Captive's Return Read online

  She knew what Jonan would say in response to such thoughts. He would have no sympathy for the people who had stood by and allowed the slave trade to flourish. But as much as she had thrown in her lot with the Kyonans, she was still a Balenan born and bred. She couldn’t dismiss her entire kingdom so quickly. She didn’t take any delight in her isolation and exile from her own people. It was an inevitable but regrettable effect of the decision she had made long ago.

  Not that she regretted the decision, or would change it. But it would always grieve her to be so severed from her own people, and she didn’t think Jonan would ever really understand that. The thought made her heart ache.

  But no. Here she was, thinking that Jonan was too hard on her countrymen, when at this very moment, he was bound and being hauled to the castle by the same authorities who had given their word he would be peacefully received. She felt her anger at Giles returning full force. Was it any wonder Jonan thought so poorly of her people when they behaved with so little integrity?

  She was still in the grip of this galvanizing anger when the carriage came to a stop in the castle courtyard. Without waiting for any sign from her armed escort, she leaped lightly out of the vehicle and swept into the castle’s entryway, her air of dignified assurance daring anyone to question her.

  She had turned toward the royal wing, the guards who had followed her from the docks hurrying to catch up with her, when she heard a familiar voice.

  “Scarlett! You’re here already. Welcome.”

  “Welcome?” She felt her blood boil as she turned to face the attractive young man hurrying down the staircase toward her. “How dare you say ‘welcome’ to me? How could you, Giles?” She glared up at him, making no attempt to keep her voice down. “How could you dare?”

  Her cousin’s face tightened at her words, in a way she knew signified anger, although he was too well-mannered to express it openly. She knew that nothing would annoy him more than if she were to cause an embarrassing scene in front of the various servants who milled around the entranceway. It was tempting to do it, just to test his restraint, but she had no more desire than he did to be the subject of idle gossip.

  “You must be tired from your journey, and in need of refreshment,” Giles said, the words tight and clipped. Of course he would refuse to even acknowledge her accusation. “Come into my mother’s receiving room. She is eager to see you.”

  Scarlett had been about to hotly retort that she didn’t want refreshments, she wanted her husband released, but Giles’s mention of her Aunt Mariska made her waver. She did want to see the woman who had been a mother to her all her life. She wanted to see her desperately.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she gave a tight nod, continuing to glare at Giles so that he would know she wasn’t happy about it. Her behavior was a far cry from the carefully controlled demeanor of the haughty Lady Wrendal, but she didn’t care. She had no desire to maintain that persona.

  She swept past Giles and up the stairs, leading the way to her aunt’s rooms. She wanted to remind herself as much as everyone else that she knew her way around here, and was not going to tolerate being treated like an outsider.

  She knew a moment’s hesitation when she reached her aunt’s door. What would Aunt Mariska really think of all Scarlett had done? But there was an interested servant passing by, and Scarlett didn’t want to show any uncertainty. She knocked and confidently entered. Giles followed behind her.

  “Scarlett! My child! You’ve returned to us!” Scarlett could hear the tears in Aunt Mariska’s voice, and her own eyes suddenly stung as she threw herself forward and into her aunt’s arms. They closed around her, and a familiar scent settled over her. How could she have doubted her reception?

  “Aunt Mariska!” she said, her voice shaky. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I know, my darling, I’ve missed you too,” her aunt soothed, stroking her hair as if she was still a child. And indeed, she felt suddenly like a child again, with no problems too big for her beloved aunt to fix with a smile and a kind word.

  If only that were true. She drew back, turning to face Giles, who had shut the door behind him.

  “How could you do this, Giles?” she demanded, her eyes and voice hardening. “How could you betray me like this?”

  “There’s no need to be so dramatic, Scarlett,” her cousin said waspishly. “I haven’t done anything of the kind. On the contrary, I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t see how having my husband thrown in the dungeons can be considered protecting me,” Scarlett said incredulously.

  “That wasn’t my doing,” said Giles quickly.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really? The royal guards who arrested him said otherwise. Or were they lying when they said they were acting on your orders?”

  Giles frowned at her accusatory tone, but at least he had the grace to look uncomfortable. “No, they weren’t lying,” he admitted. “I did order them to apprehend Jonan and escort him to the dungeons. But I acted for the best.”

  “For the best?” Scarlett demanded furiously. “Jonan predicted something like this, but I never believed you capable of treachery. It seems he was right all along!”

  Aunt Mariska laid a hand on Scarlett’s arm. Scarlett was shaking with anger, and it was all she could do to stop herself from throwing it off.

  “Hear him out, Scarlett,” the older woman said gently. “I understand why you’re angry, but he’s trying to help you.”

  “You have a strange idea of what will help,” said Scarlett, pain shooting through her at the realization that her aunt was complicit in Giles’s treatment of Jonan. “I know you never liked Jonan, Giles, but I never suspected you of duplicity. You personally assured me that we would be received peacefully.”

  “And at the time I wrote it, I had every reason to believe you would be,” Giles shot back. “But things have changed since then. And whatever you may think of me, I’ve been scrambling for a way to protect you ever since!”

  “What things?” demanded Scarlett. “And what are you trying to protect me from that could be helped by imprisoning Jonan?” Her voice turned to steel. “If you think I’m in danger from him, then—”

  “No, I don’t think that, not exactly,” Giles cut her off. But he spoke carefully, and she was anything but mollified.

  “Not exactly?” she repeated, her voice growing dangerously quiet. “What does that mean?”

  Giles sighed. “It means that I don’t think he intends you any harm, but harm is likely to come to you through him anyway.” He turned away from her. “The people are suffering, Scarlett. And they’re angry. Things have been hard this last year, harder than they’ve been in a very long time. And people want someone to blame.”

  “Maybe they can blame our ancestors who built our economy on such a despicable foundation, so that when the slaves finally received justice, it put our country at risk of collapse.”

  She tried to speak in the same hard voice, but even to her own ears, her words lacked conviction. She had seen the suffering and the anger herself, just in the short ride to the castle. And as much as she tried to keep it at bay, she could feel the old familiar guilt creeping back in. The guilt that used to eat at her every time she thought about what her family would think if they knew about her secret double life.

  “Perhaps that’s who we should blame,” said Giles heavily. “But people who are long dead don’t make a satisfying scapegoat, do they? We can’t exactly put their necks under the blade to satisfy the people’s bloodlust.”

  A cold chill ran over Scarlett. “If you’re trying,” she choked out, “to put Jonan’s neck there instead—”

  “I’m trying,” Giles snapped, with something less than his usual princely dignity, “to keep your neck from being put there. If you would think about something other than your precious Jonan for one minute, you would realize that you are just as notable—and just as hated—a figure as he is.” He paused, taking a deep breath and calming his tone with an obvious effort. “O
r didn’t you know that everyone is now aware of your…clandestine activities back when you lived here?”

  Scarlett had gone still at his words, and she spoke quietly, keeping her voice steady with difficulty. “I assumed that everyone would know. That’s why I asked you whether it was safe for us to come here.”

  Her eyes fell on her aunt, taking in the tentative look that had come over her face.

  “We…we weren’t entirely sure what to…that is, I know that these stories can often grow in the telling. Did…did you really lead the whole resistance, Scarlett?”

  Scarlett took a deep breath. She had been expecting this moment. So many times she had both dreaded and longed for a time when she could tell her aunt and her cousin the truth. She should have fought Jonan harder about him coming on this trip, but the truth was she had desperately wanted him by her side when this moment came. And now she was alone anyway.

  “Yes, Aunt Mariska,” she said quietly. “I did.”

  Giles drew in a sharp breath. “And you accuse me of duplicity?”

  “Giles,” said Aunt Mariska warningly, but he ignored her.

  “You have the temerity to storm in here, outraged, as if you’re the one who’s been wronged? How could you do it to us, Scarlett? I always knew you were sympathetic toward the Kyonans, but I never dreamed you would go so far. What form did it take? I suppose you used your position, your relationship to your father, your relationship to us, to learn sensitive information about what would hurt us most. Did you pass that information on to them? The rumors are that you did more than just give information, that you got your own hands dirty too. What did you do, disguise yourself and attack with the guerrilla fighters in the jungle? Did you kill people, Scarlett? Our people?”

  Scarlett flinched at the harshness of Giles’s tone, but she waited silently for him to get it all out before she spoke.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “To all of that.”

  Chapter Four

  In spite of herself, Scarlett looked at her aunt, and saw that even she looked shocked, her face unusually pale. Giles’s face was frozen, so Scarlett hurried on before she could lose her nerve.

  “And even though I took no pleasure in it, in any of it, I can’t say that I regret it.”

  Giles once again turned away from her, but not quickly enough to hide the pain in his features. The betrayal she saw in his eyes made her feel like a knife was being twisted in her gut.

  “I’ve been defending you,” he said quietly. “But it seems you really are guilty of treason after all. You’re like a sister to me, Scarlett. I didn’t want to believe it of you.”

  “I’m sorry Giles,” she said, and the anguish in her voice seemed to catch his attention. He turned slowly back toward her. “I really am sorry. I hated lying to you. I didn’t want to harm Balenol, or the crown, and especially not you. But things couldn’t go on how they were. The slave trade was heinous. I tried a more peaceful approach, but no one would listen.”

  “I’m not saying things were perfect,” said Giles, his voice once again hard. “But I hardly think that justified turning on your own people. You’ve admitted yourself that you killed people! You think that kind of violence was justified?”

  “Do you think I liked the violence?” Scarlett demanded, starting to get angry herself. “I hated it! I hated all of it! The violence toward the slaves, the fighting in the jungle, the whippings, the riots, the beheadings, all of it!” Her chest was heaving, and she glowered back at him. “So you think things weren’t quite perfect, Giles? What delusion are you living in? You remember when my father moved to Nohl and made me move in with him?”

  “I—yes, of course I remember,” said Giles, thrown by the unexpected question.

  “And do you remember that I didn’t want to go, and didn’t like living in his house?”

  “Yes,” said Giles cautiously, as if fearing a trap.

  “Almost four years I lived with him,” said Scarlett, glaring her cousin down. “Maybe if you’d lived with him that long, you would’ve started a resistance too. Not that it took me four years. Within the first week I knew that I couldn’t go on as I was. Do you know what I witnessed three days after moving in with him?”

  She waited, but neither of her listeners spoke, both watching her warily.

  “A new slave had just arrived, a young girl. I don’t know what she was called. It wasn’t until later that I started making the effort to learn their names. Like all of us, I was raised not to think of them as human, after all.” She made no effort to soften her words. Her aunt gave a barely perceptible flinch, and even Giles looked uncomfortable.

  “Well, she wasn’t quite up to scratch, not for the great Lord Wrendal. On my third morning in his house, she ruined his eggs. Apparently it was the third time, and that was one too many. She’d been warned, he said, what would happen if she did it again. So he beat her, mercilessly, right in front of me. She was maybe twelve years old. He beat her so brutally that she died the next day.”

  Scarlett shrugged, the horror of that moment as fresh as if she was still fourteen and innocent. “I was with him when her death was reported to him. He didn’t blink, just said that there were plenty more where she came from, and he hoped the next one would know how to cook eggs better.”

  Scarlett paused. The silence in the room was absolute, both her aunt and her cousin completely still. Scarlett turned her face slightly to the side, shame washing over her as she continued.

  “And I did nothing. I sat there while he beat her, and I didn’t say a word. I could see that she couldn’t take it, but I was too afraid, too cowardly, to intervene. I learned later of course how to intervene without seeming to, how to manipulate him and direct him without him knowing it.”

  She shook her head. “I wish I could say that it was an isolated incident, but it wasn’t. It was absolutely normal in my father’s house. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. You probably never even noticed, but we had hardly any female slaves. I made sure of it. I used every trick I could think of to have them assigned elsewhere. I knew that in the castle, for example, slaves were treated much better than they were at my father’s house. His soldiers were always hanging around, and the things they used to do to the girls…”

  She covered her face with her hand in an involuntary movement. After a moment, she took a deep breath, mastering herself. “Bonnie was different,” she said, her voice stronger. “She was tough, and she was almost always with me. If she needed to, she could hide in my rooms, and not even Father’s lackeys would dare to go in there.”

  She looked back at Giles and Aunt Mariska and saw that they were held spellbound by her words. Her aunt had tears in her eyes, and Giles was watching her with a very serious expression on his face.

  “Why didn’t you tell us all this at the time?” he asked, his voice no longer angry.

  Scarlett made a dismissive noise. “I went to Uncle Rupert after my father beat that poor girl to death. I told him what had happened and begged him to let me come back to live at the castle. He agreed that it was ‘most unfortunate’ that the child hadn’t recovered from her punishment. But he said that my father had the right to discipline his slaves as he saw fit, and that he had the right to decide where his daughter would live, and that it would be inappropriate for my uncle to intervene in either matter.”

  “I never knew that you had spoken to him,” whispered Aunt Mariska. “Your uncle didn’t tell me.”

  Scarlett shrugged. “I imagine it was a conversation of little consequence to him. But for me…it changed my life. It was clear to me then how bad we had all become. And that I was on my own. I realized that if I wanted things to change, I would have to make it happen. Almost immediately I started researching the history of the trade. I learned about the first resistance, generations ago, and heard of the rumors that survivors still lived in the jungle. I began to look for them. And I found them. They were good people.”

  Her eyes suddenly stung as she remembered the day she stumbled on t
he group of nomads. Raldo had been the first to believe in her good intentions, and he had never stopped looking out for her from then on, even though it eventually cost him his life.

  She tried to shake off her melancholy. “It helped,” she continued, feeling a powerful release in finally saying all of this out loud. “Knowing that I was fighting back against my father helped me to endure all the injustice I witnessed during those years. And knowing I was outsmarting him helped me to endure his scorn and cruelty toward me. But even so, I was afraid of him from the moment I saw him beat that girl until the moment he died. So afraid that I couldn’t even lift a hand to save myself when he had a sword to my heart. If Jonan hadn’t been there, he would have killed me.”

  “What?” said Giles, startled into speech. “I can imagine he was angry when he found out about your activities, but surely he wouldn’t have killed you. He would have known we wouldn’t let him get away with that.”

  She gave a humorless laugh. “Wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t have known anything about it. He didn’t try to kill me because of my role in the resistance, although I’m sure that was an extra motivation. He had planned all along to kill me, then to make it look like the Kyonans did it, so that he could start his war. He thought Balenol would be able to easily overpower the young, inexperienced Kyonan king, and then we would have a permanent source of slaves. But he knew that King Siloam would not go to war without a compelling reason.”

  Scarlett raised her eyebrows at the horrified shock on the two faces turned to her. Apparently this part of the story had not filtered back to them. She should have written more comprehensively about what had happened. But it didn’t matter now. She took a deep breath, bringing her thoughts back to the crisis at hand.