“Now that we are in the belly of the beast, what is our next step?” Edward asked quietly.
Rhys squeezed Elizabeau’s hand, inhaling thoughtfully as he did so. He was still shaking from the emotion of their reunion , so much so that it was a struggle for him to focus. But he forced himself; too much hung in the balance.
“I have mulled several scenarios over in my mind but the one that seems the most logical to me is to remove her as quickly as possible,” he said, gazing down at Elizabeau’s pale face as he spoke. “If we can remove her now, under cover of darkness, it will give us time to get away. I fear that if we wait until morning to attempt an escape, eight hundred of de Lacy’s troops might have something else to say about it. I cannot stave off an army alone and I do not want to jeopardize her further.”
Edward nodded in agreement. “So what do you have planned?”
“I will need your assistance.”
“You know that you have it.”
Rhys looked at Elizabeau fully in the face. “Are you strong enough to do this, angel? I need for you to be strong just a while longer.”
She clutched his hands fiercely, nodding her head. “I could fly if you wanted me to. What would you have me do?”
A short time later, the door to Lady Elizabeau’s chamber opened and the soldiers on guard watched the enormous, cloaked French swordsman leave the room and fade into the darkness of the stairwell. Sir Edward remained behind in the lady’s chamber, mentioning that the lady had been overcome with the presentation of the swordsman and now lay upon her bed in a fitful doze. When two of the guards looked into the room and saw a figure covered up upon the mattress, they were no wiser to the ruse.
The figure on the mattress was pillows and clothing shaped to look like a body. Beneath Rhys’ great black cloak, a small lady clung to his torso and prayed that they would not be discovered. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever done.
She had no idea that the worst was yet to come.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
From a distance, Ludlow looked like a great hulking beast crouched against the night sky. As David rode up on the bastion from a distance, he could see the towers reaching to the sky. Upon the wall walk, a lantern was poised every twenty feet or so to provide some light for the sentries on guard. He could see the motion on the wall walk of men on night duty. Everything looked relatively quiet.
He had followed Conrad’s man up the road that led to Ludlow but had lost him when they had traveled through a cluster of trees about a mile from the fortress. As David pulled up at the edge of the trees, not wanting to be sighted by the sentries, he felt a distinct amount of frustration. There was no other place for Conrad’s knight to go; he had to have gone into the castle. David began to feel fury along with his frustration. He’d long suspected there had been a traitor in their midst; now, he was coming to see that he had perhaps been right.
In the trees, he dismounted his charger and let the horse munch on some fat green grass as he leaned against a tree and plotted his next move. His instinct was to return to Lioncross and tell his brother what he had seen and thereby allow Christopher to make the next move, but the better part of him wanted to track down Conrad’s man and gut him. Still, one thought made him run cold; the Teutonic warrior was more than likely carrying out orders; Conrad’s orders. Which meant that Conrad was the traitor, a thought that made David’s blood run cold.
He decided right then that he had to get back to his brother to inform him of what he had discovered. Just as he was preparing to mount, the sharp point of a broadsword jabbed him in the unprotected spot between his back plate and chest armor. It was a vulnerable spot and David immediately put up his hands in surrender.
“Keep your hands in the air,” a heavy Germanic accent commanded softly. “I have seen you fight. I know what you can do with a sword.”
David knew it was the man he had trailed and silently cursed himself for being stupid enough to have gotten caught. “I am at your mercy,” he said steadily. “May I at least turn around to face you?”
After several long seconds, David could feel the broadsword removed and he turned to the man. It was one of Conrad’s generals, a tall man with long blond hair and a thin face. David didn’t even know the man’s name for he had been one of the more silent men in Conrad’s retinue. Yet the man was not silent tonight.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded quietly. “Why did you follow me?”
David, hands still up, cocked an eyebrow. “That should be obvious. What are you doing riding to Ludlow in the middle of the night?”