He was still feeling her hand on his arm, like a ghost of things that would never come to pass.
“Give me a half-hour,” he said. “The sun will be down by then and I will call him away on some pretext. Move swiftly and try not to be seen, especially by your husband. Lock Lady Emelisseaway safely. We do not need her trying to escape and finding herself in a worse position than she is now.”
Alice nodded, picking up her needle once more but making no move to actually sew. “I will be ready,” she said.
Hallam simply nodded, perhaps thinking to say more to her but unable to summon the will. As he’d said, anything more said between them was futile. It was like self-torture, something neither of them wanted to indulge in. It would not change the situation.
But the situation itself could not change what was in their hearts.
With sorrow, Hallam quit the chamber as Alice silently wept.
CHAPTER FIVE
To the scentof rot and the sounds of sick men’s laborious breathing, Emelisse had fallen asleep, her head against the slick stone wall of the vault. She was cold and hungry, but her weariness superseded her other needs for the moment. Sleep was what she needed most.
To sleep and forget.
When next she realized, a soft female voice was filling her senses.
She awoke with a start.
“All is well, my lady,” a woman said, a warm hand on her arm to calm her. “Hurry, now. Help her to stand. We must remove her quickly.”
Suddenly, Emelisse was being pulled to her feet. She was so exhausted and disoriented that she had no idea what was going on until she caught a glimpse of a rather plain woman in a wildly ornate gown. She had jewels around her neck, on her ears, and in her hair, and it seemed so very strangely out of place in the filth of the vault. Emelisse looked at her, blinking.
“Am I dreaming?” she whispered. “Who are you?”
The woman simply smiled at her. It wasn’t an attractive gesture, but it was a kind one. Before Emelisse realized it, she was pulled from the cell by several well-dressed female servants, up that treacherous stairwell, and out into the night beyond.
The icy air of winter hit her like a slap to the face.
She was a little more lucid now, enough to notice that she was being quickly moved by at least four servants from what she could see. The bejeweled woman was moving swiftly beside her, making sure her servants were huddled around Emelisse like a shield, urging them to move very quickly. She kept looking around nervously, which told Emelisse that she was afraid of being seen. It was very confusing.
What in the world is going on?
The servants took her in through a kitchen yard, which was vast and well-kept. The sharp animal smells assaulted her nose. The clouds had rolled in sometime during the day, covering up the moon, so the only light was from the torches on the wall of the fortress and the fires in the kitchen yard. They came up behind the keep and in through a door built into the lower level.
It was dark in there, smelling of straw and grain. Emelisse didn’t sense danger or hazard from the women, which was why she was so willing to go with them. Anything was better than that hellish vault and they seemed to want to help her. Someone lit a pair of tapers and they hurried up a spiral staircase built into the wall of the keep, a narrow thing just like the staircase that led from the vault. Up and up they seemed to go, higher and higher, until they finally emerged onto a landing.
“Hurry,” the well-dressed woman urged softly. “Take her in there.”
She was pointing and the servants moved swiftly. Emelisse was pulled into a larger chamber, through it, and into a smaller chamber off to the side. It was there that her flight came to a halt and the bejeweled woman with the taper shut the door behindthem and bolted it. Holding up a taper to get a better look at Emelisse, she studied her for a moment before speaking.
“Forgive me for the swiftness of our actions, my lady, but it was necessary,” she said softly. “You are Emelisse de Thorington?”
Emelisse looked apprehensively to the women around her before answering. “I am.”
The women nodded. “I am Alice, Lady de Wrenville,” she said. “Covington is my husband.”
Emelisse wasn’t quite sure how to respond. She looked around at the serving women again, a small army who had moved her out of the vault, and she began to grow fearful and defensive now that she knew who the woman was.
Was she about to face a fate worse than the vault?
“Why have you brought me here?” she asked. “If your husband has sent you to interrogate me, then I will give you the same answers I have given him.”
Alice shook her head. “You misunderstand,” she said. “You do not belong in the vault, even if you are a prisoner of war. You will be held in this chamber, but you will be made comfortable and treated as a lady should be treated. I do not like that my husband put you in that terrible vault and if it was not for Hallam, I would not know anything of it.”
“Hallam?”
