Renwick was next slightest of figure, and he and Bertie were already upon a horse. Gurn was a burly man, as tall as Luke but heftier. It didn’t seem fair to require any of the horses to carry the large soldier and one of the slaves.
“Can you ride alone?” Luke asked Evelyn in Illyrian. “You won’t ride off without your brother, will you?”
Evelyn agreed, but the moment Gurn saw, he protested in Lydian. “Your Highness, you can’t let her ride alone. She’ll escape!”
“She’s promised not to. Besides, she won’t leave without her brother.”
“Your Highness,” Renwick said boldly, “please reconsider. They’ve run already. What difference does it make that we have her brother? She could easily escape and come back for him. I wouldn’t trust her—not for a moment.”
Luke bowed his head in frustration, pinching his eyes shut as he let Gurn’s and Renwick’s warnings take hold. They were right. Of course they were right. Evelyn had already proven herself determined to escape. She was as cunning as her grandfather Garren and as deceitful as her father, Rab the Raider. His father had trusted hers and died the moment he’d lowered his sword.
How could he let himself forget that fact for one moment? He glanced up at her, ready to speak, then realized why he so quickly forgot. One look at her wide blue eyes and beloved features and he wanted to trust her all over again.
He was a fool. How many times would she lie to him and run from him before he accepted her true nature? She wasn’t the woman he’d thought her to be. Not at all.
“Fine,” he announced through gritted teeth. “Their horse is surely tired. We’ll tie it behind you, Gurn. Ride this mount. The girl can ride with me. She won’t escape that way.”
Both Renwick and Gurn seemed pleased with this solution, and Luke felt a measure of satisfaction, as well, until he got up on the horse with Evelyn in front of him, her hair tucked away in a twist under her cloak but still close to him and whisper soft, smelling of the flowers she’d crushed in the woods when she’d fallen on them earlier. He quickly realized he’d been a fool again, but by then Renwick was started toward Sardis and Gurn had got the pale horse tied behind his mount and was ready to ride at the rear.
Luke urged his horse forward. It wasn’t that long a journey to Sardis. It would be over soon enough. He supposed he could have asked Renwick to trade slaves with him, but something inside him stuck at the thought of another man holding Evelyn as he did now. Perhaps he was a fool. Whether she was deceitful or not, he still cared for her and wished to hold her a little while longer.
* * *
Evelyn felt the tears racing one another down her cheeks, but she dared not lift her hand to brush them away. Prince Luke had his arms around her, and she feared if she so much as twitched, he might decide to let go of her. Then when would she be near him again?
Over and over, she reviewed the choices she’d made and tried to see where she’d gone wrong. If she could have told Luke the truth sooner, she’d have done so, but it would have endangered Bertie so much sooner. True, Luke had surprised her by claiming he wouldn’t harm her brother, but there was no saying what his brother King John might do, or any of the men who’d loved King Theodoric and wished to see his death avenged. There was every likelihood they were both riding to their deaths even now.
If death was inevitable, she ought to have confessed sooner in order that her conscience would have been clean. The thought hit her with force. Had she done wrong, then, by trying to put off a punishment that couldn’t be avoided?
Were she and Bertie bound to die for their father’s sins no matter what?
In spite of her determination to hold herself completely still, the crushing pain in her chest squeezed at her ribs and she felt the air rush from her lungs, leaving her feeling so empty and bereft that she couldn’t inhale again and sagged forward, head bowed.
“What is it?” Luke whispered near her ear.
She tried to shake her head but managed only a tremble, and though she opened her mouth, with no air in her lungs, no words passed over her lips.
Luke moved the reins to one hand and reached up to her face with the other, drawing back his hand quickly. “Are you hurt?” Alarm filled his voice.
She shook her head more forcefully and tugged in a ragged breath. “I’m fine,” she whispered.
“You’re not fine. Are you injured? Did you cut your head as I chased you or bash it when you fell?”
Realizing he must have mistaken the wetness of her tears for blood, she explained, “They’re only tears.”
“Tears?” he repeated, and his hands passed over her face again, his touch gentle, almost affectionate. Almost. “Your tears are many.”
“I have many regrets to mourn, Your Highness.”
“Oh?” There was a note of question in his tone, elevating what might have been only a sigh to enough of a prompt to compel Evelyn to speak further.
“I should have confessed from the moment you told me the name of the man who killed your father—I should have told you then whose child I was.”
“Yes. You should have,” he agreed. They rode in silence a short while longer before he asked, “Why didn’t you?”
“I feared you.”
“You know I am a Christian.”
“I have not been among Christians in many years, not since I was a child. I’m afraid I have forgotten much of Christian ways.”
Again silence fell between them, and Evelyn found she could hardly breathe, wondering what Luke must be thinking.
When he spoke again, his voice was gruff, almost strained. “Nonetheless, you should have told me the truth. Yet you didn’t.”
“For that I am so very sorry.”
His arms tightened slightly around her, drawing her closer against him in the warmth of his embrace. She felt him press his face to her hair and heard him breathe in slowly. “I don’t know how I can ever trust you again,” he whispered, his voice now most certainly strained.
Evelyn tried desperately to think of a solution, a response that would change everything between them, but nothing could undo the crimes of her father or her deceit in keeping them from the prince. “If I apologized a thousand times each day?”
“It would only remind me a thousand times more of my pain.” He relaxed his hold on her and drew back slightly.
Evelyn understood. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say, no way to fix all that had been broken. “I wish I could change all that has happened.” She spoke the words softly, almost to herself.
“Can you bring back the dead?”
“No one can.”
“Then there is no way to mend what has been broken.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way to Sardis. By the time their party arrived, the sun had begun to rise in the east. Evelyn had been unable to sleep—in spite of her exhaustion, her regrets gave her no peace. Fortunately, Bertie had dozed for much of the ride. He woke, looking disoriented, when they came to a stop at the side of the moat, where the drawbridge had yet to be lowered for the new day.
Luke sent for Hilda straight away, and the woman quickly appeared, shuffling Evelyn and Bertie up to locked rooms under heavy guard. Evelyn saw no possible way to escape, and she was too exhausted to try.
* * *
Gregory, the captain of the Sardis guard, always rose early enough to oversee the lowering of the drawbridge and now stood ready, awaiting Luke’s orders. “What are your plans?”
Luke needed information before he could decide his next move. “How do things stand with the Illyrians?”
“I sent a party as you instructed. Their messenger returned with the news that Warrick wishes to block the cave entrances with the timbers and to forbid any to visit there.”
“A wise decision.” Luke nodded, satisfied with the conclusion of the matter and pleased tha
t he wouldn’t have to personally ride back to negotiate further. Warrick had proven to be more trustworthy and far wiser than his father. Luke doubted the Illyrian prince had taken him to the caves to trap him, but there was no undoing the events that had passed. “After the Frankish siblings have rested, they must travel to Castlehead to be presented to my brother.”
“I can ready a party to escort them. Will you be accompanying them?”
Luke pondered Gregory’s question. He’d have liked to be done with the matter already, to have Evelyn and Bertie safely out of sight on Mark’s ship, sailing away to their homeland, where he would never see them again. But there was the matter of presenting them to King John.
Given his feelings about the way Evelyn had kept the secret from him, Luke knew he owed his brother the full truth, delivered in person. And while he had confidence Renwick could deliver the message accurately, Luke’s conscience goaded him. By rights, he ought to make the introductions and explain the matter to John. To send Renwick in his place seemed cowardly.
Luke knew what he ought to do, though he didn’t want to do it. “I’ll go with them, as well. The sun is only now rising. If we set out later this afternoon, we’ll arrive at Castlehead before sunset. Tell the men to be ready to depart then.”
“Six men and nine horses, then?” Gregory clarified.
“Six men,” Luke agreed, still pondering the rest. Nine horses would be a mount for each of them—the six soldiers, plus Luke, Evelyn and Bertie each on their own mount. Castlehead sat at the end of a peninsula that connected with the mainland at the city of Sardis. Once their party was on the road to Castlehead, the Frankish siblings would have nowhere to escape except the rocky seashore or the city of Sardis itself. Either way, he could recapture them quickly.
“And nine horses,” Luke decided finally. He could position his men to keep Evelyn and Bertie apart yet hemmed in by Lydian soldiers on all sides. It would have to be enough. He couldn’t bear the thought of sharing a horse with Evelyn again, not given the effect she had on him. “That should do quite well. Thank you, Gregory.”
* * *
Evelyn knew she ought to be grateful for the many kindnesses the Lydians had shown her. She and Bertie had been given new clothes—to her relief, not a fine gown like the dress she’d worn to dinner with Luke and Warrick previously but a much more practical garment with a draped, pleated skirt for riding. The garments were vastly superior to anything her grandfather had ever given them to wear. They’d been well fed and now wore new leather shoes.
Even the parcel that contained their inheritance—the jewels Bertie had gone back to Fier to fetch—had been returned to them. None of the contents were missing.
Still, as the afternoon sun cast its golden rays under a bank of clouds, turning the city of Sardis and the outlying peninsula a vibrant, glowing yellow, Evelyn felt cold dread grip her.
They rode to their deaths.
Whatever promises Luke had made to her, Evelyn knew he wasn’t the ultimate authority. He was taking her and Bertie to present them to King John. She couldn’t imagine the sovereign would let them live.
Nor was Luke taking any chances that she and her brother might escape again. He’d given them each a horse, yes, but not until the animals they were to ride were tethered on either side to his soldiers’ mounts. Short of putting her and Bertie in chains, there was little else Luke could have done to make it any clearer that they were his prisoners, and they rode a gloomy march to their deaths.
She watched him now as he addressed his men in Lydian, his words unfamiliar and yet not completely unintelligible. He gestured firmly with his arms as though visibly hedging them in. His message was clear. The soldiers were to hem them in on every side to prevent them from escaping.
And then he spoke a phrase which must have been the same in Lydian as Illyrian, because she understood with utter clarity.
“Not to be trusted.”
Evelyn met Luke’s eyes as he spoke. He pointed at her.
A moment later they started out, but she felt the condemnation of his words clinging to her with all the ferocity that had simmered in his eyes. He didn’t trust her. He never would again, not after the secret she’d kept from him.
She hung her head as they rode, shame and sorrow weighing her down. There was no point trying to escape. She deserved whatever punishment she faced—not because of what her father had done but because of what she’d done.
No matter how heartfelt her apology to Luke, she couldn’t undo the past. She couldn’t raise the dead or bring back his father.
They rode slowly and yet arrived at the beautiful fortress of Castlehead all too quickly. The clouds that had reflected back the golden sunlight earlier now swarmed thick and ominous above them, swirling to gray, blocking out the light of the sun, casting an unnatural darkness over the pale limestone walls.
Bertie caught her eyes for just a moment before they rode through the front gate. He didn’t appear to be nearly as frightened or as sorrowful as she felt. In fact, his face bore mostly curious hope.
That fact encouraged her slightly. They might be going to their deaths, but at least Bertie didn’t realize it yet. Hopefully it would all be over so quickly that Bertie felt no terror.
They waited, surrounded by Luke’s men, as the prince disappeared through a doorway. Some moments later he returned for them, his expression stern, his pallor ill. It seemed Prince Luke dreaded this audience almost as much as she did.
Luke led them, still flanked by guards, into the great hall, where a fire burned brightly at one end of the room, warding off the chill that had descended with the swirling clouds. Two engraved thrones were situated nearest the blaze, occupied by two crowned figures. Evelyn recognized the queen Gisela, one of the Emperor Charlemagne’s daughters. Evelyn had seen her before in Aachen, though that had been many long years ago.
The queen’s eyes rested on her for just a moment. She showed no sign of surprise or of question. Queen Gisela seemed almost as though she expected them.
The other throne held a broad-shouldered, dark-haired figure. King John. His resemblance to Luke was unmistakable.
Prince Luke bowed to the pair, and Evelyn sank to her knees and stayed there. Bertie bowed beside her and stayed down, as well. Prince Luke began his speech in Lydian.
Evelyn could make out little of his words—the occasional cognate or name, including that of her father. And yet neither the king nor the queen displayed any sign of surprise or anger. She’d expected them to become furiously angry, to curse and throw things and dive at them with blades drawn, but they only sat still, their expressions sad but not overly upset.
Still bowed low before them, Evelyn nonetheless bent her head upward to watch the royal pair. How many times had her grandfather flown into a fit of fury simply because his dinner was delayed or a messenger had brought news about the Lydians? Once, she’d been given a horrible beating for giving a bone with meat still clinging to it to her brother instead of to the king’s dogs. She’d long assumed it was the way of kings to scream and shout. They were leaders. Wasn’t that how leaders were supposed to behave?
But John and Gisela did not raise their voices. When King John finally spoke, it was only to ask Evelyn in Frankish if she and her brother understood Latin.
“Not well,” she admitted in Frankish, her voice trembling so much she could hardly produce enough volume to be heard in the echoing chamber. “It has been many years since we have heard that tongue.”
“Illyrian, then?” the king offered next. “I would address you in Frankish, but I want my brother to understand all I have to say.”
“We’re quite fluent in Illyrian, Your Majesty.”
King John rose from his throne and came to stand in front of Bertie. Luke stood on Bertie’s left, and Evelyn bowed at Bertie’s right.
“My brother told me many months ag
o of a mysterious pale-haired woman who saved his life at Bern. I inspected the handiwork myself and was quite impressed. Still, no one knew of this woman, but he could not forget her, and my wife and I prayed she would be found.
“When my brother reported that he had found you, the queen and I both observed his joy and could not help but wonder about your identity. On his next visit, we learned you were of Frankish origins, from Aachen, and that your name is Evelyn.”
As she stayed bent low before him, to Evelyn’s shock, the king crouched in front of her and looked her full in the face for one long moment.
“It was at this time that my wife remembered a pale-haired girl named Evelyn who had lived near the palace in Aachen, who had a younger brother, as Luke had informed us you did. Though the girl’s family was noble, her father was a rebel who’d been banished from the Holy Roman Empire, who took his children with him when he was sent away.”
King John’s voice grew sad. “We realized then that you and your brother were almost certainly Rab the Raider’s children.”
The king looked at her again, silent, and Evelyn felt her heart beating madly as though it might burst. She wished he would draw his sword that very moment and end the waiting, but at the same time, his gentle nature and calm countenance made her feel the tiniest sliver of hope.
She found her voice but could only muster up a whisper. “I am sincerely sorry for what my father did.”
“It is not your crime to apologize for.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Bertie spoke up beside her.
“Nor is it your crime, Rabertus.”
Evelyn started at the king’s words. What could he possibly mean?
Chapter Seventeen
Luke could remain silent no longer. “So, you knew?”
John stood. “Gisela didn’t realize the truth until after you’d left. We were going to tell you when next we saw you, but you have not been to Castlehead between then and now, and it wasn’t the sort of message I wanted to entrust to a messenger.”
“Why ever not? I should have liked to have known as soon as possible.” Luke felt his anger rising. His brother had known? How much heartache—how many kisses—might Luke have been spared if only he’d known sooner? Evelyn wasn’t the only one who’d kept the truth from him. John and Gisela had stayed silent far too long, as well.
The Secret Princess Page 21
