The Dark Knight (33 page)

The thought had come from nowhere, but she latched on to it like a lifeline. It was a lie, of course, one he pretended not to hear. At this point she had no idea if her father would even welcome her return, much less reward it. Baron Weston had done many things over the years to ensure her welfare, but she suffered no illusions
that he would risk his position to protect her from the king, and probably not from the Segraves, either. Unless he wanted to betray his king, she was unmarriageable, which also meant she was worthless to him. A liability rather than an asset. A very dangerous liability. Baron Weston was a fair and just lord, but he would sacrifice her without hesitation for the greater good of his people.

“I am more valuable than you realize,” she said, trying a different tack, pleased when that announcement got his attention.

He turned onto his side and angled his arm to prop up his head. His face was devoid of emotion, but one brow rose slightly. “Pray enlighten me, my lady.”

“Do you know why Faulke Segrave wants to marry me?” she asked.

“Aye.”

“An alliance with my father was only part of the reason,” she said, certain he was unaware of Segrave’s real reasons, yet hesitant to reveal them. Both her parents had warned against revealing her mother’s heritage to anyone, but what would they expect her to do if it was no longer a secret? Segrave knew. It seemed obvious the king knew as well. Did Dante? “A marriage to me means much more than an alliance with my father.”

“I know of your ties to the Welsh crown, if that is what you are trying to tell me.”

“Oh.” She had not expected the king to be so free with the information. “Then you know I am worth a large ransom to the Segraves or any number of Marcher barons. You could become a wealthy man.”

“I am already a wealthy man.”

“I did not realize assassins were paid so well that the promise of a rich reward would not prove tempting.”
She also did not realize how insulting the words sounded until she heard them aloud.

His brows simply rose a little higher. “I eliminate traitors to the crown. Do you truly think I would become what I hunt?”

She had not thought of him that way, as a hunter, a predator. Yet that was his role and he was extremely good at his profession, if any of the stories about him were to be believed. Still, he hardly fit the tales that said he killed only for gold and his own bloodlust.

It was just her luck to be held hostage by a man reputed to be a greedy villain with no conscience, and yet he had no interest in wealth or rewards if it meant betraying his loyalty to the king. She supposed that made him an honorable man, in his own way. “You could say I escaped.”

“You are grasping at straws.”

He was right. She pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze.

“The king will never allow you to marry Segrave or any other man who could pose a threat to him in Wales, now or in the future,” he said. “There is nowhere in Edward’s kingdom that you can run to escape who you are, Avalene.”

He was right, but that did not make the truth less painful. If only—

She cut that thought off before it could form. Wishes and dreams were now beyond her grasp. What she must concentrate on was what she needed to do to get through each day, hopefully no worse off than she was the day before. She forced herself to ask the question whose answer she dreaded most. “Am I to be imprisoned in the Tower?”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I do not yet know your ultimate fate, but I have endured a
great deal of trouble to bring you to London alive. If you are to be … confined, I doubt you will be mistreated.”

The answer was both a relief and a disappointment. She had already pieced together that much on her own. “What will happen when we reach London?”

“You will stay with me until I have a chance to meet with Mordecai, one of Edward’s advisers, the one who sent me on this mission.” His mouth became a hard line as he studied her face, his eyes dark with intensity. “Once your fate is decided I intend to set sail for Italy, likely within a few weeks of our arrival in London. I have no plans to return to England, and the King’s Assassin will cease to exist.”

“I—I see,” she murmured. Her battered heart plummeted. Here was the proof that she was nothing more to him than an assignment. He intended to abandon her to an unknown fate. He would sail away and leave her behind, probably in some damp, dark cell where she would rot her life away. She would never see him again. She would never see anyone again, save her jailers. Meanwhile, he would go on with his life and forget all about her. Just as her father had done.

The sound of her heartbeats was smothered by a cold sense of calm that started at her core and spread outward until every part of her felt numb. “Thank you for telling me.”

She turned onto her side to face away from him and closed her eyes, feigning sleep until it finally overtook her.

The numbness lingered the next day. She awoke wrapped in Dante’s arms, just as she feared she would, but the cold calm in her veins insulated her from any embarrassment. She simply rolled away and rose from the bed without looking at him. It didn’t take long to gather her cloak and walk to the main part of camp where her seat on the cook pot awaited.

No one spoke to her, although Rami watched her with a worried expression and twice seemed about to say something before he changed his mind. His silent offering of food to break her fast was rejected. The men ignored her completely until her horse was saddled and ready. Dante knelt next to the horse on one knee so she could use his other knee as a step to reach her saddle. She did so without her usual word of thanks.

The only thing that gave her pause was when he handed her the reins without explanation. Did they think she no longer contemplated escape? If so, they were sadly mistaken.

The countryside flowed past her in a blur of lush landscapes that left no more than faint impressions of greens and blues. Her thoughts were focused on entirely different scenery, the image of a chamber that looked remarkably like one of the cells in Coleway’s dungeons, roughly hewn from the castle’s stone foundations, cold, damp, windowless darkness. If a chamber such as this was her future, she wouldn’t last the year.

She knew she should put more thought into an actual plan for escape, but there was still nowhere to run. Aside from being easy prey on the open road, where would she go?

She thought of the fairs at Coleway when people crowded into the castle from every corner of Lord Brunor’s lands, the crush of crowds near the gates and in the streets of the village. Surely London would be that crowded all of the time. If she slipped off her horse and ran, it would not be so hard to become separated from her captors and be lost in the sea of humanity. She had to believe it was a possibility. Only she could not see what would happen beyond her initial escape. Where would she run to in the city? No one would give her sanctuary against the king, not even the Church.

A solution to that problem came to her midmorning, a solution so obvious, so simple, so
perfect
that she wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her earlier. Avalene de Forshay could not seek sanctuary, but a woman unknown to anyone could do as she pleased. She would use a false name and concoct a plausible story that would explain why she was at loose ends in London.

She would be a poor knight’s widow who had been turned out of her home by a cruel lord. Aye, she would tell this fantastical tale to the first kindly-looking person she came upon and beg them to help her.

Her skill with a needle and thread was exceptional. If
she could find someone who could direct her to the tailors’ guilds, surely she could find a kindhearted seamstress willing to accept her as an apprentice. Surely someone would recognize her talent and take her in?

The firmer the plan became in her head, the lighter her mood turned. The future was not so bleak after all. It might not offer the comforts she had once assumed would always be hers, but compared to dying in prison, meager poverty would be a large step up in the world. It was not the life she was meant for, but she would make the best of whatever her new life offered her. She always did.

“Are you hungry?”

Dante now rode next to her whenever the road allowed, but this was the first time he had spoken to her since last night. She shook her head without looking at him.

They rode awhile longer in silence. Agnes was a nice name, very common, very competent sounding. Her dead husband would be Sir Percival, of course, but she could not decide if she would paint him as the most wonderful of men or the worst. The lord who turned her out would be the worst, she decided, while Sir Percival would wear the title of “wonderful” in her tragic tale. He would live on in her memory in all his chivalrous glory. Live on figuratively, that is, since he had so recently died a tragic death. A
painful
, tragic death. A
lingering
, painful, tragic death. Oh, how her poor beloved had suffered!

Her flights of fancy actually made her smile. Who knew she had such an entertaining imagination?

“Is there something wrong with you?”

She turned to look at Dante and her humor fled. The heat of the day had melted away some of her numbness. A tentative flash of pain rippled through her chest, testing the waters. She drew a deep breath and pushed it away. “Nay.”

“Have you been in the sun too long?” he asked. There was a concerned look in his eyes. He must have orders to deliver his prisoner in good health. “Do you want a drink of water?”

“Nay.”

“Why were you smiling?”

Because I was thinking of ways to describe your death to others. Come to think of it, you might have some good suggestions on the subject. Would you mind sharing the details of a few lingering, painful deaths?
Her smile returned. “I was just thinking pleasant thoughts.”

He looked dumbfounded. “About what?”

Apparently captives on their way to a lifetime of imprisonment were not expected to make the journey looking quite so cheerful. The last thing she needed was for him to suspect she was plotting an escape. She tried to think of something that would distract him from her odd behavior. “Are you going home to Venice, or are you from some other part of Italy?”

He continued to stare at her in silence, his suspicion clearly aroused.

She lowered her gaze and pretended great interest in untying the knot in her reins. It was a stupid question. None of her business. Why should he—

“I am going home.”

Relief washed through her, but he still watched her with a wary eye. Keep him talking. “Why?”

“Do you remember the story I told you about my uncle,” he asked, “the uncle who seized everything that my father owned when my parents died?”

“Aye.” She remembered the tale, one she had dismissed as another of his lies.

“The story was not far from the truth, except that it was one of the king’s advisers who took in my brother and me when we reached England, rather than your father.
I also left out the fact that my uncle ordered my parents’ deaths and I was never able to prove him guilty of the crimes. He died recently and I am returning to Venice to reclaim everything that he stole from us while he was alive.”

Ah, so it was not to be the pleasant journey that she had imagined. She glanced over to find him gazing at some point on the horizon, his profile the same as the one she had so recently sighed over and admired, his expression suddenly unreadable. Why was he telling her about his family? More to the point, why did she want to know more? The need to keep him distracted was as good an excuse as any to keep him talking. “What were your parents like?”

Surprisingly, he told her. He spoke hesitantly at first, but soon the words began to flow freely. His father was a wealthy merchant who met his mother on one of his journeys to England. She was the youngest daughter of an English baron who was more interested in the rich dower Dante’s father provided than the fact that his daughter would be wed to a dreaded foreigner. However, his mother had loved Venice and never felt any desire to return to England.

He made mention of his mother’s preference for Venice several more times in slightly different ways, as if this were an important part of his stories. She could not understand its relevance and dismissed the oddity. She found herself drawn in to his childhood world as he told her things that made her feel as if she knew his parents personally.

And then he began to tell her about Venice. He painted such vivid pictures with his words that she could almost hear the water rippling through the canals and feel the Adriatic breezes that cooled the city. She found herself reluctantly fascinated by the tales of a land so vastly different
from her own, yearning to hear more about a city she would never see.

The more he talked, the harder it was to remember that they would soon be parted, that he intended to abandon her in London. He even spoke as if they would see the sights of Venice together, a mistake that eventually ended the tales of Venice. It happened while he described one of the more exotic foods of his homeland, one made of
moscardino
, a sea creature that sounded truly gruesome. When she made a face, he laughed and said she would have to try the dish before she decided it was not to her liking.