My Ruthless Prince

by Gaelen Foley

  Emily held her head high though her stomach was in knots. Drake’s presence beside her helped her keep up a confident façade, but at the moment, even he seemed like a stranger. Maybe all this had been a very bad idea. But it was far too late to turn back as she was escorted into an arcaded courtyard at the heart of the mighty keep.

  Drake kept a steadying hand on the small of her back. But with the other guards around them, he still avoided eye contact with her, staring straight ahead, his chin high. Something about the set of his broad shoulders warned her he was prepared to fight if it came to it. God. The last thing he needed for the sake of his dubious sanity was to engage in more violence. In the heart of the Promethean stronghold, however, with guards on every side of them, she realized that what he had said earlier was true—one wrong move, and they both could die.

  What on earth was he thinking, coming into the lion’s den like this? Why would they even accept him?

  How far had he gone to win their trust?

  “This way,” he urged her, escorting her across the inner courtyard, a steadying hand pressed against her back.

  Most of the guards parted ways with them there, splitting up to return to their various posts. Jacques and two others escorted them into the castle proper.

  As soon as they stepped inside, Emily faltered, taken aback by a sudden indescribable sensation—a wordless, welling dread—as if she had just walked through an invisible wall of evil upon entering this place.

  Gooseflesh rose on her arms at the eerie atmosphere inside the castle, the strange, faint odor on the air.

  The smell of death, corruption . . .

  “Come along,” Drake murmured.

  If he noticed her instinctual revulsion, like a horse balking before a road where danger lurked that the rider could not see, he gave no sign.

  She told herself she was being silly. The sudden drop in temperature was merely the result of their having passed into the cooler shadow of the building.

  Yet the kindly German peasants in the outlying farms had warned her not to come here when she had stopped to buy supplies and ask for information. She had only picked up a few basic words in their tongue along the way, but from their gestures, their hasty signs of the Cross, and the grim shaking of their heads, she gathered that the locals considered Waldfort Castle cursed. “Nein, fraulein. Do not go there. Sehr gefährlich.”

  Very dangerous.

  But for her loyalty to Drake, here she was. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and walked in.

  On the ground floor, the first area they entered was the Guards’ Hall, a vast, vaulted dining room, long and narrow, with giant fireplaces on both ends; it had a stone floor, whitewashed walls, and massive columns joined by Gothic arches. There was not much furniture, just a long, dark table with plain wooden chairs around it.

  They marched through it and out the other side, entering a more richly adorned corridor.

  Suddenly, a white door opened ahead.

  From between the two guards ahead of her, Emily spied a lean, distinguished gentleman, who appeared to be in his sixties, emerging from the room. He pulled the door shut quietly behind him and came toward them, slight of build and elegantly dressed, with patrician features and a shock of pewter hair. Yet as he approached, Emily was struck by the thought that there was something oddly reptilian about his bony face and cold, gray eyes.

  “Did you capture the intruder?” he asked Drake at once. As soon as he spoke, she recognized him as a fellow Englishman by the touch of Yorkshire in his accent. “Was it someone from the Order?” he added.

  “Er, not exactly, sir.” Drake nodded wryly to the guards to step aside.

  They parted, revealing Emily in their midst.

  “Well.” As the old man’s shrewd, penetrating gaze narrowed in on her, Emily realized this was the infamous James Falkirk.

  Drake’s supposed savior.

  The Promethean magnate was the one who had finally ordered Drake freed from the dungeons, not out of any particular concern for his well-being, of course, but merely as a change in tactics, since the brutal daily beatings weren’t producing the desired results.

  When the others had failed to break the captured agent through cruelty, Falkirk had hoped to manipulate Drake through kindness instead, promising him protection from the torturers, winning his trust, all in an effort to turn him to the dark side.

  Emily was not sure if she should regard the old man with gratitude or an even deeper hatred. True, Falkirk had probably saved his life, but Drake’s confusion about whose side he was on at present—his loss, essentially, of himself—was due to this old schemer and his mind games.

  Falkirk’s cold stare probed her. “And who might this be?”

  Drake cleared his throat slightly. “This is the girl I told you about, sir.”

  Falkirk arched a silvery brow at him. “Indeed?” He dismissed Jacques and the others with a glance.

  They bowed briefly and retreated, leaving the three of them alone. Emily waited tensely, ready to follow Drake’s lead, as before.

  “Do you remember in London, sir, when we were confronted outside the Pulteney Hotel? She was the one who threw the rock at that Order agent who held us at gunpoint and tried to stop us from escaping.”

  “Ah, yes, your little servant girl.” Falkirk turned back to stare at Emily in amazement. “You mean to say this slip of a girl followed you all the way from London?”

  Emily pressed her lips together. She did not like being discussed like a piece of furniture.

  “Even when we were young, her survival skills were impressive, sir. Her father was the woodsman at my estate. He taught her how to track animals, how to live off the land. That’s how she found us.”

  “All the way from England . . . for love of you?” Falkirk chuckled softly as he scanned her in surprise. “It’s a long way to go for a man you can’t have, my dear.”

  His words were so casually cruel, he might as well have run her through. She dropped her gaze with a barely concealed wince. “I know my place, sir. I cannot help the way I feel. Besides, he needs me.”

  Drake cleared his throat slightly, studying the floor.

  “When I was not yet twenty, the owner of a neighboring estate tried to rape the girl. I killed him to protect her. She’s been devoted to me ever since.”

  “Hmm.” Falkirk nodded slowly.

  Emily stared at the ground, shocked to her core that he had just told Falkirk that.

  But it seemed the old man would not be satisfied by anything less than the truth. “I see. So, you love him, do you?”

  Emily lifted her chin and met his stare in shock.

  Falkirk waited.

  She could not bear to glance at Drake. “Yes, sir.”

  “And does he love you?”

  “No, sir. That would not be fitting,” she said barely audibly.

  “But you share his bed?” He folded his arms across his chest, studying her.

  Emily cringed at his interrogation, momentarily tongue-tied, for Drake had never touched her until moments ago, down in the forest. But this was the story they were telling, and the tension she felt emanating from his big body reminded her to stick to it. “Rich girls can afford to keep their morals, I suppose,” she forced out obliquely.

  Falkirk smiled at last in cynical approval. “That they can,” he said indulgently, apparently quite entertained. “What is your name, then?”

  “Emily Harper, sir.”

  “Hmm. Well, you’ve proved yourself to me already, as I recall. Back in London, it was you who allowed us to get away when that Order agent had us at gunpoint.”

  “He was going to kill my lord,” she murmured with a nod at Drake.

  “So, you saved him, and that allowed him to save me, in turn,” Falkirk said. “I’m in your debt.”

  Emily bowed her head.

  The old man appeared to accept their explanation for her arrival. Drake spoke up to make sure of it. “I hope you do not mind, sir. I did not foresee
her following me, but it isn’t safe to send her back alone.”

  “No, of course not.” He shrugged. “You are entitled to a servant if you wish. I’m just a bit puzzled, is all.” Falkirk studied him, intrigued. “We offered you a woman before, a thorough voluptuary, but you wanted no part of her or her courtesan’s tricks.”

  Drake dropped his gaze. “No, sir.”

  “Now I see why. A proper whore isn’t quite to your taste. You prefer something a little more . . . innocent. Really, Westwood, dallying with the servants,” the old man murmured in amusement, baiting him like a soft-voiced Satan. “I wouldn’t have taken you for the type.”

  Drake smiled almost intimately at him. “We all have our vices, sir. Besides, she’s not as innocent as she looks.”

  Falkirk’s lips twisted. “Very well, then. If you are sure she can be trusted. The stakes couldn’t be higher, as you know.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, have at it, then, if that is your preference. She is pretty enough, I’ll grant you that. Fetching creature, underneath all that dust. Clean yourself up, girl. And then look after my head of security well. You may be just what he needs.”

  “With pleasure, milord.” Emily moved closer to Drake.

  Falkirk looked warily from one to the other, then dismissed them both with a nod, returning to the room from which he’d come. When the door opened, she glimpsed a richly decorated dining room; a number of older gentlemen were sitting around the table though no food was served.

  Some sort of meeting appeared to be in progress.

  Then the door closed, and Drake touched her elbow, nodding to her with a cautioning look to go with him.

  Emily followed, letting out a low sigh of relief that at least they had cleared that hurdle.

  They walked on, but her mind replayed the scene she had just witnessed. Now that she had seen Drake and Falkirk together, she was even more confused about what was going on. Obviously, Falkirk had saved Drake’s life by getting him out of the dungeon, but the Order knew that Drake had saved Falkirk’s life, in turn.

  As the second most powerful of all the Prometheans, James Falkirk had many enemies; but he was a scholar, not a warrior, and in the increasing frailty of his years, he had to rely on younger men for his security.

  That was where Drake came in.

  After Falkirk had removed the broken Order agent from the dungeon, Drake had become so gratefully devoted to him that, with his warrior skills, he had ended up saving Falkirk’s neck on numerous occasions.

  An odd bond seemed to have formed between them over the past year or so that all of this had been going on.

  Frankly, Emily was amazed at how much influence Drake now seemed to have over the old schemer. Falkirk certainly appeared to trust him. Maybe they really were that close.

  Or maybe Drake had played a few mind games of his own on his supposed master.

  She could not wait until they were alone so she could ask him about that, and a great deal more.

  Going deeper into the castle, she saw that while the Guards’ Hall had been left very much in its rugged medieval state, the main floor and the owners’ residential quarters had been luxuriously refurbished in the flowery rococo style of the previous century.

  They passed grand saloons full of gilding and candy-colored pastels, claw-footed furniture with velvet upholstery, ornate chandeliers, and gleaming white chimneypieces. But the opulence of the State Rooms only sharpened her sense of something evil dwelling within.

  At the end of the central hallway, Drake led her up a grand staircase. They bypassed the second and third floors, but on the fourth, they left the stairs and proceeded down a simple hallway where the décor once more abandoned Baroque profusion in favor of the older, plainer style: strong, rustic, German simplicity.

  Drake led her down the corridor, then stopped before one of the rounded wooden doors, of which there were many, placed at regular intervals. She watched his face uncertainly, but he avoided her gaze as he took a key out of his black waistcoat pocket.

  He unlocked the door and opened it, revealing a simple, square box of a chamber. He nodded to her to go in ahead of him.

  Emily stepped into his spartan quarters, looking all around her. The chamber had a low ceiling with a few exposed, heavy, dark beams and creamy walls of wavy plaster.

  To the right of the door was a small fireplace. To the left, a washstand with an old, rust-tainted mirror above it. There were no windows in the chamber, but a small balcony opened off the opposite wall. Drake had left the little balcony doors wide open to admit the light and the fresh mountain air, and the Alpine view beyond was spectacular. Emily was drawn toward it, but then she stopped, noticing his crisply made bed in the corner.

  One bed.

  With a slight gulp, she turned and looked at him.

  He leaned against the open door, watching her in his room with a hooded gaze, his arms folded across his chest.

  “You can put your things over there.” He nodded toward the wall, where his extra coat and a few shirts hung on clothing pegs.

  She nodded, acutely aware of his silent reproach as she walked across the small faded oval of a braided cottage rug and went to lean her bag against the wall.

  “Well, then. Make yourself at home,” he concluded with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “You heard James. Stay in this room and keep out of trouble, if that’s possible for you. I’ve got to get back to my post.”

  She turned to him as she took off her cloak. “You’re leaving already?”

  “I’m not on holiday, Miss Harper.”

  “Miss Harper?” She stared at him in irked bewilderment as she draped her cloak over her arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

  His only response was an icy glare.

  She realized he was as angry at her for coming as she was at him for refusing to escape.

  A stalemate.

  She threw her cloak angrily on his bed. “Well, why don’t you get it off your chest?” she flung out.

  He shut the door, unable to resist, it seemed. “What the hell do you want me to say?” he whispered harshly. “You had no business coming here!”

  “You think I wanted to?” she whispered back. “I risked my life to come here for you—and this is my thanks?”

  “I told you not to follow me. Damn it, I knew you were going to do this.”

  “Oh, sorry. Why don’t you just put a knife to my throat again, you madman?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I apologized for that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry that you’re so unhappy to see me, but I’m here now, so what are we going to do?”

  He shook his head wearily. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Emily searched his face. “At least tell me if you got your memory back. You had that headache for three days the last time I saw you. Remember the poultice I made for you? The sage tea? When we walked in the forest at your estate, it was all starting to come back to you.”

  He just looked at her, more stubborn than a whole team of mules.

  Emily wanted to throttle him. “All right, I understand, you’re angry! Believe me, but I had no choice. I had to come and warn you. You do realize the Order is authorized to kill you? That agent in London, he would’ve shot you if not for my good aim!”

  She had thrown a potato at the agent from her bag of supplies for the journey. A rock would have been more convenient, but he was an Order agent. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, just to give Drake a chance to get away.

  Drake was shaking his head at her. “It was Jordan, Emily. I’ve known him forever. He wouldn’t have shot me.”

  “He had a pistol aimed right between your eyes!”

  “Never mind that. Listen to me.” He grasped her shoulders, leaning down a bit to glower in her face. “Right now you need to forget ever seeing him or Rotherstone or any of those men. Forget their names. I mean it. You must wipe them from your mind. Anything I ever told you about the Order or the Prometheans, erase it from your memory righ
t this moment. You know nothing. Understand?”

  “I know nothing,” she repeated with a nod.

  “I was a fool ever to have told you about any of it.”

  “You were a boy,” she said softly, gazing at him. “You were excited about your great destiny.”

  The reminder seemed to pain him.

  “You needn’t worry,” she added. “I’ve never told a soul.”

  “Good. Because if the people here thought they could get any information out of you, they would—” He stopped himself with a shaken look, released her, and turned away. “But I’d kill you myself before I’d let them take you down there,” he whispered.

  She froze, her gaze suddenly riveted on his back. “Down where?”

  “Never mind. Just stay in this room, keep your head down, and don’t talk to anyone. It’ll all be over soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled. “I have to go.”

  Frightened, she followed him toward the door. “Drake—wait.”

  He paused, regarding her from the corner of his eye. “What?”

  She stepped in front of him so he couldn’t escape and stared into his eyes. “Tell me the real reason you came here.”

  He almost, but not quite smiled. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Why did you escape from Lord Rotherstone and return to James? Please.”

  He just stared at her in mute defiance, his jet-black eyes guarding inscrutable secrets.

  “You cannot have chosen the Prometheans over the Order!” she whispered.

  “Can’t I?”

  She shook her head slowly, holding his stormy stare. “No. I’ll never believe that. Never you. The Order has been your whole life. You cannot have turned against your brother agents and Virgil. You came here to get revenge, didn’t you?” she challenged him in a barely audible tone.

  He held her gaze for a long moment. “Life is pain, Emily. The Prometheans understand that.”

  “No.” She shook her head in refusal of his stark words. “Life is beauty and light, Drake. Look out there. The trees, the mountains, the sky.” She touched his cheek tenderly. “You mustn’t give up. You’ve known hatred and suffering as few men have, but there is also love, and goodness.”