Once Upon a Castle - Jill Gregory [43]
“Then you and Marcus are the only two souls on this earth who do,” he muttered with a quick, harsh smile. “So talk, Arianne. Quickly. There is no time to lose.”
3
The wind roared like a wild beast all through the night. With their cloaks spread on the dirt floor beneath them, Nicholas and Arianne huddled before the fire, and she told him of all that had happened since Archduke Armand had died.
“At first there were murmurings in Dinadan over Marcus being crowned archduke. He was never popular with the people, you know. Many prayed for your return—some even dared to call for it.”
This remark was greeted by silence. She bit her lip, knowing that when Armand had banished his son, he’d decreed that Nicholas should never succeed him as ruler of Dinadan. She’d never discovered what had transpired between the archduke and Nicholas to cause his banishment, and if her father or Marcus had known the reason, neither had shared it with her. It must have been something horrible indeed for Armand to turn against his firstborn son with such finality.
“Continue,” Nicholas ordered, his eyes hard as agates as she hesitated.
She inched closer to the fire, her hair drifting forward across her cheeks. “Immediately after the coronation, Julian had all the nobles who’d spoken publicly against him locked away. Then rumors reached us in Galeron that he was preparing for war, making plans to overrun his neighbors’ lands.”
“Didn’t wait long, did he?”
“Scarcely a sennight.” Arianne shivered despite the lovely blaze of heat from the fire. She was no longer drowsy; the story stirred her blood with fresh zeal against the man who had imprisoned Marcus.
“It started with border raids to the south, in Ruanwald,” she told him with a quick, flashing glance. “Duke Edmund realized that he didn’t stand a chance against Dinadan’s army, so he quickly offered his daughter, Katerine, in marriage as a means of securing peace with Julian.”
She frowned into the fire, remembering how shocked she had been by this event, for it had seemed to her, the last time she’d seen Katerine of Ruanwald at Midwinter Festival last year, that she and Marcus had been quite taken with one another. Indeed, when Marcus had heard of Katerine’s being bartered off to Dinadan in order to keep the peace, he’d gone white as a bone.
“Marcus saw then that if he didn’t face Julian directly and at once, our own land would be next under attack,” she told Nicholas with a sigh.
“What of your father?” Turning to look at her, Nicholas saw the glisten of sadness in her brilliant eyes.
Arianne steadied herself and explained how first her mother had died four years earlier of a fever and then scarcely a year later her father’s heart had given out after a hard day of hunting and riding.
“I am sorry to hear of it.”
“Thank you. So you see, Marcus is the Count of Galeron now.”
“Let me guess.” He shook his head. “My trusting friend went straight off to his ‘cousin’ Julian to propose a treaty of peace.” At her nod, he brought his fist down in frustration on the hard-packed floor. “By all that’s holy, from the time we were boys, Marcus was always so honest and upright he could scarcely conceive of villainy in others. The fool…”
“Marcus is no fool!”
“No? I’d wager a storehouse full of gold that it was during this visit that Julian took Count Gullible prisoner,” he added caustically.
Furious, Arianne scrambled up on her knees to face him. “Marcus couldn’t possibly have known that Julian would engage in such treachery!” she cried, her face hot and flushed. Though she might rail at Marcus for not allowing her to sit in on his strategy sessions and meetings with the nobles, she would brook no criticism of him from another. “Marcus went to Dinadan in peace! He did take a company of knights with him, a small contingent, but they were overpowered. How was he to guess that Julian would stoop to attacking him when his mission was to reach an accord?”
Nicholas leaned back, gazing at her lazily,