Page 63 of Beloved Sacrifice

“Fun guy,” Weston murmured. Rose snorted out a laugh.

There was something between Weston and Rose. A rapport.

“I’m going to assume there are dungeons?” Rose sighed. “I would hate to not be held captive. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

Though the words were biting, her tone was wry. Weston laughed abruptly, as if it had been startled out of him.

“I very much doubt we’re going to be locked in the dungeons of Hampton Court,” Marek said.

“Really? Well, that’s disappointing.” Rose put her elbow on her bare knee, her chin on her fist. “I was hoping to add a bit of historical melodrama to it all.”

“I’m taking you to Oak House.” Knight turned off the headlights once they were past the palace, which was illuminated by elegant landscape lighting.

Marek rolled down the window to let the night air in. There was the sound of the river and, farther away, the sound of cars on the motorway. The air was scented by nature—lavender, roses, cut grass.

They took a paved road that bisected the park, and Marek understood why Knight had the lights off—it kept anyone in the surrounding area from noting a car driving through Hampton Court Home Park. They passed a small building with carts and mowers parked outside—the background areas that kept the palace functioning as a historical site and made the gardens the envy and destination of every gardener in southern England. They pulled up to black metal gates in a tall stone wall.

Knight rolled up Marek’s window as he started to brake, then locked the windows so Marek couldn’t roll it down again.

“I wasn’t going to jump out, Knight,” Marek assured him.

“Only crazy people would jump out of a moving car,” Rose quipped from the backseat.

Again, Knight pulled up to a keypad. The metal gates, these made of solid sheets of painted metal, not decorative iron, opened.

Knight turned right out of the gate, pulling onto a normal public road. If Marek remembered correctly, there was a public road that bisected Hampton Court’s surrounding grounds. The area was so big that not allowing traffic through the grounds would have crippled the surrounding villages and created mad gridlock.

On either side of the road were tall stone walls, the tops of a few buildings visible above them. They were on the road for no more than fifty meters before Knight turned left, onto a short drive that stopped at yet another black metal gate, set into the brick wall opposite the one they’d just passed through. The building beyond it was tall, tall enough that he could see the upper part of second-story windows—old fashioned narrow things with white-painted frames—in a stone face, with a black slate roof. There was a wrought iron pedestrian gate a few yards from the driveway gate. A plaque was set into the brick wall beside it, though from this angle, Marek couldn’t read it.

Knight keyed in another code and this gate swung open. It was only just wide enough to let the big car pass through. They drove past the two-story brick house, parking between the back door and the small garage building, which had clearly been a stable in its first iteration.

Knight unlocked the doors. “Climb out, everyone.”

Marek opened his door and got out, turning to offer his hand to Rose. She ignored it, stepping out onto the paved drive and looking around. Large trees cast the drive and one side of the house in shadow. A small rose garden dominated the space behind the house and to the side of the stable, stretching to a low iron fence, beyond which there was manicured grass and stately old trees.

Weston moved slowly, keeping one hand on the car.

“You can put your hand on my shoulder,” Knight said softly.

“Fuck you, Tristan,” Weston murmured.

“Don’t be such a wanker,” Knight muttered.

That was another mystery Marek needed to get to the bottom of.

The golden-haired man wasn’t just named Tristan “Knight,” he was a knight. A knight of the Masters’ Admiralty was a formidable person, and not to be crossed lightly, but Weston was talking to him as if…as if they were friends.

Knight took Weston’s elbow, as if he were escorting a prisoner, and started toward the back door of the house.

“Is it his eye?” Rose asked quietly.

“What’s that?” Marek replied.

“He…he only has one eye. Does that make it hard for him to see when it’s dark?” There was definite concern in her voice.

“I’m not sure. If that’s the case, then Knight knows him well.”

They continued walking, but they weren’t hurrying to keep up. “Can I ask you something?”

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