by kps
"Honest opinion, eh?" Wynn considered his answer for a while, knowing full well that it would determine her future actions regarding Devlan Cantrell. In truth, he believed that the chances of finding her husband were one in a thousand. One man alone did not survive long in the Guayana, and if it really had been the Duke that the Spaniard had seen, he must have been deranged, affected by the hostile environment to a degree that he hadn't recognized Alazar or sought his help in returning to civilization. Sane men didn't last long in the tropics, and a crazed one even less time.
Wynn would tell Jenny the truth but leave open that one, intriguing chance in a million that he was wrong. "If you want me to continue, I will. Your father will get his money's worth, ma'am, but the chances are slim that you'll ever know what happened to Morenes." He wanted to plant a seed of doubt, to ask what she would do if she married Devlan and Rodrigo appeared on her doorstep; but, remembering her earlier warning not to meddle in her private affairs, he restrained himself.
"Then we'll turn back in the morning … it's agreed?"
He nodded, and Jenny closed her eyes a moment in a sigh of relief. Back to Caracas, back to civilization at last! All she would need was the strength to survive the trip, and the horrible bugs and deadly creatures of the interior would be a memory instead of a gruesome, everyday reality. When she again opened her eyes, Courtland was walking away toward the spot where the bearers and Ramon were sharing a meal.
Dev took hold of Jenny's hand and she smiled at him, then tilted her head to one side, listening for a moment before she asked him if he heard the same, steady roaring sound she did. "Courtland told me there's a huge waterfall about a mile from here. That's the sound you're hearing." He pointed off to the right, and through the thick foliage and lush, heavy treetops she could just make out the outlines of a steep, granite mountain.
"We're just on the edge of a range of mountains. They call 'em tepuis here. They're sheer-sided and very high." A heavy mist obscured the peaks, and Dev explained further that they hadn't been explored yet. "No one's ever seen the tops. Our native friends over there think the tepuis are the homes of their gods."
Jenny tried to discern more of the distant scene but failed. She thought it would be interesting to see the falls before they turned back and was about to suggest it to Dev when the loud crack of a rifle shot broke the surrounding silence. Wynn's shout to Dev came a second later.
Dev jumped to his feet. "Stay here and don't move an inch!" he ordered sternly. He grabbed his rifle and ran across the campsite to the edge of an open field, disappearing among the trees and bushes at its edge.
Jenny knew she should obey, that she would only be in the way in the event they were being attacked by hostile natives, but after another shot, then another, she bolted across the camp toward the spot where Dev had disappeared. Branches clawed at her face, but she pushed through them, ignoring the scratches as she stumbled through the brush in a desperate need to know Dev was safe.
The scene in the open field was so bizarre and unbelievable that her mind rejected what her eyes saw. Dazed, she clutched at a nearby tree for support. But for the occasional loud crack of rifle fire and the raucous, keening cries of startled birds, the tableau was a violent intrusion of the past upon the present.
Across the field from Jenny, five knights, knights in full battIe armor, sat astride their liveried chargers, and the blood-eager destriers pawed the earth in anticipation of yet another charge forward. Metal visors and noseguards obscured the upper half of the attackers' faces, imparting a menacing aspect in sharp contrast to the innocent, heraldic plumed feathers that fluttered atop their helmets. Another knight lay sprawled on the ground, wounded by a lucky shot that had penetrated a weak spot in the .chain mail covering his left calf. The large, fleshy bulk of his mount lay before him, sheltering his body from additional shots by the defenders. To her right, Jenny saw one of the native bearers, the short, dark Indian known as Gualito, lying in a pool of his own blood, mortally wounded by one stab of a lance.
Jenny blinked hard to banish the imaginary vision, but when she looked across the field, the sun glancing off shiny metallic plate revealed that the aggressors from another time were all too real.
The charge began and the earth trembled beneath the thundering beat of the horses'
hooves, to the accompaniment of a round of defensive fire. Not twelve feet from her, one of the horses, struck by a bullet, crashed to its knees with a wild, snorting whinny of pain. The rider rolled away deftly escaping the great, crushing weight of the charger, to come to his feet with sword drawn. The steel flashed in the sun as the man cried out exultantly and rushed toward the woods to attack.
Dev was firing at the two others who had managed to pin down Courtland at an awkward, indefensible spot. In his concentration he failed to hear the approach of the man on foot.
Only Jenny's scream as she watched one of the knights plunge his sword into the base of Wynn's throat saved Dev from the same fate. He whirled in her direction and found himself facing his armored attacker.
One blow of the broad, double-edged sword sent his rifle flying, and as he rolled with the second lunge, Dev escaped death by a narrow margin. Instead of being struck by the sharp edge of the weapon, Dev was knocked flying by its thick, flat surface and crumpled to the earth before Jenny's horrified gaze.
She screamed again and flew to his side, disregarding the threat of the knight who loomed over his body or the fact that she was now alone in the forest, without any protection other than her tears. In her first hysterical reaction, she cradled Dev's head in her lap, sobbing as her fingers smeared the bright blood that matted the curls at his temple. Slowly, reason returned, and she carefully probed the swollen lump, checking to make sure his skull was not fractured. The blow apparently had done nothing more than cause him to pass out from the sharp pain, and she drew a deep breath and said a prayer of thanks.
The next moment she found herself jerked to her feet by the knight. He held her arm in a tight, vice-like grip, the metal scales of his gauntlet biting into the flesh of her slender wrist.
Jenny scarcely felt their sharpness, so consumed was she by the-fury that had replaced her fright. In the distance there was a gurgling scream of death, and she closed her eyes, shutting out the ugly sound as yet another of the native bearers met his death at the hands of these murderers. The knight who held her raised his visor, wiping the sweat from his eyes.
"M'Lady," he said, drawing Jenny's attention with the strange, rippling brogue in which he spoke. "I have orders to bring ye to the laird of Beann Gowd'en." The other knights now gathered around, their hauberks and emblazoned tabards smeared with the blood of their victims.
Jenny drew herself up straight and proud, disdainfully glancing down at her imprisoned arm before she raised her eyes to his with a haughty look. "And where is this den of murdering cowards who prey on unsuspecting travellers, most gallant knight?"
The stinging words had their desired effect. The man caught her other arm, whirling her roughly around to point out the mist-shrouded tepui in the distance. "There lies our land, and all who trespass its domain forfeit their lives." He made a mocking half-bow and added ironically, "All but ye, m'Lady Jennifer. Lord Rodrigo gave specific orders ye were not to come to any harm."
At the shock of Rodrigo's name, Jenny surrendered gladly to unconsciousness. She did not know that the knight's quick reflexes in catching her broke her fall. She did not feel his strong arms lift her into the care of one of his mounted companions. She knew nothing beyond the black, painless void that enveloped her mind.
Nineteen
Despite the fact that the armed knights had come down from their mountain fortress at Rodrigo's bidding, it was to Lady Fiona, hereditary leader of Beann Gowd'en by her descent from its founder, Sir Thomas the Rhymer, that they owed true allegiance. When the woman captive recovered consciousness on the. journey through the secret labyrinth of caves that honeycombed the immense mountain, the knight who'd swept her onto
his mount had bound her arms at the wrist and covered her eyes with the scarf she'd been wearing.
Raddock had been given specific orders not to harm her, though no such ban extended to the only one of her companions to escape death. The tall, mustached man who'd suffered the head wound had been slung over the charger of one of the fallen knights and securely trussed, even though he'd stayed unconscious for the trip to the mountain top.
The knights made an impressive sight, their polished armor plate glinting in the noonday sun as they emerged from the the cave that opened onto the flat, fertile surface of Beann Gowd'en. To the lady waiting a distance away with her party of attendants and guards, it was no great wonder that the superstitious Indian tribes who inhabited the forest floor took the seldom-seen warriors as gods of the mountain. They always had, since her ancestor Sir Thomas had brought his followers to this secluded new land in the early thirteen hundreds.
Lady Fiona of Loch Gowd took a deep breath, trying to quell her excitement as the group of knights cantered forward and reined in their charges a short distance from her party.
Raddock had his orders. He knew that the lady he carried belonged to Rodrigo, the Spanish devil who'd usurped the leadership of their country and taken it upon himself to be declared the new Laird. He knew that she could not be allowed to overhear any conversation that might endanger his Lady. And so, before he approached her, he lifted Rodrigo's wife down from the stallion and left her in the care of another knight.
Fiona's voice was hushed as she bade Raddock to rise from his kneeling obeisance, then inquired how the foray had gone. "Two loyal squires down, m'lady, and none but the man there," he swung around and pointed with a gauntleted hand, "left of the trespassers. What be ye'r further wishes?" Fiona peered past her knight, studying the immobile form draped over the saddle. The germ of an idea took seed in her mind, and she asked how badly he was wounded. "'Tis but a head scrape, m'lady, a blow to his thick head and nae more. He'll live to rue the death o' m'men, tha' I swear."
"Nae, loyal champion mine, I've plans tha' include this fellow. Listen close," she ordered, coming nearer as she whispered her instructions. After a few minutes Raddock nodded, then bowed and turned away to rejoin his men and motion his second in command, Sir David, to one side for a quick conference.
Worn by the long trip and pushed to exhaustion by the shock of what she'd been through, Jenny lay listlessly against the hard, metal breastplate of the knight who held her, lost in a kind of limbo. She knew neither where she was nor why the party of men had stopped. Was Dev all right? That was the worry that consumed her. When she'd come out of her swoon, she'd been able to see that he was tied to one of the horses. Although he appeared limp, she consoled herself with the belief that they would not have bothered to bring him along if he were not alive.
Suddenly she heard voices and recognized the man who had originally captured her as he said, " 'Tis no use, Davie, the man is gone. All ye'r shakin' will nae bring a dead man back t'life! Stay behind wi' Balterry an' see t'buryin' him. E'en now, the Laird's wonderin' where we be!"
An icy chill settled over Jenny's flesh, and she grew dizzy again. Dev couldn't be ... oh, dear God no, she thought, struggling to get away from her captor, trying to tear the scarf away from her eyes. A horse whinnied as metal armor clanked against its own protective shielding, and she heard, as blackness mercifully blotted out pain, the heavy sound of a body falling to the ground.
When Jenny opened her eyes, she found herself in a world that had not existed for five hundred years. She was lying in a canopied bed whose heavy draperies of dark, purple velveteen were half drawn. A figure resting on a chair in the gathering shadows of the room rose at the sound of her voice, moaning, then sobbing as she remembered that Dev was dead. The pain that reverberated within her tortured mind was too much to bear in silence.
For minutes the maid who had stood watch over the unconscious girl stood at the bedside, unsure of what she should do. The lady was obviously in shock, beside herself with hysterical grief. Did she dare risk calling the Laird in now? Or, thought Amarythe, would it be best to wait until this storm of emotion had passed? Laird Rodrigo did not appreciate an outward show of feeling in anyone, but then, this young girl was his wife. Surely she, of all people, would be exempt from his wrath.
Finally Amarythe murmured a soft plea, "Weep nae more, m'lady! The sun is lowering and ye're husband'll want t'see ye soon. Approach him wi' eyes tha' be reddened wi' tears, or he'll be full of glow'rs and baleful temper." The lady stared at her as though she were some strange being not of this world, and Amarythe turned away with a puzzled frown of her own and went to fetch a cloth 'and a basin of cool water.
Jenny submitted dully to the attentions of the maid, allowing her to bathe her tired, aching eyes with the damp cloth, letting herself be helped from bed and dressed in a gown of pale blue linen. When the girl had finished her ministrations and handed Jenny a looking. glass, she did not recognize the person who stared back at her, Despite the uneven surface that gave her reflection a wavery appearance, Jenny found the transformation in the mirror startling. She was dressed in a simple clinging gown that silhouetted her body. A loose, knee-length vest of the same material hung in graceful folds over the garment, but it was shot through with golden thread so that it shimmered in the yellow glow of the candles that had been lit. A girdle of fine gold links belted the vest at the waist, fastened by a buckle set with a single sapphire the size of a small hen's egg.
In her strange, burred accent, the girl had answered her questions with the name of each garment. After she'd brushed out Jenny's hair until it lay like a heavy, gleaming veil of black across her shoulders, Amarythe had dexterously parted the heavy masses at the center and formed two neat coils of hair that she pinned to the side of Jenny's head. A long, nearly sheer veil the girl had called a wimple was wound under the chin and allowed to drape a bit before being pinned atop the head and covered by another veil that was secured by a simple gold tiara. Now Jenny looked like a well-to-do lady of the Middle Ages, an image that was as frightening and strange to her as Amarythe's accent or the antiquated look of the room's furnishings.
The girl had refused to reply to her queries about her surroundings, apparently afraid to say anything before Rodrigo had seen Jenny. When she was completely dressed, Jenny was escorted from the room, down a long, stone-walled hallway lit by flickering torches to a room with guards on either side of its massive, carved wooden doors. Neither of the two men was wearing knightly livery. Their modem style of dress, similar to the clothing Dev and Wynn had been wearing on the expedition, added to Jenny's confusion.
Both men lounged insolently against the wall, their guns obviously the threat that kept intruders away from Rodrigo's private suite. Amarythe must have become used to the aggressive, overly bold attitude of Rodrigo's hirelings, for as one of the men stepped forward and made a grab for her, she spryly avoided his grasping hand and threw an arm out to shield Jenny from the same. "Ye'll let us pass, y'big ox, or ye'll have ye'r master t'answer to!
The lady wi' me is the Laird's wife … step aside and let us enter!"
Though there was little respect in the appraising glances they gave Jenny, they appeared to take the warning at face value, and one of them swung the door open and stood back to let them pass by unmolested. Inside the maid ushered Jenny up to a huge desk and made a low, kneeling curtsey, announcing that she had brought the Lady Jennifer, and rising only when Rodrigo, without lifting his head from the papers he was studying, curtly dismissed her.
There was a long, purposeful silence before Rodrigo looked up, a maneuver that in the past had served to set the mood for his ascendency in a meeting with another. Too much had happened to Jenny this day, though, for her to be unsettled by such tactics. She stood facing him,
her head held high as her husband's eyes met hers for the first time in two years. "I had not thought it possible, my dear Jena, but you have grown even more lovely than I remember,"
he comme
nted, his gaze sweeping over her body with a touch of the old, familiar possessiveness he'd always shown. "The style of clothing suits you ... an appropriate setting for a fine jewel."
"You have the advantage of being familiar with these styles ... with this place you've found, Rodrigo," Jenny answered coldly, glancing around at the tapestries decorating the walls, at the cressets that flickered a dull light over the room's furnishings. "Your gallant knights have cost me enough pain this day to last a lifetime; do not test me further by playing at cat-and-mouse games!" She glared at him, her nostrils flaring with open resentment, as he rose and walked around the desk to her side.
"You are referring to the men who died down below, no?" He took her hand, his eyes narrowing with a flash of dark menace as she snatched it away. He remained outwardly calm, though a tight, ticking pulse in his cheek betrayed a growing irritation with her lack of warmth. "Or perhaps to the young man who died after the journey here?" Jenny's eyes closed for a brief moment, and Rodrigo smiled, shrugging his shoulders in a careless way.
"These things happen, cara, life is given ... it is taken away. What can this one death mean when you have been given back your husband, eh?"
Jenny bit her lip to keep from crying out against his ridiculous claim, to hold back the ridicule she wanted to fling in his sneering face. What did it matter now that she'd found Rodrigo alive ... nothing mattered now. She turned her face away from him, then a whimper escaped her as his long, thin fingers closed on her jaw, forcing her around to look into his eyes.
"You do not seem happy about our reunion, little one. All these many months I have longed to see you again. Surely you must have missed me to come all this way." He let go of her, then caught her shoulders and gave her body a shake. "I am waiting to hear you speak of the love you bear me, Jena. Why do you choose to anger me at such a tender moment?"
