“Do you truly think someone stole it?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
Her brow remained knit. “Why are you here?”
“As a favor to Prince Raynaldo, to see Sebastiao suitably wed.”
“No. Why are you here? Outside here now?”
“To study that.” Through her cloak he grasped her arm and turned her toward the chateau. She stiffened but did not draw away. She was a small thing but strong, he already knew, and not easily frightened. He suspected that if threatened she would fight him—or anyone else—before she called for help. But he liked to hold her. He liked to feel her in his hands. “Do you see how that stair descends on the exterior wall behind the trees?”
“I think so. It’s covered in snow, isn’t it? I don’t see its top.”
“It begins in the northwest tower and continues around the corner to a platform rock on the bank of the river.”
Disquiet settled upon her features. “The murderer might have escaped by boat?”
“It is possible. I have yet to study the platform, but at this distance I see little indication that anyone has used those stairs since it snowed.”
“Desperation can make for daring acts. What are the chances that if we go down to the river we will find a person who, two nights ago, tried to leave by that stairway and slipped on the snow and fell to her death?”
“Little.”
“Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you don’t want me to accompany you to investigate it?”
“The latter.”
She whirled about and, like a fawn leaping through snow, headed across the road toward the slope down to the river, her cloak billowing out behind. He followed until she came to the trees where a person might be concealed, then he moved beside her. The sunlight’s glare upon the snow made searching the shadows difficult, and he remained close to her, the uncertain footing upon the slope justifying his grasp of her arm when she slipped. She darted him a glance and pulled free of his grasp. He continued close behind her.
Denis’s words from the day before played in his mind like Matins chant: The devil liked to take female form to tempt a man. That was balderdash, of course. Vitor knew the truth of it. He wanted this woman because he could not have her, and because she was plainspoken and uniquely enchanting with her black hair tangling about her shoulders and her starlit eyes that retreated when she found him watching her. She made him hungry.
At the base of the castle walls the bank cut sharply into the river, the snow forming a heavy ledge at the edge of the water that reflected the sky like a mirror. Vitor had navigated this deceptively still, broad silver ribbon in the past. It could sweep a man away before he could utter a word of protest. She plowed a path away from its glittering surface directly to the base of the stair that climbed the side of the chateau like a scar to the turret in its uppermost room. Submerged to her knees, she attempted the steps. She tried thrice and three times slipped. The third landed her on her behind.
“Finished now?” he asked from a distance.
“For the time being.” She brushed off her cloak and studied the risers. “No one could climb down once the snow began. Do you really believe someone tried to leave via this route?”
“I don’t. I do believe that someone made the attempt.”
“Why?”
“In the room at the top of the tower, the rug and floorboards near the door are soaked, and footprints lead from the chamber down the stairs. Also, a quantity of rust is scattered about the threshold, suggesting a door opened after long disuse. An attempt may have been made to depart through this door, then abandoned.”
“Then why did you wish to come here to study the base of the stairs when the murderer never came down all the way?”
“To encourage my memory.” He walked toward the platform from which in warmer seasons a boat could be launched. “To try to imagine what the murderer might have intended by descending.”
She moved away, peering at the turret high above as she disappeared around the corner. “Perhaps it was not the murderer who opened that door in the tower room,” she called back. “Perhaps it was someone else.”
“I found blood on the door handle, and upon the floor a candlestick stained with it as well.” Before him, half buried, was a door to a storage shed built into the castle wall. Within he would find a boat and oars. “You might consider searching the ladies’ belongings for garments or linens stained unusually with blood.”
“I will if I can manage it. It would be fairly easy to disguise such a stain as— What? No!”
The splash that followed her exclamation grabbed Vitor’s chest and catapulted his legs along the wall to the chateau’s corner. A flash of a dark body darted into the trees, but his eyes sought the woman in the river. Her cloak and skirts ballooned with trapped air but in moments they would tug her to the bottom. Not wasting breath to shout, she struggled toward the bank, but the current pulled her away faster than she could paddle.
He stripped off his coat and boots and dove.
Chapter 7
The Hero
Water burning his skin with cold, Vitor reached her and grabbed her beneath the arms. His legs tangled in her skirts. He kicked them free and pulled her back against the current. She helped him, but her skin was already white.
It seemed an age of frigid pain before he reached the platform. Together they struggled against her sodden garments and dragged her entirely from the water. With shaking hands she fumbled at the fastening of her cloak. Struggling to his feet, he grabbed his coat, pulled forth his knife, and fell to his knees before her.
“Can’t—” She plucked at the knot. “Get—” Her words were barely audible, her lips blue.
He pushed her hands aside and cut the cloak fastening, then turned her and at her back sliced a line up the fasteners of the heavy woolen gown and the linen undergarment below. The laces of her stays split beneath the sharp blade, and she struggled out of the garments. He reached for his coat and she slid her arms into it stiffly as he pulled on his boots. She climbed to her feet in the slushy depression they’d made in the snow. Like a wraith, her black hair was matted about her face and neck and her eyes were sockets of ebony in the stark white oval of her face.
He took her up into his arms and climbed toward the road. As slight as she was icy, she tucked her face and hands against his chest and did not protest, which terrified him.
By the time he strode through the main gate, her body shook in violent tremors. But he felt her hard breaths and knew she was trying to withstand it. A guard followed. No one stirred in the great hall. Vitor carried her to the housekeeper’s day chamber, small and easily heated.
“Have a fire laid immediately and bring tea,” he commanded the guard. “Then alert Monsieur Brazil and Sir Beverley, but no one else. Be quick.”
“Sim, meu senhor.” The man disappeared.
He lowered her to the chair before the hearth, drew his coat from her stiff limbs, and wrapped a blanket about her. She allowed it all in trembling silence. But when he tucked the wool around her feet, then took her hands between his to chafe, she tugged them away.
“Go,” she whispered between clacking teeth. “Dry.”
“You must remove the wet garment. Whom do you wish me to call to assist you?”
She shook her head. “Go.”
“When the guard returns.”