Page 27

Chapter 27

Olivia

O livia gripped her dagger in a sweating hand, but she wasn’t foolhardy enough to take on a man armed with a sword. She would leave the guards to handle them.

Instead, she ran along the inside wall of the warehouse, following behind Cade. By the time she got a clear view of him, he had Marigold’s attacker lying at his feet and was attempting to free Marigold while she sobbed noisily.

Something wound tight inside Olivia loosened. Her friend was all right. The tears sounded more like a natural overflow of emotion than the deep wail of someone badly injured or in extreme distress.

Olivia started to move closer to the pair when she remembered that the warehouse held another captive. And the second captive didn’t have a desperate lover to rush to her rescue.

Olivia swung around, searching for Elisabeth and her remaining captor. But Daphne was ahead of her. Before Olivia had done more than visually locate the abducted girl, Daphne was shouting for Elisabeth to duck.

Elisabeth obeyed promptly, and Daphne hurled a broken piece of plaster at her captor. Olivia wasted no time in following suit. Swapping her dagger to her left hand, she seized a piece of loose debris from the floor and aimed it at the man.

He had successfully dodged Daphne’s plaster and was attempting to haul Elisabeth back upright again. The girl was stubbornly resisting, however, and her captor wasn’t prepared for Olivia’s chunk of wood. It hit him on one shoulder.

He bellowed and swung around just in time for Daphne to catch him in the side of the head with part of a brick. He swayed and crumpled to the ground.

Daphne hurried to Elisabeth’s side, helping her to her feet and talking in a soft, reassuring flow. Energy coursed through Olivia, and she breathed hard, despite her relatively minor exertion.

She couldn’t relax yet, however. Spinning around, she searched for Julius, hoping to find he had already completed his fight.

For a second all she could see were swaying, shouting figures, but her eyes latched onto Julius, a point of calm in the chaos. He appeared unharmed, his focus on two men locked in a rapid fistfight.

Before she could release a sigh of relief, however, her eyes caught on another man. Whatever Cade had done to incapacitate Marigold’s attacker, the effect hadn’t been permanent. He was back on his feet, unnoticed by Cade, who was still working to free Marigold, and was approaching Julius from behind.

He no longer had his sword—if he had ever had one—but he held a brick raised high, ready to bring it down on the back of Julius’s head.

“Julius!” Olivia screamed, throwing herself forward in a desperate lunge.

She slid forward across the ground, her wild, screaming approach distracting the man. As she slid all the way to his side, she stabbed her dagger—still clutched in her left hand—awkwardly into his foot.

Julius turned, his sword coming up as he instinctively ran the man through. The attacker gave a soft, surprised grunt and dropped the brick, his hands going to the sword now protruding from his middle.

The brick fell toward Olivia. Trapped in an awkward position, she tried to roll away, but there was no time.

She braced herself for the strike of the brick, but instead a heavy weight fell over her as Julius threw himself across her. Bracing himself with his arms, he took the blow of the brick against his back.

“Julius!” she cried again, her words muffled this time.

But while the brick must have hurt, it had missed his head, and he was able to scramble easily to his feet. He pulled her up after him, his eyes roaming over her.

“Are you all right?” He sounded frantic with worry. “You weren’t hurt?”

Olivia shook her head, letting him pull her into his arms and feeling his relieved sigh all the way through her. As she rested against his chest, she remembered there was still one fight unfinished.

She peered toward the guard who had been wrestling with his opponent. The man had both hands propped on his knees, his back hunched as he sucked in breaths, clearly winded from the fight. His opponent lay at his feet. Daphne stood beside the downed man, a brick in her hand.

She looked up, met Olivia’s eyes, and shrugged. “Someone had to do something,” she said matter-of-factly.

Olivia laughed shakily, her eyes roaming over the men scattered across the ground. The other guard had already secured his opponent with a length of rope and was moving on to the most lively looking of the other prone men.

She relaxed into Julius again. It really was over.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Julius asked again, and she forced herself to pull away from him.

“Yes, just a little shaken. But what about you?” Her eyes roamed over him, looking for any sign of injury.

“I’m fine.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but with a shake of his head, he also stepped back and surveyed the chaos of the room.

Cade had finally succeeded in freeing Marigold, although Olivia didn’t know how he’d managed it. She was wrapped in his arms and had stopped sobbing, at least.

But when she caught Olivia’s eye over Cade’s shoulder, she launched into motion, wriggling free of his grip and flying across the room to throw her arms around Olivia.

“Cade said you’re betrothed to the prince in my place? And that you were the first to guess I was abducted. He said you never stopped looking for me. I’m so sorry, Olivia,” she wailed.

Olivia patted her back, meeting Julius’s eyes over her shoulder with a silent laugh. The reaction was so very Marigold—sincerity wrapped in the most noisy and dramatic shell possible.

Now that she understood being a royal involved constant restraint and a lifetime of doing and saying the right thing at the right time, she couldn’t imagine Marigold in her place.

“Right now I’m too relieved you’re safe to be angry,” Olivia said when her friend finally let her go. “But I intend to have stern words with you later. How could you trick me like that! It was an abominable thing to do!”

“I never intended to trap you into a betrothal, let alone a marriage!” Marigold dashed the tears from her face. “I didn’t think they’d actually go through with it! I just wanted them to see how ridiculous the whole thing was.”

“Well it didn’t play out like that,” Olivia said with what she felt was admirable restraint.

“Of course, I expected to be there the next morning to explain it all myself,” Marigold said in subdued tones. “I never meant to leave you to face everyone alone.”

Olivia squeezed her arm. “Yes, that much I knew almost immediately. It wasn’t at all like you to disappear like that.”

Marigold threw her a grateful look. “You had more faith in me than my own family.”

Olivia thought of her interaction with Lord Emerson. “I don’t think your father truly understands you. But I do think he loves you, in his own way.”

Marigold heaved a sigh. “I know. But really!” She fired up again. “To not even look for me!”

“He did start looking after a while,” Olivia said, before adding, “But he was looking thinking you’d run away, so he was looking in all the wrong places.”

“He would,” said Marigold darkly. “But I truly am sorry, Olivia. I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on what I did.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I can see that it was too much. You’re a true friend, and I never should have done that to you.”

She sighed. “It wasn’t my first plan. At first I was going to ask you to conspire with me and go to the ball in my place knowingly. I knew you shared my frustration at the royal family’s stance on the Legacy and the way they let it control matters rather than finding ways to fight it. I wanted us to show them how ridiculous the whole situation was and force them to let Julius choose his own bride.”

“How selfless of you,” Julius said wryly.

Marigold threw him a look. “Don’t pretend you wanted to marry me any more than I wanted to marry you!”

“So why didn’t you tell me everything?” Olivia asked, refusing to be distracted from the point—or to imagine Marigold and Julius married.

Marigold’s lips twisted, guilt suffusing her face. “You mentioned your misconception about needing glass slippers before I said anything, so I decided on a whim not to tell you. I thought it would shield you from any blame that way,” she hurried to add.

Olivia regarded her steadily, brows raised, and Marigold winced.

“I did think that! But fine, I was also a little afraid that I wouldn’t be able to convince you to go along with it. I thought that if I just didn’t go to the ball, my parents would find me and force me there and it would happen anyway. I’m sure the royals would have thrown another ball if necessary.”

Olivia felt frustration and anger rise up inside her, but it was mixed with a thread of relief. Her friend had wronged her, but if she hadn’t, Olivia would never have known Julius as anyone but the strange man on the hill. Marigold had done wrong, but she had already suffered for it—for months.

Olivia’s anger melted away.

“I forgive you,” she said. “As long as you never play such a trick on me again. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve already paid for your trick, and I don’t intend to try to extract further punishment.” She looked back at the shackles lying abandoned by the table. “Did they harm you?”

Marigold’s face crumpled, and Cade appeared to wrap one arm around her.

“They provided me with basic necessities,” she whispered, “and they didn’t hit me, if that’s what you mean. But I’ll admit I wasn’t an easy prisoner at first, and they weren’t afraid to fight back if I initiated it.”

“And of course you had to fight them,” Cade breathed against her hair. “You wouldn’t be Marigold if you didn’t.”

“I had company for a while at the beginning,” Marigold said. “But then the other girl was released. I was on my own after that until Elisabeth arrived a few days ago.”

She smiled at the girl who still stood alone in the middle of the warehouse. She didn’t seem to have yet recovered from the shock and confusion of her abrupt rescue, and she could have done with another hug from Daphne.

“Wait, where’s Daphne?” Olivia spun around, looking for her missing cousin.

When she found her, her heightened emotions bubbled out into laughter.

“Who is Daphne?” Marigold asked, peering in the same direction. “Is she…asleep?”

Daphne was perched on a pile of stacked bricks, her head resting on an even taller pile beside her. Her eyes were closed.

“That’s Daphne, Olivia’s cousin,” Cade said. “She’s from Oakden.”

“Even so!” Marigold shook her head. “Sleeping here?”

“I’m sure she’ll wake up soon,” Olivia said. “She always does wake up at just the right moment.”

Marigold narrowed her eyes, clearly suspicious of the newcomer. But after everything Marigold had put them through, Olivia wasn’t going to let her question Daphne.

“Why did you never tell me about Cade?” she asked instead. “Didn’t you trust me to keep it quiet?”

Her hurt shone through in her voice, and Marigold’s face fell. “It wasn’t that.” She looked guiltily sideways at Cade. “To tell the truth, I enjoyed playing the role of star-crossed lovers with a secret romance. It was the most thrilling thing in my life.”

Cade’s arm tightened around her, but his expression froze.

“I was afraid of that,” he whispered. “I worried that you’d never really cared for me at all. That’s why I didn’t start looking for you sooner.”

Marigold’s face twisted further. “That’s not true! I was having fun with the role, but loving you was never playacting. I wouldn’t have started if it was. I really do love you, and I did since the beginning. I got my just desserts for keeping it a secret, too. If I’d told my parents sooner, I might have been able to convince them to approve our betrothal. But I didn’t tell them about you until they told me about the arranged betrothal to Julius. And it was too late by then. Letting me marry one of their most bitter rivals would have been hard enough, let alone losing the prospect of becoming queen.”

She looked at Cade. “At least your parents were willing to put aside their pride to argue on our behalf. My parents weren’t. I’m glad I’ll be joining your family when we’re married.”

“My family have their faults as well.” Cade sounded constrained.

The external door crashed open with a dramatic bang. They turned to see four guards and a medic race inside. The new arrivals were all breathing heavily as if after a run.

“Apparently our fight was noisy enough to alert the neighbors,” Julius said lightly.

He stepped forward to greet the guards, and they must have recognized him because all five men bowed. The two guards who had been in the process of securing the injured men called for assistance, and Julius nodded for the new guards to join them. Three of the men did so, and the medic ran immediately for the nearest injured man, but the leader of the small troop approached Julius.

“What happened here, Your Highness?” he asked. “Were you attacked?”

“We rescued two young women who had been abducted.” Julius indicated Elisabeth, who had shrunk back from the new arrivals, and Marigold.

“Lady Marigold!” The sergeant bowed again, his eyes growing even wider as he saw Cade’s arm around her. “And Lord Cade!”

Whatever Marigold’s parents thought about her choice, they were going to have to deal with rumors of it flying through the capital soon. Given her rank, manner, and appearance, Marigold had always attracted attention and was a favorite with the public. It was probably the reason the queen had thought her a reasonable choice for Julius despite her casual manner.

“I need you to send one of your men to the closest garrison for horses,” Julius told the sergeant. “We’ve obviously attracted attention here, so a crowd will likely gather. I want us on horseback for the trip back to the palace. Five mounts, if you can manage it.” He glanced at Olivia. “Daphne can ride?”

“Passably.” Daphne sat up on her improvised sofa. “Are we finally leaving, then?”

Olivia stifled a laugh at the bewildered face of the sergeant.

“Ah yes, Your Highness,” the distracted sergeant managed. “We should be able to provide five horses, though they might not be of the same quality you’re used to.”

“Any horse trained to take a rider will be fine,” Julius said. “The rest of you should secure these men and escort them to the palace as soon as possible.” He eyed the medic who was shaking his head over one of the men. “Those who are able to be moved anyway. We’ll want to question them without delay.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” The sergeant saluted him before turning to bark orders to his men.

Olivia put a hand on Julius’s arm. “Have the horses meet us at the rendezvous point. The first thing we have to do is get Elisabeth there to meet her parents. They’ll be desperately worried if she’s not there at the appointed time.”

Elisabeth burst into tears at the mention of her parents, and Daphne hurried back to her side, taking her arm in a bracing way.

Julius eyed her warily but agreed, clearly having no desire to prolong the Larkins’ suffering unnecessarily.

After relaying the revised order to the sergeant, he led the group of six out of the warehouse. The sergeant tried to send guards with them, but Julius refused. As it was, they were only leaving five guards and one medic to deal with five severely wounded but hostile men.

Outside, only a small crowd had gathered, and they drew back at the sight of the nobles, whispers breaking out in every direction. Julius hustled the others along quickly, and they reached the rendezvous point only a few minutes late.

“Mother! Father!” Elisabeth shouted as soon as her parents came into view. She broke away from Daphne and sprinted across the small courtyard to throw herself into her parents’ arms.

The rest of them followed more sedately.

“Your Highness, what is the meaning of this?” Larkin asked as his wife held their crying daughter.

Julius’s mouth twisted. “We were able to use the information you provided to guess where the abducted women were being held, so we decided to move at once and stage a rescue.”

“Women? There were more taken than just my Elisabeth?” Larkin asked sharply, his eyes surveying the group and fixing on Marigold. They grew wide and then wider again as he took in Cade’s protective arm around her. “I don’t understand,” he said weakly.

“For now, all you need to know is that your daughter is safely returned to you,” Julius said.

“Elisabeth didn’t fight them,” Marigold said in a subdued voice, “so they didn’t hurt her. I told her they wouldn’t as long as she didn’t resist her imprisonment.”

“Thank you!” Elisabeth cried from the safety of her mother’s arms. “I would have been terrified without you.” Her voice dropped. “More terrified, anyway.”

Marigold smiled. “I consider us sisters in captivity, and I hope once you’ve recovered, you’ll visit me.”

Both Larkin and his wife’s brows rose in unison, and they exchanged a look.

“There’s no longer any need to flee the city,” Julius said. “The perpetrators of this crime will be uncovered and brought to justice. I swear it.”

“I see…” Master Larkin’s eyes lingered on Marigold, nestled in the circle of Cade’s arm. “In that case, we’ll take our daughter home.” He bowed low, gesturing to his wife and daughter, who let go of each other to drop into curtsies.

“We’re so sorry for the ordeal you’ve endured, Elisabeth,” Olivia said. “We’ll be sure to keep you all updated on any developments.”

Two guards entered the courtyard, leading a string of five horses. Julius signaled to them, and goodbyes were said quickly as the five bound for the palace quickly mounted.

Cade and Marigold looked reluctant to separate, but at a look from Julius they did so, each mounting their own horse.

Just before Cade swung onto his, Julius clapped him on the back. “That was an excellent guess, by the way. I don’t think I’ve congratulated you on it yet. Just try not to get us all killed alongside you next time, please.”

Cade gave him a tight smile as he mounted, not bothering to answer. Olivia couldn’t imagine he felt any regret for his rash actions given how everything had turned out.

She just hoped they would be equally successful at identifying the culprit behind the abductions and ensuring there were no more victims.