Linda Needham (19 page)

Alex turned to take his place at the table beside Talia, but she was already well flanked: the king on her left and bloody, drooling Conrad settling himself on her right.

Hell. Astounded at a world going ever madder, Alex sat down on Stephen’s left, feeling as pouty as a child, chafing at the blathering chatter between Talia and Conrad, trying to concentrate on Stephen’s questions about the terrain around Carrisford and the state of its armory and the best routes through the valley, when all he wanted was to separate Talia from Conrad, and Conrad’s head from his shoulders—

Bloody hell.

“Y
ou were right, Alex,” Stephen said, frowning down at the armory inventory. “You’ve not enough here to defend the castle for more than a week or two.”

Alex’s meeting with Stephen and his counselors in Alex’s chamber was lasting deep into the night. A distracting, disorienting eternity, while Talia was somewhere with Conrad.

“My armorers are fine craftsmen, my liege, quick and skilled, and have been working long hours. But as you’ve seen, I’ve only got two of them.”

“And I need Carrisford well equipped, Alex, if this campaign we’ve just planned against Gloucester is going to succeed. No matter who is here to lead the defense.” Stephen set down his
cup of wine and tapped on the parchment in front of his chamberlain. “Make a note to send a half dozen of my own armorers and enough iron to do the job.”

Alex knew that the king’s offer had all to do with his own royal interests, but he did appreciate Stephen’s ability to make it seem like generosity.

“My thanks to you, Your Grace.”

The remainder of the night was a mad turmoil of maps and charts, opinions and prognostications, all of which led unerringly to the near certainty that the king’s war was coming here, to Carrisford, to Talia and everyone she loved.

Stephen was sending more men as well, more weapons, and horses.

And Alex couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

When the crowd dispersed, Stephen finally propped his booted feet onto the table and leaned back in his chair. “They seemed to get on well, Alex. You must be pleased.”

“I’ve no complaints against your advisors, Your Grace. Save for William, who’s—”

“An ass, I know. But I wasn’t speaking of them. Have you no curiosity about Fitz Warren and your ward? How they got on this evening…without us?”

To counter his probing, Alex looked right at the king and said, “I’m sure they got on very well, my liege. At least I hope so.”

What a damned liar he was.

Stephen rose, stretched and yawned, then made his way to the door. “If you truly believe that Fitz Warren is the right and best man for Lady Talia, Alex, then I give you leave to make the match. If…”

Stephen said good night, leaving the rest of his statement hanging there. Leaving Alex to wrestle with it through his dreams and long into the morning as he finally sent the royal entourage on its peripatetic way.

Without ever setting eyes on Talia.

Or learning of Conrad’s opinion. Only that the man had left sometime before the king.

Alex had loved only once in his life: his brother. He’d had no idea at the time that love could be so precarious, so rare. Or the lack of it so debilitating. And now here it was, terrifying him again, making him feel powerless and aching to ask for more. For a family, just like this one that Talia had offered him so plainly.

The family he’d so roundly refused.

Feeling like a ghost, terrified now of actually finding Talia and learning that she had fallen deeply for Conrad’s charms, Alex wandered down to the lists, rounding the corner of the armory just in time to see Kyle on horseback, running full out for the quintain.

Aiming badly.

Bloody hell! The boy went down cracking hard, and Alex ran. He shoved the squires away. “Let me see him.”

The boy was staring into the sky, his eyes fixed on nothing, his mouth open, his body still as death.

“Christ, boy, breathe!” Alex gave his chest a thump with his palm. The gasp that came braying out of him sounded more like a wheeze from an old sackbutt than from a pair of human lungs.

Then a whole lot of coughing rolled the boy and brought him up onto his hands and knees. And started Alex’s heart beating again.

Knowing the shame of the first fall, and the second and the twelfth, Alex waved the others away, but stayed beside him, patting him on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Kyle.”

The boy finally sagged flat out on the ground again and whispered something unintelligible but universal.

“I know, lad. First time I landed on my back, I didn’t wake up for a full quarter hour.”

The boy turned his head, a watery eye showing over his crooked elbow, through his shock of de Monteneau hair. “You fell?” he asked, barely a sound at all.

Alex laughed hard. “So many times, Kyle, I stopped counting before I was seventeen.”

The wheezing slowed and Alex stood, lifting
the boy by his shoulder. “Come, boy, I have something to tell you. But not here; we’re liable to be run over by one of those young squires on horseback.”

The boy gave him a look of horror but followed Alex up the stairs toward the wall walk and the view of the bay beyond, his head drooping, his stride heavy, like a man approaching the gallows. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

“For what?”

Those eyes peered through that shock of hair again. “For falling.”

“You’ll fall a thousand times before you get it right. And then you’ll only fall on the odd Sunday. Be sorry only if you never try again.”

“Aye, my lord.”

How did one go about telling a young man that one was his brother?

All the time he’d wasted. The loss.

So many of them.

“Kyle,” he began, but then his mouth went pasty. “Well, uhm…’tis past time that I tell you this…this particular thing.”

“I know.” Kyle groaned and sagged against the short wall. “You don’t want me to squire anymore. I can’t blame you, my lord.”

“That’s not what I mean, lad.” Alex sagged too, feeling ancient and guilty and unfocused. “You’re a fine squire. And you’ll be an even finer knight.”

“You really think so?”

Alex saw Gil again in the eager honesty of the boy’s eyes. “’Tis in your blood.”

“How can you tell that?”

“I just know, Kyle. Because…” He truly wanted to tell him, but this was a profound truth that he himself was only just realizing, and the words seemed caught up on the lump in his throat. “Because you and I have a lot in common.”

“Oh, I double-doubt that, my lord.” Kyle laughed and brushed a piece of grass off his shoulder. “You an’ me?”

“Yes, and I’m not sure how to tell you this…” Because it will change so many things.

“The news that bad, is it?”

He’d once thought so. Learning of these brothers his father had left him. Spare ones. But now it seemed the opposite—somehow more than good.

Alex looked the boy in the eye, praying that Kyle wouldn’t hate him too much for having held back. “I should have said before this, when you were first sent to me. I didn’t because…hell, it doesn’t matter why…just that I’m saying it now. That you’re…Kyle, you’re my brother.”

Kyle raised his chin, cocked his head. “I know that, my lord.”

The wind caught his banner nearby and gave it a good snap. “What did you say?”

Kyle shaded his eyes and squinted toward the bay and then looked back at Alex. “Well, sir, I
know that your father was the same as mine. And so that makes us brothers. Halfway, that is. ’Cause our mothers were different.”

Alex studied him, disbelieving that the boy could have known this and not have said something. “When, lad? Did you know of our connection when you joined my service?”

“Aye.” The boy rubbed the back of his head, wincing some. “I don’t recall ever not knowing.”

“Christ, Kyle. You knew all this time, and you said nothing to me?”

He drew back, startled, worry creasing his forehead. “It wasn’t my place to bring up such a thing, my lord. It was yours.”

“Why the devil would you think that?”

The boy drew back further, shoulders hunched as though Alex had just struck him, and frowning down at his feet. “Well, because you are my liege lord, sir. I was plenty glad enough just to be near you.”

Bloody hell. Just to be near? What a sorry ass he’d been to the boy.

“And you were willing to settle for that little? For my unconscionable anger toward you, my coldness, when you knew all along that we were brothers.” Alex watched helplessly as huge tears gathered in his brother’s eyes.

Kyle sniffed them back and stiffened his chin. “Oh, but I wasn’t settling, my lord, I was proud of you.”

Damnation. “You’ll call me Alex, like a proper brother. Do you hear me?”

The boy’s eyes grew wide, terrified. “Yes, but I—” He swallowed loudly. “In public, sir? I couldn’t!”

“You will.” Which only made the boy recoil. Small steps would have to do. But there was plenty of time for that. He had begun to believe he had plenty of time for a lot of things. “All right, then. But you’ll work on it, Kyle.”

He nodded. “Aye, I will.”

“So how’s your head?”

A smile quivered at the corners of his mouth. “Hard. Like yours, I suspect.”

Alex roared with laughter. He took in great, delicious, salt-sprayed gulps of it, wondering why he’d waited so long. How he could have been so very stupid, so blind, in so very many ways.

And if Talia could possibly forgive him for it.

Talia didn’t know whether to be blisteringly angry at Alex, or sad or grateful or pleased, for leaving her with Conrad all night.

The man had been everything that Alex had promised. Kind and generous, honorable and intelligent, blessed with good looks and a sense of humor.

Making all the right overtures about marriage and children and Carrisford—

And it didn’t matter at all.

The king and his entourage were gone now, and the castle was beginning to show its fatal flaws. A day or two longer and it would be nothing but a fiery rubble.

Like the coward she was, she had evaded Alex all day, absenting herself from the king’s hurried leave-taking, avoiding the great hall, taking meals while hiding here in a corner of the cellar like the rat she was.

“Ah, there you are, my lady.”

“Jasper!”

“Hiding, I see, and well you should be.”

“I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself.” She popped the corner of bread into her mouth and stood up, brushing the crumbs off her hands. “What can I do for you?”

“I think you ought to come take a look at the east-facing loop passage. Doesn’t look good to me.”

“Show me.” Feeling as though she were skulking, she followed Jasper through the cellars and up a set of stairs into the east tower, and finally out into the dimly lighted corridor of arrow loops that ran between the towers.

“See right here. I think this doorway’s just about ready to go, my lady.”

Talia came around the corner of the corridor and stopped in her tracks. Jasper was pointing up at the empty keystone in the sagging arch not two feet above his head.

“Holy Mother of Jesus, Jasper, get back over here, right now!”

“It’s ready to go, ain’t it?” A thin stream of stone dust poured down onto his forehead and he frowned at her.

“Come here, Jasper!” Talia darted toward him, grabbed his hand and yanked him to safety.

An instant later the arch fell in, as though Jasper had been holding it up by sheer ignorance of the danger.

They both stared at the small pile of stones at their feet.

“You saved my life, my lady!”

“What’s happened here, Jasper?”

“Dunno, my lady. Leod’s been working here…”

Talia heard a shift of stones above them and pulled Jasper out of the way again, just as the rest of the ceiling began to fall in, the corbels giving way first, and then the flat cross-slabs, pitching into the corridor, one after the other, each landing just behind them, as Talia pulled Jasper with her, until they reached the safety of the tower.

“Dear God! Go, Jasper! Check from the opposite tower, but take care.” Her heart in her throat, Talia sent Jasper outside and waited in the archway while the dust cleared, terrified that one of the watchmen above might have fallen through.

“Hello?” she shouted into the lifting dust, finally clambering over the fall. Wondering if her
undermining had done this and what other dangerous traps she might have set around the castle without realizing it.

“Is anyone hurt?” she called again into the distance. “Helllloooo!”

“Hello?” Giddrey was right above her on the sill of the wall, peering into the breach. “Anyone hurt? Oh, my lady! Good God! Stay right there!”

Talia heard his footfalls on the tower stairs and met him on wobbling legs as he came flying into the room.

“Thank God, you’re all right.”

“Was anyone on the walk?”

“One very quick-footed watchman who ran like a hare. And, meaning no disrespect to you, my lady, but I’m getting you out of here before His Lordship has my hide.”

Giddrey shoved her the few steps down through the filtering dust and into the courtyard.

Into a very crowded courtyard, with Alex storming toward her at full tilt at the head of the mob, his face a fierce but unreadable mask.

One that would quickly turn to anger, when he discovered the cause.

And he would discover it, because he was a thorough man who would inspect every inch of the foundation.

Because he had a castle to sell.

And the evidence of all her digging—her treachery—was just waiting for him to discover it.
She’d be convicted and locked in his dungeon within the hour, and her neck in the noose by nightfall.

Running away seemed pointless.

Besides, Alex would be on her in the next breath, and her heart was already skipping and stuttering. Because she was madly in love with a dear man who needed so much more than she could give him.

The very man who was lifting her into his arms, enfolding her, holding her tightly against him. “Christ God, Talia! You could have been killed.”

Then his mouth was everywhere across her face—her eyelids and her temple and finally her mouth.

A long, deeply plundering, soul-melting kiss that struck the breath from her and left her weak-kneed and her head spinning when he held her at arm’s length from him as the others reached them.

“What the hell happened, Talia?” His eyes were hot and intense and traveling all over her as he turned her, went around her, feeling of her arms, her legs, her ribs, finally taking her head in both his hands and tilting her chin to him.

“Alex, I’m sorry, I—”

He grabbed her against him and held her as though he would never let go. And he whispered the most marvelous thing she’d ever heard, “Lord, if I’d lost you, Talia…”