If He's Daring
Page 24
“Papa says only a coward threatens women and children,” said Alwyn.
“Henry is not talking to you!” yelled Morris as he shoved Alwyn back toward Catryn.
“Not Henry. A-E-D-D-O-N. Aeddon. He talks to me.”
Morris paled and stared at Alwyn. “Who?”
“I just told you. A-E-D-D-O-N. Aeddon. And he says he wants to pull your lungs out through your nose.”
“Take them to the cellars,” Morris ordered Tom and then glared at Catryn. “Maybe some time locked up down there with no food, no water, and no light will make you begin to think more clearly.”
“Papa says—” began Alwyn as Tom and another man grabbed him and Catryn.
“Shut up! Shut up! Just bloody shut up! Get them out of here, Tom. Now!”
Catryn did not bother fighting the man who dragged her out of the room, past two more guards in the hall. Even if she could break his hold, she would then have to try and free Alwyn. The odds of doing both things and then getting out of the house were not ones anyone would bet on. She decided to save her strength.
She and Alwyn were taken down into the cellar. Catryn was held firmly by Tom as the other man used the candle he held to light several others in the dank room. Tom unlocked a metal cage and the men pushed her and Alwyn inside. She stumbled, and by the time she caught her balance and turned toward the door, it was locked and Tom was staring at her through the bars. He then looked at Alwyn, a look that held a touch of fear. Catryn moved quickly to put her arm around her son and hold him close to her side.
“You teach him that?” Tom asked her.
“Teach who what?” she asked, even though she had a very good idea of what he was asking about.
“Teach the boy to try to make folk believe he can talk to the dead.”
“Do not be ridiculous. No one can talk to the dead. What an odd thing to believe.”
“Well, Aeddon was odd.”
Before she could ask what he meant by that, he left. She breathed a sigh of relief when he did not snuff the candles his compatriot had lit. For a while she and Alwyn would not be left in the dark. It was a small comfort.
Catryn looked around their prison. They were in a large metal cage which held several racks of wine and large barrels. A quick, closer look at the goods revealed it was all of the best quality, some of it obviously bought from smugglers. To the back of the cage there were several wooden crates with more bottles packed inside. In a far corner was one barrel standing alone. A peek inside revealed apples and she grinned, reaching down to choose two. It seemed someone wanted to be sure there were apples at hand and that they were not all eaten by the men Morris hired, or the servants.
“Come and sit, Alwyn,” she said as she sat down on one of the covered boxes that held brandy. “I found us some apples. I think the cook hides them here so they are not all eaten before they can be used in cooking. It is also a good storage area for such things. These may be more tart than you like, but will ease any hunger or thirst you may have.”
Alwyn sat next to her and began to polish his apple on his coat sleeve. “We could drink some of what is in all these bottles.”
“We could, although I am not certain I can open them since I do not have the proper tools. But ’tis wine and brandy, love, and I would just as soon you do not have any of it. If our thirst grows too keen, however, I will not hesitate to try and find a way. I but hope we are not pushed to that need as you are too young to be drinking wine or brandy.”
The look in Alwyn’s face, one that told her he was deciding if he should remind her that he was not a baby, made her want to smile. Catryn turned her attention to her apple. To her relief it was not too tart and she slowly ate hers while studying their prison for any possible route of escape. It did not take long for her to know there was none. The key to the door was too far away, hung on a hook near the bottom of the stairs, and the cage itself was built strongly, the bars sunk into the stone floor. Morris obviously felt a great need to protect his drink as if it were liquid gold.
Catryn’s thoughts then turned to Morris’s reaction to Alwyn’s talk of Aeddon. Morris had known the man. Considering what Tom had said before leaving the cellar, so had he. Although Henry had never mentioned the man, it was very possible that he had also known Aeddon. She was not sure why, since she knew there had undoubtedly been many people her husband had known whom she had never met or would have wanted to, but the fact that Morris, Tom, and quite possibly Henry had known Aeddon made her very uneasy.
She looked at her son, who was taking very small bites from his apple in such a way that it was leaving funny little patterns. The only way she could learn about Aeddon was to ask Alwyn, yet she hesitated. He was just a child and she could not be certain the questions she had would bring answers a child should hear. Aeddon had proven to be a rough-spoken spirit. Catryn realized she had no choice, however. This man Aeddon, whose spirit clung tenaciously to her child, was an important piece of the puzzle that had become her life. She was certain of it.
“Do you think Giles is all right?” Alwyn asked.
“He was when we stopped to change the horses,” she replied. “The last part of the journey was not nearly as rough as the first part, and he managed to hang on all during that bumpy ride.”
Alwyn nodded. “Giles is strong. Maybe he can rescue us or get us some help. It will all be fine.”
She was not so sure of that but was not about to say so, and turned her thoughts back to the matter of his ghostly companion. “Alwyn, is Aeddon with you now?” she asked.
“He is always with me,” Alwyn replied. “That is what papas do.”
“I see.” Since Henry had spent so little time with their son, she wondered if that was why Alwyn was so ready to believe his spirit friend was actually his father. “And you are very certain that he says he is your father? You believe that?”
“Yes. He is.”
“But, love, I do not know this man. Mothers usually know what man helped them make a child, and I have never met anyone named Aeddon.”
“He says you were sleeping and Henry paid him to make me.”
Catryn had a sudden urge to be violently ill and then stiffened her spine. “Does he say why he would do such a thing?”
Alwyn frowned for a moment. “I cannot say bad words.”
“This time it is allowed as I truly want to know what he has answered. It is very important.”
“He says he was a reckless bastard and owed Henry money. He is sorry, but that was what was asked of him to clear his debt. Then Henry betrayed him as soon as he knew I was in your belly and cut Papa’s throat and threw him in the river.”
Catryn had so many questions, but she hesitated to ask her son any of them. The answers could well be things a five-year-old child should not hear, let alone repeat. It made no sense. If Morris knew about Alwyn’s true father, however, it would explain why he was so adamant that everything should belong to him.
A tapping at the small window drew her out of her thoughts and she looked over to see Giles’s dirty face peering in at her. He grinned and waved. Alwyn looked and waved back. Then Giles moved out of sight, yet she was sure he had not gone far.
“You were right, Mama. Giles is fine.” Alwyn calmly returned to eating his apple.
Leaning back against the bars, Catryn wished she could share her son’s calm. Her mind was crowded with questions and her heart ached. If what Alwyn said was true then she was not quite as pure as she had thought. She did not wish to even consider what Orion might think of her if he knew she had cuckolded her husband. It might not matter that the cuckolding was arranged by Henry and she was too drugged to know what was happening.
She had an urge to weep but did not really know why. Catryn supposed it was the knowledge that, from the very beginning, all Henry had wanted of her was a son. If what Aeddon the ghost said was true, Henry had been willing to use his own wife like a brood mare, even hiring a stallion to get her with child. It was both horrifying and humiliating.
The candles were sputtering, threatening to plunge her and Alwyn into the dark when Tom walked in. He glared at the candles, muttered something about what an idiot Harry was, and then unlocked the door to the cage. Catryn lunged at him, but he was ready for her. He grabbed her by the arm and swung her around so hard she slammed back into the bars of the cage. Then he grabbed Alwyn before she could recover her sense.
Cursing softly to herself as she checked for any sign of blood on her face, she followed him out of the cellar. There was no choice since he held Alwyn and had a pistol in his hand. Wincing when she touched a spot that was already bruising on her cheek, she now knew why he had come after them on his own. He had a true skill in handling prisoners.
Once inside the room where Morris waited for her, Tom shoved Alwyn toward her. She held Alwyn close and watched Tom and another man shut the doors and take up a place on either side, pistols at the ready. Catryn then looked at Morris sitting in his pretentious chair. He studied her face and then glared at Tom.
“You have marred her,” he snapped.
“She tried to escape,” replied Tom. “I persuaded her to stay.”
Morris narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Catryn realized that he was uncertain about Tom, perhaps even a little afraid. Unfortunately, she could not think of any way to use that.
“So, have you had time to reconsider your stubborn refusal to do as you are asked?” Morris sipped at a glass of deep red wine and watched her closely as he waited for her to say something.
“You have no right to keep us here,” she said. “You have no right to order me to marry you. You had better let us go or you shall be very sorry, very soon.”
“Sorry? I was sorry the day Henry married you. He never should have married anyone. He and I had a bargain and he broke it.”
“What bargain could you have had that would stop him from trying to find a wife and breed an heir? No man would willingly give that up.”
Morris sneered as he leaned forward in his chair. “I knew his secret.”
Catryn made soft sound, rife with scorn. “I suspect you have a few secrets of your own. Just how bad could that secret be that Henry would give up his chance to have an heir?”
“The fact that he could never breed an heir.”
“And how could you be so very certain of that? Did he rut with anything in skirts yet produce no bastards?” The tension grew in her as she tried to push him to spit out the truth, but she resisted the urge to ask him any direct questions yet, for fear he would simply toss her back into the cellars until he could think of an answer. She knew Morris well enough to know that to uncover the truth one had to push him into a temper.
“He did indeed rut with anything in skirts, right up until he picked the wrong man’s wife.” Morris smiled in a way that gave Catryn chills. “No more rutting for dear Henry after that,” he said in a singsong voice very like a child’s.
She frowned as that implied an injury that had left Henry unmanned, yet she was certain she had glimpsed the appropriate shaping of his breeches from time to time, a shaping that strongly hinted that everything that should be there was. “Henry was not castrated.”
“Ever see him naked?”
She blushed. “That is none of your business.”
“Ha! Did not think so.”
“Our wedding night—”
“Was performed in the dark with a mostly clothed man. That was me. In the dark, after a little laudanum in your drink, and you did not know the difference. Think old Henry was a bit offended by that. Sad to say, that time was a failure as you did not conceive that night. Henry would not let me try again. He decided he did not want me to sire his child, or perhaps he just did not like to share you with me. He never liked sharing his things with me.”
Catryn slowly shook her head as she fought the nausea that threatened to swamp her. “I saw, well, the front of his breeches . . .” She struggled to think of the right words and was almost relieved when Morris interrupted her.
“Padded. But, yes, most of him was still there. Let us just say that Henry lacked what was needed to seed a child of his own. Of course, that was also why Henry stopped even trying to pretend he was a real man with some use for a woman.”
She rubbed at her forehead where the dull throb of a headache was forming, one she doubted was caused solely by Tom slamming her into the cage bars. The way Morris kept answering her questions without really telling her anything was maddening enough to make her want to scream. If she was hearing him correctly, and correctly guessing what was not being said, then Henry had been gelded by an angry husband.
“What do you mean when you say he was pretending to be a real man?”
“He did not truly like or desire women. He tried and all it got him was mutilated.”
“If he did not like or desire women, then why was he rutting with them so freely that a man felt the need to maim him? And where did he go nearly every night after we married if not to rut with some other woman?”
“I just told you that he fought his urges at first. After he married you he gave that up completely and often visited his favorite catamite.”
“Henry preferred men?”
She could see that Morris was highly annoyed that she was not horrified, but then no one knew about her father’s uncle and his dear friend. Her father had been the only one in the family who had not shunned the man when the truth of his preferences had slipped out. Her great-uncle had also been the only one in the family to visit her and her father regularly and to offer to help them when they were so close to losing everything. It was a shame that Henry had lacked the good heart her late great-uncle had had.
“Not men exactly, not children either, but boys barely into manhood. That is why he was stabbed.”
“The men who stabbed him went to their deaths still claiming it was just their idea to rob Henry.”
“Which they had to do if they wished to save their families. You see, Henry seduced the only son of a very powerful man. Even I have not been able to get the name, just that tiny bit of information.”
“Well, none of this truly matters, does it?”
“It tells you, quite clearly, that your son is not the rightful heir.”
“My son was recognized by Henry as his true and lawful heir. He was born while Henry and I were married, so the law recognizes him as the heir. Even the timing of the birth was all correct and acceptable, being that it was a year after Henry and I married. Alwyn is legally a de Warrenne, God help him, and it is past time you accepted that.”
“That brat is no de Warrenne!” bellowed Morris as he leapt up from his chair.
Catryn pushed Alwyn behind her and braced for a possible attack, all the while praying that Orion would hurry up and find her.
Chapter Eighteen
With a swiftness Orion had to admire, Iago and Bened removed the two guards at the door. It was not a skill he would have thought the elegant Iago would have. The ones in the family who had gifts like Iago’s usually avoided anything that brought them into too much contact with death. Such stealth and skill were of the kind taught to men who would go into battle.
“I believe our cousin Iago has a few secrets,” murmured Gethin.
Orion looked at the man hiding with him in the alley across from Morris’s town house. “I was just thinking much the same. Surprised me. The veil between the living and the dead is very thin fo
r Iago. Would not have thought a man with such a gift would indulge in anything requiring the skill to put a man down with such stealth. That is a warrior’s talent and few with Iago’s gifts would ever wish to be near a battle of any kind, small or large.”
“True, such skills do often go hand in hand with dealing out death.”
“Exactly. Even if Iago does no killing himself, he must work with ones who do. But I will not quibble, for those skills have proven very useful at the moment.”
When Bened appeared at the corner of the house and gave them the signal, Orion and Gethin hurried across the street. It worried him that he had not yet seen Giles, not at any point along the route from Radmoor to Morris’s. Although he had not been overly concerned about the boy once they reached London and had found no sign of a dead or injured Giles on the road, constantly reminding himself that Giles’s hard life had given him skills and a resilience other children did not have, that newly won calm began to fade. He should have seen some sign of the boy by now.
Pressing himself against the outer wall of the house, Orion watched the door. No one had rushed out when the two guards had abruptly disappeared, but he would give it a few more minutes just to be certain no alarm was sounded by those within the house. Entering a house none of them had been able to reconnoiter was dangerous enough. They could not even be all that certain that Morris was in there, except that the presence of two burly guards implied the man had come home. All that lack of certainty left them with only one real advantage, and that was the element of surprise. He wanted to be as certain as possible that they held on to that.
“Father, over here.”
The whispered words immediately soothed Orion in a way he had not known he needed to be soothed, and he realized he had actually not put aside his concern, simply buried it beneath a thin layer of reassurances. He turned, looking into the shadows at the far edge of the house. It took him a moment to see the boy and he shook his head, torn between hugging the boy for being safe and shaking him until his teeth rattled for doing something so dangerous. He also knew now that Giles had undoubtedly been a very skilled little thief. He signaled the others and then moved toward Giles, confident that the others would quickly join them.