with London merchants about antique furniture and French wallpaper. But today he seemed determined to visit every remote tower and precarious turret in the castle.

Prim was almost grateful when Luke’s wanderings took him past the old great hall and down to the ancient kitchen. Little used now, it would be the perfect place to hide her book. Prim rushed down a curving flight of stairs, for Luke had suddenly increased his speed. She ended up in a large, vaulted chamber with wall-sized fireplaces.

Aged roasting spits sat empty, and Prim stood still, gazing at them and trying to hear Luke’s footsteps. He could have taken any of five archways. In the half-light she could discern the outline of a grape press, and across the room lay a well that had once been the castle’s main source of water. Prim hastily searched the fireplaces, the press, glanced down the well. No book. She looked inside vast cooking pots and empty barrels to no avail. Then she went to each archway and listened. At the third, she heard Luke’s whistle. It was beginning to annoy her most sincerely, for it meant she would have to climb yet another staircase.

Lifting her skirts, she had time only to bless her luck that these stairs were wide enough for her crinoline before rushing after her elusive host. She followed the whistle up to the high vault that contained a cistern used to hold rainwater. Then she tracked it out onto the wall walk, through a turret and down into the Plantagenet Tower. It was here that she lost her way. Somehow she ended up turned around, her sense of direction gone.

She was no longer in the Plantagenet. She remembered a long trek through the structures attached to the defensive walls. Perhaps she’d followed that wretched whistle as far as the barbican and the drawbridge. Sighing,
Prim chose a direction and marched downward, ever downward. It got dark, then lighter, until she stepped through an archway—into the kitchen, again.

“Wretched castle,” she muttered. Then she cried out as a shadow moved.

“Miss Dane?”

It was one of the footmen. Prim let out her breath and shook her head.

“Dinesdale, I didn’t see you.”

Dinesdale was another of Luke’s protégés. He had a habit of recruiting unfortunates from the rookeries and bringing them to Beaufort. Dinesdale had arrived yesterday. He was lance tall and thickly muscled from loading freight for railroads, so he made a gigantic and threatening shadow. He didn’t reply to her remark, which made Prim uneasy.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked.

“Got lost, miss.”

“Oh.”

He said nothing else, and Prim grew more uneasy. He was staring at her as though she were a haunch of meat.

Pointing to the arch nearest the grape press, she said, “That’s the way out.”

She moved toward the archway, and Dinesdale moved with her. But he moved so that he blocked her path. Prim stopped.

“What are you—”

Luke’s voice made her jump.

“Miss Dane?”

Luke came down the stairs near the grape press and
stood in the archway. “What’s going on? Dinesdale, what are you doing down here?”

“Got lost, governor.”

Prim walked around the footman’s bulk hastily and joined Luke. “I’m afraid we both got lost, Sir Lucas. It’s lucky you found us.”

“Right,” Luke said with an assessing look at Dinesdale. “We can get out this way.”

Offering his arm to Prim, he conducted her up and into the great hall. Dinesdale followed and was ordered to find Featherstone in the butler’s pantry. As Prim watched him go, she realized why she had been so uneasy. For some reason the footman reminded her of that miserable creature Jowett who had hunted her.

“Got your breath again?”

“Hmm?” She was still thinking of Jowett. “Oh, yes, I am recovered, but I’m thirsty after all that climb—” Prim stopped and stared at Luke. “What did you say?”

He gave her a dark-eyed smile.

“Thought I was going to have to come back and carry you a few times. Especially after that last trip up the Plantagenet.”

Breasts heaving, face burning, Prim pointed a finger at Luke Hawthorne. “Vile, abominable, wretched, cursed, despicable—you, you led me all over this miserable castle!”

Luke threw back his head and laughed. It echoed off the walls and the distant ceiling. Her legs and chest aching, her mouth parched, her skin clammy from perspiration, Primrose Victoria Dane succumbed to rage for only the second time in her life.

“By God!” she roared.

This made Luke laugh harder. “I didn’t ask you to follow me, Miss Prim. Tell me, what is the etiquette for spying?”

“Etiquette?” she cried. “I’ll show you etiquette!”

Whirling around, she rushed to a table next to a suit of jousting armor. On the table lay various pieces of a more ornate set. She picked up an elbow cap and hurled it at Luke. He ducked, still laughing, and it hit the floor with a loud clatter. Prim grabbed a vambrace and threw it, forcing him to dive out of the way. He wasn’t laughing quite so hard now. She sent a cuisse sailing at him, followed by both greaves.

“Here! You stop that, Miss Prim.” Luke dived behind a medieval wedding chest as she heaved a breastplate at him.

“Foul, beastly ruffian,” she shouted.

Turning back to the table, she found that she’d run out of armor. Her eye fell on the swords mounted on the wall behind it. There was quite a selection. There was a lovely hand-and-a-half sword, but it was far too heavy. She quickly surveyed a falchion, a two-edged sword with a triangular pommel, and a one-handed sword with a disk pommel. That was the one.

Prim reached up and pulled the weapon off the wall. It was in good shape. No rust, Hefting it in her right hand, she turned to face Luke just as he stood up behind the wedding chest.

She pointed the sword at his chest. “It’s time for another etiquette lesson.”

The Gentleman stood looking out a window that dripped with rain. In the street below a gas lamp flickered, a yellow beacon in the windswept darkness.

I’m not having this. All I’ve worked for, threatened by a dead whore and a spinster of no consequence. My position and my work are too important. And I’m sick of worrying about it. High time it all ended. High time
.

He turned and glanced at his guest, one he ordinarily wouldn’t allow in the kitchen yard, much less his study. “Hawthorne, is it? Damnation and hell. Hawthorne isn’t a man to cross.”

“Who woulda thought?” Fleet mused softly. “Nightshade a gentleman. A bloody miracle, that’s what it is. You heard of him, have you, governor?”

“In my line, one gets to know these things. But
that’s hardly relevant, Fleet. We have to get her away from him.”

There was a short pause. Then Fleet grunted.

“Maybe not, governor.” Fleet sat down in one of The Gentleman’s leather wingback chairs, purloined one of his host’s expensive cigars, and lit it. “Maybe not. If we can get into his place, or if we can use somebody already there.” He puffed hard on the cigar.

“What are you saying?” The Gentleman gripped the edge of the windowsill to keep himself from snatching the cigar.

“I’m saying you can bribe a whole castle full o’ servants with enough blunt.” Fleet turned his cigar so that he could examine the burning tip.

The Gentleman sneered. “More witnesses, you fool.”

“Nah. You leave it to me, governor. I’ll get someone in there to take care of her. Mark my words, we’ll be rid of her in less than a fortnight.”

Snake quick, The Gentleman pounced on Fleet, gripped his collar, and dragged him out of the chair.

Shoving his face close to Fleet’s, he said, “A week. You have a week. After that, I’ll do the job myself if I have to.”

The Gentleman released Fleet as suddenly as he’d grabbed him. Fleet dropped into the chair, but before he could say anything, his cigar was snatched from him.

“Get out.”

Fleet stood and made a show of straightening his collar and coat. “You should watch yerself, governor. That temper is what got you in this mess in the first place.”

A harsh laugh made The Gentleman turn red. “I need no advice from a man with the refinement of a sewer rat.” He turned back to the window, placing a hand on the cold pane. “Get out, Fleet, before I decide you’re as much trouble as my dead mistress.”

The Gentleman heard the door shut behind his guest. It was time to take more direct control. If Fleet failed, he would end up floating facedown in the Thames. As for Miss Dane … Servants weren’t the only ones who had the run of Castle Beaufort.

Luke beheld a wondrous sight—Miss Primrose Dane coming after him with a sword. He tried not to smile again, for she was already furious with him, but he failed. The sword wavered as she uttered a small roar of combined outrage and wrath. Then she rushed at him with the sword pointed at his chest.

If it hadn’t been for the windows, he might have tried to get away, but she came at him through shafts of white light, her hair catching fire in sunbeams. He forgot to move as he watched. Prim almost reached the wedding chest, but as he stood there gawking at her in the rays of the sun, she suddenly halted. The sword froze at his chest level; it dropped to point at the floor. They stood in the aged hall, their breath sounding loud in the vastness of the place, and stared at each other.

He was awakened from his foolish stupor when her little face seemed to crumple and tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. “What’s wrong now?”

The only answer he got was a long, strangled cry. Prim dropped the sword as if it burned her, and it clanged on the marble tile. Turning her back, she lowered her head. He could see her pound her fist against her leg repeatedly, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He left the shelter of the wedding chest and approached her with caution.