He gave her a mischievous grin. “Of course it is. The baron waits in yonder wood with Oncle Jehan and Charles. They’re having a row about who should come and rescue you and Lady Genevieve.” He looked down at the woman and frowned. “Is she ill?”
“How—how—” Simone brought the hand not holding Genevieve to her mouth, hysterical hope threatening to spin the hall into dizzying nothingness. Nicholas had come! He’d used Didier to find her!
He’s come for his mother, not for you,a hateful voice of reason said to her, but Simone did not care. He’d come, which meant he was safe.
“Yea, Didier,” she croaked. “She is quite ill.”
The boy’s face was solemn, thoughtful. “I am very sorry to hear that. She is a nice lady.” Then he looked around the room, touching his thumb to each of his fingers.
“What are you doing?” Simone asked, ducking her head behind Genevieve’s.
“Counting.” He scrunched up his face. “Lord Nicholas bade me see how many men were about. Sister, what is ten and six and ten?”
“A score and six,” Simone answered, dazed, her mind still reeling. “But how will you…?”
“We have a plan,” the boy said simply. He popped onto his feet. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“Didier, wait!” Simone said, a bit loudly. She did not want to be left alone again.
But Didier was already gone and Armand was approaching, looking highly agitated and rubbing at himself as if he were a hound beset by fleas.
Looped around his crippled forearm was a long, dirty length of rope.
“What are we waiting for, FitzTodd?” Jehan demanded for the tenth time since they had spotted the abandoned abbey below. The relentless rain dripped from the man’s hood. “If Simone is indeed in yonder keep, she is in great danger! Let us go now, before it is too late for her or your mother.”
“I agree,” Charles Beauville said in an accusatory manner that set Nick’s teeth on edge. “Why have we traveled this long distance if you have no plans to approach Simone’s abductor?” He raised a sparse, effeminate eyebrow. “I cannot blame you for your fear, but—”
Nicholas growled, at the very ends of his patience with the haughty Frenchman. Nick seized the man by the back of his neck and thrust him forward to the very edge of the wood, Charles Beauville scrambling on the tips of his toes to keep up.
“See you those lights, you pompous idiot?” he demanded, releasing Charles. “They aretorches.Armand is not yet so deluded that he would attempt this deed alone. Do we charge blindly ahead, we shall put the women in more danger than they already are, and die ourselves.” Nick spread one arm toward the lair. “But, do you have a death wish, please, be my guest.”
Beauville paled, and his mouth gaped open and shut like a fish’s.
“He’s right about that, son,” Jehan intervened, coming to stand between the two younger men as the lightning flashed. “We must think this through, if only for Simone’s sake. But FitzTodd”—Jehan turned his slender face, the boning, the eyes so like Simone’s, toward Nick—“I fail to see how standing about will garner us the information we require.”
Nicholas turned from the men and scanned the steep track below. Still no sign. “We’ve a spy within the very den,” he said over his shoulder.
“A spy?” Charles squawked. “Why did you not say something? Jehan, I—”
“Who?” The old man ignored Charles, touching Nick’s shoulder. “Who else would know where to find her? Who would aid us?”
Nicholas looked at Jehan, saw the desperate hope in his eyes, the pleas for Nick to confirm the old man’s greatest fear and also his wildest hope.
He knows,Nick thought.Whether Simone confided in him or nay, this man knows.
“Who do you think, Renault?” Nick said, not unkindly. “Who, indeed, would care enough for Simone to travel all this way? Who could gain entrance to the abbey without being detected?
“Who bears Armand a grudge greater than any of us three?”
Jehan’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and the old man’s eyes welled. “Didier?” he choked.
Nick nodded.
Charles gave a strangled, wild sound and stepped forward once more, his face the color of the foam on the beach below. “That’s quite enough, FitzTodd! I know not what game you play, but I’ll not stand for it!”
Nick looked at him mildly. “Have you finished?”
“I—I—” Charles stuttered, and then closed his mouth in a prim line.
