Bodyguards Boxed Set

by Julianne MacLean

  Where in the world was she?

  And what was she doing under the bed?

  Shivering, she tried to remember what had happened after her and Royce’s wild ride had come to an abrupt end on the valley floor. Their landing had been cushioned by deep snowdrifts rather than trees or rocks. She recalled being grateful for that.

  And she remembered thinking that she might have preferred a quick death to what had come next: they had been forced to trudge through the snow with no cloaks to protect them from the weather. They had walked for hours, up one hillside and down the next, struggling through drifts, climbing over boulders, even sloshing through an icy stream for a great distance to conceal their tracks.

  Royce had insisted on changing direction several times, intent on confusing the rebels pursuing them. And she had followed him without a word of complaint—even after the sun had set and night made the air dangerously, numbingly frigid—until she had literally dropped, unable to take another step.

  The last thing she remembered was Royce picking her up and carrying her, murmuring words of concern in a voice that had sounded deep, soft. She must have fallen asleep in his arms.

  And now she was here.

  But where, exactly, was here?

  And where was Royce?

  Teeth chattering, she reached out and cautiously lifted the sheet that hung all the way to the floor, peering out at her surroundings.

  It was a small, neat chamber, no more than ten paces wide and ten paces long, dark but for a low fire that burned in a rough-hewn stone hearth, a few feet away. She could also make out a table, a stool.

  But she was clearly alone. Worry gnawed at her.

  Until she glanced the other way and saw Royce’s crossbow and shield, propped in a corner—the metal dented and scratched from their harrowing flight down the hillside.

  Exhaling slowly in relief, she pushed out from under the bed, biting back a moan. Every inch of her body ached, and the icy cold had penetrated to her very bones. Scooting away from the bed, she sat up, winced, and quickly lifted her hands from the rushes. Even her palms hurt, scraped raw by the rope she had had to climb.

  Trembling at the memory, she stared down at her reddened hands, overwhelmed by emotions she had been battling to suppress all afternoon. Terror. Disbelief. Shock. A chaos of feelings that made beads of perspiration break out on her forehead.

  She had come close to dying today.

  More than once.

  And she was not yet safe. The men they had left behind on the mountainside would be searching for them.

  For her.

  So they could try again to kill her.

  She glanced at the door, wishing more than ever that Royce were here with her. But for some reason, for now, he had had to leave her alone. A reckless impulse made her want to go out and look for him, but she knew he would not want her to take such a risk.

  She would have to wait for him here. And she did not wish to have him find her like this when he came back: a shaking, petrified heap on the floor. As she rose, she glanced down, realizing she was barefoot. Royce had taken off her sodden boots and hose. She noticed them drying in front of the fire.

  Which seemed like an excellent idea. Moving to the small hearth, she crouched down. The heat barely seemed to penetrate her chilled skin. She started to rub her hands up and down her arms but instantly stopped, her stinging palms making her inhale a sharp breath.

  Desperate, she turned to look back at the bed, wondering if it might offer even a threadbare blanket.

  And she almost groaned in relief: the bed was not only piled with thick blankets, but with a fur.

  She hurried over to pick it up, wrapping it around her body. It was a large coverlet made of silver-tipped white fur, and it felt as soft and warm as she imagined Heaven must feel on a summer day. Huddled within it, she sighed gratefully and studied her surroundings more closely. The room boasted not only comfortable furnishings of polished, light-colored pine but also a large window with shutters.

  Unable to resist, she lifted the wooden bar that locked the shutters from the inside. Pulling one of them open just a crack, she peeked out to see where she was.

  Moonlight illuminated the streets of a town, a fairly large town from the look of it. Thatch-roofed shops and homes crowded winding alleyways, many of their windows aglow with torchlight. Laughter and the music of a harp and pipes danced on the cold night air.

  The door opened behind her.

  She spun, gasping.

  It was Royce who stepped inside. Bolting the door behind him, he set aside the armful of items he carried and strode forward to meet her even as she rushed toward him.

  She melted into his embrace, a sob escaping her throat, the fur sliding from her shoulders.

  “Shh.” He held her close, his hand moving up and down her back, his voice a scant whisper. “I am sorry I had to leave you for a moment, Ciara. I chose an empty chamber and hid you here while I went to pay the innkeeper. I did not want anyone to see you.” He led her over to the window, reached out to close the shutter she had opened, and dropped the bar into place to lock it. “It is better that they think I am traveling alone, in case anyone should come asking questions.”

  She nodded, clinging to his tunic, burying her face against his shoulder, her heart pounding at the thought of the danger they were in. “Royce, where are—”

  “Shh.” He tilted her head up, touched a finger to her lips. “We must be careful to keep our voices low.”

  She shifted to a barely audible whisper. “Where are we?”

  “In Gavena. At an inn on the outskirts of the town marketplace.” Releasing her, he bent down to pick up the fur and wrap it around her. “Gavena is one of three large towns in this part of the mountains. We have lost our pursuers for now. And they will not find us easily.”

  Ciara did not think that particularly reassuring.

  She did not want the rebels to find them at all.

  Shivering, clutching the fur with both hands, she followed him as he turned to walk back to the pile of goods he had brought in. “But who were those men chasing us?” she whispered. “How can you be sure they were rebels? Could they not have been”— she searched for an innocent explanation—”concerned fellow travelers who saw our distress and were coming to help us?”

  “Mayhap, milady.” He crouched over a long object concealed in a length of homespun cloth and began unwrapping it. “Mayhap it was merely an early spring thaw that started the avalanche. And a coincidence that we were right in the middle of the pass when it started.”

  She gulped, noticing that the object he was unwrapping was a sword. He did not look or sound as if he believed a word he was saying. “You think those men caused the avalanche.”

  He lifted the sword by the hilt, testing its edge with his thumb, hesitating. “Aye,” he said at last. “Ciara, I saw something—some one—on the peak above us, just before it began. When you and I were...”

  He paused again, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  Setting the blade aside, he picked up another of the bundles. “But it could have been a coincidence. There is no way to be certain.”

  “Or it could have been another assassination attempt.” She sank down on a nearby stool, feeling as if her legs would no longer support her. “An avalanche would have been a perfect way to kill me—to kill us both. Without leaving a trace.”

  Over his shoulder, he met her gaze. “Aye, milady,” he said softly, a muscle tightening in his jaw, the expression in his dark eyes grim. “And the rebels have proven before that they are clever. I will not underestimate them again.” He turned away, adding under his breath, “I have made too many mistakes already.”

  Ciara barely heard him, distracted by the cold knot of dread that had settled in her stomach. Over the last few days, she had given little thought to those who meant to harm her, had been too swept up in the new places and people and experiences she had encountered on their journey, the new feelings she had enjoyed.

 
; Only now did she understand the peril of their situation. They were being hunted by men who were intelligent, ruthless... and mayhap as knowledgeable of these mountains as Royce was.

  She shuddered, no longer finding warmth within the fur’s soft folds. “I do not understand how the rebels could have found us so easily.” Her voice was a thready whisper. “We have been traveling only a handful of days.”

  He rose with another blade in his hand, this one a short-sword, and carried it over to the fire to examine it more closely. “Either they have been following us undetected, or someone told them where to find us.”

  Ciara regarded him with wide eyes. Neither possibility was pleasant. “But you have been most careful to make sure we were not being followed. And who could have told them where to find us? Unless...”

  He glanced at her. “What, Ciara?”

  She almost could not voice the thought, had to force herself to say it aloud. “What if Sir Bayard is not so good a friend as you believe?”

  Royce’s eyes darkened. He straightened to his full height, shaking his head. “Nay,” he whispered. “Nay, I will not believe that.”

  Ciara did not wish to believe it either, but Royce’s troubled expression told her he had suspicions as well. “It is the only explanation that makes sense. Who else—”

  “Bayard would not have tried to kill us.”

  “I do not mean to say that he would. But if he gave information to the rebels, did not know what they intended—”

  “What information would he give them? And why? Bayard had no idea of your true identity.”

  “But who else could have given us away?” she asked desperately. “No one knows of my true identity. No one knows of our plan or the route we decided to travel, except you and me and my father. Every other person in Châlons believes I am traveling in the wedding procession—”

  She paused as a new and even more distressing possibility flitted through her mind.

  It seemed the same idea had just occurred to Royce. “Except for the one person who knows you are not in the procession,” he finished for her. “The woman who took your place. The decoy.”

  “Miriam,” Ciara whispered, already shaking her head in denial. “Nay, she is completely loyal to me. And she was so brave when she volunteered to take my place in the procession—”

  “Volunteered?” Royce echoed darkly.

  Ciara could not seem to catch her breath. Suddenly the fact that Miriam had stepped forward so quickly took on a different, more ominous meaning. And then another memory struck. “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “That night in the solar, the night I was attacked... Miriam was with me. She spoke of the rebels. Tried to coax me into running away. The man who injured me came in right after she left—”

  “As if he had been signaled,” Royce concluded. “Told that your maidservant had failed to persuade you to abandon your betrothal. Told that you were now alone.”

  Ciara dropped her gaze, the thought of such a betrayal almost too much to bear. “But for so many years Miriam has been... she was always...”

  The closest I had to a friend.

  Tears stung her eyes as she looked up at Royce. “I cannot believe she would be in league with traitors who wish to kill me.”

  His expression softened. “We may be wrong, milady. It could all be—”

  “Coincidence?” she choked out. “Just as it was a coincidence that we were in the pass when the avalanche started? Nay, it all makes sense.” Her throat tightened as the pieces fit together logically. “The rebels were able to locate us so quickly because they never were chasing the wedding procession in the first place. They knew I was not there... because she told them.”

  Awash in anguish, she fell silent.

  “We cannot be certain, Princess,” Royce said after a moment. “All we know is that either my friend or yours may be working with those who are trying to kill us.” He started to walk back toward her. “And we do not know which one it is.”

  “But it would seem that one of us has been betrayed by someone we trusted,” Ciara agreed in a pained whisper.

  Royce sighed, sounding weary. “We will have to worry about bringing the traitor to justice later. For the moment, we have our hands full staying alive.” Still carrying the short-sword, he returned to the array of goods he had deposited by the door. “There is no way to know how many men are looking for us. And they could already be searching the towns.”

  Trembling again, Ciara clutched the fur closer around her. “Royce, what are we going to do?”

  “We do not have many choices, milady. Our pursuers have some idea where we might be, they know where we are going, and they also know what we both look like. They only saw us from afar, but it was close enough. The one advantage we had was surprise—and we have lost that.”

  If he was saying this to frighten her, he was succeeding.

  He looked over at her, his mouth a harsh line, his eyes stormy. “I will take no more chances with your life, Ciara. Thuringia is only a few days distant, but the rebels will be expecting us to run straight for the border as fast as possible. They will be on the alert, searching all the trails and passes. I think it would be best to remain hidden for a time.”

  Ciara nodded gratefully in agreement. Rest and sleep sounded far more appealing at the moment than another trek through the snow. “I do not think I could travel another step if I had to.”

  “Then we will stay here for two days, mayhap three, and hope that the search will pass us by.” He moved closer, reaching down to tilt her head up, barely touching her chin with his fingertips. “I have made too many mistakes, Ciara. I will not make any more.”

  “I trust you, Royce.”

  Her words made a muscle flex in his tanned, stubbled cheek. Withdrawing his hand, he turned away to finish sorting through the bundles of goods.

  She watched him in silence for a moment. “I hope Hera will be all right. They would not hurt her, would they?”

  “The rebels would have naught to gain by harming a defenseless puppy, milady. They no doubt confiscated our things—including our animals—in the hope of finding some clue to our whereabouts.”

  She sighed, trying to feel reassured. “It would seem only one good thing has come from our adventures this day.”

  “And what, pray tell, is that?”

  “The effects of the cassis I drank have worn off,” she said with forced cheerfulness.

  She did not succeed in wringing so much as a smile from him.

  Giving up her attempt to lighten the mood, she studied the items at his feet. In addition to the two swords, he had peasant garments made of rough homespun—tunics, leggings—and a pair of boots. “Where did you get all that?”

  “In the stables. I helped myself to a few necessities.”

  “You stole them?”

  “Milady, the shops are not open at this hour,” he said dryly. “And when we leave here, I thought it would be best if we go in disguise. We might attract a bit of attention dressed as we are, at least by daylight.” He indicated her ruined gown and his own tattered, bloodied tunic. “I left the stable boys a few coins in payment.”

  Picking up two of his “acquisitions”—a cake of soap and some lengths of clean linen—he crossed to the table in the far corner, which held a wooden ewer and washbasin. He poured water into the bowl, then motioned for her to join him. “Let me see your hands, Ciara.”

  She rose, still holding the fur close as she walked over to him, her bare feet tickled by the rushes. “I think you should see to your own injuries first,” she protested. The condition of his clothes told her that he had been hurt far worse than she in the avalanche. The thought made her heart ache.

  He glanced down at her with a strange expression. “I am supposed to be taking care of you, milady. And I have done a damnably poor job of it today.”

  Ciara tried to puzzle out the emotion in his midnight eyes, seeing warmth and concern there, and...

  He dropped his gaze before she could make sense of
the rest.

  She had the distinct impression he was purposely trying to conceal his feelings from her.

  She did not understand, knew only that the emotion she had glimpsed brought a flutter to her stomach, like a warm, flickering candle flame inside her.

  “I suffered only a few scratches, Your Highness,” he said briskly. “I can tend to them later.” Gently taking one of her hands, he turned it palm upward.

  And grated out an oath. “I am sorry, Princess,” he whispered, frowning down at her raw skin.

  “Do not apologize. You saved my life today, Royce. I am grateful.” She realized that sounded too formal, that it did not begin to describe the feelings in her heart. “I should have told you earlier, should have told you that I—”

  “There is no need to tell me anything,” he said flatly. “And pray do not thank me. I almost got you killed today.” Dampening a piece of linen, he began to cleanse her hand with a tenderness that belied his cool words.

  “You did not almost get me killed,” she insisted, struggling to keep her voice low, “You saved me. When I was trapped on the cliff, if it had not been for you—”

  “If it had not been for me, you would not have been there in the first place,” he said in a harsh whisper, the anger obviously directed at himself. “I should never have stopped in the middle of that pass. I should have been thinking of my duty, not my—”

  He left the sentence unfinished. And completed his work in silence, bandaging both her hands with fresh lengths of cloth.

  When he turned aside, his tone was once again mild. “I am finished with you, Princess.”

  Despite the softness of his voice, Ciara stepped back as if he had pushed her away. She told herself he was referring to her injured hands, but could not help wondering if his words held a different meaning.

  She could not explain the hurt that twisted through her, but she kept it from her voice. “Then allow me to help you. The cuts on your back—”

  “I can manage alone. I have done so before.”

  “But you do not have to manage alone,” she pointed out.

  He faced the corner in stony silence for a long moment. Then he reached for the hem of his tunic and yanked the garment off over his head.