Protection

Chapter Fourteen

I promise, the action is rising. It won't be boring forever! What is your favorite part of the story so far? Or is it so bad that you hate it? Be honest. Comment, pleeeease!

"A lady has been killed. "

Sterling stared at them hardly.

Alayna's chest rose and fell. She was trying to gather her wits. But it was as if they were all scattered on the carpet.

   "Who? Do you know who it was?"

She was absolutely amazed by Alex. He spoke as if nothing had happened.

"Lady Duvall."

She didn't know any of the names following that one. She knew the name Duvall- she and her parents had known some Duvalls before the Revolution. She did not know what had become of them.

 "...Henri said she was walking out because she felt faint- he heard the gunfire, but by then, the gunman was gone."

  Alayna felt her face turn white. The name had been familiar. She knew a Henri Duvall. She had gone to school with his wife, Amarae. Before they married, she had been a Gaston.

  "Madam'selle, are you alright?"

Had Sterling asked her? She couldn't make out the voices. She pictured Amarae.

Long black hair.

Green eyes.

Pale skin.

People had mixed them up all the time. They could have been called sisters. And they had been sisters. They had stayed in the same room together when they travelled to Italy. But she hadn't thought of Amarae in years. They had been friends around the age of thirteen. But then the Gastons had relocated to Versailles, and she never heard from them again.

  Immediately, Alayna felt sick to her stomach. Someone had mistaken them. She knew that she should be the one dead- not Amarae.

  "Alayna, I had better take you home."

No, she didn't want to go home. Terror rose up in her throat, and her heart began. It wasn't that pleasant racing sensation she got when Alex kissed her- it was horrific and terrible and sickening. They would kill her. They would. She knew they would. And she would go to hell.

   "Let's go...Sterling, try and come later, would you?"

Alex was coaxing her coat on her, but all she could do was stare. At nothing.

He wasn't too gentle. He forced her arms in it, exhaled heavily. She was struck even lower when she realized that he had looked at their kiss as just that: a kiss. But it hadn't been only a kiss. Had it? Was she reading too heavily into things?

Bother the infernal kiss. She shouldn't have done it. Kisses and romance were the last thing she needed. Alayna needed peace. And Alex didn't give her peace. He made things worse.

  So she would look elsewhere for her peace.

"Is there anyone who might held a grudge against her?"

Henri Duvall shook his head. "No. I'm sure everyone liked her. No one would..."

Alex crossed his arms over his chest, and settled the back of his legs against his desk. He kept seeing Julia. Julia everywhere.

  "I came to you, monsuier, because I know you have been where I am, oui."

His knees buckled a little. "Yes."

"I do not know what to do."

What was there to do? Alex didn't know how he had gotten through it himself. He hadn't ever really thought about it.

  "Things get easier day after day," he said numbly, and swallowed. "Is there no one who might wish to hurt you?"

  "I do not think so."

What was with the French and danger? They always seemed to be in trouble. Guns and blood and pettycoats. And Alayna.

  He silenced a groan as Henri Duvall continued, shaking his head occasionally. That kiss. Why had he kissed her?

You're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to die.

Alayna's hands trembled as she attempted to comb her hair. But twice already, she had dropped the brush.

  Amarae. Her dear Amarae.

She should be the one with a bullet through her head. Not Amarae, who had always been sweet, and thought of everyone but herself. "So unlike me," Alayna whispered.

   Alayna, a godly woman always thinks of others before she thinks of herself. She feeds the poor and she loves the orphans.

  And Alayna's mental response had always been: "Yet you do not dare to turn an eye on the scarlet women."

   Her heart seemed to still. And why, why, why had she kissed him? She felt she had bound her soul to Adrien, and then, she kissed a man she despised? Her entire body ached with grief and uncertainty and dread. She was making things too difficult.

     "The letter opener."

The voice was demonic and hissing and silent. She pictured it in her head...the crimson seeping out over the identical slices in her wrists. Then it would be dark. And she woul have no shadows to hide from in the night. No spectors. No ghosts, no memories.

   After she thought about it, and after she had reached for the drawer, she was astonished by her own madness.

   Tears filled her eyes. Thoughts of suicide had visited her before. She had contemplated throwing herself from the ledge of the house right after James had rescued her. Her depression had been deep those days- but she wagered she was furrowing in one much deeper now. She found no hope.

    They were coming for her. They would find her, and then, she would die. It had been her greatest fear since escape. Death. There seemed to be nothing more horrid, than to be mutilated for her name and lies.

     And she didn't know who she could go to. Alex would never understand. He would tell her she was crazy and that she had made the entire thing up. She knew he would.

Because he couldn't understand.

 So, tired of being tired, but wide awake, she slipped beneath her covers, and spent that entire night staring at her window.