Susan Paul - The Captive Bride

“Just as soon as the lady decides to make an appearance,”Aric said irately. “God’s feet, Senet, send someone to tell her to make haste. You’re master here, now. Will you let her keep you waiting so long and looking a fool?”

Senet supposed it would do no harm to send one of the servants to request that Katharine hurry to present herself. The feast could not properly begin until the blessing had been given, and the priest could not give the blessing until the lady of the castle was in her place. Lifting a finger, he beckoned a serving maid to attend him.

“Go up to my lady’s chamber,”he instructed, “and give her my compliments. Tell her that I desire she join us within the quarter hour.”

“M’lor?”Clarise leaned forward again, looking past John. “M’lady is not in her chamber.”

Senet and the men surrounding him all turned to look at her. Clarise blushed hotly beneath their steady regard.

“I went to speak with her,”she explained slowly, striving to make her English perfect, “before coming to the hall. And the chamber, it was empty. I think she must be with her ladies.”She was thoughtful a moment, before saying, “I mean to say, in the chambers of the ladies?”

“I understand, Clarise,”Senet told her. “You’re certain she was not in her own chambers?”

Clarise shook her head. “I called for her. There was no one, m’lor. I thought it very strange, for there were many clothes, lying all places.partout, oui? It was a great disorder.”

“I don’t think that she means Lady Katharine’s simply a poor housekeeper,”John said, turning a wary gaze upon his friends.

Senet was already on his feet, with Kayne and Aric following him. Racing up the stairs he told himself that he was wrong, that she was merely somewhere in the castle, in one of her ladies’ chambers, just as Clarise had said, but his heart knew the truth even before he pushed open Katharine’s chamber door.

Breathing hard, he took in the sight before him. It was exactly as Clarise had described it. There were clothes everywhere. Fine clothes, and shoes, too, as if the women had been in far too much of a hurry to hide their escape.

“Where could they have gone?”Aric said, surveying the chamber through steely eyes.

“They can’t have left the castle,”Kayne muttered. “There were guards at every door. It would have been impossible for that many women to slip out And certainly not Lady Katharine, with her great beauty. There is no place where she might go unnoticed.”

Senet walked slowly across the room, to a tapestry that covered one wall. Reaching up with both hands, he yanked the elegant cloth from the wall, exposing the hidden door.

“Lomas is ridden with tunnels, secret and mazelike,”he said in a low voice. “She must have forgotten that I know this castle far better than she, or anyone else, could.”He turned to look at his friends. “Tell Sir Alain to get the horses and men ready, Aric.”A hard, grim smile that they knew well formed on his lips. “We’re going hunting.”

The Bull and Dog was, to Katharine’s mind, a thotoughly sorry refuge, but it was likely the only roof they’d be able to buy to cover their heads for the night. She’d paid the innkeeper dearly to give them the lone private room the dwelling possessed, as well as to put a guard over their horses until morning. It was small comfort set against the smells and vulgar sounds the inn’s patrons filled the place with, but it was better than sleeping in the rain, which had begun to pour an hour earlier.

In the filthy, tiny chamber that the inn’s only whore had vacated for their use, Katharine and her ladies sat on a single pallet and tried mightily to eat, but the greasy stew the innkeeper’s wife had brought them was difficult to identify and harder to stomach.

“Is it squirrel, perhaps?”Magan asked, lifting out of her bowl a hunk of something that still had hair on it.

“Let us pray that it is,”Dorothea replied. “Squirrel would be far preferable to what I think it is.”

Ariette let out a sudden scream and threw her bowl across the room, splaying the contents across the wall and floor.

“What in the name of all heaven—!”Katharine was across the room at once, peering at the discarded bowl and its spilled contents in the dim candlelight light before lifting a foot to squash what was crawling about among the stew’s other, more lifeless ingredients.

“I’m sorry!”Ariette cried, clutching her cloak tightly about herself. “It was moving.”

“’Twas only a roach,”Katharine said calmly, returning to sit beside the other women. “I’ve killed it, though God knows what good it will do us. The room is crawling with them. And other vermin.”

Exchanging glances, Magan and Dorothea put their bowls aside and discreetly scooted away from them.

Katharine set her hands on her indrawn knees and leaned her head against the wall. “How weary I am,”she murmured. “I realize this is no fine place, but at least we are dry, and so are the horses.”

“Yes,”Magan said, “we must be thankful for that.”

“Yes,”Ariette agreed quietly, without enthusiasm. “Although ‘tis cold in here as it is out of doors.”

“We’ll be fortunate if those leering brutes in the tavern don’t come bursting in all together, intent upon the most lecherous sort of evil,”Dorothea said. “They were loud enough in their thoughts when we entered this place.”

“Oh, my lady, will they?”Magan asked with open fear. “They did seem so very rough and crude.”

“If they do,”Katharine said from behind hands that rubbed at her face, “we’ll fend them off. You have your daggers, do you not? Don’t hesitate. to make use of them, for I assure you I’ll have mine well blooded before one of the wretches can so much as set a finger to me. And if they do attempt to enter this chamber, ‘twill be for our gold, most like, rather than our persons.”

“That is even worse,”Dorothea said dryly. “We need our gold far more dearly than we need our virtue. If we’re to make our way without starving to death,”she added when her companions looked at her.

“I think this a complete madness,”Ariette stated, drawing her cloak still more about her. “We’ll never find Kieran FitzAllen, and if Sir Senet should find us.”She left the dire thought unfinished.

“We will find Kieran,”Katharine said insistently. “If not us, then the messenger who left Lomas will do so, and then Kie will come looking for us. Somehow we’ll come across each other. It must be so.”

“You try to convince yourself, my lady,”Dorothea said, “but if Sir Senet finds us first, we’ll be fortunate to live through the beatings we’ll be given.”

“I know,”Katharine admitted morosely. The idea of running away from Lomas had seemed such a good one earlier, in the light of day and in the face of her fury at Senet Gaillard, but now, sitting in this dank hovel with the prospect of a long and sleepless night looming ahead—and a longer, difficult journey, as well—it wasn’t quite so appealing. “But that son of a traitor—that usurper—will not find us so easily. The feast will delay him from discovering that we’ve gone, and the rainthank a merciful God for it—will wash away the tracks we’ve made.”

Dorothea shook her head. “That won’t stop a man like Senet Gaillard.”

Katharine thought of the man, of his ice—blue eyes and black hair. Of the hard face that had been without emotion after the victory he’d won at Lomas.

“No,”she said softly, “I cannot think it will. I admit that my scheme to get away from him is perhaps a foolish one. I should never have let you all come with me.”

“We would never have let you go alone,”Ariette told her.