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He didn’t notice the pocket or the box. His searching fingers found the Swiss Army knife, and he pulled it out with a triumphant expression that swiftly changed to puzzlement as he stared at it. With all the blades and utensils folded in, it didn’t look like much. She didn’t want to lose the knife, but if he figured out the blades she knew she would. She drew a quick breath and reached for the knife.
He drew it back, scowling. Grace made her expression impatient. She untied the scarf from her head and unbound her hair, letting it fall free. He blinked at the long, thick mass. She reached for the knife again and this time he let her have it. She closed her hand around it so the blades didn’t show, and turned it so he could see the head of the small tweezers. Delicately she plucked it out, and he blinked in astonishment. She held the tweezers in the palm of her hand, letting him look at it, then she quickly gathered her hair and began rolling it up around the knife, forming an oblong bun. When the roll was tight against her nape, she stuck the tweezers into her hair to secure it, and gave the beast a beatific smile.
He looked at her, then at her hair. He blinked again. Then he evidently decided ladies’ hairstyles were beyond him, and turned his attention back to the bag.
Next he found a small penlight, luckily the kind that came on when the top was twisted instead of one with a button. Grace sighed, pulled the tweezers out of her hair, and started to unroll the bun, but he got the idea and dropped the penlight back into the bag without examining it very closely. He missed the book of matches, but it had probably gotten stuck between the pages of one of the books.
Next he found an extra pair of stockings, rolled into a ball. To her relief, she didn’t have to put them in her hair. He found her comb, and exclaimed over how well made it was. She had searched for a wooden one that wouldn’t cause comment, then carefully scratched off the maker’s name. The comb was one thing he really could have used, but he dropped it back into the bag without further interest. A few more halfhearted pawings, and he decided she didn’t have any valuables hidden from
him. He gathered the horse’s reins, and with a click of his tongue and a touch of his heels they rode on, with her held carefully in front of him like a queen—a queen with a Swiss Army knife rolled up in her hair.
Chapter 20
THE GRIMY GROUP OF MEN AND THEIR TWO CAPTIVES REACHED A castle just before nightfall. The setting sun had given Grace their direction of travel, and she had carefully noted what landmarks she could. Luckily, they seemed to be traveling due east, so if—when—she managed to free Niall and they escaped, she knew they should go due west.
The castle was surprisingly small, little more than a keep with a great hall added, and in ill repair at that. Grace was ushered into the dark, smelly interior, but at least she walked on her own. She watched, trying to hide her anxiety, as Niall was carried in. The bundle had stopped squirming a couple of hours before, and she wondered if they had inadvertently smothered him. Evidently the same thought occurred to the beast, because he shouted something and one of the four men carrying Niall cuffed him on the side of the head. A muffled growl reassured them, and Grace.
Securing Niall was much more important than dealing with her, at least for the moment. A smoky torch was fetched, and Niall was carried down a narrow, winding stone staircase, deep into the bowels of the castle. Grace trailed along because she didn’t know what else to do, and the dirty, sullen women who had watched her arrival didn’t seem welcoming. Besides, she needed to know where Niall would be held.
The dungeon was creepy. It was dank and dark, with moisture oozing from the slimy stone walls. The air was noticeably colder. There were three cells dug into the earth, each of them secured by an enormous wooden door. There weren’t any grilles in the door; the prisoners in this dungeon would live in total darkness, cold and damp, and likely die of pneumonia within a week or two.
The beast cut the ropes that bound the plaids about Black Niall; he and his men all stood with weapons ready, should Niall try to escape. Grace stood on tiptoe, her eyes wide as she tried to get a glimpse of the man who had haunted her for so long. Her movement drew the beast’s attention and he scowled at her. He barked an order, and one of the men reluctantly took her arm and forced her to the stairs. She tried to resist, slow him down, but he wasn’t happy to be missing the fun and he literally hauled her up the stairs, wrenching her arm in the process. Below, yells burst from male throats and she twisted her head, trying to see, but she was already too far up the curving stairs. There was a crash, and curses, and the sounds of a scuffle, feet scraping on stone and the thud of fists into flesh.
She flinched, wondering if they intended to beat him to death. Her guard jerked at her arm, scowling at her. She gave him a frustrated glare. Yelling at him wouldn’t do any good, because no one understood her.
They reached the great hall and he shoved her toward another flight of stairs, this one curving upward into the keep. This staircase was just as dark and narrow. Grace glanced down and saw the sullen faces watching her.
The guard paused in front of a crude wooden door, opened it, and shoved her inside. Immediately she whirled but he closed the door in her face, with a snarled order that she took to mean “Stay there!”
There was no keyhole in the door and the bar was positioned on this side of the door, meaning she wasn’t locked in, but when she laid her ear against the wood she heard the guard settling himself on the other side.
She turned and looked at her jail. The room was small and dark, lit by a single smoking torch whose light didn’t quite reach all the corners of the room despite its lack of size. The only window was a narrow slit, cut so an arrow could be shot from it at any angle. The floor was covered with rushes gone black and smelly with age, and the only furniture was a roughly made bed that was about the size of a modern double, a single chair, and a wobbly table. A small chest sat against the far wall, and a single candle stood on the table. There was a fireplace, but no fire. A leather bottle stood on the table beside the candle, and a single metal cup.
Grace took advantage of her privacy, which she was sure was only temporary. Unless she missed her guess, this was the beast’s bedchamber. Hastily she removed the tweezers from her hair, which had held up remarkably well, and unrolled the knife. After replacing the tweezers in their slot, she thrust the knife inside her stocking and retied the garter, determined to keep the combination weapon and tool with her from now on.
Taking the small wooden box from its pocket inside the burlap bag, she opened it and removed the handkerchief, carefully unrolling it so she didn’t lose any of the precious pills. She had brought a full course of antibiotics, and prescriptions of painkillers and Seconals, in addition to picking up some over-the-counter stuff in Edinburgh. The Seconals were an impulse, an effort to cover all bases; it was strange that they would be the first drug she would need to use.
The reddish capsules were hundred-milligram doses, enough to put someone to sleep. What she had to figure out was the delivery system, because she couldn’t hand one to the beast and say, “Here, take this.”
She looked at the leather bottle, thinking. Alcohol intensified the effects of Seconal; what wasn’t a lethal dose of the drug could become lethal if the user also drank. She didn’t want to kill the beast, just knock him out. Two or three pills were enough to put someone to sleep; the pharmacist had carefully told her that she shouldn’t take more than one, because she didn’t weigh very much.
The beast was a heavy man, not very tall but she guessed his weight at two hundred pounds. She picked out three capsules, and returned her drug stash to the burlap bag.
She opened the leather bottle and sniffed the contents. Her eyes watered at the smell of raw, strong ale. He wouldn’t notice anything wrong with the taste if she dissolved the entire thirty capsules in his cup.
Three should do the trick, however. Carefully she pulled the capsules apart, pouring the powder into the battered metal cup. Then she poured a little ale into the cup and swished the liquid around until the powder dissolved. She peered into the cup. The color of the ale looked a little cloudy, but in this light he wasn’t likely to notice.
Then, forcing herself to calm and patience, Grace sat down in the chair with the cup in her hand.
She waited a long time. The noise that drifted up made her think there was a revelry going on downstairs. She was hungry, but she wasn’t anxious to join them. If someone thought to send food, fine. If not, she had been hungry before.
She grew drowsy. The flickering torch was as sedative as watching a fire in a fireplace, and gave off enough warmth that she wasn’t cold. She thought of Niall, and knew that he was neither warm nor comfortable enough to sleep. He would be hungry, too; if they hadn’t fed her, they certainly hadn’t fed him. That was assuming he was even still alive, but she didn’t think they had killed him yet. If the beast intended to kill him, he would want to gloat a bit first. He struck her as that kind of man.
Finally she heard voices outside the door. She didn’t jump up, but continued sitting relaxed in the chair, or at least as relaxed as she could be on something as hard as rock. The door opened and the beast came in, his shaggy head lowered and his small, mean eyes bright with anticipation. He looked at the cup, at the open bottle of ale on the table, and his lips spread in a big grin, displaying terrible teeth and remnants of the dinner he had eaten.
Grace yawned and leisurely came to her feet. She pretended to sip the ale, then looked at him and raised the cup in a silent question, nodding at the bottle. He rumbled what she took to be agreement, and she filled the cup, then passed it to him.
He downed the ale in two gulps, then wiped the back of his hand across his wet mouth. His eyes never left her, and lust burned hotly in them.
