To Chase the Storm

by Kimberly Cates

  "Nay, you're not Anne." The woman's voice was as shaky as a frightened child's. "She had golden curls and—"

  "Hasten!" Tessa's voice cut through Rafe's thoughts as she lashed the other end of the cord to the huge bedpost. "We have to be quit of here before the guards return." She headed to the concealed doorway. "There is a way out through the garden, and I saw some horses."

  Rafe thrust the pistol into the waistband of his breeches, and then cast a backward glance at the sinister chamber as he followed Tessa out the door. "Where the devil will we go?" he demanded, catching Tessa's hand.

  “Valcour Castle."

  "No. I'll not go there."

  "It is our only chance."

  He cursed, but then surrendered to her will as they bolted down the precipitous stone stairway and out into the night. Yet even as they stole two horses, mounted them, and thundered toward Tessa's wild lands, Rafe fumed at the knowledge that he would soon be forced to confront the earl who might prove to be his own grandfather. He could not shake the sense of doom as he remembered the crazed light in Morgause Warburton's eyes as she stared at the enameled crest on his mother's ring.

  Chapter 9

  Tessa clasped her travel-stained skirts with smudged hands, an odd thickness in her throat as her gaze swept the room. Valcour Castle had not changed. She felt as though a gentle hand had reached out and forced time to pause in its flight.

  The great hall spanned the length of the huge stone edifice, a monument to generations of noblemen who had brought honor to the English kings. Walls that had been raised in the reign of the fourth Henry were draped in tapestries depicting the battles at Agincourt, Crécy, and Bosworth Field; walnut screens carved by masters' hands provided a backdrop for massive chairs of bog oak and chests inlaid with subtly shaded woods.

  A huge trestle table stretched majestically in a seemingly endless sweep of cherry wood inlaid with Tudor roses. Though deserted now, the great table echoed with the memory of countless revelries past. At the head of that table the mighty Tarrant St. Cyr, Earl of Valcour, had stood, an eternity ago, addressing the somber gathering of sailors' families.

  Tessa could still hear the earl's voice, harsh with his own grief. "All hands were lost..."

  She could see Hagar's face, stricken, as though the nobleman had cleaved her heart with his sword. She could hear her foster-mother wailing in disbelief, dying inside. And Tessa could feel her own child-terror as the world that had seemed a magical adventure shattered around her.

  Her life had never been the same after she learned William Ravenscroft was dead. And as for Tarrant St. Cyr, after the death of his son-in-law, his treasured daughter, and the grandson who would have been his heir, the bold, blustery Earl of Valcour had become as grim as a wounded wolf. All joy had been driven from the castle that had once rung with his hearty laughter.

  Tessa wrapped her arms tight about her body and attempted to chafe warmth back into her limbs as she walked into a pool of light spilling from a high-arched window, but the sunshine did nothing to warm her.

  It was ironic that here, in the chamber where she had learned of her father's death, she would now give to Tarrant St. Cyr the grandson he had lost. What would the earl say when she raised the ghost of his grandson before him? And what emotions would fill the man standing so stiff and hostile before the flames writhing upon the massive hearth?

  Tessa's gaze shifted to Rafe, her heart aching at the dread she sensed in the powerful Spaniard. His feet were planted apart as if he stood on the deck of his beloved ship, ready to weather a storm. This would be the most devastating tempest he had faced in his life.

  She wanted to go to him, smooth away the lines of pain carved about that sensual mouth. She wanted to thread her fingers through his hair and assure him that all would be well. But she could not, for to do so would be to chip away yet another bit of the fierce pride that was so vital to Rafael Santadar, the man who had fought to save her on the hellish beach where Hagar had burned, the man who had kissed her with a fearsome passion.

  She wished she could assure him that things would not go awry, that St. Cyr would accept him with open arms, draw him into a protective embrace that would shield Rafe from the queen's wrath, but Tessa could offer no assurances.

  Rafe was enraged by the mere thought that he might be tainted with the blood of his enemies. And with the precious lives Spain's offensive had stolen from England, it was possible that Tarrant St. Cyr would be less than pleased that a captain of the great armada, was seeking haven within his walls.

  Perhaps that was the reason it was taking the earl so long to enter the great hall, Tessa thought, her lips compressing with impatience. It seemed as though hours had passed since the wide-eyed page had skittered from the room in search of his master.

  Maybe the earl was even now ordering his soldiers to hurl the enemy captain into chains, or was it possible that the addle-brained page had muddled the message Tessa had sent, and St. Cyr had no idea that they waited below.

  Her gaze flicked again to Rafe. His strong fingers were tracing the circlet of gold about his neck, and his eyes were dark with confusion and skepticism. If St. Cyr didn't hasten, she had little doubt the Spaniard's patience would snap and Rafe would stalk from the castle.

  Tessa caught her lip between her teeth. She could feel Rafe's dread, though it was not betrayed by any shadow on his face. He knew a dread that Warburton's dank cells and threats of agonizing death could never have spawned in him. A lump formed in her throat; the need to break the horrible silence clamored within her.

  She drew in a shaky breath and paced closer to the blazing fire before which Rafe stood. She extended her hands toward the flame as if to warm them.

  "Once, when I was a little girl, I worked my marionettes in this room," she said, her voice soft with memory. "My father was proud of my puppetry, and he had promised the earl's spit boys that he would bring me here to play for them. They were roaring with laughter, the lot of them, nearly bringing the buttery down about their ears, most likely because I was mixing up the odd voices I had given to each of my figures."

  She stole a glance up at Rafe, saw him staring at her, his face impassive. "I was fair bursting with my own importance," she continued, "when suddenly the room went still. It was the earl come to see what the disturbance was. He had been strolling through the castle yard when he heard the laughter. He sent the servants back to their tasks and demanded to see my father and me here in this hall.

  "I was only six years old, too young to understand the trouble my father might have been in. I skipped into the room at his side and then ran up to the earl and demanded to know why he had spoiled my fun."

  She saw Rafe's head turn toward her, the steely hardness in his gaze softening a little. Then his eyes narrowed as if in anger at her effort to distract him.

  "My father nearly collapsed into apoplexy at my brashness. But the earl merely looked at me—all blustery and brimming with childish indignation—and burst into laughter. He roared until tears poured down his face. I can still remember standing a hand's breadth from his chair, glaring at him, my hands on my hips. He caught me up and held me on his lap, and told me I was a bold puss, like his own daughter when she was a girl. He bade me fetch my marionettes, and then he sat and watched me with the most determined interest until the strings on my figures were so tangled even Papa couldn't unwind them."

  "Oh, no doubt your earl is a blasted saint," Rafe snapped. "If he'd but grace us with his presence, we could cease this foolery and leave."

  As though conjured by Rafe's very words, the militant tramp of footfalls reverberated from the corridor beyond, and both Tessa and Rafe turned as the Earl of Valcour stalked through the archway.

  A full head of tousled iron-gray hair gave Tarrant St. Cyr the appearance of having just been dragged from his bed, yet there was nothing sleepy or serene about the old warrior. Despite the gout that often times confined him to his chamber, and that had barred him from his beloved soldiering, he reminded Te
ssa of nothing so much as a petard about to explode.

  Piercing falcon eyes glared out at the world from beneath enormous coal-black eyebrows, and his features were ornamented by an aged scar earned in battle in the Low Countries. Tessa fancifully thought the earl wore his disfigurement like a badge of courage across his craggy jaw.

  Tessa felt Rafe go rigid, and she drew herself up to her full height, knowing Tarrant St. Cyr accepted timidity in no one. Yet the look in the old earl's eyes almost made her falter.

  "What the bloody hell is this about?" Tarrant boomed, a gleam of such stark violence burning in his gaze that Tessa's breath caught in her throat. "That witling boy said there was a man here, some fortune-hungry vulture greedy for St. Cyr lands."

  Tessa started to speak, to cut off the harsh words she knew would be fire to the smoldering fuse of Rafe's temper. But she was too late. The Spaniard, his eyes afire with fury, took a step in front of her, as if to shield her from Tarrant's angry words.

  "I want nothing from you, old man! Were it not for Tessa's insistence, I would not have sullied your door. You can cast your lands to the devil, and be damned." He spun and caught Tessa's hand in a hard grip. "We'll away from here at once, take our chances upon the highroads."

  "The devil you will! You claimed to possess a ring. My daughter's ring.”

  "Nay." Tessa strained against Rafe's grasp. "Lord Valcour, it was I who made that claim."

  Her interference only infuriated Rafe further. His gaze, now laced with loathing, flashed to the earl's face. "It is not your daughter's ring!" Rage burst free in Rafe. "It is nothing to do with you!" He seized the golden circlet and held it close to the warrior's scarred countenance. "It was my mother's!"

  "Your mother's!" The earl's voice threatened to split the timbers girding the ceiling. His face was ice-white as his gaze locked upon the object in Rafe's hand. Rafe stared at the aged Englishman's features, knowing instinctively that no blow from a broadsword had ever given the old warrior a deeper wound than the sight of the ring that glistened in the firelight.

  Disbelief, horror, and sick certainty ripped through Rafe, and he closed his fist around the ring as if to shield it from what he now sensed was the truth.

  "It is not your mother's ring." Tarrant St. Cyr’s voice was broken, anguished. "This is not the trinket of some scurvy Spanish wench. It is Anne's... Anne's!" The earl's hand flashed out and crushed Rafe's wrist in a bruising grip. Rafe burned to dash the Englishman's hand away from him, but his limbs seemed deadened, immovable.

  "My lord, please!" Tessa cried, her hand closing upon the earl's arm.

  "Where did your mother steal it, you accursed Spanish scum? Tell me, by God!"

  "My mother was no thief!" Rafe raged.

  ”Maybe she was a murderess, then," St. Cyr bellowed. “Part of the vile horde that cut down my Anne and her husband and their babe. We never even found their bodies."

  The old warrior flung Rafe's wrist away from him and wheeled away, but not before Rafe had seen his lips contort and heard him utter a harsh sound akin to a sob. "It was twenty-eight years ago. The pain should not wrench at me so deeply still."

  "But, your lordship"—Tessa's voice was earnest and soft, like a cool mist on his fiery pain—"Captain Santadar was a child twenty-eight years past!"

  Tarrant St. Cyr’s face blanched, and Rafe was stricken by the storm in the nobleman's eyes as his gaze slashed from Tessa's face to Rafe's own. "Santadar—is your name Santadar?"

  "Santadar." Tessa repeated the name softly.

  "Then you..." The earl's voice caught. His eyes were fixed upon Rafe's face, and Rafe had the strange sensation that the Englishman was seeing him, truly seeing him, for the first time. "My God, you might really be... Anne's son."

  The ring had fallen from Rafe's numb fingers, and Tarrant reached out and grasped it as though it contained magical powers. Aye, and perhaps it did, Tessa thought. It had raised someone from the dead.

  "No. I mean, I do not know." Rafe hated the unsteadiness in his voice. "My mother died when I was four years old. I don't even know her name. But she was Spanish. She must have been. I don't believe my own mother was English."

  "Would you remember her face, if you saw it?" The sudden gentling of Tarrant's gravelly voice unsettled Rafe as nothing else had, feeding his own unease.

  "Of course I would! She was my mother!"

  "Look you here."

  Rafe started as the earl drew from beneath the collar of his slashed-silver doublet a small object, a delicate oval that looked out of place in the palm of his battered hand.

  "This is a likeness of my daughter, Anne."

  For long seconds, Rafe only stared into the old warrior's eyes, unable to look down at the picture he held, unwilling to confront the truth that might shatter all that he was.

  Lost in his own secret pain, the earl let his voice drop low as he began to spin skeins of memory, tales of a past Rafe had never known. "Anne was the most beautiful maiden at court, and Ruy Santadar was handsome and gallant, the nephew of a diplomat come from King Philip. Anne loved him, but if I'd known I was sending her to her death, I would never have consented to their marriage."

  Rafe closed his eyes against the spell Tarrant's words were weaving about him, but the darkness only haunted him more deeply still, tormenting him with images of lemon trees and laughter and a wooden sword his magnificent father had bought for him at market. Rafe's jaw knotted as those glittering remembrances melted into a memory of screams, terror, and flashing blades.

  He could hear his own childish shrieks, feel the burning pain as the brigand's knife bit into his flesh. And he could see his mother, her golden hair a tangle about her savaged angel face, as she fell beneath the beasts that had attacked them. He tried to block out the pain of the memory, but it only drove itself deeper into his heart.

  St. Cyr’s voice intruded into Rafe's consciousness. "Their son was the joy of Anne's heart. My only comfort lies in the knowledge that few people know such happiness as Ruy and Anne did in the few years they were given. And if you—if you are their son..." The earl's voice cracked, and Rafe opened his eyes to see his own face reflected back at him in the old man's eyes.

  "Look, boy," Tarrant urged, his brawny hand trembling as he held the delicately wrought miniature. "For the love of God, look at her likeness."

  Rafe felt gentle fingers drift down the muscled plane of his back, and he knew them to be Tessa's. He drew strength from the warmth of that hand. And yet a sense of foreboding stole through him, as though he would witness his own death if he looked upon the painted face.

  With agonizing slowness he forced his gaze down the broad expanse of the earl's doublet to where the aged nobleman's hand lay open before him. Rafe sucked in a deep breath, his whole body feeling like a whipcord ready to snap.

  And then his eyes fixed on the fragile oval of porcelain that lay on that scarred palm, and it was as though Valcour Castle and indeed the world itself had crumbled away beneath his feet.

  Curls that shone like spun gold wreathed a face as delicate as a Madonna's; sweet lips curved as if they possessed some wondrous secret. Eyes, dark blue like Rafe's own, sparkled with mischief, and a challenge that Rafe well knew would drive a man to sell his soul for but a single smile.

  And he had known that smile, seen that smile a thousand times in his dreams; he had watched the quicksilver flashes of love and merriment brighten those angelic features. And he had seen them savaged by grief and agony.

  "Nanita, run! Leave me!"

  The deep, desperate voice of Rafe's father cut into his memory, and Rafe could feel his mother's anguish, a living thing within her breast, as she seized her son in her arms and fled across the night-dark land.

  A fist of iron seemed to clench about Rafe's throat. His eyes burned with tears that he refused to shed.

  No! a voice inside him insisted. It is impossible!

  Yet of their own volition, his fingers reached out, and took the likeness from Tarrant St. Cyr’s hand. Conf
usion, hatred, and a crushing sense of helplessness ground deep within Rafe, and he felt again the terror of the child he had been, lost and alone.

  He skimmed a trembling thumb over the intricate brush strokes that had captured his mother forever. Then he raised his eyes to those of his grandfather and stared into the face of his own uncertain future.

  Chapter 10

  Purple clouds of twilight trailed about Valcour Castle’s turrets like the robes of an ancient king. Tessa peered across the courtyard from the window of her chamber, her arms and legs aching less than her heart.

  It was time for her to leave. If she were wise she would go now that she had paid her debt to Rafael Santadar, slip out into the night and let the Spaniard tilt with his own demons in the days to come.

  She had delivered him to a grandfather who was prepared to protect him with his life if need be. And although she was sure that Lord Neville and the eerie Lady Morgause would like to hurl Rafe back into the sea, Tessa knew that neither Warburton possessed the courage to defy Valcour’s might. She suppressed a shudder at the memory of the aged noblewoman's pale visage, the hidden menace that skulked beneath, and her mind filled with the sinister and vengeful fate that could await Rafe at the woman's hands.

  Tessa banished her fears and clung instead to the strength in Rafe's broad shoulders and the power of the St. Cyr name.

  He was safe. Safe. Yet as she leaned against the wall of the bedchamber that had once been Anne St. Cyr’s, Tessa drew little comfort from that knowledge, feeling suddenly desperate and alone.

  Her gaze swept over the beautiful gold-framed portrait that hung on the tapestry-draped wall. It was the image of a girl poised on the brink of womanhood. The eyes, so like Rafe's, glowed beneath the painter's masterful strokes, shining with the confidence of a woman who is much loved.