The Forgiven Duke (A Forgotten Castles Novel) (9 page)

The regent gaped, looked at Gabriel in shock, and then looked back at the massive structure in the room.

“As you can see, someone has been building the plans in that manuscript. I believe we are seeing something very dangerous.”

The regent shook his head at the massive machine, walking toward it and touching it. He turned toward Gabriel and appeared to be shouting, but Gabriel was able to make out the words. “And very valuable. This must be the work of Brooke.”

“Yes, I believe he must have hired someone to decode the partial manuscript I was just studying. Someone who is an expert in mathematics and science. Considering the manuscript was written decades ago . . . it’s astonishing really. Augusto must have been a genius.”

“Come.” The regent beckoned him back into the library. He motioned toward the desk with pen and ink and sat down at it. He wrote quickly, passing the paper to Gabriel.

I owe you a debt, St. Easton. Now that I know the full importance of it, I will include you in the mystery of this manuscript. I haven’t told anyone of our alliance, but I expect utter compliance. Do you agree?

Gabriel looked up at a man he’d always thought rather worthless and countered, “Only if you allow me go back to Iceland and bring Alexandria here to safety.”

I’ve already set that ship in motion, literally.
The regent wrote.
She should be in London within the month.

“And then?” Gabriel asked.

“And then you will see to her welfare while I see to finding her parents and the missing part of this manuscript.”

Gabriel nodded. Alexandria wouldn’t like it. She would chafe at being pulled from her mission. But none of that mattered anymore. It was too dangerous. And if the regent’s soldiers reached her soon, they would demand she come straight to London, which might keep her from marrying John. It would be better if the command came from the regent. That way, if she thought herself in love with John, she couldn’t blame Gabriel.

He had to force her to remain with him in London.

It was the only way to keep her safe.

Chapter Nine

A
lex breathed in the cool afternoon air and closed her eyes, amazed by her horse’s easy gait. It was so smooth it felt as if they were sailing across the uneven ground. Sturdy and strong, the Icelandic horses were the prettiest animals she had ever seen. Baen, as Svein called her horse, and the entire Icelandic breed had two additional gaits no other horses in the world had. It was heavenly compared to that tall beast Missy had loaned her back in Carlisle.

“Svein, what is this gait called?”

Svein turned from his stocky, caramel-colored horse and grinned. “The
tölt
. It is very comfortable over long distances. You like it, yes?”

“Yes, very comfortable. She’s such a pretty horse too.” Her horse was dark cream with a white mane and gentle brown eyes.

“I picked her for you because she is so pretty. And for her name,” Svein bellowed back to her.

“Her name? Baen?”

“It means ‘prayer,’ and I think you have many prayers inside you.”

Alex shot John a smiling glance and he rolled his eyes. “It’s perfect, Svein. Thank you,” she stated, thinking that her continual communication with God, both thanksgiving and pleading, was the rock of her foundation that gave her the courage for this journey. How anyone traveled through life without that she could hardly fathom. She thought about that over the next hours as they climbed hills and picked their way across hardscrabble valleys.

She looked over at John, his bright head pressing into the constant wind, looking like a foreign prince from some long-ago day in his striped tail-cap and dark furs. His horse was called Blakkur, a dark brown horse with a black mane and a white star between his eyes. They both fit perfectly her imaginings that they were exotic people in a strange country on a mission of great danger. It wasn’t far from the truth, she supposed, shivering with excitement. She’d never felt so alive.

They’d been on the road from Reykjavik for a couple of days. The road had ended hours ago and now they traveled over rough, patchy ground, passing the occasional turf farm, roaming sheep, and hamlets dotted with cottages made from wood and peat. There weren’t many trees in this land. The wind roamed freely over the rocky soil and blew strong and constant, making her nose red and achy, but she wasn’t complaining. It felt as if she’d been dropped on a distant planet where the earth was dry orange and brown, with tufts of snow-covered grass. The loose dirt crunched under the mare’s feet, and Alex felt a rumbling beneath the surface, like any moment the rolling unease underneath them would explode and crack, pulling them beneath the surface of the crust. So strange—alien and exciting somehow.

Here, she was no longer Alexandria Featherstone. Here, she could be some otherworldly creature with kohl around her eyes and a strange headdress that reached toward the sky. She closed her eyes as the horse sailed across the choppy ground and imagined herself an Egyptian warrior queen, come to conquer an alien race.

“Are you sleeping?” John’s voice was low and quiet with humor.

Alex’s eyelids fluttered open. “No. But if we keep going much longer, I might fall asleep.”

“I think I could sleep while riding these magnificent animals. I wonder if we shouldn’t take them with us when we leave.”

“If you take them with you, they will never be able to return,” Svein informed from in front of them. The man had good ears. “Icelandic breeds are protected by law. No horse can be brought here. It might taint the line. And if an Icelandic horse leaves, it can never return.”

“Is that why they have special gaits and look so different?”

“Yes. And we plan to keep it that way.” The usually smiling Svein sounded more serious than he ever had.

The sudden sounds of pounding hooves from behind them caused Alex to spin around. A crack of sound exploded from behind them with shouts. Good heavens, they were being shot at!

The three of them hauled to a stop. John reached over and grasped the reins of Alex’s jumpy horse. “What’s happening?” she shouted. “Who are they?”

“Whoever they are, they will be upon us in moments.” John looked over at Svein. “We need to take cover.”

“There. Those stones in the distance.” Svein pointed toward the only possible place in the area. “Hurry!”

John let go of Alex’s reins and nodded that she go before him. Alex kicked the sides of Baen’s belly and yelled for her to go as another shot whizzed through the air. Had the Spaniards caught up with her?

The pile of stones off to one side of the path were hardly large enough for the three of them to crouch behind. Alex worried for the horses, who stood taller than their cover. If only there was something she could do. She really did need to learn how to shoot a pistol.

John had one that he pulled out and loaded with powder and shot. Svein pulled out a long, gleaming knife and a short sword. Alex grasped a large rock that was lying on the ground beside her. It was better than nothing.

Her heart thudded as the men drew closer. They reined in their horses and pointed their pistols toward the rocks where they crouched.

“Alexandria Featherstone,” one of them shouted. “It is she that we want. No harm will come to you if she comes willingly with us.”

“Over my dead body,” John murmured, leaning around the stone to aim at the men.

Svein slanted a look at Alex. “Do you know these men?”

Alex peeked over the stone and studied their faces. They were dark skinned and had dark hair—good-looking men. Possibly Spanish but she didn’t think so. The man’s accent sounded different. She sank back down. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“What do you want with Lady Featherstone?” John shouted.

The sound of a pistol going off answered.

John growled low in his throat, leaned around the side, and shot back at them. Alex heard one man howl and the sound of the horses’ panicked whinnies. She peeked over the top again and saw that one man was down, still moving but injured. The other man was trying to keep his horse under control while keeping his pistol aimed at them.

“You should not have done that,” he shouted with a heavy accent. “Now, you must die.”

“John, shoot the man on the horse. I will charge them.”

John nodded, aimed, and shot while Svein waited for the retuning fire and then ran from around their stone cover so fast that it took Alex’s breath away. She peered out again, seeing Svein charge the man on the horse. John reloaded and ran from the other side, toward the man on the ground.

Alex watched in awe as Svein tore the man from his horse. He had pulled out a sword, though, and looked to be quite good at wielding it. She bit down on her bottom lip, her gaze darting from John, who was holding his pistol on the man on the ground and seemed to have him under control, to Svein, who was not faring well at all against the darker man.

A sound escaped her throat when Svein’s foe backed him toward her, the tip of his blade at Svein’s throat. He seemed about to run him through! They turned, the man now with his back to her and getting closer.

Without thinking, she rose up as tall as she could and flung the large rock in her hand at the man’s back. It hit him in the head, made him totter and grip at the sword. Alex screamed as the sword slashed down across Svein’s chest, leaving a well of red.

“John, help him!” she shouted. Thinking to hold the pistol on the other man she ran over and ripped it from John’s hands while the other man turned, rage in his dark eyes. Svein stumbled and dropped to one knee on the ground.

John let Alex take hold of the pistol and pulled out his sword, turned to the foe, and hissed out, “Don’t get too close to him, Alexandria. Just hold it on him.” She nodded, keeping her gaze trained on the man, who lay still looking at her with narrowed eyes. She could see John fighting the other one from the corner of her eyes.

John was good. She could see the difference between Svein’s and his heavy movements. So, too, could his opponent, it would seem, since he started backing away. It wasn’t long, a flash of quickly executed movements and then a sickening sound, the blade going through flesh and the groan of the man. He slumped to the ground.

The man lying at Alex’s feet made a harsh sound in his throat and turned his face toward her. He spat at her, gasping out, “Stupid girl. You are undeserving of the Carbonari—” He paused, his breathing coming in short puffs, his face grimacing with pain. “You do not deserve . . . what your parents—”

Alex crouched beside him. “My parents? You know my parents?”

He turned his face away and breathed his last.

“No, wake up.” Alex turned his face. “Who are you?”

Nothing. The man was dead. She turned to see John coming toward her. “They are both dead then.” He held out his hand to help her up.

“Who were they? Oh, John, he mentioned my parents. What if they sent these men? What have we done?”

TWILIGHT DEEPENED INTO THE LONG
darkness. The creak of the saddle leather, the whistle of the wind, and the crunch of loose earth under Baen’s hooves made an oddly calm melody that fit so well here. Alex tilted her head back and breathed in the cold air, watching a million stars come dancing out, the edges of light still lingering around the circle of the earth.

A strange and fantastical beauty here, Father. Is this what my parents love so much? This . . . everlasting adventure? But what of the men they had recently buried? How could any adventure be worth the loss of lives?

She looked at Svein and took a breath of relief, glad his wound was only a long scratch down his chest that they had easily bandaged up. She didn’t know how she would have gone on if he had been killed too.

She looked at John’s moonlit silhouette and felt another twinge of doubt and fear. He always made her laugh, made her feel like they were on an adventure together, but now, things seemed so serious between them. He’d killed two men for her. And when she thought of the life marriage promised, she shrank inside. Everything in her strained for this . . . what they had now—adventure and danger and . . . meaning, but that seemed so wrong. Life lived in a house in Dublin, a normal life like the one John promised seemed the right path, the right choice, but then why did the thought of it smother her? What was wrong with her?

Svein held up his hand to stop them. “We’re nearing Lake Mývatn. Stay close. Many hot springs are coming up.”

The little path they were on meandered near the dark waters of Lake Mývatn. They wound around it for another hour, hearing bird call and the forever wind that pushed against their faces. As the trail dipped south, the wind turned sharper, moaning with an unease that made Alex shiver inside her furs. She nudged the mare closer to Svein and felt a tingling crawl of fear. “Will we stop for the night soon?” Her voice was quiet in the darkness, afraid to shout and wake up the ghosts that seemed to be hovering about.

“Yes.” He grinned back at them, his white teeth lit by the moon, his eyes gleeful. “We are almost there. Just stay close. We must watch for fissures. Some are deep and could cause great injury to the horses and ourselves.”

Alex looked back at John, her brows drawing together, and shot him an anxious glance. John just shrugged, motioning to keep up. They stepped around pools of dark water, some bubbling, some with steam coming from them, a sharp, sour smell in the air. Alex wrinkled her nose but said nothing. It was too otherworldly to speak aloud.

Sudden dark towers rose from the earth in front of them. Was it a castle? A fortress? Alex peered through the dim moonlight, leaning forward and breathing deeply in and out. Great towers rose into the night sky with oddly placed round windows. Closer and closer until Alex saw that they weren’t buildings at all, but twisted, bumpy lumps of gigantic pillars and arches—all black.

Silently they rode up a slight hill and under a massive arch into what seemed to be a courtyard. Alex took a sudden inhale and stopped Baen. “Oh my,” she whispered.

Not a courtyard and yet one. Tall, uneven pillars, like black sand castles, surrounded them. It was as if the earth had burned down and this was all that was left. Hell, fire, and brimstone. She could smell it and taste the sharp metal tang on the tip of her tongue. No wonder they said when Satan had been cast down from heaven after rebelling against God, he’d landed here and made it his home on earth. She could almost believe it.