The Lady in the Coppergate Tower (Proper Romance)

by Nancy Campbell Allen

  She pressed her hand to her forehead, forcing herself to recall the events of the previous night.

  Tea with Elana. The shock of discovery. Returning to her room. Opening the door. A shadow looming over her.

  Then a flash of light, a screech of twisting metal, and then darkness.

  Petrescu must have lain in wait for her, rendered her unconscious, and brought her here.

  She looked again at Marit, who regarded her with wide eyes, still murmuring under her breath. Hazel’s heart sank. How would they communicate? And even if they could, would Marit be lucid?

  “I don’t suppose you speak anything other than Romanian?” she tried.

  “Speak, speak,” Marit responded, her eyes lighting up.

  “You speak English?” Hazel shifted on the bed, putting her hand to her head at the dull ache that lingered.

  Yet, beyond the word “speak,” Marit’s English seemed limited.

  Hazel tried the only other two languages she knew—French and German—and Marit seemed conversant in both, although she continued her singsong litany of nonsense words, regardless of the language.

  “German, it is,” Hazel said. “Slightly better than my French.”

  Marit nodded. “German and French . . . German and French . . .”

  Hazel stood from the bed, her eyes filling with tears. She was afraid, she had no idea when Petrescu would return or what he had planned, and she feared Sam would be out of his mind with worry, but before her was her sister, a stranger, yet someone she’d known her whole life.

  “Marit,” she said and approached her slowly. “Do you know me? I am Hazel. I am your sister.”

  “Sister, sister, Hazel sister,” Marit murmured.

  “Oh, what has he done to you?” Hazel’s heart ached. It had been just over a year ago when Dream Hazel had begun looking . . . different. Her eyes had taken on a wild glow, and she had ceased smiling. “You have not always been . . .”

  She stopped a few feet away and swiped at a tear that fell despite her efforts to keep her emotions in check.

  Marit’s eyes slowly hardened, and her expression tightened. “Where have you been?” she asked Hazel in German. “You left me here to rot.”

  Hazel shook her head. “I did not. I didn’t know you were here. Our uncle”—she paused—“well, our ancestor, Dravor, only just found me and told me you were here.”

  From her periphery, Hazel saw a book levitate. She turned her head, stunned, and then looked back at Marit, who regarded her evenly.

  “Marit, are you doing that?”

  The book flew forward, hitting Hazel’s head.

  “Stop!”

  Book after book launched at Hazel, beating her from all sides.

  “No, stop!”

  Another book smashed into her face, and Hazel’s temper snapped.

  “Marit, stop!” Her shout echoed through the room, and the books immediately dropped to the ground. “I did not know you were here! Do you understand me? I only knew you from my dreams, which made no sense!” She paused, her chest heaving, and wiped a trickle of blood from the side of her mouth. “Did you know of me?”

  Marit’s eyes clouded, and she put a hand to her heart. She shook her head and winced. “Dreams, dreams, many many dreams, dreams . . .” The singing returned, and Hazel was unsure which she preferred—lucid anger or benign madness.

  She looked around at the books strewn over the floor. She picked up one near her feet. Mathematical Theory, she read in French on the cover. She picked up another. Latin Primer. She slowly crossed the floor, looking at more titles. The languages were varied, but it seemed Marit had books on every subject under the sun.

  “Do you have a perfect recollection of everything you read?” she asked Marit quietly in German.

  “I remember I remember I remember.”

  Hazel turned back to Marit and tapped her lip thoughtfully with her fingertip. “What do you call him? Petrescu? Does he visit you? He brought you these books, yes? How do you eat?”

  Marit’s eyes widened at Petrescu’s name. Her eyes clouded then cleared, and she shook her head again. “Uncle . . .”

  “Do you know who he really is?” Hazel spotted a journal on the floor. She picked it up and flipped through the pages. The entries were written in a feminine hand and mostly in Romanian, but a smattering of other languages were decipherable to Hazel. Anything with a Latin or Germanic base gave her a basic understanding of the thoughts expressed.

  The journal was dated two years earlier, and the name in the journal’s front flyleaf was Marit Lehn. Yet the content was not the ravings of a madwoman. They were things Hazel might have written herself, only these contained yearnings to experience the world, to see all the things she’d learned of only in books.

  “Is this yours, Marit?” Hazel glanced at her sister, who had retreated back against the wall.

  “Marit’s books, Marit’s books . . .”

  There were magick spells in the margins, and as the pages progressed, the spells seemed to grow more complex. She walked to the window and looked out over the snowy outside world. The tower was nearly encased with a tangle of vines and wicked-looking thorns. It was also slowly turning, she realized. The movement was so gradual she hadn’t noticed it, but with the trees as reference, she suddenly also felt it.

  She reached out to the window, confused by the fact that there wasn’t a glass pane in place. But no cold air was blowing in. The room was warm, and had been since she awoke.

  “No!” Marit shouted as Hazel’s fingers brushed the edge.

  Pain shot through Hazel’s hand as soon as her fingertips broke the plane of where the glass should have been. She cried out and pulled her hand to her chest as Marit crossed the room and grabbed her.

  She pulled Hazel’s hand into her own and looked at it. Welts were already rising on her fingers.

  “So that is how he has kept you here.” Hazel looked at her sister, sick inside. “I am so sorry I didn’t know. I would have come for you. My mother would have come for you.” She realized she’d spoken in English, and though Marit seemed to understand, Hazel repeated it in German.

  Marit’s eyes filmed with tears, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a smile, but no sooner had she seemed to regain her lucidity, than she winced in pain and grabbed her head. When she looked at Hazel again, the hardened expression had returned.

  “No, no, no,” Hazel murmured, and began speaking to her rapidly, reaching for her hands and telling her about the world outside and all the things they would do together when they were free.

  Marit became distracted, then docile, and Hazel walked with her back to the bed and sat down. She kept up the chatter, wondering how long she could maintain the pace before going mad, herself.

  They settled back against the white-painted iron headboard, and Hazel held tight to her sister’s hand. Her gold bracelet touched Marit’s wrist, which Hazel might not have noticed except for the sudden warmth she felt along her skin. Her bracelet connected with Marit’s platinum chain, and instead of the burn Hazel had felt from the touch of platinum the first night she’d met Dravor Petrescu, this time it was comfortable.

  Marit also looked at the joined chains, and her expression turned to delight. Her deep lavender eyes sparkled, and for a fraction of a moment, she seemed to recognize Hazel. Almost immediately, though, she winced and again raised her free hand to her head.

  Hazel anticipated the change in her demeanor, so she began chattering again about her adventures and her life. After a time, she settled on singing nursery rhymes and songs Rowena had sung to her. The memorized lyrics came freely, and as she felt her sister relax against her, their fingers still clasped, she tried to piece together what Dravor had done.

  Clearly Marit had not gone mad of her own accord. Seeing the behavior firsthand, Hazel was confident that Dravor had manipulated Marit’s t
houghts—possibly with a spell, or something he’d fed her or infused her with. Hazel’s best guess was that Marit had grown more proficient, both in intellect and capacity for magick, as time passed than Dravor had anticipated. Now, whenever her head seemed to clear, the madness abated, she was afflicted with a bout of pain.

  As the day wore on, Hazel’s stomach rumbled, and she wondered how Petrescu provided for Marit. The tower maintained a mellow hum. Now that she knew they were turning, she figured the machinery operating the movement was the source of the noise.

  Suddenly a loud churning and clanking of gears rang through the room, and Marit shot from the bed. She ran to an open wardrobe and beckoned for Hazel to join her.

  A section of the wardrobe rolled back, and a tray appeared with a large basket. Marit grabbed the basket, and when Hazel put her hand into the wardrobe to see if she could somehow keep the panel from closing, Marit yelled and pulled back Hazel’s hand.

  “He thought of everything, didn’t he?” she muttered to herself in disgust.

  Marit opened the basket and pulled out food that, Hazel admitted, smelled delicious. They ate together on a blanket spread on the floor, and Hazel wondered how long she could maintain her calm control before going mad, herself.

  Sam clamped the last two wires together. He reattached the covering on Eugene’s spinal simulation and opened the back panel, securing the tins in place. He held his breath and hoped for the best.

  He pushed the “live” switch and watched until Eugene finally moved. His eyes blinked open, and the sound of his whirring cogs grew. Sam had never been so happy to hear the familiar sound.

  He gripped Eugene’s shoulder and forced the ’ton to look at him. “What happened here? Where is Hazel?”

  Eugene put his hand to the back of his neck. “I had finished charging and was returning to your room when I stopped to check on Hazel. I saw Petrescu—he must have been waiting for her—and when he saw me, he pointed his hand at me. I flew through the air, and just before I hit the wall, I saw Hazel crumple at his feet. I tried to stop him, sir, but my circuits . . .” He gestured to his chest, where an odd dent remained from the attack.

  Sam nodded, sober. “He has her, Eugene. I need your help.”

  “Of course. I shall compute our odds of success via several different scenarios.”

  “I would rather not know our odds, as I suspect they will be depressingly low. Elana has told me what she knows of the count’s castle and tower—which is where I suspect he has taken Hazel—and we can evaluate our options when we get there.”

  “Very good. I must add, however, that Miss Hazel herself says ‘Knowledge is power,’ and knowing the odds may help you—”

  Sam held up his hand. “Knowing the odds will not change my mind. I will get her out of that tower or die trying.”

  Eugene raised one brow, but nodded as he stood. “If that seems reasonable to you, I’ll not argue.”

  “Good.”

  “It is not a sound position to take, but the choice is yours.”

  “Yes. Excellent.” Sam gathered the tools and put them in the trunk Elana had secured for him.

  “I suppose a human brain may not appreciate the sound logic that rules a ’ton’s behavior, but I’ll do my best to understand why waiting until later to know your odds is the best course of action. After all, the odds will change depending on if you mount a rescue attempt from inside the tower versus the outside of the tower.”

  Sam looked at Eugene, his nostrils flaring. “An urchin off the streets would reason that odds are better for rescue from the inside than the outside.”

  Eugene shrugged and lifted the trunk from the floor as if it were as light as a feather. “Depends on the interior construction, I should think.”

  Sam retrieved his coat from a chair where he’d draped it earlier. “How can you possibly measure odds, then, not knowing what the interior looks like?” He shook the coat and slipped it on.

  “That is why the calculation is based on averages. One would assume the tower interior is not empty, like a grain silo, and assuming Miss Hazel is at the top, there must be a mechanism in place to have transported her up there. Utilizing the mechanism should be much simpler than attempting to scale the outer wall.”

  Sam sighed and opened the door to the hallway. “Throw a grappling hook into the equation, now where are the odds?”

  “One moment . . .”

  Sam rolled his eyes and followed Eugene from the room. Perhaps, he reasoned, the best benefit of having a ’ton with superior programming was that in times of trouble, he was a wonderful distraction.

  The hours seemed to turn as slowly as the tower itself. Hazel wondered how long it would be until Petrescu appeared—if ever. Marit was relatively calm. She occasionally paced in circles, muttering in Romanian and sometimes in German.

  Hazel examined every inch of the room, paying close attention to the wardrobe, which seemed the most likely means of escape. But whatever barrier the count had placed on the moving panel and the window was powerful enough that jumping through it wasn’t an option.

  Light outside the window dimmed by degrees, and still the snow continued to fall. The tower had made a full rotation, showing the land for miles. Villages could be seen in the distance, looking like toy houses, and Vania, closer to the castle, lay in the valley below like a page from a picture book.

  Sam was down there, if Petrescu hadn’t already done something to him. Was he worried? Even now trying to find her? The thought of losing him was worse than the notion that she might be stuck in the tower with Marit forever.

  “Now I understand why you walk in circles,” Hazel said in English as she made her own slow pass around the room. “The most amazing thing, really, is that you weren’t driven mad long before now.”

  “I came close,” Marit said, picking up books and putting them back on their shelves.

  Hazel’s attention whipped to Marit, who seemed to have responded without realizing it. And she’d answered in perfect English.

  Marit suddenly cried out and tunneled her fingers in her hair.

  Hazel’s heart thudded “Oh, no, no, no!” She rushed to Marit and grabbed her hand, touching their bracelets together, and began singing the nursery rhyme Rowena had used to sing to her as a child. It was the one Marit seemed to like the most, and to Hazel’s relief, she was quick enough to ward off a violent attack.

  She was still singing, Marit humming along, when the gears inside the tower turned. Marit looked up, delighted, and ran to the wardrobe.

  But instead of the small panel that had opened earlier to deliver a basket of food, a larger side door opened.

  Marit stopped, then took a tentative step back.

  Hazel moved toward Marit as the door slid open, revealing first a pair of men’s shoes, then trousers, a coat, and then a face.

  Marit screamed and scrambled back, and Hazel’s breath caught in her throat.

  It was Renton.

  Hours had passed by the time Sam successfully repaired Eugene, gathered supplies, and found a driver willing to brave the elements and rough terrain between Vania and the count’s castle. Hazel had been in her uncle’s clutches the entire day, and the thought that he might be too late to find her—to save her—had Sam sick with worry.

  He now brushed the snow from his eyes as he stood at the base of Coppergate’s tower. It was a massive structure, originally made of solid blocks of stone and brick but now showing signs of age. Missing chunks revealed enormous cogs and gears churning and clanking inside. The copper-covered roof had taken on a green tinge but had probably shone brilliantly when newly constructed.

  A knot of brambles and thorns provided a barrier around the base and climbed midway up the structure. The tower itself turned so slowly, he thought he might be imagining it, but the thicket of thorns remained stationary. He blinked quickly, feeling dizzy.

&
nbsp; Some of the vines were nearly as thick as his arm, with thorns as big as his fist, and the thicket itself was a meter deep.

  “It appears Miss Elana was correct about the thorns,” Eugene said.

  Turning to Eugene, he said, “And I was correct that we’d be better off going inside.”

  “We won’t be needing this, then.” Eugene tossed a heavy grappling hook to the ground.

  A scream echoed from inside the tower, faint behind the thick, stone wall, but loud enough that Sam heard it and felt his blood run cold.

  “Find the entrance,” he said to Eugene. “Now.”

  The grin on Renton’s face was smug, and Hazel nearly went blind with fury. She clenched her fists and debated her odds of doing enough harm to him to render him useless long enough to get herself and Marit to the wardrobe.

  “Marit, shh,” she said to her frantic sister, who grabbed her arm and pulled her back, nearly tumbling them both to the floor.

  Marit cried, speaking in Romanian, and Hazel was forced to struggle against her to remain upright.

  “I see she remembers me,” Renton said.

  Marit let go of Hazel and scrambled to the wall, where she crouched down and pulled her knees to her chest.

  Hazel planted herself in front of Renton. “Why are you not in jail?” She matched him step for step, always keeping herself between Renton and Marit.

  “Did you honestly think the count had me arrested? He has friends in every police force between here and London.”

  “I saw them take you into custody.” She shook her head as realization dawned. “It was all a show for me.”

  “And a good one. I was actually on the same train you took, you know. And riding on an animatronic horse is much faster than traveling overland by carriage.”

  “I assume you were the ‘business’ my uncle needed to see to last night.” Hazel was pleased to see he still bore the marks of the scratches she had inflicted on his face.