“And to you? There is more than one way to be disloyal to a king, Karsten.”
The tension between the two men escalated, with Karsten scowling over that remark. “You aren’t actually accusing me of something, are you?”
“Does it look like I’m on duty today?” Christoph countered. “I was curious, though, after hearing such glowing reports about you lately, to see if you really have begun shouldering a few responsibilities for your family. The last time I saw you—when was it, two years ago? You were still carousing your way through your twenties.”
Karsten laughed now. “And you didn’t?”
Christoph shrugged. “I spent most of those years at the palace. Of course when I’m not on duty . . .”
He bent toward Alana to kiss her neck to make his point. It took every ounce of her willpower not to blush and to put her hand to his cheek as if she welcomed his attention. But that also drew Karsten’s attention to her.
Looking at Alana with interest in his eyes, the young noble asked Christoph, “Who is your new mistress?”
“Much too new to introduce to you, so forget it. I’ll be keeping her name to myself.”
Karsten laughed again. “You’ve never forgiven me for luring that Austrian wench away from you, have you?”
“What Austrian wench?”
Both men laughed this time. The tension was gone, too. Karsten even nodded toward the wrestling platform again. “Let’s give it a turn, eh?”
They moved toward the platform. The last match was over, but the winner was still up there waiting for another challenger. When Christoph and Karsten both stripped down to just their pants and boots, the fellow quickly hopped off the platform to make room for them. Imagine doing this at this time of the year! They ought to be shivering, Alana thought. But neither young man seemed to be bothered by the cold.
Alana tried to look away, she really did. Propriety demanded it! She even half-turned her face from the platform, but her eyes just wouldn’t obey and she finally gave up trying. Good Lord, Christoph’s body was superb. The noble wasn’t skinny by any means, yet there really was no comparison. Christoph had more strength in his arms, across that wide back and muscular chest. His legs were more muscular, too, and from the expression on his face Alana could see he knew he was going to win, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind. But Karsten didn’t look worried. Maybe there was more to wrestling than just brawn.
They circled each other, arms out, each making a few false moves. Then the grappling began, the straining, and the crowd started cheering, which brought even more people over to watch. She kept hearing “captain” whispered, but also “Bruslan.” Karsten was one of the notorious Bruslans? Good grief, Christoph was wrestling with one of the old king’s descendants? Was this his official business here today, to find out what Karsten Bruslan was up to?
She kept getting jostled farther back by the crowd as more and more people rushed over to watch two noblemen playing at one of their sports. It didn’t look as if either contestant was abiding by the rules. Christoph had a couple opportunities where he could easily have tossed Karsten off the platform, but it seemed both men would rather win the contest in a more grueling way by actually proving who was the better wrestler.
She was jostled again, more rudely this time. Some of her ale actually sloshed out of her mug. The little she’d drunk had relaxed her nicely, so she didn’t want any more of it. She looked for someplace to set the mug down without having to return to that overly warm tent and headed to an overturned crate by one of the games that was presently unattended.
“Your fortune, m’lady?” someone asked behind her.
She turned to decline the offer, then gasped as she realized who it was disguised to look like an old crone. “Poppie?”
“Look at the entertainment, not at me.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Henry told me, but there’s no time to catch up. I came to warn you that the man who stole your bracelet is a spy who works for the same people who hired me. They may conclude you are still alive, so be on your guard.”
“Can I tell the captain this?”
“Do you trust him?”
“I—yes, I do.”
“I had hoped to follow these people to their meetings, but I will leave it to your discretion. I must go, it’s not safe for me here.”
She heard him slip away and resisted the impulse to watch him go. She felt a pang of loneliness. She wanted to go with him! She sighed to herself. She and Poppie shouldn’t have to sneak around like this to meet. She should already be with her father, her protection assured, and Christoph should be working with Poppie instead of working against her. Did she really trust him? Yes, she supposed she did. He was completely devoted to her father’s protection, which was why he couldn’t simply take her at her word. Knowing about the other imposters, she couldn’t even blame him for being so suspicious. And he was even giving her a day of fun to make up for yesterday. Claiming he had to keep an eye on her was an obvious excuse when he could just have left her in that cell all day.
The tug on her coat drew her eyes down to a little girl who pointed in the opposite direction of the wrestling platform and said, “My dog. Help please.”
All Alana saw was a group of children playing in the snow beyond the cleared fairgrounds. If their parents had been watching them, they weren’t now. Just about everyone at the festival was either at the wrestling match or heading that way. So she followed the little girl.
Alana soon discovered that the girl didn’t want help retrieving an actual dog, but a stuffed toy that had been tossed about fifteen feet away from where the children were playing. Some of the boys in that group were old enough to have helped. The child had probably asked them first and they’d ignored her. For whatever reason, the little girl was afraid to get the toy back herself.
Alana found out why when she started heading toward the toy and was soon trudging through snow that was more than a foot deep. The children were yelling at her to come back, that it was dangerous. Wild animals didn’t hide in the snow, did they? she wondered. She almost turned back, but the toy was only a couple more feet away, so lightweight it hadn’t sunk into the snow.
She didn’t reach the toy. The ice cracked under her feet and she was suddenly submerged in the coldest water she’d ever felt in her life.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CHRISTOPH WAS GETTING BORED humoring Karsten, but he’d managed to address a few more points while they rolled about the platform, each trying to pin the other. “I heard you’re sponsoring the sleigh races today. Will you be racing as well?” he asked.
“No, but I’ve entered my sleigh—and warned my driver not to win,” Karsten replied.
“So you are currying favor with the commoners here?”
“Why would that surprise you? I am the logical choice for Frederick to name as his successor. When he does, we will both want the people to be able to rejoice. I’m merely making sure, by my own merits, that they will like me as much as they do him. And no, I am not trying to hurry this along. Frederick is a good king. I love him. He’s the father I wish I’d had.”
Christoph grunted as he was slammed to the floor. Karsten had caught him by surprise with those remarks. Christoph knew that Karsten was actively campaigning to win Frederick’s and the people’s favor, but he was surprised to hear him admit it.
He bucked Karsten off him and got back to his feet. “And if our king should have a son, all your efforts would be wasted.”
“Why wasted? The boy would still need advisers, fresh ones, not those old coots who decry change. I’ll help this country in whatever role I’m deemed fit to play, just as you do. We feel the same, you know, when it comes to Lubinia.”
Truth or a cunning attempt to ingratiate himself with the king’s guard? It was hard to tell with Karsten Bruslan. But Christoph was ready to end this match. He’d looked for Alana and hadn’t been able to find her in the crowd.
He was about to should
er Karsten and simply push him over the side when he saw people at the back of the crowd running toward the lake. Everyone knew the small lake was there and to avoid it. At the next winter festival it would be utilized, but at this first one, the ice wasn’t thick enough yet. He could see the hole in the ice where someone had been stupid enough to test it—or someone hadn’t known the lake was there. . . .
He leapt off the platform and ran as fast as he could, that last thought producing a gut-wrenching fear. Someone was trying to throw a rope out in the direction of the hole, but no one was there to catch it.
“Break the ice!” he shouted at the small crowd before he ran across it.
He only went five feet before his weight started another crack. He jumped down on the ice and was partially submerged. He used his elbows to widen the hole, then dove down into the icy water to look for Alana. He saw her submerged near the hole she’d fallen through, trying to use the floor of the lake as a springboard to push herself back up, but her heavy clothes were weighing her down. Her movements were too slow, her limbs barely moving. He swam to her and threw her toward the opening above them. There wasn’t enough room for both of them, so he grasped the sharp edge of the ice with both hands and pulled another chunk loose. He caught her again when she started sinking, but he was able to get both their heads above water this time. She was breathing, but she didn’t even try to hold on to him. He was terrified by how long she’d been in the water.
The men had broken through the ice up to the hole he’d made, and he saw Karsten there with three others, working to clear more ice away.
“Hold your breath,” Christoph told Alana. “We’re going to swim underwater a bit because the ice here is too weak to support our weight.”
“I—can’t.”
He hugged her tightly to him. “I’ll swim for both of us, it’s not far now.”
Christoph kept her in front of him as he kicked through the ice-covered water. They had only about six more feet of ice to get past, then another few feet and he was able to pick Alana up in his arms and walk the rest of the way to shore. Women were waiting there with blankets, which they threw around him and Alana. They all ran to the closest cottage, where Christoph laid Alana down on a pile of blankets near a warm hearth. The women tried to shoo him out as they peeled Alana’s freezing, wet clothes off her, but he wasn’t budging from the room. He could see the numbness was beginning to wear off because she was trembling despite the heated blankets the women kept wrapping around her.
One old woman, shaking her head at him, said, “You know what she needs, Count Becker. She’s your woman, see to it.”
Thinking she’d made her point, she took all the other women out of the room with her and closed the door. Christoph didn’t hesitate. He quickly removed the rest of his clothes and lay down in front of the fire next to Alana, putting her blankets over both of them and wrapping his arms and legs around her. She barely noticed. Her trembling shook them both and continued unabated. It wasn’t enough.
He began kissing her gently, first her cheeks, then her neck, sharing his warm breath with her as he hugged her closer and rubbed her briskly with his hands. As he continued to run his hands up and down her body, he noticed a little color returning to her cheeks and her breathing evening out. He also noticed his restraint was becoming painful. He began to sweat. A few minutes later, she did as well.
“I think you should probably move outside the blanket,” she finally said in a prim little voice.
He suddenly felt like laughing. “I should, yes, but I warn you, I’m naked.”
“I know,” she fairly squeaked.
He put a hand to her cheek. “This was necessary, Alana. There’s no shame in sharing heat when it’s desperately needed. You could have died in that water. When I found you, you were already giving up.”
“I wasn’t giving up, I just couldn’t tell if I was moving or not, and, well, I can’t swim, either, so that made it rather awkward. But thank you for finding me. I was out of breath.”
“It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left your side.”
“No, you had to do what you came here to do. I understand. By the way, did you win?”
“No, I jumped off the platform to find you.”
“Did you? Then you’ll have to challenge Karsten Bruslan again. You would have won.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHRISTOPH DIDN’T DOUBT THAT his prisoner was fast asleep after her harrowing brush with death today. She’d barely been able to keep her eyes open during dinner. He tried to sleep as well, but he couldn’t.
He didn’t think he was ever going to get the sight of her naked body out of his mind. Lithe, athletic, breasts proudly jutting. No soft curves, but tight ones. That body had been worked strenuously to become that firm. And yesterday in her cell, her gray eyes blazing at him, long black hair swirling about her hips in her underclothes. But the image that kept coming back to him most frequently was the one of her trying to sit up in that narrow bed in the cell, face flushed, glistening with sweat, hair damp as if she’d just had vigorous sex. That one had kept him awake long hours last night as well. Damn . . .
He was three times the fool for not grabbing the excuse she had given him to keep her by his side. She’d even repeated it tonight, that she was in danger, and had pointedly asked, “What if that thief is actually a Bruslan spy? If they get their hands on that bracelet, they’ll know I’m alive.”
That was a wild accusation, yet the thief in question had actually gone missing today before they’d returned to the palace. Christoph viewed that as a rather firm declaration of guilt, for the theft of the jewelry anyway. Telling her that did seem to relieve her mind a little.
What had stopped him from bringing her to his room where he wanted her? His guilt for not having watched her more closely at the festival? Probably. Her utter exhaustion? That, too. He should ruthlessly have taken advantage of that, but he couldn’t do it, even wanting her as much as he did. Why? Because he was beginning to believe she was innocent?
She was too intelligent not to have doubts unless she wholeheartedly believed what she’d told him. That made her the innocent English lady she’d been up to this point, and put the entire plot on her guardian’s shoulders. But was her guardian innocent, too, and merely coerced somehow to present this tale to her? That was much more credible than an assassin’s turning soft over an infant’s smile. But only her guardian could tell him the truth, and Alana would be the lure to catch him. That was assuming the man cared enough about her to find out what had happened to her after she’d entered the palace. So innocent or not, Christoph couldn’t release her.
Having finally nodded off, he was awakened by a woman’s scream followed by complete silence. He leapt from his bed and headed immediately to Alana’s cell to investigate. He found her crossing the storage room. Boris and Franz, who slept there, had also been roused and were trying to help her, but she wouldn’t stop until she saw Christoph.
“This is how you protect me?!” she accused him in a high-pitched, nearly hysterical tone.
He barely registered her question because his eyes were riveted on her blood-spattered white robe. He ran the rest of the way to her. “Why are you bleeding?”
“I’m not.”
He drew in his breath. “What happened?”
“One of your men tried to kill me!”
“My men?”
“I suppose he could have stolen the uniform,” she allowed, “but I did see it as he ran out the door.”
“Watch her,” he told his servants before he ran to her cell. At a glance, he saw the club on the floor, bloodied, and a trail of blood that led outside the cell straight to the armory.
The door to the armory was wide-open, as was the door to the ward.
The trail ended there, but footprints had been left in the newly fallen snow. The man hadn’t gotten far; he was bent over, a hand to his head, trying to make his way up the stairs to the parapets, where he could escape over the fortress wall.
Christoph didn’t shout for his guards, he wanted the man himself. He caught him at the top of the stairs, yanked him around, and slammed a fist into his face. Completely unprofessional, but the rage inside him for what the man had tried to do to Alana controlled him. Yet he hit him too hard. He heard the crack as the man’s back and head went down hard on the stone floor, and he didn’t get up. Christoph recognized him. Rainier, the man Alana had accused, had obviously snuck back into the ward tonight, or he’d never really left, had hidden instead. Either that or he’d had help, which was an even more alarming thought.
Christoph swore a blue streak. Two of his men on patrol in that section of the wall were already running toward him. “A traitor,” Christoph told them. “Lock him in the prison. Search him first, you’ll likely find the master cell key on him. Assign no less than four guards outside his cell. If he’s not there in the morning for me to question, there will be hell to pay.”
He went straight back to the storage room. Franz was wringing his hands. Boris was trying to comfort Alana. It didn’t look to be working because fear was still etched on her face.
He couldn’t blame her for being hysterical and angry. “I caught him,” he assured her calmly. “I’ll interrogate him as soon as he regains consciousness.”
“The thief?”
“Yes.”
“I knew this could happen,” she said shakily. “But I don’t think I ever really thought it would, that I’d actually have to fight for my life.”
Inclined to think she really was holding herself together with a thin thread, he moved to take her out of there immediately. Her sudden gasp as her eyes moved over him gave him pause. Had she really only just noticed his lack of clothing?
She was apparently going to pretend that very thing, primly giving him her back and saying, “How dare you come here like that?”
He was too angry, mostly at himself for not taking her concerns more seriously, to wonder where such absurdity was coming from. She’d just been assaulted while under his protection. She’d also proven she was capable of fending off such an assault.