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He sweeps my hair back from my face. “Did you think I’d abandoned you?”
“It briefly occurred to me, although I didn’t truly think you would do that. And then Valine found me, and I knew something had gone horribly wrong.”
He tenderly cups my cheek. “Thank you for your faith in me.”
I revel in the feel of his palm against my cheek—the strength of his fingers, the calluses, and the warmth. “I had planned to go with you,” I confess. “That day. When you came.”
His hand tightens briefly. “You had?”
I nod.
His eyes grow darker, filled with shadows of frustration and regret. “I am sorry I let you down. Shall I explain it to you now or when I tell the others?”
“Later,” I say, unwilling to spend what little privacy we have been granted on the tale. He is here now, and that is what matters. “What of the others? Valine? Jaspar?”
He leans down to kiss the tip of my nose. “That, too, is part of the tale, but they are here and safe.” He rubs a thumb along my bottom lip once, twice, and then I open my mouth and gently place my teeth around it. “You are not well enough for this,” he murmurs, but does not withdraw his hand.
“Perhaps it is what will cure me.”
He removes his thumb from my mouth, then brings his lips down on mine, so tender and loving that I nearly weep. “Later,” he promises.
Almost as if he had been waiting for us to finish, Beast reappears at our side and sends me an apologetic look. “I have known him for fourteen years, my lady.”
“By all means,” I say. “I do not mean to keep him to myself.” But I do. At least once the others have had their fill.
The look the two men exchange is so eloquent that it causes my eyes to sting. “Come to tag along, have you?” Beast asks.
“If you’ll have me.”
Beast grins that infectious grin of his. “Always.” Then he sobers. “Through Genevieve, I have learned of your time in prison and the oubliette in Cognac, as well as your subsequent escape. I am eager to learn how you ended up with Rohan’s forces.”
Maraud’s smile is tight and humorless. “Not Rohan. I’m here with Pierre d’Albret.”
Silence fills the cave. Sybella grows pale and briefly closes her eyes, then opens them again before Beast’s gaze lingers too long upon her. She gives him a cocky grin, but it fools none of us. “So that’s why he never showed up for his second audience with the king,” she muses. Then she frowns. “Although I still don’t understand why he chose to leave that day.”
“That I do not know, my lady,” Maraud says.
Beast stares up at the ceiling so innocently that Sybella grows immediately suspicious. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”
“Wait,” Aeva says. “Have you not told her yet?”
“Told me what?” Sybella asks.
Beast shrugs his massive shoulders. “There hasn’t been time.”
“We were on the road for eight days, and have been here in Brittany for three weeks. There was plenty of time.”
Sybella looks from Aeva to Beast. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
Beast glares at Aeva. “That was why I was not going to tell her.”
“She deserves to know,” the Arduinnite insists.
Beast heaves a great sigh. “The night before Pierre left, I may have paid him a visit.”
“Alone?”
“No,” he scoffs. “I had Aeva with me.”
Sybella directs a heated glare at the other woman, who simply shrugs. “He is about as easy to dissuade as you are.”
Beast reaches up to scratch his chin. “And I may have held a knife to his balls. Explained that if he left peacefully, he could keep one of them, but if he did not leave immediately, he would lose both.”
Sybella looks torn between humor, horror, and disbelief. “I wish I thought you were jesting, but I am fairly sure you aren’t.”
“So how many balls did he end up with?” By the grin on Maraud’s face, I can tell this escapade is not the first of its sort.
“Both,” Beast says morosely. “His lightskirt returned from the garderobe just then, and I didn’t want to frighten her.”
“What about frightening me, you lackwit?” Sybella places her hand firmly around Beast’s collar. “You and I must have a talk.”
“But we haven’t heard the rest of Maraud’s story yet.” She sighs and lets go of him.
“My time with d’Albret wasn’t by choice,” Maraud continues. “He said he was holding someone I would want to see.” His gaze darts briefly my way, and I realize he feared Pierre had taken me. “It was my father.” His voice is utterly flat, dead. “My father is working with them.”
“But you are not,” Beast reminds him.
“No.” Maraud does not so much smile as grimace. “I’m not.”
Beast steps in to the brittle silence. “Well, this answers one question. Where Rohan’s reinforcements were coming from. How many?”
“Over three thousand. When I realized I was stuck there, I learned everything I could, then as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I left, intending to get the information to where it would do the most good. Little did I realize that meant delivering it directly into your hands.”
His eyes grow grim. “Rohan had caught wind of the resistance and ordered a contingent of Pierre’s troops to go after them. Tried to anticipate your next move.”
“He almos
t did. We were only two days ahead of you.”
“When the commander heard of the cannon train, he assumed that would be a likely target.”
“And so he turned it into a trap.”
“That very nearly worked.”
Everyone’s glance flits over to me again. I close my eyes and gently nudge Maraud to keep talking. “When I heard of their plans to try to take out the resistance, I arranged to go with them and give warning. The resistance is the one thing that is giving Brittany hope. The one weapon that is successfully gnawing away at Rohan’s carefully laid plans. But they have no idea it is you,” he adds. “They think it is just a couple of hotheaded local barons. Or a small group of loyalists.”
“Does he not realize everyone is loyal to the queen?” Sybella asks. “For having averted yet another war. Does he not remember the hundred long years of war our people have already endured? They want peace. They want their lives back.”
Maraud shifts. “I wish that were the only news I carry.”
Some of the light fades from Beast’s eyes. “There’s more?”
“They have allied with England. Four thousand English troops will be landing in two weeks.”
Chapter 81
“Has Rohan lost his mind? Why bring England into this?” Beast rubs his hands over his head, as if in pain. “Doesn’t he realize that with one foot in the door, the English will likely not leave? The duchess tried to walk that fine line when accepting their aid last year, but this . . . ?” He shakes his head.
Jaspar, Valine, Andry, and Tassin have joined the others in the center of the cave, while I listen from my spot against the wall.
Maraud stretches his long legs out in front of him. “It appears they really didn’t want Brittany in the hands of the French.”
“Then they could have damned well sent more troops the first time we asked,” Beast says.
“Why didn’t they?” Poulet asks. “Why would the English give Rohan that many troops when they could only spare the duchess half as many?”
