“I’m sorry,” she murmured, suddenly chastened by their play. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Lady,” he said, laughing, as he rolled her under him, “you can hurt me like that any day.”
Chapter 10
The carriage stood ready to roll, the horses jangling their harnesses, and still Lenora had no idea how to say good-bye.
Was this the end, then, of the strange connection she shared with Wolfram, whatever it was? Certainly not a marriage; she refused to accept it as such. Although what then to make of her behavior last night? She’d never thought of herself as a woman who would engage in lusty bed play before marriage. If she wasn’t married to the man, why had she bedded him with such abandon?
And what now? She was returning home to England, and he was staying to fight in Germany. It was entirely possible she’d never see him again. He could die here, as so many were dying in the protests flaring across Europe this spring. The thought filled her with a sudden anger, and sadness, at the senselessness of it all.
Or what if he did make it back to England? Would he pursue his claim as her husband?
She thought it strange, ominous even, that Wolfram had brought up none of these questions last night or this morning. After their lovemaking, he’d fetched her brandy for her. She’d sipped it in bed as he’d straightened the bed linens. Then he’d tucked her in his arms for her best night’s sleep in months. When she’d awoken this morning, he’d already quit the room, leaving her with his scent on the pillows and an odd sense of disappointment.
She hadn’t expected a morning romp, had she?
She sighed, fidgeting with her gloves outside the grand entrance of Schloss Dremen under the porte cochere. Wolfram still hadn’t shown up to see her off. Surely he didn’t plan to let her go without offering his farewells? He’d been absent at breakfast, also—verifying final travel arrangements with Count von Dremen, the butler had informed her.
But what to say to him? How did one take one’s leave of a man who’d forced her into marriage and into his bed, but had then treated her as his princess and allowed her to tie him up and act out shameless fantasies until she’d collapsed on top of him in a boneless heap of pleasure? Her head whirled. She had no experience by which to judge or understand this situation.
“It’s time to go, Lenora.”
She jumped when Wolfram’s deep voice rumbled from behind her.
“Come, let me hand you into the carriage,” he continued, taking her arm to walk her down the steps.
“But . . .” She paused, frowning, casting around for some way to express the muddle of her feelings. “What will happen to you?”
A sad smile lifted the corner of his mouth. Goodness, that mouth. She wanted to kiss it again. A shiver rippled through her frame as her body remembered their climax together last night.
“You needn’t worry about me, lady,” he was saying. “You’ll be safe on your way home to your parents. The count and I have gone over all arrangements with Herr Weisstagen”—he nodded at the man coming toward them from the hall—“who will serve as your steward for the trip. He’s a good man; you may put your faith in him.”
But she did worry. Surely one didn’t share with a man what she had done with Wolfram and then think of him no more! And there was something disturbingly fatalistic in how he avoided all discussion of his own return to England.
“Will I see you again, Wolfram?” She looked up into those clear blue eyes of his and saw a shadow pass over their depths before he looked away.
“You have the copy of the marriage contract and my dower settlement documents. Make use of them once you return home.”
She frowned. “You sound as if you don’t intend to return to England. As if you don’t expect to emerge from these skirmishes.” She couldn’t bring herself to say, As if you expect to die, although the phrase echoed in her head. Why, after all, should she care?
“One can never predict the future, Lenora.” He handed her into the waiting carriage—bundled her in, in fact, far too quickly for all the questions and fears running through her mind—and settled her on the front-facing squabs. “I, for example, would never have guessed a month ago that I was about to meet the princess of my dreams. That she would ride into my camp in muddy boy’s breeches and steal my heart.” He picked up the hand she held clenched in her lap and brushed a kiss across her gloved knuckles. “That I would be forced by the situation to steal in return from her, in ways I would never wish. That I would so lose my heart that I’d sell my soul to the very devil to make up for the hurt I caused.”
A sob escaped her as he tucked her hand back into her lap rug. “Farewell, my beautiful Lenora,” he said. “My lady wife, my princess.”
She drew breath to speak, to say—what? But he quickly shut the carriage door and signaled for the driver to take off. Herr Weisstagen, a maid assigned to her for the voyage, and a trunk containing a travel wardrobe supplied by the countess followed in another carriage. A small troop of hardened soldiers rode alongside both vehicles. As the party rolled down the long castle drive, Lenora opened the carriage window and leaned out to look back. Wolfram, already growing small, stood alone on the castle steps.
She waved and bit back another sob. Stupid man. Romantic fool.
And her stupid, stupid heart.
They had traveled uneventfully clear across the border into the Kingdom of the Netherlands before Lenora had figured out the switch.
The Netherlands was one of the few European states free from turmoil this spring. Lenora prayed the other monarchs would follow the example of King William II, who had staved off revolution by supporting a liberal constitution with elected representatives and limiting his royal power. Her retinue headed for the country’s port of Amsterdam to arrange passage to England.
The Royal Oak Inn accommodated them for the night. After a surprisingly fine dinner in the ladies’ parlor, she’d disentangled herself from a pair of nervous sisters seeking to pass through the chaos of the revolution to reach the lying-in of their youngest sister in Antwerp. Lenora ventured to the inn’s common room to seek information from her guards about the road conditions ahead. The voices made loud by ale froze her to the spot before she rounded the corner.
“If you ask me, he’s a stupid fool to die for a woman when Germany needs good men like him to fight,” growled a man to the sound of someone dealing cards. She recognized the voice as belonging to one of her armed escorts.
“Married not even a fortnight, I heard,” replied a gravel-voiced companion, “and already gone to his death in a trade for her. Are you cocking on this draw?”
“Do you remember that wheelwright from the last inn, where we changed horses?” asked another. “He told me that wool merchants stopped over the day before who had just come from Rotenburg—ha! a doublet of eights!—and that the merchants said der Wolfram had ridden straight up to the Schloss.”
Her guards played faro in the inn’s common room—and they spoke about her and Wolfram!
“They said the Black Knight turned himself in to Prince Kurt,” continued the speaker, “and that the prince threw him in the dungeon. The execution is expected next week.”
Execution! The world swam as blood drained from her head. When her legs worked again, she marched into the room.
Four men shot to their feet. “Freifrau,” said the dealer, “you shouldn’t be in here! The company is not fit for a lady.”
“Bother that!” She dropped onto the bench at their table. “Sit, good men. I overheard you speak. Pray tell me what you know about der Wolfram.”
The men exchanged wary glances. “We dare not, meine Dame. Count von Dremen made a bargain with your husband that we would see you safely home to England.”
She looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand. You say Freiherr von Wolfsbach went to Rotenburg—voluntarily?”
The men glanced again uneasily at each other. “Lady, it’s not for us to discuss the count’s business or that of the Black Knight. Ou
r master charged us with your safety. Our business is to that duty alone.”
She frowned. She could probably browbeat these guards into telling her more, but she wanted no other servants punished for aiding her. Her conscience carried enough guilt for this unending fiasco of a Germany voyage. “Where is Herr Weisstagen?” she asked them. The steward that Count von Dremen had put in charge of her return home was a steady and honorable older man; he’d handled all their travel arrangements over the past week with calm competence.
“He took his pipe outside after supper, Freifrau. You’ll find him in the courtyard.” The men escorted her out of the taproom, nodding and smiling in their relief to be rid of her.
The sweet aroma of burning tobacco led her past the inn’s gas lamps to a dark corner of the stable yard where Herr Weisstagen stood puffing quietly at his pipe.
“Guten Abend, meine Dame.” He greeted her with a companionable nod. “Is all satisfactory with your ladyship’s accommodations?”
“Yes, thank you, all is fine.” She stopped in front of him. “I am, however, in need of some information. I realize my request might put you in a difficult situation with your master, but it has come to my attention that all is not what I believed it to be, in terms of my departure from Schloss Dremen.”
Herr Weisstagen sighed. He drew hard on his pipe before speaking. “Freifrau, what difference would any of it make to you now? I know enough of your story to realize you have sought to return to England ever since leaving Rotenburg. You’re going home; surely the rest doesn’t matter?”
She swallowed, felt a sweat start to break out despite the cool evening air. The guards had been right: something was amiss. “It matters,” she said, twisting her hands.
The sinking feeling in her stomach confirmed it to be true. Despite all that had happened, she didn’t think she could stand to have Wolfram’s death on her conscience. But what choice was there, if Kurt already had him in the dungeon?
“Does Lord Becker know what has happened? Perhaps you could get a message to him and the militiamen who were fighting with the Freiherr . . .” She trailed off under Herr Weisstagen’s steady gaze.
Weisstagen was Dremen’s man, and Dremen had apparently betrayed her. The count was not the ally she’d believed him to be, but stood fast with the other aristocrats fiercely opposing the revolutionaries with every means at their disposal.
What a dim-witted fool she’d been. She had trusted the count, and now Wolfram stood to die because of it. He’d allowed himself to be imprisoned by Kurt in exchange for her.
Herr Weisstagen’s sad eyes lit with the red glow of his pipe as he pulled on it again. “Did you know I had a son?”
“No, I didn’t.” She frowned at his phrasing. “You had a son?”
“Ja, Dame. He worked as undersecretary to Count von Dremen’s cousin, the bishop of Tübingen. Until my boy became involved with the revolutionaries.”
“What happened?” Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. Dear God, would the stories of suffering never cease?
“The bishop imprisoned him for spreading insurrection. Gustav died of typhus while awaiting a trial they never bothered to schedule.”
The steady glow and dimming of the pipe mesmerized her. Save for its radiance, the courtyard surrounded them in darkness and quiet. “Herr Weisstagen, where lie your sympathies?” she whispered.
When he didn’t answer, she moved closer. “I can’t leave Lord Ravensworth to die in another prison. Perhaps his men could do something if they knew where he was.” She swallowed, felt a sweat break out across her brow despite the cool evening air. “Perhaps I can do something.”
Herr Weisstagen bent over to tap out his spent tobacco against the courtyard wall. “Did you also know, Dame Lenora, that I have a daughter, still very much alive?”
A prick of hope tickled down her back. “I am very pleased to learn it.”
“Her name is Helga Stanfeld. She’s one of the head maids at Rotenburg, a widow recently engaged to be married to Herr Blumthal, the gardener of the Schloss. Perhaps you knew her?” The steward straightened back up and fixed his gaze on hers. “Perhaps she can help you.”
Dear God—she would have to go back.
Back to Rotenburg.
Back to Kurt.
It wasn’t how Wolf expected to die.
Locked in a dungeon, that holdover from the days of medieval barbarism and royal privilege that the revolutionaries were working so hard to abolish. The protesters dreamed of a future for Germany and the other European nations where all people had rights and shared in the governance of their country. Where democracy and peace ruled the land, instead of the arbitrary will of oft-despotic aristocrats bent on their own interests.
Such as now.
Through Wolf’s one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, he watched Kurt gloat. The prince paced Wolf’s small prison cell, issuing directions for the beatings. The bastard’s delight was almost comical as he watched Wolf slowly die.
When Count von Dremen’s men had delivered Wolf to the gates of Schloss Rotenburg, the prince had welcomed him with irons and chains. They’d thrown him in the dungeon—more medieval torture drama—on meager rations for a few days. Visits from Kurt punctuated the gloom of the dank cell, as the prince brought in bright lamps and a daily beating from his henchmen.
Wolf knew his nemesis drew out the sweet pleasure of killing him. From Wolf’s perspective, the game began to bore. When he became impatient with the beatings on the third day, he tried to provoke Kurt into a rage so that the man would get it over with and finish him off.
Yet no matter how Wolf goaded him, the prince wouldn’t order anything more than an extra beating.
“She’s mine now, Prinz. My wife, no matter what you do. She’s out of your reach forever.”
Blow to the kidneys. Hard cross to the jaw.
Wolf spit out blood, aiming for Kurt. “She could be carrying my child even now.”
That earned him a battery of hard punches to the stomach until he retched up the gruel they’d fed him that morning. But Kurt still couldn’t be incited into giving the order to kill him.
It reminded Wolf of what Lenora had hinted at—how her former fiancé had toyed with her for weeks in casual sexual torture but insisted on saving her virginity for their wedding night. The bastard’s pattern held for a long week in the dungeon. Wolf marked the days’ passage by the alteration of full dark with the dim sun that filtered into his cell from a light shaft in the passageway.
He thought of Lenora: his princess. Beautiful, brave, more loving than he’d dared hope. More sensuous than she understood. After his death, would she find some worthy man to bring out that passion, to help her experience delight and not shame in it? He wanted happiness for her, although the image of her with another man punched to his gut with more agony than that of the prison guards’ blows.
His one deep consolation was that Lenora was safe. He thanked God for it every day. With any luck, she might even be home in England by now—certainly she was out of Germany and awaiting passage in Amsterdam for the North Sea crossing. He regretted that fate had robbed them of the lifetime they might have had to explore each other and craft a life together, perhaps even to have children. But he did not lament for a moment the decision he’d made to trade his freedom for hers. Kurt wouldn’t have killed her, but the life that twisted wastrel intended for her was a type of death nonetheless. He’d gladly give his own life to spare her that hell. He did bitterly regret that he’d not been able to stop Kurt. But the revolution would continue, with or without the Black Knight’s help.
And one day—perhaps one day soon—the Prince Kurts of the world would rule no more.
The bruises bloomed over Wolf’s body. He drifted in and out of consciousness. After one particularly brutal beating, he heard the prince’s disgusted mutter: “Leave him alone for a couple of days. England has made his German blood weak. I don’t want him dead yet.” They sent a doctor down to sew up his reopened shoulder wound and apply po
ultices to the worst of the bruises. They even improved his rations and spooned beef broth down his throat until he regained his strength.
It was then that they dragged him out of the dungeon. Guards shackled him into the stocks for a day and night of exposure in the Gruselstadt town square. Later the next morning Kurt emerged from the Schloss to supervise Wolf’s lashing at the castle whipping post. It was the very post, Wolf registered dimly, where he’d first seen Lenora as she’d undergone the same abuse. A large crowd gathered for the event; the prince’s men had roused the whole town, it seemed, to witness Wolf’s punishment.
After a dozen or so preliminary lashes, Kurt mounted the raised dais surrounding the post to address the crowd. “This traitor before you is known among the people as der Wolfram, the Wolf-Raven, the Black Knight. His real name is Wolfram von Wolfsbach und Ravensworth, former free imperial knight of the House of Wolfsbach. And yet this traitor is no true heir to that ancient title. Instead of defending the people of Germany as the knights were charged to do, this man has dishonored the title with his treason! He is not even a full-blooded German, as his mother left our land long ago to sully her bloodline with an Englishman. This Wolf-Raven fights only for himself. He brings shame to his grandfather’s noble house!”
Kurt was working himself into a rage. He paced the dais, his voice booming out ever louder, his arms gesticulating wildly. “Instead of defending the state, this fraudulent knight abuses his title to cause mayhem and destruction throughout the land of his maternal ancestors. He sides with those cowards and fools who seek to upset our centuries-old way of life with a ridiculous call for changes that would destroy the confederation! He’s led rebellions responsible for many deaths. Commerce, industry, transportation—all the orderly conduct of German life grinds to a standstill because of men like him!”
The crowd shifted uneasily. Mutters of discontent rippled through it. Wolf squinted to focus an eye on two men whispering together and casting scornful glances at their prince. Kurt’s popularity had dipped to an all-time low, even for that miserable despot. Rumors had reached Wolf in the dungeon that Kurt had ordered a school in a nearby hamlet burned to the ground on suspicion that the teacher held revolutionary sympathies. The teacher, a young man from the University of Berlin, had apparently collected signatures from local farmers and merchants for a petition demanding a legislative diet to meet regularly in Gruselstadt.
Knight of Love Page 14
