She blinked. What did he just say? No. She heard him wrong. No! This was some sort of cruel jest. She asked him.
“Phillip DeAvoy,” he repeated. “He is alive.”
“No,” she groaned out loud. It couldn’t be true. Phillip was dead. Philliphadto be dead! She helped bury him! No! Bamburgh was mistaken. Her hands began to shake—along with the rest of her. “We buried him.”
“I know,” her captor told her. “He makes certain to tell anyone who will listen how he was buried alive. He escaped his grave and took his place as governor.”
Buried alive? He escaped his grave? Dear God, no! She never meant to…Julianna shivered in her spot thinking of it.
Phillip was alive. She was going back to him.
No. No way in hell.
Chapter Fifteen
Bamburgh and hismen (seven in all) made camp for the night on the outskirts of Cartington.
The viscount gave Julianna a tent to sleep in, but she sat on a stool outside of it thinking about all that had happened. Was Nicholas still alive? If he was, would he take back Lismoor from the English? If he was not…she couldn’t think of it. She refused. She missed him now more than ever before. The weight of it felt dangerously heavy. She missed Elias and Agnes…she looked away and wiped a tear from her eyes for Molly and Margaret.
She heard a sound when the wind died down and glanced to her left to see the viscount coming toward her. He carried a lantern, lighting his path and his golden countenance. He wore a long, brown coat over a stained léine belted at his narrow waist. His long legs were encased in breeches and boots. A strand of pale blonde hair had escaped the clasp at his nape and fell over his cheek and jaw as he sat on the other side of a fire.
“Why are you not in the tent I provided? There are wild creatures lurking about, waiting to devour you. You should be inside.”
She wondered if he was speaking of animals, or his men. “I cannot sleep, my lord.”
“Louis, please,” he insisted with an easy smile she remembered from traveling with him and his grandmother in the carriage to Rothbury. “Tell me what is troubling you.”
“You, for one,” she told him honestly. “Did I meet you just so you could deliver me back to my nightmares? Or was it for a better purpose?”
His smile widened in the moonlight. “Miss Feathers, I never do the ordinary. But do not think I will risk my neck for you or your cause. I am fighting for enough already.”
“Of course.” She remained quiet after that, partially because the wind picked up and was whipping their words away.
“Do you work for Phillip?” she finally asked. “Did you tell him you knew where I was?”
“Aye. To everything,” he answered honestly. “I did not know you were married to him.”
She had told him some things about her life with Phillip on the way. She wanted him to know what she was facing when he brought her back.
God help her, she wasstillmarried to Phillip! Waves of panic and fear threatened to drown her, engulf her in hopelessness.
Was Elias safe? What if he no longer had a father? Elias could be an orphan. She would take him, become his mother and tell him all about his father.
William. Nicholas. He couldn’t be dead. Not when they were just finding each other again. She loved him and she ached to tell him. He couldn’t be dead and Phillip, alive.
“Come, let us speak in your tent.” He stood up and invited her inside.
She didn’t know him. She didn’t want to be alone with him. She didn’t want to put him to sleep and face his men in the morning without his protection. Their eyes had strayed many times to the woman entering their company. They were hungry to devour her. She could feel it any time one of them was in her sight. She could run, but how far would she get before she froze to death?
With no other option, she went when he commanded and followed him into the tent, her fangs ready.
“Was the governor a difficult man to love?” he asked when they were inside. He set his lantern down in the center of the space and sat down on one of the loose cushions covering another corner. “Was he unfaithful?”
She looked around for another cushion to sit. He tossed her one of his. “He was impossible to love,” she told him as she sat. “For me at least.”
“Did he beat you?” he asked in a softer tone.
She looked away and heard him swear under his breath. “All right,” he agreed, “we will figure something out.”
