Chapter 14
“Sophie, love, you’re going to pace a hole in the floor.”
She stopped and glared at Leo. Then she resumed her pacing. She scratched at her arms, sick to her core that she’d just sat at the same table with Lord Drayton. He’d laughed and joked with her father and about charmed the skirts off of Anne. Leo had to continuously grip her hand under the table to keep her from tearing Drayton’s throat out. She didn’t understand why her almost-fiancé, her beloved, hadn’t already torn the man’s throat out.
“We can’t kill him until we know where your brother is,” Tristan said as if reading her mind.
Tristan finally met her gaze. He’d apologized profusely, berating himself for being so easily fooled by Jordan. Fay had apologized profusely for leaving them alone for even a few minutes, knowing that Tristan was susceptible to being fooled. She’d come back after making sure Catherine was all right after suffering a minor fall to find Tristan having a grand old time on the training field and Jordan nowhere to be found.
“We need to kill him soon, though,” Fay said. “Did you see the way he was sucking up to Anne? If that monster asks for her hand again, I will lose my—”
“We won’t let it come to that,” Leo assured her. “But Tristan is right. We can’t harm the weasel until we find Jordan.”
“Can’t we threaten him, though?” Fay asked. “Get him alone and make him talk? Between you and Tristan, I think he’d confess.”
“I believe he’s too arrogant to do any such thing, my love,” Tristan answered. “He knows we have no proof. He also knows we’d risk Sir Walter’s ire if we threatened him with anything more than words. He’s an honored guest who believes he will become part of the family soon.” He nodded at Fay’s angry splutter. “Jordan has no army to back him, no ties to the castle besides a seeming old friendship with Sir Leo. Drayton knows all that.”
Sophie sat beside Leo, feeling defeated. “Then what do we do?” A bleak silence filled the room and she put her head on Leo’s shoulder. She began to think they all thought Jordan might already be dead. “We have to do something,” she said.
Leo sighed hard enough to ruffle the ends of her hair. “I suppose we can pray.”
Fay huffed and left the room, Tristan following on her heels. Sophie wasn’t much satisfied with the answer, either, but she continued to sit quietly with Leo. Her big brother had tried so valiantly to save her, even when she didn’t need saving. He’d given up his own life in their time. She couldn’t fathom him meeting such a lonely end. Murdered by a scoundrel and never seen again.
“We can ride around the countryside and look for clues at first light,” Leo offered. She stood up to leave his room and he clasped her hand. “Promise me you won’t go out tonight on your own or do anything else so foolish.”
“I won’t,” she said listlessly. “I’m going to the chapel. If it’s the only thing I can do for him, I guess I’m going to do it.”
*
It had to have been hours since Jordan had been stuffed into the closet. He must have drifted off to sleep for a bit because he woke with a start when he heard voices and scuffling noises outside his makeshift prison. He pulled himself to the door and pressed his ear to it to listen. Several men were moving heavy objects across the floor. That accounted for the scuffling. But the voices were disjointed, covered by the sounds of wood cracking and some clanking noises. He was able to make out the words “Dernier” and “tonight”, though, and that was all he really needed.
Remembering the alarming conversation between Drayton and his goon, he knew the attack on Dernier Keep was about to commence. How far away was it? Tristan and most of his men were at Grancourt, which Drayton clearly knew. He was counting on the keep being easily taken, so the first step in his plan to dominate the northern England countryside would be a success. Then he’d marry Anne and wait for her to die or murder her, then take Grancourt Castle for his own.
Jordan clenched his fists, anger and helplessness coursing through his veins like fire. He was able to leave a clue after the goon tackled him to the ground and smashed his nose. The goon had his boot on Jordan’s back, waiting for Drayton to toss him the ropes to hogtie him with. In those few seconds, he’d managed to pull his Swiss Army Knife from his pants and scratch Drayton’s name in the dirt. He hoped the bright red plastic case would attract someone’s eye if they went looking for him.
As the noise faded away outside the tiny, dark room, he knew no one was coming for him. Even if they found out who’d nabbed him, he was underground. He’d been keeping that reality at bay while he was stuck in there, but now it felt like he was buried alive. Most likely, soon to be just plain buried. No one would ever find him. He was on his own, underground, in 1398. It made him laugh, but only for a second.
The silence outside made him think they were on their way to Dernier Keep. It also made him wonder if he had been left completely alone. The thought so overwhelmed him with hope, he jumped up and fumbled his way to the door. Then he crashed his body against it. Pain rocketed through his shoulder.
“You in there, settle down. We’re only waiting to see if anyone ransoms you, you know?”
He hadn’t known that and it gave him more hope, despite the fact that he hadn’t been left completely alone to continue to try and break down the door. Maybe the ransom request meant that they wouldn’t kill him until they were absolutely positive he was worthless. They must have thought he might be important to that Italian lord he supposedly used to work for. If they got money and could ship him off to Italy, that would be cleaner than outright killing him. He was surprised Drayton had that small speck of decency in him. Or he was so greedy he thought the ransom would be worth the risk of letting him go.
“Nobody’s going to ransom you, dumbass,” he muttered, disgusted he’d gotten lost in the idea that he might be let go after all.
It was up to him, then. He was on his own. He psyched himself up for a few minutes, trying to channel Die Hard and any other movie where the hero was up against a herd of bad guys. He felt around the floor and the walls, nothing more than dirt carved out of the ground and shored up with beams. God, he wanted out of there.
Digging around along the edges of the walls, he was able to pry a rock from the dirt. It was only about the size of his fist, but it had a sharp edge. He prodded and poked every inch of his prison until he found one of the support beams had cracked vertically, almost from floor to ceiling. He shuddered to think what that meant to the integrity of the ceiling, but stuffed that thought away. He crammed his fingers as far into the crack as he could and pulled. He put his foot on it and pulled more. Finally a piece came away and he landed on his backside with a large, jagged chunk of wood in his hands.
“What’s going on in there?” the guard yelled. Jordan gathered his weapons and crawled silently to the door, standing up on one side of it. He prayed it wouldn’t open inward and break his nose some more. “Do you think you’re going to dig your way out?” The guard rattled the door handle in warning and Jordan held his breath. “Oh, bloody hell, did the foolish bastard kill himself?”
The door swung open, to the opposite side of Jordan. The first miracle. The weak lantern light flooding into the room almost blinded him, but he could see the guard wasn’t any bigger than he was. The second miracle. Using all his pent up rage and action movie channeling, Jordan flung himself forward with the rock gripped overhead. He brought it down in an arc with all the force he could muster. It met the guard’s head with a disgusting thunk.
Yes! He’d done it. Now all he had to do was tie up the guard with his old ropes and get out of there.
Except, no! The guard hadn’t fallen to the ground like he was supposed to. How could he not after that terrifying crack to the skull? He staggered and lunged toward Jordan. Dazed by the fact that the guard hadn’t been knocked out like he should have been, Jordan got slammed into the hard-packed wall by the guard. He still had his arms free and hit the guard again, this time in the back of the head. And again and again, in the same spot. His arm hurt from the force of the blows. He couldn’t imagine being hit like that. The fact that he was doing it to someone sickened him. And yet, the man would not fall down.
Despite the fact he’d bashed the man’s head at least five times with a rock, he was still getting punched in the stomach. Still being crushed against the wall. Jordan went beyond all thought. Something other than his mental faculties took over. That something remembered he had a large, jagged piece of wood in his other hand and he plunged it upward. It encountered resistance, so he pushed harder. A terrible ripping, splatting noise woke Jordan from his trance and he saw the guard at his feet. Finally.
Blood poured from the man’s head and side. Jordan stood frozen, staring down at him for at least a full minute. I killed someone, he thought. No, you didn’t. A few stitches … he crouched and, with shaking hands, felt for a pulse in the man’s neck. He felt blood against his fingertips. But no pulse. He turned away and threw up.
Okay, so he had killed someone. That would have to get unpacked later. For now, he took off, out of the room, past the area where he saw large, empty crates. Had they been filled with more weapons to take Dernier? He had to get out, to warn Tristan. Fortunately, the place had a pretty simple layout once he was out of the large room. It was mostly the path leading up, with more crude rooms carved out of the ground here and there on either side. He headed up and the path grew wider. Finally, he came to the huge, wooden trapdoor. A quick inspection showed that it was on a wheeled pulley system. He wasn’t sure how advanced, if at all, that was for this time, but he still thought it was ingenious. It didn’t seem possible they’d only left him with one guard and he almost panicked before he was able to find the mechanism to pull the door back enough for him to squeeze his body out.
It was almost as dark outside as it had been underground, but he ran anyway. Since he’d been ass up on the back of a horse coming in, he hadn’t exactly gotten a proper lay of the land. He didn’t have a clue where he was, but anywhere was better than ending up in a locked, dirt room again.
After he ran out of breath, he collapsed to the ground, heart about to beat from his chest. A quick image of the guard lying in the ever-growing pool of his own blood flashed before Jordan’s eyes and he squeezed them shut. He concentrated on catching his breath so he could get his bearings out there in the dark. He had no clue if it was just after sundown or the middle of the night. All sense of time had left him while he was locked up. After a minute, the moon appeared from behind a cloud and he sighed with relief. It was a half-moon, but blessedly bright. Getting up on all fours, he saw the woods weren’t too far away. He could hide in the trees until full light and then he could get his bearings.
Standing up, he turned in a circle, hoping for a landmark so he could help the people at Grancourt find the place again. He was in the middle of a vast, fallow field. Opposite the trees, he saw the outline of a big house and his stomach dropped.
Crap. He knew exactly where he was.