That meant that he and his mother had been very close.
Sometimes, he still talked about her. His mother had been a small woman, with blonde hair and big, blue eyes that she had passed down to her son. She had been lighthearted and witty, and sometimes Andreas said that he could still hear her silly giggle. She’d had a way of giggling that had made anyone who heard it want to giggle right along with her. Andreas could remember his father putting his hand over his mother’s mouth when that giggle grew out of control, but it had never been mean-spirited. Her death, and the deaths of his two younger siblings, had left Andreas as the remaining child of a man who was grieving too deeply to function.
It had been a difficult time for them both.
Those in the family thought that it was perhaps his mother’s death that prevented Andreas from marrying. The last woman he had been close to and had loved unconditionally had died, and her death had left a son who had incorporated that loss into the very fiber of his existence. Once Troy came to grips with the loss of Helene, he tried to speak with his son about it, but Andreas didn’t want to discuss it. He lived with that loss as part of him and he wasn’t willing to deal with it. When he grew older, it was still part of him, and Andreas felt no sense of urgency to take a wife. To be close to a woman ever again.
Some wondered if he ever would.
Which is why this moment was of particular interest to William and Tor and Theodis. Andreas had apparently found a woman to keep company with, as shocking as it was, so they were more than happy to let Andreas find his evening’s entertainment elsewhere. They didn’t want to get in his way.
As Andreas headed out of the chamber with a luscious blonde trailing behind him, they looked at each other and smiled. Perhaps Troy de Wolfe would finally get that wedding he’d been hoping for, with Andreas finding a bride, in all places, at a guild called Gomorrah.
Or perhaps it would be another dead end.
Knowing Andreas, the latter was more than likely.
CHAPTER FIVE
He was a very big man.
Maybe not the tallest, for Gavriella had seen taller, but the sheer breadth of his body and arms was simply solid and big. And his hands, embraced by enormous leather gloves, were the size of her head when contracted into a fist.
In truth, she was a little awed by the man. He had been very kind to her and had helped her calm a great deal with his steady manner and offered drink. She still wasn’t sure why he had paid any attention to her, considering she had been running around like a madwoman and, like an idiot, she had even smashed into the wall. She would have been embarrassed about that had she not been so terrified.
There would be time to be embarrassed about it later.
The knight’s appearance had been unexpected. She probably should have been more suspicious of him than she had been because in a place like this, it seemed like everyone wanted something. A kiss, a dance, or something far more intimate… everyone seemed to want something.
She wondered what this knight really wanted.
From her.
But he had been very polite and he had offered to show her the way out, and being desperate to leave, she had accepted his offer. Perhaps it wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but desperate times called for risk. She was going to risk herself to get out of this hellscape, even if she had to place herself in the care of this enormous knight to do it. Suspicion was there, but so was curiosity.
He was intriguing.
Although she couldn’t really see his face very well because of the mask he wore, she thought he had rather a nice face. At least, everything between his nose and his chin, which had a big dimple in it. He had smiled, although not broadly, and she had caught a glimpse of massive dimples in each cheek. He wasn’t wearing a helm or anything on his head, even if the rest of him was dressed in a tunic and mail. The dog mask he wore covered a good portion of his face and all of his forehead, but she could see his hair. It was close cropped and blond from what she could tell.
He was quite something to look at, in truth.
But that didn’t mean he was trustworthy.
Even as she followed him from the alcove and into a corridor, she knew she was being stupid. She was going to follow him all the way out and then hope he didn’t try to abduct her or, worse, molest her on the street because she’d been dumb enough to fall into his hands. Although his manner didn’t seem to convey that type of man, she didn’t know him, so she really had no idea of his nature or his character. Those men who had cornered her last year in her village hadn’t seemed wicked in nature until their intentions were revealed. It wasn’t strange that the incident that changed her life also made her distrustful of any man, no matter how kind he was.
And that’s what made this moment so very difficult.
Desperation was causing her to do something she wouldn’t normally do.
Trust a man she didn’t know.
As Gavriella followed along behind him, she made sure to stay out of arm’s length. He never made any attempt to touch her or pull her along, and so far, he had turned around to make sure she was behind him only once. They entered a corridor, dark and angled, that took them into a room crowded with men who are watching a woman who was sitting on a table, and her escort seemed to move faster when they entered that chamber for some reason. Because he picked up the pace, she picked up the pace, and they were soon through that chamber and into another corridor.
She could hear music.
Gavriella’s heart began to flood with relief, realizing they were near the chamber with the music and the dancing. That was where she’d last seen Aurelia and Camilla, and she was starting to feel as if she might actually break free from this horrid place. She knew that the music-filled chamber was near the chamber that was filled with all of that marvelous food, and beyond that were the rooms that connected to the outside world.
Closer!
She was drawing ever closer to leaving. It was strange how she seemed completely oriented now, whereas earlier, she seemed to become more and more lost with every turn she took. Her new friend, the man who called himself Wolf, seemed to have a good sense of direction because he was leading her back the way she had come. He seemed to know which way to go and which door to take, and she was starting to hope that, at least for the moment, following him had been a good idea.
But that was her last calm thought before someone grabbed her.
They had just entered the room with the music and the dancing, and the room was full of people dancing to a lively folk tune. The musicians were quite good and they were playing adeptly as a room full of dancers leapt and twirled gaily. But the moment Gavriella stepped into the warm, smoky room, someone grabbed her by the wrist and started yanking her towards the writhing throng.
Immediately, she dug her heels in and began to fight to free herself. The man who had hold of her was big and smelly, and he yanked her so hard by the wrist that she felt pains shooting up her arm. She thought she even heard something crack and, suddenly, she was in a good deal of pain as the idiot pulled her towards the dance floor. The more she dug her heels in, the more he pulled, and she finally screamed at him to let her go. He barely had time to turn around and scowl at her before there was suddenly a big body in between them.
His hold on her wrist abruptly released and he was on the ground.
The man she knew as Wolf had his big arm around her shoulders and begin pulling her quickly back to their original course.