Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

himself out of the sagging cot. Now, however, wasn’t the time to indulge his pain, not if he was to drag his sorry carcass across England again. He just couldn’t afford to let the aches and pains of an old man stop him.

No, that wasn’t quite right. He would have to drag his sorry carcass across England not once but twice. He buried his face in his hands as he remembered that Robert also wanted him to get Imogen out of England. He shuddered. Out of England meant a ship. He hated ships. He had traveled only once on an accursed sea devil, and had sworn then that if he got off the damn thing alive, then he would never again defy the laws of nature. As far as he was concerned, if the Almighty had wanted men to travel the oceans he would have given them gills.

He shuddered again, then lifted his head resolutely. Boats were in the future. His more immediate problem was getting out of the castle and, really, the boy had been damnably vague as to how he thought that feat was going to be accomplished.

Matthew might be too lowly to have as many guards placed on him as Robert had, but that was hardly the point when one guard prevented him leaving the castle just as effectively as ten. Getting out of the castle was the linchpin to any plan he may have to rescue Imogen as Robert wanted.

The boy was an idealistic dreamer despite his rough edges, Matthew realized with a rueful smile. For all his training as a warrior, Robert was still a wide-eyed boy in so many ways. Oh, he might hide it well enough beneath the bluster of knighthood and few guessed that it was so, but Matthew had known the boy too long to be fooled.

It was the idealism and hidden vulnerability that had called him to Robert’s service in the first place. And how he had paid for that sentimental folly! He had spent years trying to make sure Robert wasn’t killed by one of his own chivalrous gestures, those self-same gestures that Robert denied existed, and now here he was, at his advanced age, about to commit one of his own. Until now it had always suited Matthew to deal with the practical side of things while Robert dashed around doing knightly things, and he did it well.

Too damn well, it would seem, if Robert thought he could single-handedly save the beauty from the circling beasts. He snorted in self-disgust as his mind began sifting through his situation, trying to find a way to do just that. He smiled with satisfaction as a solution began to formulate.

Certainly, the plan he devised was crude and lacking in a certain finesse, but for all that, it would work perfectly. That was one of the joys of being low-born, you didn’t have to muck around with such frivolities as style. If a thing worked, it worked.

And this would work, he hoped, as he finally found his feet.

He waited patiently beside the door for the guard to bring in his usual bowl of slop for supper. When the man finally arrived Matthew took full advantage of his surprise at finding the cot empty to bring the chamberpot down on his head, hard.

The guard grunted very satisfactorily as he fell to the floor with a muted thud. Matthew quickly dragged the dead weight of the man farther into the room. He closed the door and began to remove the guard’s clothes. Once the man was naked, bound and gagged, Matthew hauled him onto the cot and threw a blanket over him. In the ill-lit room one drunk man covered with a blanket looked very much like another, Matthew thought with a smile of satisfaction as he began to remove his own clothes.

That fact would hopefully buy him the time he needed.

Matthew couldn’t help a grimace of distaste escaping as he began slipping on the other man’s sweaty clothes and leather armor. Obviously the guard in the cot didn’t value personal cleanliness, Matthew thought with a fastidious shiver, but dressed quickly anyway.

He gave himself a once-over and nodded with satisfaction. He would pass easily as a member of the King’s Guard and the smell that lingered in the unconscious man’s clothes would surely prevent any closer inspections.

He left the chamber calmly, locking the door with his stolen keys. If he was in luck, it would probably be several hours before anyone thought to check on the drunken old man, and the guard he had knocked out wouldn’t be coming to any time soon to raise the alarm. That should give him the extra time he needed to not only get out of the castle but also to find out exactly what kind of trouble the boy had got himself into this time.

He slipped the keys into one of his pockets, straightened his shoulders instinctively after a quick check of the corridor. Several guards loitered down at the far end but none of them was paying him any attention.

He headed straight for them. These were the very men who would best know what had happened to Robert.

Fortunately for him, the King’s Guards were the same as bored men everywhere, they loved to gamble and gossip in equal measure. It took him no time to find someone willing to answer all his questions in return for a few rolls of the dice and soon he was crouched down in a dark niche with a guard, the younger man’s face filled with chagrined wonder.

“Damn your eyes, Old Man. You can’t have won again!” he muttered as he picked up the dice suspiciously. A close inspection revealed nothing amiss and reluctantly he began counting out the coins he had just lost. “I’ve never seen luck such as yours,” he growled darkly.

Matthew shrugged his shoulders and rolled the dice from one hand to the other. “If I was truly lucky, my boy, do you think I’d be guarding empty