“It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left your side.”
“No, you had to do what you came here to do. I understand. By the way, did you win?”
“No, I jumped off the platform to find you.”
“Did you? Then you’ll have to challenge Karsten Bruslan again. You would have won.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHRISTOPH DIDN’T DOUBT THAT his prisoner was fast asleep after her harrowing brush with death today. She’d barely been able to keep her eyes open during dinner. He tried to sleep as well, but he couldn’t.
He didn’t think he was ever going to get the sight of her naked body out of his mind. Lithe, athletic, breasts proudly jutting. No soft curves, but tight ones. That body had been worked strenuously to become that firm. And yesterday in her cell, her gray eyes blazing at him, long black hair swirling about her hips in her underclothes. But the image that kept coming back to him most frequently was the one of her trying to sit up in that narrow bed in the cell, face flushed, glistening with sweat, hair damp as if she’d just had vigorous sex. That one had kept him awake long hours last night as well. Damn . . .
He was three times the fool for not grabbing the excuse she had given him to keep her by his side. She’d even repeated it tonight, that she was in danger, and had pointedly asked, “What if that thief is actually a Bruslan spy? If they get their hands on that bracelet, they’ll know I’m alive.”
That was a wild accusation, yet the thief in question had actually gone missing today before they’d returned to the palace. Christoph viewed that as a rather firm declaration of guilt, for the theft of the jewelry anyway. Telling her that did seem to relieve her mind a little.
What had stopped him from bringing her to his room where he wanted her? His guilt for not having watched her more closely at the festival? Probably. Her utter exhaustion? That, too. He should ruthlessly have taken advantage of that, but he couldn’t do it, even wanting her as much as he did. Why? Because he was beginning to believe she was innocent?
She was too intelligent not to have doubts unless she wholeheartedly believed what she’d told him. That made her the innocent English lady she’d been up to this point, and put the entire plot on her guardian’s shoulders. But was her guardian innocent, too, and merely coerced somehow to present this tale to her? That was much more credible than an assassin’s turning soft over an infant’s smile. But only her guardian could tell him the truth, and Alana would be the lure to catch him. That was assuming the man cared enough about her to find out what had happened to her after she’d entered the palace. So innocent or not, Christoph couldn’t release her.
Having finally nodded off, he was awakened by a woman’s scream followed by complete silence. He leapt from his bed and headed immediately to Alana’s cell to investigate. He found her crossing the storage room. Boris and Franz, who slept there, had also been roused and were trying to help her, but she wouldn’t stop until she saw Christoph.
“This is how you protect me?!” she accused him in a high-pitched, nearly hysterical tone.
He barely registered her question because his eyes were riveted on her blood-spattered white robe. He ran the rest of the way to her. “Why are you bleeding?”
“I’m not.”
He drew in his breath. “What happened?”
“One of your men tried to kill me!”
“My men?”
“I suppose he could have stolen the uniform,” she allowed, “but I did see it as he ran out the door.”
“Watch her,” he told his servants before he ran to her cell. At a glance, he saw the club on the floor, bloodied, and a trail of blood that led outside the cell straight to the armory.
The door to the armory was wide-open, as was the door to the ward.
The trail ended there, but footprints had been left in the newly fallen snow. The man hadn’t gotten far; he was bent over, a hand to his head, trying to make his way up the stairs to the parapets, where he could escape over the fortress wall.
Christoph didn’t shout for his guards, he wanted the man himself. He caught him at the top of the stairs, yanked him around, and slammed a fist into his face. Completely unprofessional, but the rage inside him for what the man had tried to do to Alana controlled him. Yet he hit him too hard. He heard the crack as the man’s back and head went down hard on the stone floor, and he didn’t get up. Christoph recognized him. Rainier, the man Alana had accused, had obviously snuck back into the ward tonight, or he’d never really left, had hidden instead. Either that or he’d had help, which was an even more alarming thought.
Christoph swore a blue streak. Two of his men on patrol in that section of the wall were already running toward him. “A traitor,” Christoph told them. “Lock him in the prison. Search him first, you’ll likely find the master cell key on him. Assign no less than four guards outside his cell. If he’s not there in the morning for me to question, there will be hell to pay.”
He went straight back to the storage room. Franz was wringing his hands. Boris was trying to comfort Alana. It didn’t look to be working because fear was still etched on her face.
He couldn’t blame her for being hysterical and angry. “I caught him,” he assured her calmly. “I’ll interrogate him as soon as he regains consciousness.”
“The thief?”
“Yes.”
“I knew this could happen,” she said shakily. “But I don’t think I ever really thought it would, that I’d actually have to fight for my life.”
Inclined to think she really was holding herself together with a thin thread, he moved to take her out of there immediately. Her sudden gasp as her eyes moved over him gave him pause. Had she really only just noticed his lack of clothing?
