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I woke to the sounds of approaching footsteps. I sprang from my bed, grabbed the hook I used to fetch the windows closed, and was halfway across my room before I realized it was probably Crispin, not Rodney. Only after I paused to listen and reassure myself that the heavy footfalls matched the larger man rather than the duke’s scrawny son did my heartbeat slow to normal.
A soft tap at the folding doors that stretched from wall to wall announced his arrival at the other side.
I opened it to find Crispin leaning sleepily against the outside wall. Golden-brown hair stood about on his head as if a whirlwind had whipped it into a frenzy. He stifled a yawn, hiding it behind a great paw of a hand before blinking at me blearily.
“Morning.” He offered me a slow smile that made me suddenly aware that I still carried the hook. He nodded at it. “Planning on hanging me out to dry?”
“I thought you were Rodney.” My face burned.
He suddenly sobered, concern filling his dark eyes. “Does he often come up here?”
“Never,” I assured him. “He rarely ventures beyond the first floor. And even then, he prefers to heckle from the door.”
“Good.” He said the single word with more firm conviction than it merited.
I studied his face for a bit, trying to figure out what he really had meant.
He cleared his throat and looked away over my shoulder. “I thought we should perhaps figure out how to dissuade him from venturing into the library today when he comes to unlock the gate. I didn’t know where to store the bedding, and do you mind if I hide in there, just in case?”
“Of course.” I glanced down at myself. I still wore my rumpled clothing from the day before. If I didn’t change, Rodney would notice. “Could you just give me a moment?”
“Might I put the bedding away while you change?”
“Yes. It goes in the bottom drawer of the third bookcase to the right of the door.”
“I will see to it.” He had already turned toward the stairs again before I moved to close the door.
Swiftly I changed, straightened, and went through my usual routines for starting the morning. A glance out the window revealed darkly overcast skies promising rain and disguising the time. Hopefully, we hadn’t slept too late.
Rushing down the stairs, I passed the door to the second floor without pausing. Crispin had cleared away his bedding. My glance through the door revealed him packing up his bag.
When I reached the first floor, it was thankfully still dark. The gate remained closed and locked. Despite the relief, I lit some of the lamps and scanned the room for any signs of Crispin’s presence. Rodney’s off-key drunken singing broke out in the corridor just as I spotted one of Crispin’s broken-tipped pens. It must have fallen out of his bag the previous night. Now it rested under the edge of the shelves next to the door.
As Rodney came around the corner and peered through the gate, I went to fetch the pen.
“Wh’ave we here?” he slurred as he unlocked the gate.
I ignored him.
“Hey, I was talking to you.” He swung the gate open as I rose, pen in hand. It caught me in my back, driving me forward. I caught myself against the shelf. “A bit hard to ignore me now, eh?” he asked as he threw his weight against the gate, pressing me against the unforgiving ridges of the shelves.
“Rodney, let me go.” I shoved backward hard, trying to keep my face from hitting the books and wood.
“Looky what I caught.” He heaved against the gate. I had to turn my head to protect my face as my elbows gave way, and my body hit the shelves hard. The edges and book spines prodded my front in various places.
He leaned close. The nasty scents of wine and fish filled my senses as he burped in my ear. After a couple of noisily moist swallows from him, I prayed he wasn’t about to be sick on me. Instead, he did something worse.
He laughed, reaching through the bars to tug on my ear. “Poppa says I can do anything I want with you. I think it’s ’bout time I try something.” Spittle from his words sprayed the side of my face. “You’re mine, girly. Poppa says so.” He bit my ear.
I yelped. Unbidden tears slipped from beneath my lids.
“Let her go,” Crispin ordered.
Relief and fear crashed over me. A sob formed like a rock in the back of my throat, but I refused to let it free.
“Why?” Rodney’s whine challenged Crispin, but the pressure pinning me to the shelves immediately let up as he stepped away to confront my defender. “She is mine, scholar.”
As soon as I could, I slipped free of the gate. I didn’t stop moving until I had placed half the room and Crispin’s sizable bulk between Rodney and me.
My move hadn’t gone unnoticed either. Rodney made a mocking sneer.
“Leave her be.” Crispin stepped between us, blocking Rodney’s access to me. “Only a coward harasses those who cannot fight back.”
Rodney snorted. “All high and mighty, you are only a little bit of nothing. Just you wait. When you leave, I will still be here. I shall do as I will.” With that, Rodney turned around to stride out the gate and closed it with a bang. The effect was ruined when his knees turned wobbly, causing him to fall into the corridor. He stumbled in recovery, slurred a curse, and fumbled with a tapestry before finally leaving.
I listened with bated breath for the sounds of him departure to fade, but Crispin didn’t hesitate.
“Did he hurt you?”
His large hands gently cradled my face for a moment as he briefly studied my features. He bent close to inspect my ear, and his warm breath caressed my cheek. A fluttering sensation flickered through my middle.
“Thank the Kurios, he didn’t break the skin.” He traced the curve of my ear with the barest of brushes with his thumb.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Good,” he whispered.
He lingered, close and looming, filling my senses with heat and a heady awareness of his height and strength so carefully restrained. Finally, I turned my head, only to encounter his turbulent, dark gaze still studying my features.
“I am well,” I assured him.
He retreated abruptly. “But you won’t be if I leave.”
Fear shot through me. I rubbed the goosebumps that prickled my arms. “True.” At the rate Rodney was escalating his unwanted attentions, he would be claiming my hand within hours of Crispin’s departure.
Crispin crossed to the table where he had dropped his satchel. “I have the beginnings of a plan, but it involves me leaving here a few days before you.” He frowned darkly. “A great deal can happen in a matter of hours, let alone days.”
“Are the days necessary?” I asked.
“Yes, that is how I am going to lay a false trail. I hadn’t figured in Rodney’s increased aggression.” He proceeded to fill me in on his plan.
The details were still vague, but the essence of the plan struck me as sound. After a time wherein Pip and he would work their way through the necessary preparations, Crispin and Pip would leave. They would exit the city by the main gate and travel north, clearly bound for Everly as they continued his quest. Marking out the events on an invisible map on the tabletop, he explained that he planned on traveling at least two days north. That should be enough to meet up and fall in with a traveling company. Then he would disappear from the company, leaving in the guise of another of the company, and return to Worthenave’s capital with a new identity.
Once back, he would set the second part of the plot in motion. That was where I came into the plan.
“I will need to contact you.”
I shook my head. “It will be too risky. They watch everything even when the security is the loosest. They read every piece of paper, every note. Trying to contact me would completely undo all of your efforts to lay a false trail.”
“Then it will have to be an arranged day.” He studied my face. “Do they always let you out every seventh day?”
“Yes.” I frowned. “I am never left alone, though. Rodney or a guard escorts me every moment.”
“Let me worry about that.” He pulled out one of his notebooks and opened it. Uncapping an inkwell, he prepped a pen. “List everything that happens on one of those days.”
As I recited the routine, he jotted the steps down. When I reached the point that the laundress handed me my clothing for the week, he bid me stop. Then, after asking around thirty questions about her, he had me continue. When I reached the point I returned to the library, he nodded.
“Does your escort stay with you?”
“No.”
“Is the gate locked?”
“No. What you witnessed the other day is the way it typically goes, save for the duke himself rarely visits.”
He made a soft humming sound in reply while still studying his scratching. Then he closed the notebook, capped the ink, and cleaned and stowed his pen.
“Give me a week, and I will have a plan prepared.”
“What do you need from me? How can I help?”
He drew the strap of his satchel over his broad shoulder and turned to face me. “Your trust and your silence.”
“But—”
He started shaking his head before the word had even made it out of my mouth. “The less you know, the safer you are. You are going to have to trust me.”
From his honest face, calm demeanor, and careful restraint, I had seen plenty to reassure me of his trustworthiness. The fact he was a follower of the Kurios was the strongest factor in his favor. Well, that and his rescue of me just a short time before our plotting.
“Do you?”
His simple question broke through my thoughts, making me abruptly aware that I had been staring at him.
Averting my eyes a moment, I nodded. “As much as I have ever trusted anyone, which isn’t much of an indicator considering my circumstances.”
“Fair enough.” A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t let it free. “I will return.” He bowed and then disappeared out through the gate.
I watched him turn the corner as a familiar sensation filled my chest. It was an old companion. Loneliness.
~~~~~
MY FIRST TASK WAS TO find Pip. After looking in my assigned chamber and finding it empty, I tried the stables. I found Pip knee-deep in mucking the otherwise empty horse’s stall.
“Isn’t that the stable boy’s job?” I asked as I rested my forearms on the top of the stall door.
“Hey, master.” Pip didn’t even look up as he shoveled the horse’s waste aside. “Didn’t trust them around the horse. They don’t know one end from the other and treat each the same. Besides, Taffy doesn’t like them.”
“Taffy?” I frowned down at him as he carried the shovelful of refuse past me.
“Your horse,” he called back over his shoulder before exiting into the yard, most likely to dispose of his load. He returned a few moments later with a large forkful of clean straw for the stall.
“I don’t recall naming my horse.”
“You didn’t. I did.” He paused in spreading the straw to grimace at me. “She needed a name. I couldn’t just keep calling her Horse.”
“Very practical of you,” I observed. “How did you know she was a she?”
“Asked one of the horse boys, I did.” He sniffed and set back to the task.
“Why Taffy?”
“’Cause I like taffy, and I like her.”
“Fair enough.”
“How’s the lady?” Pip stopped spreading to lean on his fork and peer at me. “The duke’s son stayed up all night drinking with his friends and bragging about all the things he would do to her before their wedding.”
Renewed anger filled my gut. I worked to remain as relaxed as possible on the surface. “He didn’t succeed in doing anything beyond biting her, which I stopped.”
“Biting her?” Pip screwed up his face in a grimace. “Strange.”
“Yes, and disturbing.”
“We are going to do something about it, aren’t we?”
I waved at him to be silent but nodded slightly in answer to his glare.
“How close are you to completing your task?”
“I am finished with the mucking.” Pip tramped out of the stall and motioned for me to close the door behind him. “I still have to exercise Taffy.”
I couldn’t hide my smile, but thankfully Pip’s back was turned. “That sounds like the perfect opportunity for your first riding lesson.”
“Really?” The lad beamed at me. “I get to learn?”
“Of course.” I smiled back at him. “I was even considering buying you a horse before we leave here. Perhaps a packhorse as well.”
“Bless me!” He propped the fork against the stable wall. “Follow me. I have Taffy penned up over here.”
The following lesson was short and not as progressive as I had hoped. Still, my horse had obviously taken a liking to Pip since our arrival. She was quite patient with his fumbling and mistakes.
When we finally finished, Pip was at least managing to keep on Taffy’s back pretty well. Afterwards, we walked back to my assigned chambers by a new route. I noted every nook and cranny along the way.
Once within my chamber, I locked the door and spread out my plan for rescuing Ryda. Pip was an enthusiastic advocate of doing it sooner rather than later. He made a great fuss over helping, even volunteering to walk all the possible routes from the library to the outer courtyard at all times of the day. We needed to find the best way for Ryda to walk out of the fortress. Also, there was the problem as to where and how to meet her.
When the noon bell rang to signal the next meal in the great hall, Pip and I parted ways. I returned to the library, tracing a new roundabout route. Pip headed to the kitchens to fetch at least one tray, hopefully two.
I arrived at the library to find the gate standing open as usual, but the distant sounds of voices in the room above caused me to pause. Carefully laying out my supplies across the table surface, I set it up to look like I had been studying intensely for hours. I even removed choice volumes from the shelves. All the time, I listened.
The volume of the voice rose and fell, but didn’t pause often. When it did, Ryda’s softer voice responded in short bits of sound.
“Ryda?” I called up the stairwell.
The voices above fell silent.
“Ryda, are you there?”
“She is here, scholar.” The Duke of Worthenave appeared at the second-floor door. “I required her expertise on something. She will be right down to help you.” He turned back to speak through the open doorway to Ryda, who was just out of sight. “Remember what I told you.”
“I will.” The sound of her voice clearly indicated tears, but I forced myself not to react. Revealing my concern would only make her more vulnerable to her captor, not less.
“She will be right down,” the duke assured me as he swept down the stairs and past me. Pausing halfway to the gate, he turned and pinned me with an intense stare. “How much longer do you think your studies are likely to take, scholar?”
I shrugged. “I have not finished searching the shelves.”
The duke sneered. “You have two weeks to finish. After that, you will leave. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” I offered him a half bow. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Enough.” He strode out.
I waited long enough for the sound of his steps to fade away before I climbed the stairs to search for Ryda. She awaited me on the second floor. Pacing the width of the room, she wrung her hands.
“He took your notes. Rodney has finally agreed to take me as a wife. The wedding is in three weeks.” She met my gaze across the room. “I need to escape before then.”
“Who is truly behind this wedding?” I suspected I knew the answer, but I needed her to confirm it.
“The duke.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “He has mentioned it every time we met.”
“And Rodney?”
She laughed weakly. “He has made it clear that he finds me revolting. Believe me, the feeling is mutual.”
“He is blind.”
She blushed a delightful shade of pink but otherwise ignored my comment. “Can we do it? Can I escape before then?”
“I will do everything I can to free you.”
Her lack of confidence in my proclamation saddened me, but I wasn’t about to give in before we had even started. “I have some questions for you.”
She nodded and tried to stop her pacing. Her hands shook instead until she hid them beneath her work apron. “I am sorry, I can’t...” She closed her eyes and appeared to pray. Tears leaked from beneath her eyelids.
“We should pray.” I caught her trembling hands through the fabric of her apron, enclosing them in my larger hands. Rubbing my thumbs across the backs of them, I bowed my head. “Heavenly just and righteous Father, please give us the wisdom to know how to best go about preventing this proposed marriage. You know how we should act; please guide us. Clear our paths, straighten our ways, and prepare our deliverance. Amen.”
I didn’t immediately lift my head. The frantic flutter of Ryda’s pulse beneath my fingers on her wrists slowed. The rhythm of her breathing had slowed, too, and she no longer fought my grip on her hands.
“Why did you say ‘our’?” she asked suddenly.
I opened my eyes to find her emerald gaze focused on my features. The luminescent hue reminded me of the new grass in the spring when the bees first ventured out to collect pollen.
She swallowed and clarified her earlier statement. “I mean, you don’t have to do this.”
“No.” I stopped her right there, gently squeezing her hands. “My faith demands I help you. My brothers would hound me to an early grave if I abandoned you in such a dire situation, not to mention they would pummel me within an inch of my life. And above all, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to help you.” I pulled her a bit closer, lowering my head to almost her height, so our noses were inches apart. “We are in this together.”
She swallowed again nervously but didn’t drop my gaze. “Brothers? Do you come from a large family?”
I smiled. “The largest I know of. I have eleven brothers.”
Her eyes widened, drawing my attention to the blue flecks midst the green. “Does your mother still live?”
That made me laugh. I released her hands to draw back and grin at her. “She lives. She and my father are alive and well, praise the Kurios.”
She nodded. “Good. I look forward to meeting them.” She offered a hesitant smile as though unsure of how I would take her boldness of assuming an introduction.
“And they will love meeting you.” I didn’t point out that she would be the first potential bride any of us had brought home. Not that I was willing to claim her for myself. Still, despite her apparent eligibility and appropriateness as a mate for any of my brothers, I wasn’t comfortable placing her with any of them in my mind.
Brushing that thought away for another time, I pulled both of our attention back to the issue at hand. “Does Rodney ever travel away from the capital for any purpose? Perhaps we can provoke him to leave long enough for you to be safe while I lay the false trails.”
We discussed the possibilities until the evening meal, producing a potential solution. When Rodney arrived to lock the gate, I remained until he had completed his task. Engaging him in a stunted question-and-answer exchange, I walked with him to the great hall, ensuring he wouldn’t return to harass Ryda. I proceeded to keep my eye on him during the meal.
The duke sat at the high table with all the pomp and ceremony of a king. Meanwhile, just below the high table, Rodney and his band of ruffian friends in expensive clothing drank themselves into foolishness. When the duke retired, the young men continued drinking, boasting, swearing, and bragging until no one remained awake to listen to them, save their bodyguards and me. When I finally left, only one man remained conscious. The rest of them sprawled about the floor or over the table, senseless.
