Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “I’m fine,” he said, gripping her too tightly, so gratified that she’d reached out to him. “I’ve just spent the afternoon with you.”

  “Back so soon?”

  They turned to find Gaspar standing in the entrance to the keep, eyeing their clasped hands. Nicki yanked hers out of Alex’s grasp, recoiling from him. “We...we thought it was going to rain.”

  “Oh, the weather’s turning bad, all right,” Gaspar said blandly, raising his gaze to the murky heavens. “There’s quite a hellish tempest brewing. Just you wait and see.”

  * * *

  Gaspar placed the goblet carefully in Edith’s hands and closed her gnarled fingers around it. “Here it is. Now, you must make sure her ladyship drinks all of it, remember?”

  The old hag stared into the goblet with that vacant expression that meant she didn’t remember at all, even though Gaspar had explained it to her after supper. “What’s this, then?”

  “Raisin wine,” he ground out with ill-feigned patience while glancing over his shoulder to make sure there was no one else in the torchlit staircase to overhear. Most everyone had retired for the night, but still...

  There was little risk in using Edith for this mission. By tomorrow it was unlikely she would recall having brought the adulterated wine to her young mistress.

  “Raisin wine,” the old women murmured, frowning in confusion.

  “With something in it to help her sleep,” he reminded. “She’s had trouble sleeping of late.”

  “That she has, poor lamb. Aye, but she’ll be in her own bed tonight. She’ll sleep like a stone.” She tried to hand the goblet back, but Gaspar pushed it toward her.

  “Sleeplessness can linger long after the cause for it is gone,” he said. “She needs something to relax her. ‘Twill be good for her.”

  Edith pinned him with a sharp look that reminded him of the mulish creature she’d been years before. “She doesn’t know what’s good for her, that one. Never did.”

  “There. You see? She needs you.” He patted her hands, closing her cold, twisted fingers more firmly around the goblet, lest she drop it. “You must make her drink it—all of it. She won’t like the taste, but that’s just the sleeping herbs. She mustn’t leave a drop. I made it extra strong, so don’t be alarmed if it takes effect quickly. Can you remember all that?”

  “What do you think I am?” she demanded irately. “The town idiot?”

  “Not at all, but her ladyship can be stubborn at times. And since she doesn’t always know what’s best, you must help her by making her drink all of it. Watch her and make sure she does it. Don’t leave until—”

  “Yes, yes! She’ll drink it. Now leave me be.” Steadying herself with a hand on the stone wall, Edith turned and began her torturously slow progress up the winding stairs. “I must go to my lamb. My lamb needs me.”

  Gaspar waited in the stairwell while Edith went through the motions of readying her mistress for bed. If anyone could get that doctored wine into Nicolette, it was her beloved maid, from whom she’d been inseparable since coming to Peverell as a child. Old age had long ago stripped Edith of her faculties, but Nicolette was unwilling to hurt her feelings by taking on another maid. The result was that the mistress more or less served the maid, coddling her like an old grandmother and indulging her every whim. She’d drink the wine just to make Edith happy.

  “Well?” Gaspar said as the doddering old creature shuffled tediously down the stairs toward him.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Gaspar,” he said between clenched teeth. “Remember?”

  “Oh, you.” Grimacing as if she’d just smelled something rancid, Edith tried to push past him, but he blocked her path.

  “Did she drink it?” Gaspar noted with dismay that Edith’s hands were empty. Wouldn’t she have brought the empty goblet back down?

  Edith blinked at him.

  “The raisin wine,” he said slowly. “Did she—”

  “I said I’d make her drink it, and I did. She always does what I tell her, because she knows I know what’s good for her.” She tried to squeeze through, but he held firm.

  “Are you sure she drank it all?” He must remember to retrieve the goblet when he departed the solar later tonight, so there would be no evidence of his handiwork.

  She let out an exaggerated huff of impatience. “Every last drop. She was swaying on her feet by the time I got her into her night shift, if it’s any comfort to you.”

  This time, when she elbowed him aside, Gaspar let her go. “A great deal of comfort,” he said softly.

  Just before she disappeared around the bend of the curving staircase, Edith turned and glared up at him. “I don’t like you.”

  “I don’t like you either, you loony old bitch.”

  Chapter 16

  Gaspar paused in the entrance to the great hall, letting his eyes get used to the dark and the drumming of rain on the shutters, listening for sounds from behind the closed curtains of Milo’s bed. All he heard was a soft, rattling snore. Beal, curled up on the floor at the foot of his master’s bed like some faithful dog, was snoring as well. Presently Gaspar could make out the shapes of the servants sleeping in the rushes. Adjusting the burlap sack on his shoulder, he stole quietly across the hall, stepping carefully over the somnolent bodies.

  He opened the door of the pantry slowly, lest it squeak; it didn’t. Creeping inside, he closed the door behind him and let out a pent-up breath.

  It was black as hell in this little room, what with no windows to let in the moonlight. He lit the lantern hanging from the ceiling, and by its dull yellow glow shoved aside the bags of grain and meal blocking the door to the service stairwell.

  Extinguishing the lantern, he ducked through the small door and ascended the narrow stairway in pitch blackness, his heart thudding with nerves and anticipation. This is it. This is really it.

  At the top of the stairs, he peeled off his tunic and stuffed it into the sack. That left him in a nondescript shirt and braies—nothing that she could recognize as his. From the sack he retrieved the mask he’d fashioned out of an old black woolen hood by sewing up the opening and cutting holes for his eyes and mouth.

  He pulled the mask over his head, filled his lungs with air, and let it out slowly. And then he turned the door handle and opened the door a crack.

  He stilled then, unsettled by the golden light illuminating the big chamber, indicating that Lady Nicolette had not yet retired. Steeling himself—she drank the whole bloody goblet, for pity’s sake, and it was extra-potent—he slowly eased the door open, smiling at what he found.

  Nicolette lay on her bed, the curtains on the side facing him wide open, clad only in her night shift, writhing deliriously. The covers had been turned down, but she hadn’t gotten under them. He could see all of her.

  The goblet—completely empty save for a tell-tale crystalline residue—lay in the rushes next to the bed.

  How perfect. How utterly perfect.

  Closing the door behind him, he walked up to her and dumped the sack on the floor, loudly. She started, a low moan rising from her as she clutched at the mattress.

  Gaspar took a moment just to look at her. The shift was nearly identical to the one he’d swiped in Rouen—a wisp of white silk that left her arms and lower legs completely exposed. Her hair was loose, like a young girl’s. She opened her eyes, but seemed to have trouble focusing on him. “Who’s there? Oh, God. Alex? Is it you?”

  Gaspar nodded. Wouldn’t that be delicious, to have Alex de Périgeaux convicted of raping his cousin’s wife? Gaspar almost hoped she did remember her ravishment tomorrow. Milo was in no condition to challenge Alex to a duel, so most likely he’d simply be mutilated, but given Nicolette’s rank, he might even be hanged. Gaspar wished he could tell her, yes, it’s your Alex, come to show you a thing or two, but to speak would be risky; she might recognize his voice.

  Gaspar leaned closer, relishing her look of horror when she saw his mask. He cupped her face, pr
essed his thumb between her lips; their slick heat made him hard. She whipped her head to the side. “Y-you’re not Alex.” Frantic now, she tried to sit up, but her body began to quake uncontrollably, and she collapsed under the wrenching spasms.

  Her breasts pressed irresistibly against the silk of her shift as she thrashed. Gaspar covered them with his hands and squeezed. She cried out and he slammed a hand over her mouth.

  Her eyes went wide as the seizure subsided. Gaspar grew stiff as a cudgel thinking about her helplessness, his power, her abject terror. Now he’d show her who was the master. Now she’d do his bidding, like it or not. And he’d make damn sure she didn’t like it.

  With his free hand, he began to raise her shift, but she went berserk at that, flailing at him with her fists. One caught him in the nose, jolting him with pain.

  “Bitch!” He let go of her mouth and whipped his open hand across her face, hard.

  That dazed her for a moment. “Mama?”

  “Not even close.” He rummaged in his sack for the rope and rags he’d brought. When he turned back, she was trying to crawl off the bed. “Not so fast.” Grabbing her shoulders, he slammed her back down, immobilizing her with a knee in the stomach. She punched him in a mad frenzy, so he grabbed the rope and swiftly tied her hands to the headboard.

  He’d have to gag her, too, but not right away. He had plans for that silky mouth of hers.

  “Nay!” She gasped as he knelt over her face, tugging at the drawstring of his braies. “Oh, God, help! Somebody—”

  Shoving a hand over her mouth again, he slid his dagger out of his boot and press it to the bridge of her nose. “Have you ever seen a woman without a nose? I have. ‘Tisn’t very pretty.” Leaning close so he could savor the panic in her eyes, he said, “Just you shut up and do everything I tell you to do, exactly like I tell you to do it, and I might let you keep that lovely little nose of yours.” An empty threat, of course, since he had no intention of drawing attention to what he’d done by disfiguring her, but she’d have no way of knowing that.

  “G-Gaspar?”

  Damn it to hell! In his excitement, he’d forgotten himself and spoken. That was careless. Now he might be forced to kill her—after he’d had his fun, of course—unless... “Nay, it’s Alex.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Alex?”

  “Aye.” Keeping the dagger to her nose, Gaspar fumbled with the cord securing his braies. “It’s Alex. You’ve been teaching me—now I’m going to teach you a thing or two.”

  There came a soft knock, and then a muffled voice. “Nicki?”

  Bugger me, it’s him!

  Swearing under his breath, Gaspar sliced the rope off her hands and crammed it, along with the dagger and the rags, into his sack.

  Alex knocked again, and this time Gaspar realized the sound was coming not from the turret, but from the service stairwell. Sneaky bastard. He’s probably been diddling her since he got here.

  The door handle turned. With no time to get to the turret, Gaspar secreted himself behind the closed curtains on the other side of the bed just as the door creaked open.

  “Nicki?”

  “Alex, don’t,” she groaned. “Don’t do this.”

  Swift footsteps in the rushes. “Nicki. Nicki, what’s—”

  “Don’t touch me! Don’t—”

  “Nicki, it’s me, Alex. I’m not going to hurt you. Nicki?”

  She whimpered. The leather strips supporting the mattress squeaked under the convulsive movements of her body.

  “Nicki? Oh, God. Oh, no.”

  Alex spoke fatuous words of comfort until she quieted. “I’ll be right back.” He sprinted across the solar, whipping open the door to the turret staircase and pounding down the stairs.

  Gaspar strode quickly to the service door while, from below, Alex shouted for Beal to ride into town and bring back the surgeon. Turning for one last, frustrating look at her before ducking through the door, Gaspar spied the empty goblet in the rushes. Hissing an oath, he went back to retrieve the incriminating item as Alex’s footsteps raced back up the stairs. Gaspar made it back to the little corner door and pulled it closed behind him just as Alex returned.

  Well, that’s just fine, Gaspar growled as he stomped down the narrow little stairwell. He knew having that bastard underfoot would spoil everything. Just bloody marvelous.

  * * *

  “He’s here.” Beal ushered old Guyot into the solar, crossed himself at the sight of his insensible mistress, and fled back down the stairs.

  “She caught the contagion from her husband, I see,” remarked the surgeon as he walked toward them, his satchel in one hand and his bucket in the other.

  Alex, kneeling at the side of Nicki’s bed, nodded bleakly. “She insisted on tending to him. I tried to stop her. I should have tried harder.” It should have been him, stricken down with this awful malady. He wished it had been. To see her this way, alternating between delirium and shuddering spasms, pained him to his very soul.

  The old man tsked as he set his bag and bucket next to the bed. “No one pays me any heed.” He tossed his mantle onto the bench. His green coif was crooked, the ties hanging loose, and his eyes were puffy from his sudden awakening by Beal.

  “God, no...” Nicki moaned. “How could you do this?”

  “Shh...easy.” Alex took her hand, stroked her sweat-dampened hair. “No one’s doing anything to you, Nicki. You’re ill.” From the corner of his eye Alex saw the old surgeon roll up his tunic sleeves, his gaze openly speculative as he watched his patient being comforted by her cousin by marriage.

  Nicki twisted beneath the sheet that Alex had drawn over her, her eyes wild. When he’d first found her, she seemed to think he was attacking her. Then she’d accused Gaspar of the same thing. Other names came and went in her deranged ramblings. She said Milo’s name occasionally, and also those of Father Octavian and Brother Martin. She’d spoken to Alex as if he were her late uncle Henri, and once she’d even called him “Mama.”

  “No one wants to hurt you,” Alex assured her, taking her face in his hands. “Least of all me.”

  “You did hurt me, Phillipe,” she rasped. “How could you? I trusted you.”

  Phillipe? “I’m not Phillipe, Nicki. I’m Alex. Look at me.”

  “Alex?” she said in a small voice.

  “Yes.” Rising, he sat on the edge of the bed and took her in his arms, not caring, for now, what the old man thought. She felt so soft and vulnerable. It filled him with cold fear to see her this way. Turning to Guyot, he said, “Do something for her!”

  The old surgeon was stirring something in a little bowl. Alex smelled mustard. “Sit her up so I can purge her stomach.”

  Wishing she didn’t have to go through this, Alex propped her up, sitting behind her for support, while Guyot got her to choke down the vile concoction. Within moments, she began to moan piteously and clutch at her stomach. “It’s all right, love,” Alex soothed as Guyot put a chamber pot before her. Alex held her tightly, murmuring reassurances and twisting her hair out of the way as her stomach emptied. “You’ll feel much better now.”

  But she clearly didn’t. In fact, another seizure gripped her almost immediately. Alex held her as it ran its course, and then she closed her eyes and went slack. He brushed the hair off her face and pulled the sheet back over her, lamenting her dreadful paleness. But for the rising and falling of her chest, she looked like a corpse.

  “Do something that will help!” Alex ordered the old man. In desperation, he added, “If she dies, so will you—by my own hand.”

  Guyot shook out his bloody apron and tied it over his tunic. “I’ve been threatened thusly dozens of times, and as you can see, I’m still very much alive. I suggest you concentrate your energies on helping me treat your...lady cousin, for if you think you can strike terror into this old breast, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “Just see that she lives.”

  “That’s up to God.” The surgeon reached into his satchel and brought forth his
small knife, testing its blade with his thumb. “And his men of healing.”

  Alex felt uneasy as Guyot positioned the bucket at the edge of the bed. “Is that really—”

  “It’s absolutely essential,” he snapped. “Else I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Aye, but she’s so terrified of bloodlettings.”

  “More terrified than she is of death?”

  Nicki stirred, murmuring something Alex couldn’t make out.

  “Make no mistake,” Guyot said softly, “if she’s not bled, she won’t live to see the morning. ‘Tis the only thing that saved her husband.”

  “Do it, then,” Alex said, wishing to God there was some other way.

  “Alex?” Nicki mumbled. Her eyes glittered feverishly despite the coolness of her skin. One strap of her shift had slid down over her shoulder. Alex straightened it and gathered her in his arms.

  “I’m here.”

  “What’s wrong? Everything’s spinning.”

  “You’re sick. You’ve got what Milo had. Maître Guyot is going to help you get better.”

  She turned her head, her expression of disorientation giving way to alarm as she took in the surgeon’s blood-flecked apron and knife. Alex felt her go rigid in his arms. “Nay.”

  “Nicki, it’s only way.” But she’d begun struggling against him, kicking and clawing.

  “Nay! Please, Alex, don’t let him—”

  “Nicki, listen to me—”

  She cried out, her nails digging into him. Alex turned to find Guyot pulling a loop of rope out of his bag.

  “Nay!” she screamed, fighting to free herself. “Nay, please!”

  “Here.” Guyot thrust the rope at Alex. “You do it. She’s too strong for me. Just leave her left arm free.”

  “Nay!” Nicki shrieked, thrashing frantically as Alex strove to restrain her.

  “No rope,” Alex told the old man. “Put it away. I won’t tie her down.”

  “But how the devil are we supposed to—”

  “Put the rope away,” Alex said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Look at her. You can’t hope to—”