Chloe let her eyes wander and a vague smile touched her lips.
Jasper released her face. "She's all right. I'll give her something else when we begin."
Chloe drifted over to a settle beside the massive ingle-nook fireplace and sat down. Her head was beginning to ache and she felt nauseated, but her senses were returning so fast now, they seemed to be tumbling over themselves as full awareness flooded her. She had been married to Crispin. She was Crispin's wife. Till death.
She kept her eyes down, her hands twisting idly in her silken lap. A spark of firelight caught the sinuous golden twists of the coiled serpent ring they'd put on her finger. Nothing mattered any longer in the face of the fact embodied in the perverted wedding ring. Except Hugo… Hugo was to walk into a trap when they took her to the crypt. He would be forced to watch the ceremony of her initiation and then Jasper would kill him. For herself, the crypt didn't matter. She was condemned to a life as Crispin's wife… his prisoner… what else happened to her mattered not a jot. But she must try to help Hugo. If they believed her still drugged, she might have a chance.
She let her head fall back against the settle and closed her eyes. Let them think she was dozing again.
Around her the buzz of noise increased in volume and she lost all sense of time, and then she heard Jasper's voice against her ear. "Come, little sister, it's time to prepare for your wedding night."
Samuel moved his cold-numbed limbs and took a swig of brandy from his flask. Then he heard the sound of voices. A wavering light fell across the path beyond his hiding place. Boots crunched on the icy ground.
Two men appeared. At the door of the crypt, one of them reached up. Then the door swung open and the two disappeared with their lantern.
Inside, Hugo came alert at the first sound of the key in the door above. He edged farther back against the wall, although he knew he wouldn't be visible from below. He listened as the two men lit the pitch torches and the altar candles and their light threw giant shadows up onto the vaulted ceiling.
One of the men was Denis DeLacy. He poured wine into a crystal flagon and drank deeply, his eyes roaming over the bier. He opened one of the little pots and shook a small pinch of herbs onto the palm of his hand. He put his tongue to it and licked, waiting for the crackle to start in his head.
Outside, Samuel waited. Then there were more voices, more light, and a group of men came down the path. A shrouded figure walked in their midst and the lantern caught the glimmer of white beneath the cloak and the deep golden radiance of her hair.
Tension ripped through Samuel with a surge of almost unmanageable fury. He breathed long and slow until he had himself in control again. All but two men entered the crypt.
Those two, pistols in their hands, moved to either side of the entrance, each taking up a position in the thick bushes.
They were awaiting the arrival of Hugo Lattimer.
Samuel waited until the deep night silence of the countryside had reasserted itself after the flurry of arrival. Then he moved. He moved like a sylph made of air, belying his size.
The first man didn't know what had hit him when the flat edge of a hand chopped at the base of his skull. He went down into the underbrush without a murmur. The second man half turned as the dark bulk of a figure sprang at him. His finger slipped on the trigger of his pistol, a cry, strangled at birth, broke from his lips as the hand chopped at his throat and he went down like his partner.
Samuel eased open the heavy door to the crypt. He slid through the narrowest gap he could manage and then crouched in the shadows at the top of the stairs. He held a pistol in each hand, a wicked double-bladed knife in a sheath in his boot. He could hear the voices from below clearly.
Chloe stood still in the middle of the chamber. Her eyes darted surreptitiously from side to side as she took in her surroundings. This was the place that had created Hugo's painted devils. The evil miasma of the place rose up from the tombstone slabs of the floor, seemed to writhe out of the stone walls with the serpentine flickering of the pitch torches This was the place where Hugo had killed her father.
For some reason she wasn't frightened. The last residues of the drug she'd been given had vanished and she was as clear-headed as she'd ever been. Even her hunger had disappeared, although she was conscious of a void inside her. But it was a void that seemed to create the energy that thrummed in her veins, infusing her mind and body.
When would Hugo come? She had to save him. It was the only thought, the only purpose, and since she had no plans, she must rely on instinct and circumstance as they arose.
Someone was taking the cloak from her shoulders. A rapt silence fell as she stood in her pure white gown with her golden hair, now loosened, falling about her shoulders.
Then Hugo spoke, his voice echoing in the silence. "It seems we finally come to a meeting, Jasper."
They all looked upward. Hugo, in his shirt-sleeves, swung one leg over the narrow rail of the gallery. He held the two epees in one hand. With a twist of his wrist he sent one of them spinning down.
Automatically, Jasper reached up and caught the hilt in his gloved hand.
In stunned silence but as if under the command of one will, the group of men moved backward against the wall. Chloe was at first thunderstruck, then filled with a wild exultation. Hugo had set his own trap.
Suddenly Jasper laughed. "I wasn't expecting you to be ahead of me, Lattimer. I forgot that you're now a model of sobriety and clear-thinking. An oversight-and a pity… as I had your reception so well prepared. However-" He raised his epee in a fencer's salute. "As you say, we have unfinished business. Let us finish it."
Huyo swung his other leg over the gallery rail and jumped down. It was a long jump, but he landed easily on the balls of his stocking feet-a man who'd spent many years climbing the rigging of a ship of the line.
"I've pistols, if you prefer," he offered courteously, watching as Jasper also shrugged out of his coat.
"No… no…" Jasper said calmly, bending to pull off his boots. "It should be done according to ritual, as always."
"And according to ritual, the honor of the woman falls to the victor."
"Exactly so."
Chloe understood what was happening; Jasper's bedtime story had left nothing out, and she knew all the details of the rules and rituals of the Congregation. Hugo was fighting for her as he'd fought for her mother. If he won, then she would never have to take her place in the crypt again. If he lost… but then nothing would matter. If he lost, he would be dead. The duels of the Congregation were always mortal combat.
Crispin was hissing through his teeth, his body very close to Chloe's. Hugo suddenly turned to look at Chloe for the first time. "Go and stand on the stairs, lass," he instructed in even tones.
"But I-"
"Do it!"
For once she obeyed immediately, and as she reached the stairs understood the reason for the order. Samuel was standing in the darkness behind her. Hugo was not going to play by the rules. Even if he lost, she would not be abandoned to the Congregation.
The two men saluted each other. Then Hugo said softly, "En garde." He lunged in a straight thrust and Jasper parried in quarte. The blades met and disengaged.
Chloe watched with a numb and dreadful fascination as the two men danced over the tombstone slabs, their blades glimmering, flashing with an almost impossible speed, moving from one position to another in a rapid series of attacks and counterattacks as they probed for an opening in their opponent's guard. It seemed to her that neither man held the attack for more than one engagement, as each attack was parried, the defender became the attacker.
Ten… fifteen… twenty minutes it went on, and it seemed impossible that any man could maintain such speed and accuracy for another second.
Finish it… please God, finish it. The prayer went around and around in Chloe's head. She could feel their growing fatigue amid the desperate clashing of invincible wills… the desperate purpose that fueled them both… the terrifying knowledge of imminent death.