Her Lord and Protector (formerly titled On Silent Wings) (33 page)

Katherine could
no longer move her mouth to speak. Through weighted lids she saw the ground
rush up to meet her.

A sing-song
voice came from far away. “At last.
I
shall be Lady Drayton.”

Where was
Katherine? Alex looked around, his height making it easy to see over the crowd.
She seemed not to be in the Hall.

Sarah Cooke had
led a still-crying Edward away to sit with her. Robert stood near the whiskey
barrel talking to some of the other men who seemed intent on getting drunk
before Elizabeth’s burial at dawn tomorrow morning.

Agnes appeared
on the other side of the coffin. “Lord Drayton, I am truly sorry for your
loss.”

Alex took in her
tear-streaked face and trembling chin. “I know you were good friends.”

“I wish to be
your friend, too.”

Alex held back
from barking out a bitter, sardonic laugh. “Thank you for coming today, Agnes.”

A commotion
turned Alex’s attention toward the front door. “What’s all the to-do?”

“Lord Drayton!”
came Stephen’s sharp, alarmed voice. “Lady Drayton’s lying on the ground!”

****

“Dear God,” Alex
moaned as he lifted his limp, unresponsive wife and carried her into the house
at a run. “Oh, dear God.”

He laid her on
the couch in the parlor. “I do not think she is breathing.”

Robert knelt,
his whiskey breath wafting over Alex’s shoulder. “Whatever could have
happened?”

Alex couldn’t
answer. A deep trembling had taken hold of him. His throat seemed to clamp shut
as he watched her not breathing, not moving. His heart shredded. “Breathe, Katherine.
Breathe!”

Agnes leaned
into his line of vision. “Father, is everything all right?”

He heard Sarah’s
shaky reply. “Agnes, didn’t you see Lady Drayton just a while ago? You two went
out the front door together.”

“Yes, we went
outside to talk, and then I came back in,” Agnes said with a catch in her
voice. “She seemed fine when I left her.”

Alex swung
toward her. “Did you see anyone? Was she alone? Where is Stephen?”

“He is here.”
Carly crouched in one corner with a white-faced Stephen, her arms wrapped
around him.

“I saw no one,” Stephen
said, his voice quavering. “I came out of the maze and there she was. Is she
dead? Is she dead, too?”

Agnes
straightened, her eyes riveted on Katherine, and tapped her chin. “I did speak
with her briefly,” she said. “She wanted to remain alone after accepting my
apology. She did mention something about being with child. I wonder what happened?”

“She is with
child?” The old, black fear slammed into Alex. He cried out and grabbed Katherine’s
shoulders. “Wake up! You have to wake up!”

No response. Her
lips were pale, her eyes shut tight.

He lowered his
head to her still-warm chest. “You can’t be dead. I can’t go through this.
Please. Katherine, please. I love you so much. Wake up.”

Hopelessness
slithered into him like a thousand cold snakes. Katherine was dead. As was his
child.

He couldn’t save
them.

“What curse has
fallen upon me?” he moaned, his tears flowing freely. “What did I do to deserve
such wrath?”

He became aware
of hands on his shoulders and back. Sam knelt beside him.

“Millie and I
will take care of her,” Sam whispered, tears shining on the baggy creases under
his eyes. “Go to your bed and lie down. ’Tis a terrible day.”

Alex shook him
off and lurched to his feet. “I shall burn this castle to the ground!” he declared.
“’Tis cursed with death.” He swung toward Carly and Stephen huddled in the
corner. “We will leave this place. And never return.”

Later, Alex sat
in the great chair in his bedchamber. “I cannot do it, Sam,” he said, his head
in his hands. “This is tearing me up inside. Everyone I have ever loved has
died. I cannot look at her dead in a coffin for three days. She had so much
life in her. I can’t do it.”

Sam touched his
shoulder. “Do you want to....”

“Yes.” Alex
raked stiff fingers through his hair. “’Tis not proper, I know. But I can’t do
it.”

“We’ll bury her
tomorrow with Elizabeth, then,” Sam said.

“Tomorrow. Yes.”

The next
morning, Alex stood in the family graveyard and stared around him. Four little
stones stood in a neat row. His babes, all dead before they’d left Mary’s sick
womb, lay within the ground wrapped in their tiny white shrouds. To their left,
Mary’s tombstone stood, and those of his parents.

Behind these,
two fresh holes in the ground now held the coffins of Elizabeth and Katherine.

Katherine. His
throat tightened with sorrow. His wife. His lover, mother of his child. Dead.
He wanted to follow her into the ground. She had left him an empty shell.

He had thought
he could never love again, but s
he had taken his icy heart in her soft
warm hand, and melted it.

“Alex, we can go
back now if you wish. The rest of the mourners are returning to the house.”

Alex turned to
Sam on legs that felt years older. “Yes.”

****

Scattered scrape
and tumbling sounds reached her ears. With a gasp, Katherine opened her eyes to
full blackness. Groggy with sleep, she tried to sit up. Her forehead met with
something hard. Her headboard, perhaps? Was it night? She widened her eyes to
see, but it didn’t help.

Her hands skated
down something smooth and solid above her. Shifting, she felt her elbows
connect with the same at her sides. Icy knives of steel cut through the last of
her dazed mind. She was trapped in some sort of box.

What was
happening? She sucked in breath, and the smell of freshly hewn wood and dank
earth assailed her nostrils. The sound above her came again, flat and thick.

Her lungs
wouldn’t fill. “Alex!” Her voice was weak, too weak for anyone to hear. She
pushed at the top and sides of the box. “Alex!”

The dull thump
sounded again above her. At that moment, an image rushed into her head of a day
filled with the stench of a city burned to the ground, of a day when she
slumped at her father’s grave, unable to block out the sound of dirt falling
onto his coffin.

The same sound
resonated above her right now. Katherine went rigid.

Dear God! Did
they think her dead? Were they burying her?

She gasped for
breath and began to pound on the lid. “Alex! Help me!”

Perspiration
beaded her face. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Blackness stuffed itself
into her nose and mouth and would smother her, make her go utterly and
completely mad. She thrashed and sobbed, trying to tuck up her legs and rock
her body from side to side.

No! NO! She had
to get out—get out—God! She was in hell—worse than any torment the devil
himself could concoct.

“Alex....” Her
heart slammed her chest and her lungs burned in their effort to suck in air.

I
’
m not dead!

With all her
strength, Katherine beat at the walls of her prison.

Alex turned to
take a last look at Katherine’s coffin, now partially covered with dirt. He
would return home now, would put
Stephen
and Carly into the carriage and go as far away from
this cursed place as possible. To the sea, perhaps, to live on a cliff and
watch the sun set on his life.

Somewhere a
faint knock sounded, fast and furious. He glanced at the burial man beating
dirt from his shovel with his boot.

“Lord Drayton?”

Agnes. Alex
barely glanced at her.

As she hurried
up to him, she stumbled and gave a small, alarmed cry. Alex grasped her arm to
keep her steady. When she stood, she leaned into him.

“Thank you, my
lord. Gramercy,
’
tis a wonder you were standing
here to catch me. May I walk back with you?”

Alex nodded only
out of politeness.
“If
you wish.” He turned away, but then heard the sound again. A muted thumping, as
if someone with thickly gloved hands were knocking on a door. “What is that I
hear?”

Agnes blinked
and glanced around. “I hear nothing, my lord. If you please, may I take your
arm? I have a chill today, and you are so warm. And...I would like to comfort
you.”

Alex shook his
head and put up a hand. “I do not want your comfort.”

Agnes’ mouth
opened, then closed. Her gaze dropped to the ground. “Is there no chance for
us, then?”

Alex’s grief
pinpointed in a flash of fury. “What is wrong with you? There never
was
a chance with us.”

“Oh, Alexander.”
Her moist-eyed gaze slid left and right, and she licked her lips. “I wanted to
be your wife. I—I love you.”

Alex wasn’t
listening. There it was again, that knocking sound, but fainter now and slowing
in cadence. He fell to his knees and peered down into the hole where
Katherine’s coffin rested, covered now by a thick layer of dirt. The sound was
coming from there.

Thump. Thump.
Then, silence.

The man with the
shovel had stopped and was staring down into the hole.

A sudden, sick
tilting in Alex’s gut made his hands grow clammy. The breath left his lungs.
Edward’s words rushed back, words he’d spoken to Agnes on the day Alex stood
outside the herbarium with his book.
Do not touch that. It is mandrake root.
Makes one sleep like the dead.

Words tore from
Alex’s throat as he leaped into the hole and frantically dug away at the dirt.
“Oh, God. She is alive. She’s alive!”

****

Voices. Murmurs.
Dank earth smell and inky blackness.

Death slithered
through her mind.

Shouting. God’s
angels had come to fetch her.

A scraping,
then, furious and fast, as if the world around her were falling apart. And more
shouts, these frantic. And clearer.

The pounding
above her grew horrendous. These were no angels. Hell must be her destination.

Screaming.

“Agnes, what
have you done?”

“We’re almost
there.”

“Open it!”

A grating along
the top edge spilled sudden light into her prison. Katherine opened her mouth
and sucked in life.

A face drew
close to her. “Katherine. My love.”

Large hands
cradled her cheeks. Warm lips pressed to hers.

Alex
.

He couldn’t stop
watching her. Katherine slumbered peacefully next to him on their bed, one hand
curled loosely into a fist on her chest. Gently, Alex skimmed his hand over the
back of hers and followed the curve of her fingers.

The purple
shadows under her eyes would fade. Healthy color would return to her smooth
cheeks.

She stirred
beside him.

He looked past
her at the slivers of golden afternoon sun that rimmed his heavy drapes. His
heart had been like those drapes, shutting out whatever bright hope and love
that had tried to break through.

But now his
heart had opened, and the light streaming into it was Katherine. She had given
him a second chance at happiness.

“I love you,” he
whispered in her ear.

Katherine opened
her eyes, stretched, and smiled at her husband. “I love you. What hour is it?”

“Almost four of
the clock.”

“I could fairly
sleep the day away.” Katherine brushed a stray hair from Alex’s forehead. “Do
you think our child will be all right?”

Alex lay a hand
on her belly. “The doctor seems to think so. You continued to breathe
throughout your sleep although no one could see it. And he said anyone daft
enough to use soap on an injury such as mine had to be too stubborn to die.”

Katherine gave
Alex a pensive look. “Agnes. Is she...?”

“Gone,” Alex
said, handing Katherine a goblet of watered honey with orange. He tried to keep
the venom from his voice. “For so long I thought it was my fault. She did all
those things to Mary, my children, to you—to be my wife. They took her away
this afternoon.”

Katherine sat up
and sipped the drink. “What will become of her?”

Alex shrugged.
“Mayhap Rochester will step in.”

“Mayhap not. I
am sure he is gone on to his next conquest.” Katherine placed her cup on the
bedside table and snuggled into Alex’s arms.