Captive Rose (50 page)

Leila flinched as the door slammed shut and the bar
outside clanked into place. She was alone. In pitch darkness.

Great wrenching sobs began to tear at her throat and
chest, and for a long moment she was too paralyzed with shock to move. It was
only when she heard faint squeaking sounds that she gasped and fell quiet,
choking on her tears.

Dear God. She was not alone.

Shrieking in terror, she scrambled through the straw,
groping wildly for a corner. When she found one, she huddled there, hugging her
knees to her chest and pressing her wet face to the cold wall.

She bit her clenched fist until blood came, listening
as the straw rustled and seemed to come alive all around her. Something brushed
her foot.

She began to scream and could not stop.

***

Furious, Guy burst into Philip's bedchamber. His eyes
narrowed as his half brother rose in surprise from his writing desk.

"
Dammit
, man! What did
you say to her?"

Philip looked confused. "Say to whom? What are you
talking about?"

"Leila! She's gone, fled the castle, and I think
it's because of something you said to her."

Philip stared at him in disbelief. "Lady Leila is
gone?"

Grimacing from the pain in his leg, made all the more
acute by his chausses rubbing against the bandages, Guy leaned on a chair for
support. "Good God, man, haven't you heard the uproar outside? I've over a
hundred men mounting up at this moment to go out and look for her."

"No. I've been so absorbed in my work . . ."
Philip spread his hands. "Are you sure she's gone? Have you looked in the
hospital?"

"Of course! That's where I thought she was all
afternoon until I sent Enid a short while ago to fetch her. Enid found the
hospital empty and the
braziers
cold. No one has been
there for hours. As she came rushing back to tell me, she spied Nicholas
playing in some mud puddles near the kitchen. Do you know what he said when she
asked him if he'd seen Leila?"

Philip shook his head, his face pale.

Guy's gut twisted in torment, his anxiety eating him alive.
"Nicholas saw her by a wagon near the grain storehouse. She must have
hidden herself in it to get out of the castle."

"But have you looked everywhere else?" Philip
blurted. "There are so many places she could be—"

"She's nowhere to be found. No one has seen her,"
Guy cut him off sharply. Limping, he approached his brother. "What the
hell did you say to her the other night before Henry found you together in the
hospital? Damn you, Philip, you struck her!" His voice rose to a shout. "Tell
me!"

Clearly shaken, Philip sank onto the stool. "I—I
told her she was a curse to you and this household. I blamed her for the
dissension between us and for the assault that almost killed you, and I said
that it was because of your marriage that Lord
Gervais
was seeking revenge against you. I said I wanted to be rid of her and I made
her an offer. But she turned it down. I was so angry, I hit her . . ."
Philip's shoulders slumped, and he fell silent.

Guy was assailed by dread. "What offer?"

"If she agreed to leave that night, I was prepared
to give her enough money to see her way back to Damascus, with safe escort to
Marseilles."

"You would have done this to me?" Guy asked
incredulously, quiet rage building inside him. "You know Leila means more
to me than my life, yet you would have helped her to leave me?"

"I thought she was killing you with her cure!"
Philip exclaimed, his eyes heavy with remorse. "I didn't know what else to
do to get her away from you. How could I have known her eastern medicine would
save your life?" He lowered his head. "I'm sorry, Guy. Truly sorry. I
was wrong about Leila, about her skills. I've thought of nothing else for two
days. I was planning to talk to her tonight, to ask her forgiveness—"

"It seems you are too late," Guy said
bitterly. "Since she found so little acceptance here, maybe she decided to
take your words to heart after all. Or perhaps she planned to leave me all
along, and in that wagon she finally found her opportunity. Oh, God . . ."

"I cannot believe that," Philip objected. "When
she denied my offer, she said she had no wish to return to Damascus. I saw her
eyes, Guy. I would swear she meant it."

Guy was so mired in his tormented thoughts that he
barely heard him. He had never been at such a loss. Ah, Leila, why have you
done this? Why?

He simply could not bring himself to believe she had
left him out of hatred. Not after what they had shared earlier that day. She
had never made love to him so completely, so freely. It wasn't possible—or was
it?

Had her impassioned kiss, her trembling touch fooled
him so thoroughly? While he had exulted that he lived to hold her in his arms
again, what had filled her heart? Loathing? Resentment? She had lied to him
about going to the hospital. She had said she would
return,
that they would spend tonight together, when all the while she knew she was
going to leave him!

Guy clenched his fists. Had she saved his life, then,
not because she cared, but only because of her ingrained duty as a physician?
And when he had recovered, had she felt that her obligation was fulfilled? Dear
God, someone tell him it wasn't so!

"My lord. Griffin is saddled and waiting outside
the chapel."

Guy glanced up at Henry Langton in the doorway. "Are
the men ready to ride?"

"Yes. We await your orders."

"Surely you can't mean to join them, Guy,"
Philip said in disbelief, rising abruptly. "Your wound—"

"The hell with my wound! Do you think I could sit
idly by while my wife is out there somewhere, alone and unprotected?" Guy
ignored the burning pain in his leg as he moved with impatience to the door. "Enough
talk. It's already growing dark. I have discovered what I needed to know."

As he and Henry hurried down the stone steps, Philip
hastened after them.

"I want to ride with you, Guy. I want to help look
for Leila."

Stepping outside the chapel into a light drizzle, Guy
looked back at his half brother, his expression grim. "No. I want you to
stay here and pray, Philip. Pray very, very hard that we find her. I promise
you there will be hell to pay if we don't."

"Lord de
Warenne
!"

Guy turned as Robert
Burnell
rushed toward him, a stout, red-faced farmer puffing alongside the swarthy
knight. He recognized the man as one of his tenants.

"What is it?" he demanded, growing
increasingly impatient to begin their search while there was yet some daylight.

"My lord, this is one of the men who came to the
castle today for grain. He has some news—"

"Aye, my lord, news indeed," the farmer
blurted. "I only discovered an hour past, when I went to unload the wagon
and feed the stock, that my fine roan mare was stolen from the stable. I found
this" —he held out a piece of dove-gray fabric—"hanging from a nail
on the sideboard. I've never known a Welsh rebel to dress in fine velvet, my
lord. Then when I arrived here to report the crime, Sir
Burnell
told me about your lady . . ." He grew silent, looking extremely
uncomfortable.

Guy's pounding heart seemed to fill his throat as he
took the tattered fragment and rubbed it between his fingers. "It's from
Leila's cloak," he said. "Were you able to find any tracks after the
storm?"

"Aye, my lord, I followed what was left of the
hoofprints
for a good distance before I came here. They
headed west for about a half mile, then turned sharply south at the River
Usk
."

West and south, Guy thought, puzzled. Leila should have
ridden directly to the east if she was heading for London. Then where the hell
. . . ?

His gut instinct suddenly gave him the startling
answer.

"She's gone to her brother," he stated with
cold certainty. "I would swear it. There would have been no other reason
for her to ride south."

"God's teeth, my lord, why would she have done
that?" Henry exclaimed, shaking his head. Then he glanced sharply at Guy,
incredulity in his eyes. "Does she know of the trial by combat?"

"Yes. We were together when
Burnell
gave me the news. What of it?"

"She said something to me, my lord,
the
night you were wounded. It might explain—"

"Speak up, man!" Guy demanded.

"Philip had just left the hospital, and Lady Leila
pitied him, even though he had struck her. She said that Philip was only trying
to protect you, and that if she believed someone she loved was being
threatened, she would do the same. She would try to stop it."

Someone she loved . . .

Henry's words seemed to ring in Guy's brain, flooding
his heart with bittersweet joy.

Had Leila left him out of love? She had acted so
strangely after hearing that he would fight Roger. Had she gone to her brother
in hopes of somehow preventing the trial by combat? Surely she knew Roger would
not be swayed by tearful pleas. She would have to give him something, promise
him something. But what? All she had to barter with was
herself
. . .

"Mount up," Guy ordered, his realization
chilling him to the bone. "I have no illusions that Roger will release
Leila if I make a formal demand for her return. Though she went of her own
accord, she will be his prisoner now. And I have no patience to make
preparations for a lengthy siege. By the time we reach the
Gervais
fortress, it will be dark, and there will be no moon tonight to betray our
movements. We'll scale the walls and take them by surprise."

"And if Roger and his men already expect us, my
lord?" Henry queried, his face clouded with doubt.

"Unlikely. After his mistreatment of Leila at
Westminster, I'm sure Roger believes the last place I'd expect her to go would
be to him. And he probably thinks I'm still too ill to get out of bed even if I
did guess where she was, the bastard! I imagine that he and Maude are raising a
goblet right now in honor of their unexpected good fortune." Infuriated by
the thought, Guy seized Griffin's reins from his squire, adding grimly, "If
the fortress does prove heavily guarded, we'll just have to fight all the
harder."

As the two knights nodded in assent, Guy clenched his
teeth against the pain and hoisted himself into the saddle. He pulled his
restless war-horse hard about,
then
rode to the
gatehouse, where he turned and faced the crowded bailey. Forty armored knights
and almost a hundred men-at-arms stared back at him, silent and waiting.

"Prepare your hearts for battle," he roared. "We
ride against Roger
Gervais
! "

Chapter 27

Guy watched from the trees as a small force of thirty
men-at-arms carrying hastily constructed scaling ladders crept stealthily
across cleared ground toward the
Gervais
fortress.
When they received his signal, their orders were to clamber over the curtain
wall and open the massive gate to the remainder of his forces.

He took a deep breath and said another swift prayer of
thanks that there was no moonlight. A cold drizzle continued to fall and a mist
was rising from the river, but as yet it wasn't thick enough to grant them
extra cover.

"My lord, someone approaches along the road from
the village,"
came
Henry's tense whisper.

"Damn!" Guy hid himself behind a huge tree
trunk, signaling for the rest of his men to do the same. Their horses had been
left a quarter mile to the north as an added precaution against discovery. When
they got inside the castle, theirs would be a battle fought on foot and hand to
hand.

Guy peered around the tree, his gaze keenly piercing
the darkness. He counted three men on horseback. Excitement gripped him as he
realized they were headed for the castle, offering his forces an unforeseen
opportunity. If they could take down these men, three of his own knights could
proceed in their place and, when the gate was opened for them, the rest of his
men could rush inside . . .

Guy gestured for five knights to follow him. Swords
drawn, they crouched in the ditch at the side of the road until the
unsuspecting travelers were almost upon them,
then
attacked with silent swiftness. The three men were yanked from their saddles so
suddenly they had no chance to cry out, and their mounts were quickly calmed.

Only when the captives were dragged into the trees did
Guy discover one of the men was dressed as a priest. As the two
Gervais
knights were mercilessly dispatched, their throats
cut,
the clergyman was propped up against a tree, a blade
pressed beneath his fat double chin.

"Please do not kill me! I beg you—"

"Silence!" Guy hissed, towering over him. "Speak
only to answer my questions. Is that understood?"

The priest bobbed his head, his wide eyes showing white
in the darkness.

"Who are you?"

"I am Father Anselm, priest to Lord
Gervais
. My lord is expecting me at this very moment."

Guy's mind raced with this news. Obviously he would
have to include this priest in his new plan if they wanted to get beyond the
gate. "Do you always ride about with two armed knights as your escort?"
he queried tersely, thinking it strange.

"No, no. They were sent out to find me," the
man answered in a nervous rush. "I-I was in the village paying a call. My
lord
Gervais
wants me to prepare some special
documents which must be sent to the archbishop by morning. I tell you, he
awaits me with great impatience! He is sure to send out more of his men if I
don't arrive soon—"