Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
Crouched behind a boulder on the crest of the ridge behind Hugo’s damned mini-castle, Max frowned at the quiet that had descended over the back courtyard at the foot of the ridge, where not thirty seconds ago, the two kidnappers of Jeremiah had carried a hatless Miss Calliope through the castle’s back door from the stables. She’d been kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs—Max could see through his binoculars her chest was heaving—but a gag kept the sound to a minimum. Her hat had been lost somewhere in the struggle.
The employees who’d been busily at their work—building what he suspected was a large second stable, mucking out the first one, women hanging laundry on a thick line from one back corner of the castle to a nearby cabin—had stopped dead at the sight. The expression on many of their grim faces had been shock and dismay. Locals, most likely, who would know the young woman and her family.
Three of them—two men and a woman—had run toward the back door with a purposeful manner, only to be barred by an armed guard dressed in a Western shirt and denim trousers. Three more armed guards had come out of what Max had thought might be a bunkhouse, an arrogant Hugo giving instructions to Kuthbert, damn them both, then striding toward the back door Miss Calliope had been hustled through.
“I’m going in,” Max told Bart and Creede, his voice hard and urgent, his body taut. They’d ridden as fast as the horses could go along a shortcut Bart knew to the castle. Had had no time to discuss plans.
There wasn’t a moment to lose, not with Evil Prince Hugo’s reputation.
Damn it, Hugo and his men had kidnapped Miss Calliope from what should have been safe, neutral land. Had kidnapped her right in front of her brother and Sheriff Sam Creede.
“We’re all going in,” Bart said, the man looking and sounding as deadly as Max felt, Bart’s steely eyes scanning the back of Hugo’s compound, the horses tethered on the back side of the ridge. They’d ridden through Horse Canyon, out of sight of Hugo and his men, who would have expected them to follow them straight to the castle. Instead, Bart had led them along the crescent curve of the canyon to within a half mile of this ridge, the three of them arriving at their current position the same moment as Hugo and his men reached his back courtyard. “Through the front,” Bart said. “Guns drawn, if needed.”
“No,” Max said, brushing dirt from his cowboy clothes, then he tweaked his collar to straighten the plaid fabric, adrenaline running through his veins. “No guns. I’m going alone.”
“Are you loco?” Creede said, his binoculars trained on Kuthbert, the henchman’s arm in a sling over his black livery. Across the courtyard, a stable boy was struggling to control a furious Apollo.
“Nope. I’m the Evil Prince’s cousin, the Duke of Balmont. They’re practically twins, which means?—”
“You and Hugo are, too,” Bart said.
Creede shook his head. “You expect him to believe his cousin just happens to be in Wyoming?”
“He’ll believe it.” Max checked the bullets in his two six-shooters, in case he needed to shoot someone other than Hugo. “That barely visible footpath we crossed just north of here. Does it go near the front of the house?”
“Yes.” Bart’s voice was curt. His expression said he wasn’t sold on Max going in alone.
“I’ll go on foot,” Max said. “I’ll tell them my horse pulled up lame.” Tugging off his leather riding glove, he pulled the royal signet ring from his finger and buttoned it into his shirt pocket beneath his leather vest. Hugo would never believe his cousin would have access to it. “I’ll need a big distraction outside, say over by that half-built stable over there without the roof, to get your sister from the house without a fight.” He pointed at the workers who’d been carrying out long pieces of lumber from a low, narrow shed before they’d stopped in shock at the commotion with Miss Calliope. “Maybe that building with the building supplies, too.”
Bart and Sam gazed at him for what seemed like eternity, but it couldn’t have been more than five seconds. “You’ve got it,” Bart said. “We’ll meet up with you and Cally in the small clearing with the yellow flowers we passed coming in. Straight up that hill at the north side of the house. We’ll have the horses, including Apollo. Tell her that, or she’ll refuse to come with you.” Motioning to Creede to follow him, he started down the rocky, wooded slope between them and Hugo’s outbuildings.
Creede gave Max a narrow-eyed nod. “Godspeed,” he said and ran after Bart.
Max crossed from the woods on the north side of Hugo’s castle to the front entrance, willing his heart rate down, willing a nonchalant, devil-may-care expression on his face. His legs strode as if he owned the place, the dirt of the front sweep crunching beneath his cowboy boots, the heat in the ground burning into his soles.
The hot sun beat hard on his cowboy hat, no breeze to soften the heat, no sweet-scented flowers in neatly kept beds to soften the stark lack of landscaping. Nothing to soften the military-like atmosphere that hung around the place.
A small flight of marble stairs led to a roofed portico, this bit of the castle elegant compared to the medieval-like battlements higher up. Two immense, twenty-foot-high oak doors led into the house, an ornate brass knocker engraved with the family crest on each side.
Meeting no one—everyone seemed occupied out back—he took the small flight of marble stairs onto the portico with confident, arrogant strides, just in case Hugo or one of his henchmen were watching for Bart or Creede to arrive. Stopping in front of the massive doors, their brass fittings glinting in the bright sun, he plied the right-side brass knocker three times, loud and fast.
Whatever it took to protect Miss Calliope, he told himself, he would do, and forcing his hands to unclench, he waited impatiently for someone to open the damned door, his ears straining for sounds of her, for shouts of ‘ You varmint ,’ for unladylike cussing.
For screams of a womanly nature.
His hands clenched back into fists. He would kill Hugo if Miss Calliope was harmed in any?—
The front door swung slowly open, silent on its massive hinges.
A tall, broad, uniformed butler in a well-tailored black suit of fine cloth stood in the doorway—an older man, likely from Zalgravia, given the haughty look on his square, lined face, his short military-style hair more gray than dark. He gazed at Max without expression, nor did he speak, waiting for Max to state his business.
“Good afternoon,” Max said in Zalgravian, realizing he looked, in his Western clothing, like any of the locals. Speaking in his most arrogant, formal of tones, he tilted the brim of his hat up from his face and tugged his red bandana down his neck, and assumed his own haughtiest of expressions, mimicking Hugo as best as he could, given the few moments he’d seen his ancestor at the Sky Top. “Be so good as to tell His Royal Highness Prince Hugo his cousin the Duke of Balmont has come to call.”
The butler, who’d begun to stare at Max the instant he started to speak in Zalgravian, gaped at him now, pinned, it seemed, first by Max’s voice, then by Max’s face. Abruptly, he jerked back, his expression one of fear, as if he’d just been rude to his employer. “Your…Your…” he said in Zalgravian, clearly imported from the home country. “Your…Your…”
“It’s ‘Your Grace,’ man.” Max hardened his voice, his mind frantically reviewing his assistant Nelson’s research on the royal family of the time. “Do avoid keeping me waiting.”
The butler gave him a formal bow. “Yes, Y-Your Grace.” Stepping back, he opened the door wide, a tremble in his hand. Hugo, it seemed, ruled even his own household with fear. “This w-way.”
Max stepped inside, the air cool out of the sun, the stone floor of the entrance hall cool as well against the soles of his boots, his boots echoing in the tall entrance hall. Impatience filled his heart.
Glancing around, searching for any sign of Miss Calliope, he was struck by an immediate sense of déjà-vu. The entrance hall was a miniature rendering of the royal castle at home, down to the placement of the wide, elegant staircase just ahead, and the collection of medieval weapons that hung on the far wall to the right. An immense hearth filled the wall to the left, the family coat of arms rendered in gemstones and gold hanging above the mantle.
Arched doorways, complete with oak doors, extended past the hearth down a wide hallway that led farther into the castle, these doors only fifteen feet tall. Plush rugs woven in the colors of the Zalgravian flag led the way.
And over it all, despite the finery, a tension hung in the air. A hush seemed to have fallen on the castle.
Max could guess why. It took all his will to not run up the grand staircase, yelling for Miss Calliope. But a direct confrontation with an armed Hugo and Hugo’s henchmen would only put her in more danger.
And his own family, his parents and sisters, and nieces and nephews, too, if Hugo was killed.
He was deposited in a large, gilt-edged drawing room that looked out over the front, its tall windows opening onto the beautiful green valley spread out below. Plush silk carpets covered much of the intricate parquet flooring. Cut crystal decanters filled a silver tray, side by side with bottles of expensive spirits. A collection of swords was displayed on one wall, rather than stored in specially built travel cases—Hugo was a master swordsman, whose weapons were famed for their exquisite construction by a master craftsman—which meant he intended to stay for a while.
Max’s heart hardened. Not if he could help it.
Pulling off his riding gloves, he listened for Miss Calliope.
Was her supposed death at Hugo’s hands the result of a kidnapping such as this? Of perhaps a rescue gone terribly wrong?
That would account for the stories of her death—the official ruling of an accident rather than the more likely rumors of murder. Her family would want to protect her reputation, even after she died. No one would want word of the kidnapping to get out, not even Hugo, not with his father the king breathing down his neck, as Max understood was currently the case, though there were enough witnesses in that back courtyard to fuel God knew how many days, weeks—a century—of gossip.
Footsteps sounded out in the hallway, confident, arrogant footsteps. The door opened. The butler came inside, just past the doorframe, and side-stepped to the right. “His Royal Highness Prince Maximilian Alphonse Edwin Hugo of the Kingdom of Zalgravia.”
Hugo entered the room with an air of ownership and conquest at odds with the annoyance on his face. And though Max had seen him just two days ago at the Sky Top, here and now, face-to-face with his ancestor, it was still a shock.
It was eerily like looking in a mirror, except for Hugo’s self-congratulatory military uniform, the scar on Hugo’s jaw.
The fresh, still-bleeding scratch across the back of Hugo’s sun-darkened hand.
Max willed his own hand not to close into a fist and strike his great-great-great-grandfather in that smug mouth.
Hugo raised a dark eyebrow, his own gaze on Max’s face, a scent of expensive cologne and horse wafting subtly from him. “How do you do, Balmont?” he said, his voice cultured and as haughty as the rest of him, his words in the same old-fashioned Zalgravian the two kidnappers and butler had used. “By God, the family resemblance gets stronger every time I meet you. But must you dress like the local heathens?”
Max looked Hugo up and down with an amused gaze, not worried about his cowboy attire—from what he knew of his family’s history, the globe-trotting Duke of Balmont circa 1897 was a rough-and-tumble adventurer, not a playactor sporting military honors he hadn’t earned. “Must you wear all your medals, Hugo,” he drawled in English, not trusting his twenty- first-century Zalgravian in front of his nineteenth-century ancestor, “in this heat?”
The flash of rage on Hugo’s face told Max he’d made a mark on the man’s ego, but more importantly, he’d made a mark the true Duke of Balmont would have made as well. “The queen mentioned in her latest letter you were here in America,” Hugo said, his curt voice icy cold, arrogant and impatient, the prince clearly not interested in meeting with his cousin, no matter how far across the globe the cousin had traveled. “Did she send a message with you?”
“I understood from Her Majesty that you’ve collected geological specimens from the area,” Max said, his mind thinking fast, his body unbearably taut, his ears still straining for any sounds of Miss Calliope. “I hoped I might see them.”
Hugo squelched an irritated frown, Max could see it in the corners of his mouth. “Another day, perhaps. I’m occupied at the moment. Only your name and the distance you’ve traveled compelled me to greet you.”
“What, Hugo, no hospitality? No welcome for a royal cousin?” Max slapped his riding gloves lightly against one palm, enjoying tormenting this kidnapper of Miss Calliope. “No refreshments on a hot August day at the very least?”
Hugo didn’t deign to answer, his back straight as a poker, his body stiff as a marble statue. After all, he did outrank a duke. Not that Max intended to let that stop him.
“Besides,” Max said, “I thought I would make your castle my base of exploration for the mountains in this area.”
“It’s quite impossible,” Hugo said. “The workmen are?—”
A loud bell clanged outside, from the direction of the outbuildings behind the castle. Shouts of ‘ fire ’ cut across the clanging.
A big ruckus, as Miss Calliope would say, broke out inside the house, footsteps thudding down a back staircase, more running feet sounding down the hall, heading toward the back.
“Damnation,” Hugo cursed and flung open the door.
“Your Highness,” the stocky henchman Zimmer cried out in Zalgravian, rushing up to the doorway from the foot of the grand staircase.
Uniformed servants ran to and fro. Kuthbert came from down the back hallway to meet Hugo, running fast, pain seemingly clenched in his face, his good arm cradling the one in the sling. “ Fire , Your Highness ,” he shouted over the clanging bell, breathing hard, and the three of them—Hugo and his two henchmen—sprinted down the hallway toward the back.
Max caught a young serving woman by the arm among the commotion. “Where is she?” he said in a low tone.
Dressed in the attire of the servants in Zalgravia of the time—a long black dress with a white apron and cap, though the rest of her had the look of the local people—she gaped at him. It was that damned resemblance to Hugo, he knew, but he smiled through his worry, and that and his clothing seemed to convince her he wasn’t his ancestor. But still, she stared at him mutely, though her eyes said she knew who he was asking for. Those eyes glanced up and to the left for the tiniest of moments.
“Guards?”
Her lips still closed tight, she dropped her head and curtsied to him, that dropped head saying yes.
“Thank you,” he whispered and ran for the stairs.