“You will be giving up any chance of ever returning to England if I go with you,” she said softly. “The reputation youhave worked so hard to earn… the Scorpion… will be destroyed if you leave with Lady de Ferrers. Surely you know this.”
He was nodding before she even finished her sentence. “My reputation,” he said, “what I am, Anna… it means nothing without you. If I have to trade one for the other, then I will gladly take you over anything else.”
She stroked his face, cupping it in her two warm hands, as she looked him in the eye. He was so very sincere.
“Then I am yours, forever,” she whispered. “I dare not disappoint a man who is willing to sacrifice so much for me.”
He kissed her then, deeply and fully. He still felt the strong surge of lust in his veins for her, the sexual attraction he was unable to resist, but there was something more to the kiss as well. It went beyond the physical attraction and into the realm of emotional and spiritual completeness. She filled him like nothing else ever had and his soft-centered heart was now protected by the fierceness of her love. The walls he’d built, the ones she had broken through, were long turned to dust.
“Then tonight we will go,” he said against her sweet lips. After a moment, he pulled back to look at her. “I have many things to attend to now in preparation, but I will return for you in time for the feast. Will you be all right if I leave you alone for a while?”
She nodded. “I am much better now,” she said. “You have given me such strength. Nothing else matters as long as we are together.”
He smiled faintly, touching her cheek. “Nothing else,” he agreed softly. But his smile soon faded. “It is imperative that you do not open the door for anyone but me. You must trust me on this matter.”
She could sense there was something behind his statement. “What is it?”
He considered her question a moment before seeing no reason not to be honest with her; for her own safety, he needed to be. “I made an unfortunate discovery at the mass competition today,” he said. “The man who attacked you, the one who killed Magda, is indeed a man who has come after me. He tried to kill me in the competition and rather than kill him when I got the upper hand, I was forced to let him go. He is running loose, somewhere in this village, so you must stay vigilant and stay to your room. I will post guards at your door, but make sure you stay here and keep the door locked.”
She was looking at him with great fear. “Who is this man?”
He could see she was growing upset and put a hand on her cheek to soothe her. “A French assassin,” he said. “You need not know more than that, but know he is, indeed, after me and because of that, you must be vigilant.”
Unhappy and frightened, Annavieve pondered his explanation. She didn’t press him, however. She knew quite enough about the situation and probably more than she should.
“I will be,” she told him.
He kissed her one last time before rising from the bed and heading to the chamber door. “Whatever you wear to the feast tonight, remember that you will be traveling in it for a time,” he said. “After you pack, rest if you can. I have a feeling it is going to be a long night.”
Annavieve forced a smile, thinking of a great many things: the French assassin, the fear of the unknown, Magda’s death, and her mother’s rejection. All of it was swirling around in her mind but she forced herself to focus on the good of the situation– she and Kevin would leave tonight, forever. She would be with the man, loving him, for the rest of her life. There was great joy in that. Together, they would leave this turmoil behind and start anew. She relished the thought.
“I will,” she said. “I will await your return, my love.”
His gaze lingered on her a moment before winking boldly and quitting the room. Even in that last look, that last loving gaze, Annavieve felt more adoration and happiness than she’d felt in her entire life. She looked forward to a lifetime of it.
She could not have known that before the light, they would have to face a good deal of darkness together.
The trick would be to survive it.
*
Mimsy had managedto get away from Vietta on the premise of running to town to seek sleeping powders for her young charge. Vietta was an insomniac, even at her young age, and often the apothecary would stock sleeping powders made from herbs. It was something that Vietta had been dependent on for the past year so Mimsy, in her capacity as the young woman’s nurse, was in charge of making sure there were always enough sleeping powders for Vietta. It was under that premise that she left the de Lohr encampment late in the afternoon following the big tournament that had seen Fen de Lohr defeated.
Fen had been disappointed but not nearly so much as his father. Mimsy had observed the entire family in the throes of sorrow after that, which made slipping away a simple thing. Lady Agnes was comforting her son and husband and not apt to give a second thought to a servant who asked permission to go into the village. Lady Agnes even gave her coinage for the purchase. So, as the sun began to set over the brilliant blue fall sky over Berkshire, Mimsy headed over to the Dorset and Salisbury encampment.
She was looking for the duchess, of course, a young woman who looked a good deal like she had as a young woman. Tall, elegant and beautiful, Mimsy had thought there was something oddly familiar about the young duchess even before she knewthe woman’s name. Once she realized that Lady de Ferrer was the infant she had given up so long ago, it was as if her mind froze up. She couldn’t seem to think rationally. She had never imagined in her wildest dreams that she would ever meet her daughter, ever, so the introduction had rattled her to the bone.
When the duchess ran off, Mimsy had been glad. Vietta had been focused on the duchess and not Mimsy as the woman struggled to recover from her shock. But it was soon very clear that Mimsy could not forget about the duchess and she felt terrible that the woman had run off. If the duchess had been asking about Lady Alys, then it was because she knew of the woman’s relationship to her– somehow, she must have been told her mother’s name and where she had been born. Being naturally curious, she had asked about Lady Alys in the de Lohr household and Mimsy, upon hearing her name, had been stunned speechless. She had not known how to respond, or even if she should. She’d ended up making a fool of herself and hurting the duchess in the process.
Did she want to meet the daughter she thought she had lost? Of course she did. It was an opportunity she never thought to have. And to find out she was a duchess was a startling and proud thing;herdaughter, a duchess. Mimsy could only hope the young woman would forgive her for denying her. She had to apologize.
So she made her way through the Dorset and Salisbury camp and asked a soldier about the duchess, only to be informed that the duchess was not staying in camp but rather in town at an inn. When the soldier wanted to know what the old woman wanted with the duchess, since all Dorset men were on guard for the duchess after the attack against her earlier, Mimsy told the man that she bore a message for the lady from the House of de Lohr. The soldier then proceeded to tell the woman that the duchesswas staying at the Cock and Bull tavern. Mimsy thanked the man and made haste for it.
The tavern was on the outskirts of town with a heavy presence of Dorset soldiers both inside and outside of it. Mimsy wasn’t intimidated by the soldiers, however. She’d been around them her entire life and she’d long learned to ignore them.
Pressing into the tavern with its crowded, smelly common room, she stood at the entry a great while, searching for the duchess, but did not see her. Asking a serving wench the whereabouts of Lady de Ferrers, she was directed up the stairs. As Mimsy mounted the steps, an enormous knight with dark, cropped hair was emerging from one of the rooms. As she was going up, he was coming down. They met in the middle of the flight and he threw out an arm, preventing her from going any further.
“Who are you?” he asked, unfriendly. “What is your business up these stairs?”
