She stared at him, disbelieving.
He had known something like this would happen? How was that possible?
Because . . . because he knew the truth about Sandre. The truth she had ignored.
“We’ll lose our home,” Fanchere said. “But don’t fear. I have connections all over the world, and we will not starve.”
She couldn’t hold back the tears. She and Fanchere had had a good marriage, always, respecting each other and their contributions to the union. He had brought a fortune made in merchandise. She had brought an ancient, noble name and the connections and influence that went with that. But they had never spoken of love. She had thought it was a partnership, nothing more. Now she discovered he was willing to leave Moricadia for her, and for their baby.
Looking into his thin, droopy, adored face, she put her hand to his cheek. “You are a dear man, and I thank God for the day my father picked you as my husband.”
He turned his lips into her hand and kissed her palm. “I love you, too.”
They basked in the warmth of the unexpected moment.
Leaning close, she whispered in his ear, “One more thing. I would like to somehow speak to the Reaper. Do you know how to reach him?”
He smiled. “As a matter of fact, I believe I do. Come, Eleonore. Let’s go home.”
Chapter Forty-one
A knock sounded on the door, waking Emma from her afternoon nap, the one she substituted for her nighttime sleep.
“Come in,” she called, and then she stared at the ceiling and thought, He wants me to choose him. He wants me to marry him.
Michael thought she was an Amazon. He saw her as brave and strong, someone who could do anything she wished with her life.
And he wanted her to marry him.
“Miss Chegwidden?” Tia advanced cautiously into the room.
“I’m awake.” Emma didn’t know what to do with Michael’s proposal. Since her father died, no one had wanted her, and now Michael said she had choices. And maybe she did.
What did she want?
What was the right thing to do?
She had loved the Reaper, dark, mysterious, beckoning.
Did she love Michael Durant?
She sat up in bed and rubbed her forehead with the heels of her hands, and glanced out the window. The sun was setting. “It’s late. I’ve got to get dressed!”
“If you would, Miss Chegwidden. We’ve got an emergency downstairs.” Tia stood at the bedside.
For the first time, Emma looked at Tia.
Tia’s face was red and blotchy, her eyes tearstained. “It’s not Durant,” she said.
Emma came off the bed in a rush. “Something with Brimley’s finger?”
“His finger is fine. Mending. A miracle. No.” Tia shook her head and started crying in earnest. “It’s Lady de Guignard and Elixabete.”
No. No.
As she dressed, Emma questioned Tia.
Tia didn’t seem sure of anything except that the men were carrying Elixabete back to the Fancheres’. But she wouldn’t speak of Aimée, and she was crying so hard, Emma felt a hard lump settle in her stomach.
Not Aimée. Not dear, kind Aimée, who stood poised on the verge of happiness.
Emma rushed downstairs.
The men were carrying Elixabete into the house on blankets stretched tightly between them. “Put her down,” she commanded, and they gently placed the blankets, and the child, on the floor.
She knelt beside her.
Elixabete lay on her side, curled into the fetal position, eyes closed. She clutched something close to her chest. Her face had been kicked, her nose broken, but it was the mark on her forehead that concerned Emma. She had a dent in her skull, and that was the kind of injury that could kill.
Servants crowded around.
“Step back,” Brimley ordered. “Give them room to breathe.”
Emma touched Elixabete’s shoulder.
The child’s eyes fluttered open.
“Elixabete, can you hear me?” Emma asked.
“Yes.” The girl focused on Emma, then on the people standing around her.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
“Good.” God willing, Elixabete would recover. “Can you move your fingers? Your toes?”
“Yes. Yes. Oh, Miss Chegwidden.” She gave a wrenching sob. “Why did it have to happen to her?”
That lump in Emma’s stomach grew heavier. “What happened?”
“He threw her over the edge. She screamed, but he threw her over the edge. I tried to stop him, but he kicked me and threw her over the edge.” Elixabete brought her hand up, and in it she clutched a carved horse, polished and exquisite. “She gave me this. It was her father’s. She wanted me to have it. And she’s dead.”
In a soft, soft voice, Emma asked, “Who’s dead?”
Elixabete trembled and cried.
“Is it Aimée?” Emma asked.
Elixabete nodded, then curled up around the horse again. “I want my mother,” she wailed.
Emma stroked her forehead, then stood up and told Brimley, “Put her to bed. Don’t let her get up. Put cold rags on her face to bring down the swelling. Talk to her. Give her water. And for the love of God, bring her mother here.” Turning away, she started to make her way through the crowd.
“Miss Chegwidden.” Brimley’s voice brought her to a halt. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to make them pay.”
“Durant, something’s happened in the main house.”
Michael put down his pen, glad to procrastinate on that difficult letter to his father, the one that told him that the prodigal son was alive and needed help, and raised an inquiring eyebrow at Rubio.
“The child Elixabete was hurt and Lady de Guignard . . .” Rubio shook his head, and his eyes looked the way they had when he’d first come out of the dungeon. Dull. Resigned. In pain.
Michael came to his feet. “Where’s Emma?”
“They called her to care for Elixabete.”
He wasn’t finished speaking before Michael was racing for the house. He ran inside, grabbed a footman. “Where is Elixabete?”
“They carried her upstairs. Did you hear . . . ?” He was a young man, and he had to clear his throat. “Did you hear about Lady de Guignard?”
Michael took the stairs two at a time, followed the trail of weeping maids and medical supplies up to the third level, and rushed into Elixabete’s bedroom.
Emma wasn’t there.
He grabbed Brimley by the lapels. “Where’s Emma?”
Brimley grabbed him right back. “She gave us instructions on how to care for Elixabete; then she left.”
“Where did she go?”
“I think she went . . . She said she went to make them pay.”
“To make them pay? No. She went to ride? Why didn’t you stop her?”
“I have a situation here, Durant. And I can’t lay hands on a lady!”
“How long has it been?”
“A quarter of an hour, perhaps more.”
Michael’s mind raced. Emma’s path and his hadn’t crossed when he’d run to the château, so it was too late to stop her at the stable. But if he cut across the front and into the forest, he might catch her before she reached the road.
He was running again, down the stairs and out the door. He sprinted along the drive.
The Fancheres’ carriage turned into their gate.
He swerved, jumped the hedge, and ran across the lawn.
His lungs hurt. His legs hurt. His shoulder hurt.
He headed up a rise, cut into the forest. The branches smacked him. The brush cut at his legs.
He couldn’t run fast enough.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Then he did. He broke out of the forest and tottered on the edge a twenty-foot embankment. The road was below—and he was too late. He was too late!
Old Nelson was galloping into the woods, riderless.
Prince Sandre’s guard surrounded a white-clad figure in the brush at the side of the road.
She struggled to sit up.
She was alive!
Michael started down the embankment after her.
And someone grabbed his arm.
He came around, fists up.
Fanchere shook him. “No!”
Michael tried to fight him off.
“No. Look at them!” Fanchere said softly.
Michael looked. The guards were mounting their horses. They had guns, swords, knives. They looked surly and angry, ready to kill.
One of them picked her up and flung her onto his saddle.
“Sandre’s killing their wives and children,” Fanchere said, “and if we try to take the Reaper away, they’ll kill us.”
“She’s dead if she gets to the palace. Or worse.” Michael started forward again.
“Eleonore has a plan.”
Michael looked back. “She didn’t know this was going to happen.”
“No. But we can change the plan, make it work. For God’s sake, Michael, getting yourself killed won’t help Emma escape, or get your revenge on the prince.” Fanchere spoke urgently. “And it would break Eleonore’s heart, and her heart is already broken enough.”
Michael knew Fanchere was right, but bile was sour in his mouth as he watched the guard ride away, Emma sitting behind the leader, holding on to his waist.
“All right.” He turned back to the house. “What’s the plan?”
Chapter Forty-two
The guard pushed Emma into Prince Sandre’s office.
She knew she would be sorry later, but right now, in the grip of grief and rage, the look on Sandre’s face when he recognized her was worth all the gold in his coffers.
He came to his feet with a bound. “What’s going on here?” He turned on the head of the patrol. “Quico, what have you done?”
In a rough, deep voice, Quico said, “I don’t know if she’s the Reaper, Your Highness. It’s not my job to answer that question. But we caught her riding in this costume and we brought her to you.”
“She’s a lady!” Sandre said.
When he spoke, she remembered Aimée. She remembered Elixabete. She remembered how much she hated him. In a rage, Emma leaped at him. “No, I’m the Reaper, you murdering freak!”
Quico grabbed her arms and yanked her back.
“I’m the Reaper,” she shouted, straining against his hold, “and everybody’s going to know you were chasing after a man, while all the while a mere woman was making a fool of you.”
Sandre had clearly been caught by surprise, and he was still trying to save the situation. Save face. “That’s impossible. You weren’t even in the country until recently.”
“I’ve been hiding out, riding from my secret den.”
“Where’s your secret den?” He cajoled her as if she were a two-year-old.
“Under the grave of King Reynaldo.” She hated him. Hated him with all the clawing anguish of her grief.
“What do you want me to do with her, Your Highness?” Quico pushed her toward two of his men.
They caught her arms.
She struggled against them.
“Let her go.”
They did.
Sandre walked toward her. “Now, Miss Chegwidden, let’s sit down and talk like reasonable people—”
She lunged at him, fingers clawed, aiming at his eyes.
Sandre turned his head at the last second. He staggered back, blood running from his ear.
That was even better than riding through the night as the Reaper.
The guards seized her before she could strike at him again.
Sandre stormed forward and slapped her hard enough to snap her head back and wrench her neck, and only the men holding her kept her on her feet.
“I’m sorry you made me do that,” he said.
“I didn’t make you do anything. You love hurting people.” For a moment, she remembered how he had hurt Aimée, and tears threatened.
Then he said, “You will treat me with respect!”
Rage swept away the tears. “You murderer. You killer! No one respects you. You’re supposed to be just. Instead you kill people for telling the truth.” She strained against the guards, wanting nothing more than to attack him again. “You’re a travesty.”
His guards stirred restlessly.
His hand came up again.
She braced herself.
He stood, frozen in place, then lowered his hand, very controlled. “Tell me who the Reaper really is and we’ll have no more unpleasantness.”
“I told you. I’m the Reaper.” Obviously he didn’t believe her, but that gave her a savage satisfaction, too. “I’m the Reaper, and I will have vengeance for Aimée.”
“Perhaps a night in the dungeon will cool your temper and remind you of the proper behavior of a future princess.”
A future princess? What did it take to discourage this guy? Repulsed, she said, “I would never marry you!”
“We’ll see.” The blood from his ear showed red on Sandre’s pale neck, and he scrutinized her as if weighing her reaction.
“And you would never marry me. I’m not proper. I’m not docile. That’s what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Yes, I know. You want a young woman from a foreign country with no family to protect her. You want to be able to abuse her, cheat on her, force her to do anything you demand, and know she has no way of fighting back.” In a lower voice, she said, “When you’re finished with her, you can do to her what you did to Aimée and no one will notice or care.”
Sandre lifted his eyebrows as if astonished at the idea.
With a sinking heart, Emma realized she was still his ideal wife. “Aimée warned me about you,” she finished.
Sandre’s phony surprise vanished, replaced by easily stirred ferocity. “Take her below.”
She walked between Quico and one of the other guards down to the ground level, then through a stone arch and down a dark flight of stairs lit only by torches on the walls.
A short, fat little man sat there in a chair, whistling tunelessly. When he saw her, he smiled with a mouthful of black teeth and started to chuck her under the chin, then stood at attention when he realized the prince walked behind the grim little party.
The prince held up a big black iron ring with two keys on it. “Gotzon, this prisoner is mine.”
Gotzon scowled, but he nodded, and as soon as the prince passed, he started that tuneless whistling again.
They descended another flight of stairs. The torches were farther apart here, and at the bottom, Prince Sandre took the last torch. “We don’t waste light on our prisoners,” he said, and led the way down the corridor.
She stumbled on the uneven stones under her feet, and as she passed, she glanced in the cells. The bars were thick, black and shiny, as if someone cared for them weekly.
Prince Sandre stopped in front of one door and pushed it open with his foot. “This is a very special cell. We save it for our most important visitors. It’s said that King Reynaldo himself spent his last days in here. As you can see”—he waved the torch inside—“it’s quite luxurious, and has a cot, which most of the cells do not.”
“It’s a pit.” She had never meant anything so much.
“You should see what’s below this. But perhaps you’ve changed your mind and want to return with me upstairs?”
Shaking off the guards, she walked inside.
Sandre nodded as if not surprised.
The guards shut the door behind her.
He stepped up and turned the lock. Still in that awful, conversational tone, he said, “The true advantage is—I alone have the key for it. But, oh! You despise me. Perhaps you’d rather be in a cell that Gotzon controls?”
Bile rose in her throat. “No.”
“You see, I’m not as bad as you’ve suggested. Now you might want to go sit on the bed. It’s dark down here when the light is
gone.” Sandre turned away, clapped Quico on the shoulder, and asked, “How’s your wife? Has she recovered from that bullet wound yet? My office is dusty without her.”
As they left, the guards walked behind the prince, and Emma saw the sympathetic glances they sent her.
All except Quico. He shot her a venomous look that made her want to shrink back.
Before the light disappeared, she hurried to the bed and eased herself down.
Here, in the cool damp of the dungeon, her tumble from Old Nelson’s back came back to haunt her. She’d managed to get her arms up to protect her face, but nothing protected her arms, and they felt like one big bruise. Her knee hurt as if, even through the costume, she’d scraped it, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d probably done something to her hip. It burned like fire.
The cot was narrow, the blanket thin, and the dark was so absolute she could see nothing . . . and hear everything. The rats as they scampered across the floor. The drip of water as it ran down the walls. Far above, the guard’s tuneless whistling.
Her stomach growled, reminding her she had eaten only one meal today. But she wasn’t really hungry; somewhere close, something had died and was rotting. The smell made her want to vomit.
Michael had lived here for two years.
Where was he now? And how long would it take him to come and get her?
The next day—at least, she thought it was the next day—the light of a torch announced the arrival of Prince Sandre.
He had come for her. Prince Sandre with his cousin Jean-Pierre. “Are you ready to remember what you owe me?” Sandre asked.
She clutched at the cold metal pipe that formed the side of the cot. “I owe you death.”
He unlocked the door. “Come out,” he said.
“I haven’t changed my mind. I’d rather be here than with you.”
Jean-Pierre strode in, grabbed her bruised arm, and dragged her out the door. “You don’t talk that way to your prince.”
She rammed him with her elbow. “He isn’t my prince. I’m English. Queen Victoria is my prince, and she’s not a coldhearted murderer.”
Prince Sandre pinched her chin and turned her face to his. “Are you hungry? Upstairs I’ve got food for you . . . if you behave.”