It was pitifully easy to slip into the keep. Nigel wondered how the lord and his people had managed to survive for so long. He used the cover of the crowd in the baily, neatly blending himself into the muddle of people trying to finish their work before the light of day was completely gone, to get into the keep itself.
Once inside, he hid himself in a small, shadowed alcove near the stairs and waited for George. By the time George sauntered in Nigel was so tense from waiting, to either act or be discovered, that he nearly shouted at the man. The way George was acting made the chance of discovery even greater. The man was trying not to appear as if he were looking for someone, trying so hard that anyone with eyes in his head would think he was acting suspiciously. He hissed to get George’s attention, then yanked the man into the tiny dark alcove beside him.
“Ye need practice, George,” he whispered. “Ye are about as stealthy as a cow.”
“And you are unsettlingly stealthy, like a ghost.”
“Where to now?”
“You must just follow me. It is one of those very convoluted things—in this door, out another, down the hall, up the stairs, around the corner.” His eyes widened when Nigel briefly clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Just go. I will be right behind you.” They slipped out of the shadows, and after George had taken only a few steps the man looked back over his shoulder. Nigel cursed. “Stop looking at me. Ye will just draw other eyes this way.”
As they slipped through the halls of the keep, Nigel decided that George had not exaggerated. Sir Vachel might be wrong to think no one knew about his secret room, but he was probably not in any great danger. Anyone trying to get to it risked getting thoroughly lost or eventually seen by someone. Several times he had to use the shadows to hide himself, but he knew he had a true gift for such a thing. It was not boastful to think that few people were as good at it as he was.
When they slipped into what George assured him was the last little hallway, it was completely dark. “How did ye come to learn of this?” he whispered as they inched their way along, hands on the damp wall to guide them.
“I told you that I am not blessed with any great courage,” George whispered in reply. “I have a need to find all the places to hide or to escape when I come to these keeps. Once, when I was little more than a beardless youth, I was caught in the storming of a keep. I saved myself by hiding under the dead. I now carefully search every keep I go to. These are not my lords, or my lands. I see no gain in dying for the fools.”
Nigel did not have any reply to that. It made too much sense. George was a freedman. In the end, his greatest loyalty was to himself and his large family. He grunted softly when he walked into George’s back, then grew very still as he heard the soft murmur of voices.
“We are there?” he asked.
“I but try to find the latch to the door.”
“Allow me.”
Inching past George, Nigel ran his hands over the heavy door until he found the latch. Holding his breath, tense with the need to be completely silent, he eased the door open. Stealth became a little easier as light from the bedchamber filled the cramped space. George began to inch along behind him as Nigel eased into the room, but he briefly placed a hand on George’s chest to hold him where he was. George had shown himself to be less than skilled at creeping around, but the man might yet get through this rescue without any suspicion falling on him if he just stayed out of sight.
The moment he slipped into the room, Nigel saw the couple on the bed. It took all of his willpower not to scream out his rage and immediately attack the man touching Gisele. As he crept up to the bedside, he almost felt Gisele’s pain and fear. She sounded brave but her hands were clenched so tightly at her side that the knuckles were shining white in the candlelight. Nigel saw the smallest hint of blood and realized that she had pierced her palms with her nails. He inched up to the side of the bed and silently drew his sword.
“Who is there to stop me?” said Sir Vachel.
Nigel pressed the point of his sword squarely between Sir Vachel’s slender shoulder blades. “Weel, I might be willing to give it a wee try.”
The man on top of Gisele tensed. Nigel saw him glance to the main door to the room, and his lips started to part. In less than a heartbeat he grabbed him by the hair, lifted him up enough to get a clear view of his face, and punched him on the jaw. He then dragged the man’s limp body off the gaping Gisele and quietly set it on the floor. When he saw that Gisele’s gown was open, her breasts bared, Nigel grew so furious that he sheathed his sword, drew his dagger, and reached for the unconscious Sir Vachel.
Gisele broke free of her shock as she realized that Nigel was about to cut Vachel’s throat. She scrambled to sit up, then grabbed his arm. She shivered when he looked at her, for she had never seen him that furious.
“You cannot kill him,” she whispered.
“I cannae believe ye have a drop of mercy in your soul for this bastard.”
“None, but I have a great deal of concern for you. Think, Nigel. Clear the anger from your mind and think. I have just lost over a year of my life running from the fury and vengeance of the DeVeaux, hiding from a punishment for a murder, a murder I did not even commit. I now see some chance of getting free of all of that. You have always had the chance to walk away, to turn your back on it all. The moment your knife cuts this man’s throat you will lose that freedom, and suffer as I have. We will both suffer being hunted down again, bounties placed on our heads. If you kill him I, too, will carry the weight of it, and this time there will be no way to deny it.”
“She is right,” whispered George as he tiptoed past them and latched the door to the outer hall.
“George?” Gisele stared after the man in surprise, then blushed and hastily redid her gown.
“I had a change of heart,” George muttered as he moved to the bedside, watching closely as Nigel took several deep breaths to calm his fury while he bound and gagged Vachel and finally moved away from the man.
“I see,” Gisele murmured as she got off the bed. “You will let me hang for murder, but not allow this.” She almost smiled when George just shrugged, then she turned to look at Nigel. “I am most interested in how you got in here, but at the moment I am even more interested in how we can get out.”
Nigel gave her one brief, hard hug, pleased to feel no rejection of his touch, then took her by the hand and led her toward the passageway. “I have a few things I am curious about, too. One being why a usually clever lass would flee safety and hand herself o’er to the enemy.”
Clinging tightly to Nigel’s hand as the three of them inched their way along the dark passage, she whispered in protest, “I did not hand myself over to them.”
“Ye practically rode up to their gates and knocked on them.”
