The Rebel King

At the moment, however, she was too busy careening back and forth between nausea and fear of imminent death to appreciate the view.

She could see the muscle working rapidly in the hinge of Nikolas's jaw. Sympathy for him tugged at her like a child begging for attention. Ignoring it. she said impatiently. 'Dammit, Nik, people know what Vladimir looks like!'

'Do you?' he asked, without looking at her.

'Do I…what? Know what Lord Vladimir looks like? Of course I do-what he used to look like, anyway. I've seen pictures.'

'Okay, describe him for me.'

She stared straight ahead, concentrating on the pictures in her head and trying not to think about the precipice hurtling by a few feet from the car's tires. 'All right, let's see. Tall-over six feet, if I remember right. Strong build. Bald head…blue eyes…aristocratic features-thin lips, high-bridged nose, hollow cheeks, prominent jaw-' She let the words trail off into nothing as the portrait of Vladimir's hirsute ancestor floated into her mind. She turned her head slowly to look at Nikolas. He was nodding, lips curved in a grim little smile.

'It didn't occur to me until I saw that picture. I don't know whether Vladimir was naturally bald or shaved his head, but all he'd have had to do to disguise himself was acquire hair- his own or a wig-and grow a full beard. The rest would be a matter of stance-changing his walk, stooping instead of standing tall. Things like that.' He paused, and the smile tilted wryly. 'My uncle always stooped. And he walked with a pronounced limp-from an old boating injury, he told me.'

Rhia was silent. Her mind was racing madly, trying to take it all in. There'd been no time, until now, to talk about it, work out all the implications, make sense of it. Immediately after Nikolas's stunning announcement, they'd had to dash to meet the chopper. Conversation had, of course, been next to impossible during the short flight to Dunford, and at Nikolas's apartment they'd taken time only to shower and refuel themselves on canned soup and crackers from his meager larder before heading up the coast to a destination he had yet to reveal.

'I take it you know where he is-your, uh…Silas?' Rhia had asked him as they were leaving, trying to curb her annoyance at being left in the dark, hating the distance he'd put between them, the distracted way he spoke to her, the way he carefully avoided her eyes as he replied.

'I believe I know where he might have gone, yes.'

They would take his car, he said, rather than the helicopter, which Elliot had told them was at their service for as long as they needed it. He offered no more explanation, and Rhia, looking at his stony jaw and cold-steel eyes, had decided not to argue the issue.

Now, she rather wished she had.

She also wished she'd insisted on acquiring a weapon.

Rhia seldom carried a gun, although she was skilled in the use of firearms and fully licensed to carry concealed. Naturally, bringing a weapon of any sort along on this particular assignment-accompanying Silvershire's crown prince to a clandestine meeting with his father the king-had been out of the question.

She'd asked Nikolas before they'd left his apartment if he was bringing a gun along-it seemed a reasonable question to her, considering they were heading off to confront a possible kidnapper and murderer. He'd told her flatly that he didn't own one. Sorry.

She wished now she'd taken the time to insist on getting herself one. But they'd been in such a hurry…

'There's something else I don't understand.' she said, again striving for distraction after a particularly hairy turn had caused her stomach to lodge itself temporarily in her throat. 'Lazlo has a pretty extensive dossier on Silas Donovan, ineluding family history. The information goes back a good long way-generations, in fact. A couple of hundred years' worth. How is it that an imposter can come along and insert himself into the Donovan family tree, and nobody be the wiser? What about kinfolk? Neighbors?'

His smile broadened, though there was no more humor in it than before. 'Patience, my love,' he said softly, the first words of endearment he'd spoken to her since they'd left Vladimir's castle. 'All will become clear in due time, I promise. Very soon now, in fact…'

Except for one sharp exhalation, by clenching her teeth and counting silently to ten Rhia managed to keep her seething impatience locked inside.

The car sped on. hurtling around corners on a road that wound steadily downward, ever closer to the foaming surf… then climbed steeply up again, arrowed through a cut in the shallow cliffside to emerge at last onto a barren plain. The plain, studded with scrubby vegetation, stretched ahead to a cloudless blue sky and ended in a rocky point that jutted like an arrowhead into a churning sea. At the tip of the arrowhead, a lone structure rose like a stubby white candle from a gray stone holder.

'It's a lighthouse.' Rhia said, with a little hiccup of surprised laughter, and then went silent as Nikolas pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped, leaving the motor running.

He'd had to stop. For a minute. His heart was racing and his hands were cold and sweaty on the steering wheel. Though, at least his voice seemed gratifyingly normal as he said conversationally. 'It's called the Daneby Light. A few centuries ago, wreckers made a pretty good living here, using lanterns to lure unwary sailors onto those rocks. The crown put an end to that activity sometime in the mid nineteenth century when they built this lighthouse and appointed someone as full-time keeper. Someone named Donovan, I believe.'

Beside him, Rhia was staring at the lighthouse, slowly shaking her head. 'My God, Nikolas…this is where you grew up? You must have been-' her voice slipped away from her and she snatched it back with a hard, hurting breath '-so lonely.'

She turned her head to look at him. and he saw her throat ripple and the intense shine of her eyes beneath sooty lashes, and he felt something hard and cold inside him soften and warm. For the first time since they'd left Perth Castle, he smiled a real smile. 'Darling,' he said softly, stroking her cheek with the back of his finger, 'your empathy is showing.'

He shifted gears abruptly and pulled back onto the road. He felt renewed…strengthened, suddenly, all the tension and dread in him gone. 'Actually, it wasn't all that bad. You don't really need chums, you know, when you're just a little tyke. And then, I had all this as my backyard. Silas used to take me out on the moors, or along the beach, or exploring the tide pools, and he'd teach me the names of everything we found. And at night, when it was clear, there were the stars-he taught me their names, too. On a moonless night…you wouldn't believe the stars- there aren't any lights out here to compete with them, you see. Can't say I was fond of the storms, though. Or the fog.'

'This is what you meant when you said if there's anything you know about, it's-'

'-fog,' Nikolas joined in, wryly. 'Yeah…I did have my fill of that. But then…I went off to school.' He paused, looking back, then let out a breath. 'That was the only time I was really lonely, I think. The first year was rough, but at least I had the solace of company. There was a lot of sniffling that went on in the first-term's dormitory after lights out, I can tell you. But…it got better. And later on I met Phillipe and started spending summers and holidays with him. and after that I didn't come back here much at all, actually.'

'But…wait.' She tilted her head, frowning. 'Silas doesn't still live out here, does he? According to his file, he lives and works in Dunford. At the college.'

'He does. He moved to Dunford when they closed down the lighthouse-or automated it, which amounts to the same thing. That happened when I was at Oxford. After I started teaching at the college, I got him a job there as a custodian.' He gave a sharp bark of laughter as it struck him. 'My God- can you imagine it? The Duke of Perthegon-working as a janitor?' He paused, then said in a voice with no humor in it whatsoever. 'He's been AWOL from his job, and he's not at his apartment in Dunford, either. Believe me, the first thing I did when I heard about…all this, was go looking for him. Figured he owed me some sort of an explanation. Didn't think of it then, but it has occurred to me that he might…just possibly…have come here to hide out. He'd done it once before.'

They were both silent for a moment, watching the lighthouse loom steadily larger in the car's windshield. Then Rhia said slowly. 'Okay, I get how Vladimir could have disguised himself as the old lighthouse keeper and escaped notice all these years-I mean, living way out here, no neighbors-especially if he hadn't any family. There's just one thing I don't understand.' He felt her head swivel toward him…felt the burn of her eyes. Felt a chill wash over him before she even asked the question.

'What happened to the real Silas Donovan?'

He turned his head and met her eyes-briefly-but couldn't say the words. He knew he didn't have to.