Growling, he gave her one more smack.
She slammed her fists against his back, making him flinch.
“If you do not cease this childish behavior, I will have to tie you up like a proper prisoner,” Elric warned, knowing full well he was poking the lion.
He could feel her inhaling the air to scream.
“Minnette,” a strangled cry sounded from the doorway where a woman was standing, her long, blonde hair dangling over her shoulders, and a familiar dagger blade to her throat. Glenn was standing behind her.
“Bron?” Minnette squeaked. “Glenn? What are you doing here? What are you doing with Bron?”
Glenn hissed. “The little nun has stumbled upon our dastardly plan,” he drawled. “Should I dispatch with her?”
The woman gasped, her eyes widening to saucers.
Minnette squeaked, her movements becoming more frantic. “Leave her be, she is an innocent!”
Elric grunted as Minnette’s knee connected with his belly. He dragged in a breath and prayed for patience. “Glenn will not harm her if you cooperate,” he said, pinning a glare on Glenn who had the audacity to wink. “But we cannot leave her here to tell anyone about what she has seen.”
Bron’s gaze flicked to Glenn beside her then to Minnette. “I will go, if only to keep you from hurting Lady Minnette.”
Glenn snorted. “We’ll not hurt the lady, but ye, I just might have ta find a way ta pay ye back.” The woman’s face paled.
Elric had no time to decipher the Scot’s coil of words. He retrieved Minnette’s blanket from her cot and threw it over her haphazardly. “Go,” he ordered Glenn, who took hold of Bron’s arm and spun her, his blade still against her neck. They hurried from the room, down the corridor, and took the same route around the courtyard. Back at the wall, Elric realized their problem.
“I cannot climb and carry her.”
“And I dinna trust this one not ta stab me while I heave her up and over the wall.”
“Heave?” Bron snapped. “Perhaps you are not strong enough to heave your own head off a table.”
Glenn’s eyebrows shot into his hairline, and Minnette strangled a laugh. Elric was hard pressed not to chuckle himself. Not once had anyone ever shocked Glenn enough to silence him.
Smothering his grin, he suggested, “If we cannot climb we need to find another way out.”
“There is a door in the wall near the back garden,” Glenn offered, turning to lead them back around the courtyard and down a different corridor that opened onto a small patch of wilted plants.
“Doesna look much like a garden, though,” Glenn sneered.
Bron huffed, glaring at Glenn despite the blade he still held. She was as bold and fearless as could be. Just the right kind of foil for a man like Glenn Fraser.
They made it to the door without issue, opening it to find a narrow path that led away from the convent.
“If you knew this was here, why did you not just come in this way?” Bron asked, crossing her arms over her plenteous breasts. Elric flushed, turning his gaze away from the woman.
Glenn snarled down at her, his gaze dropping to her breasts before flicking back up to her narrowed eyes. “I’ll go get the horses,” he said before turning to scowl down at Bron. “Dinna make trouble, or I’ll find great pleasure in huntin’ ye down.”
Bron sneered up at Glenn who sneered back before turning on his heel and disappearing into the darkness from which he was born.
“Is he always like that?” Bron asked, grumbling.
Minnette’s muffled voice answered, “Not usually, no.”
Bron rolled her eyes. “So tis me, then.”
Elric chuckled, which made Minnette moan.
“Put me down, Elric, before I suffocate on my own breasts!”
The image she conjured made him hesitate a moment too long because Minnette began flailing again.
With great care, Elric lowered Minnette to the ground, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders in a gesture that only proved to himself that he had the ability to be gentle, and thoughtful. At least with her.
She tried to turn away from him, but he took her face between his hands and gazed down into the eyes that haunted his wickedest dreams.
“I am sorry it has taken so long to come for you,” he murmured, watching her expression as she digested his words. Her eyes turned to ice in a blink.
“Worry not, Sir Arse, I had no reason to think of you at all, so your apology is unnecessary,” she drawled, trying to pull out of his hold. He dropped his hands.
“We will speak of this once we are somewhere safe.”
She growled. “We were somewhere safe, Sir Arse.”
Bron looked between the two of them, her watchfulness unnerving.
“Once we arrive at Bridgerdon, we will speak about your use of that moniker in reference to me,” he ground out, his humor gone.
Her eyes widened in false innocence. “Sir Arse? But it is such a fitting name for a man who has shown himself to be an arse in every way imaginable.”
With that, he took hold of her head with one arm and slammed his mouth down on hers. She squeaked in surprised, but it wasn’t long before she was melting into him. Her breasts against his chest sent shafts of lust into his manhood. God, how he missed this woman.
She broke the kiss, pulling away, and not too soon, because Glenn arrived atop Sluagh, Bellerophon behind him. Taking the reins from Glenn, Elric made short work of helping Bron onto Glenn’s horse, and then Minnette onto his. He climbed up behind her, secured an arm around her waist, and kicked Bellerophon into a gallop.
Two hours passed before Minnette finally spoke.
“We must stop,” she groaned. “Please, I need a moment.” The pained tone in her voice made him whistle for Glenn, who’d ridden ahead with his unwilling charge. He drew Bellerophon to a halt, dismounted, and then turned to help Minnette to the ground. Once her bare feet were on solid earth, she made a dash for a small boulder, behind which she retched.
Startled, Elric was beside her in a thrice, pulling her hair back from her face and rubbing circles in her back. He didn’t know what he was saying, but he murmured to her as she continued to vomit, her small body shuddering with the upheaval.
“What is wrong?” he asked, concern and fear in his words.
“A bout of sickness, nothing more,” Minnette muttered as she wiped her mouth and sat on the boulder, her legs seeming to give out.
Elric knelt before her, smoothing her hair away from her face.
“Sickness? What sickness? You did not seem ill before we left,” Elric questioned, his thoughts clashing against one another. If she was ill, they needed to get her to Bridgerdon with all haste. Bell Heather would know how to treat her.
“We must get you to Bell Heather. She will be able to heal you.”
“Tis not the kind of illness one can heal,” Bron declared from the back of Sluagh. Glenn was standing beside Bellerophon, his eyes filled with the look of someone who had knowledge Elric did not.
He turned back to look at Minnette. “What is this? Are you incurable?” A sharp pain sliced through his chest, so painful he could not draw breath. “Are you dying?”
Bron chuckled. “She may feel like she is dying before long, but she will be well.”
He kept his gaze on Minnette, the moon overhead casting fingers of light over her face. Her cheeks darkened, and she tried to duck her face to hide from him.
“What is it you are not telling me, Kitten?”
Glenn cleared his throat. “Now’s the time ta tell him, lass.”
Minnette growled, glaring daggers at Glenn who raised his hands and shrugged.
“Tell me what?”
She was silent for long minutes, her thoughts flickering across her expression.
Finally, in French, she replied, “I am with child.”
The ground beneath his feet heaved upward and the sky tilted above him. He lost his breath and his balance, as he stumbled back, landing on his arse before h
er.
“A babe?” he asked, disbelief numbing all else.
She flushed, nodding. “Oui.”
He swallowed. “You are with child…my child.”
She stiffened. “Whose else would it be? I have lain with no one but you.”
With a growl, he was back on his knees before her, taking her face between his hands.
“And there will be no one but me, ever. You are mine, Kitten, as you were always meant to be.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Come,” Bron called and Minnette flinched. So deep in thought, she’d completely forgotten that the woman was in the room with her. Bron had been by her side since the men had deposited them at the door of Tristin, Bell Heather, and Lord Kentwithe, and left them in the capable hands of a shocked Bell Heather.
Snapping to business, Bell Heather had ordered baths, clean linens, and clean clothes for both Minnette and Bron, who had demanded to share a chamber with Minnette. Minnette hadn’t argued. She could use the company.
Because Elric had gone again.
Three days had passed since she had admitted to him that she was expecting his baby. His shock, and then his possessive attitude, had manifested. When he’d gone, he’d left instructions that Minnette was not to be left alone in her chambers, and that she would get the best of the foods provided.
She was both affronted at his demanding anything, and comforted by the fact that he was showing concern, if in an arrogant way.
The chamber door opened and Bell Heather entered, her face flushed and her long hair in disarray.
“Goodness, I think they might just kill me,” Bell Heather huffed with a smile on her face.
“Your children?” Bron asked, and immediately Minnette was drawn to the conversation.
Children.
She was pregnant with Elric’s child.
A life was growing inside of her.
And she was as safe now as she was when Stringer had a knife to her throat.
He is out there, waiting for me, and he will kill me. Kill my baby.
She sucked in a breath, then another, and then she couldn’t take another. Her throat closed and her chest burned. No matter how hard she tried, the air would not come.
Suddenly, her vision danced with black spots and then narrowed until she was looking down a long, dark corridor.
“Minnette…” a muffled and alarmed voice echoed down the corridor. “Minnette!”
She did not know how long she remained trapped there in the dark and airless void, but she finally came to while lying in her bed with Bell Heather and Bron looking down at her.
The voices were still muffled and their faces were still blurred. Her thoughts were still muddled, her breaths still weak.
“Bell…Heather,” she rasped, her own voice sounding as far away as the clouds. “He will kill me, I know it.”
“Who?” Bell Heather asked, her tone sharp.
“The man…with the twisted face. A monster…” The man who had taken her from that very chamber, and had threatened such despicable things. “He will kill my baby.”
Bron gasped. “Who does she speak of?” Bron asked Bell Heather, and Minnette watched the two blurry faces turn to one another.
“I do not know,” Bell Heather answered. “Minnette, who is going to kill ye?”
“Stringer…sent by my uncle,” she rasped, her head pounding, her body throbbing with the tension it took to hold herself together.
Another gasp, this time from Bell Heather. “Nay, that cannot be possible. Stringer is dead, over two months now.”
Bell Heather’s words crashed over Minnette like thunder and lightning.
“Dead? How?” She forced the words past her tight throat.
A warm hand pressed against her forehead. “After ye escaped him, he followed Elric and Glenn. He tried to ambush them but was unsuccessful.”
Minnette held her breath.
“Elric killed him, Minnette. He is gone. He cannot hurt ye or yer babe.”
Stunned, Minnette was unaware she was weeping until the wetness of her tears soaked through her tunic. And she continued to weep until her head was one constant sharp ache, and her tears were all spent. She curled into Bron’s embrace on their shared bed and succumbed to sleep, but she did not sleep long.
There was an incessant knocking on the chamber door. Bron must’ve fallen asleep, as well, because she jerked awake just after Minnette did.
Bron grumbled something under her breath and helped Minnette to sit up so she could dismount the high bed and walk to the door. Her bare feet slapping against the stone floor, Bron made her way to the door before calling out, “Who is there?”
“Elric,” came the answer that made the room spin. “I wish an audience with Lady Minnette.”
Bron growled, ever the fierce protector, and replied, “In the morning, when she is rested and properly dressed.”
There was silence on the other side of the door. Minnette sat on the edge of the bed, her hand over her heart, waiting to see if he would press his demands or if he would do as the lioness commanded.
“Aye. I will go. In the morning then, Kitten,” Elric drawled, his deep voice all the deeper through the thick wood. She shuddered. Even the sound of him turned her inside out. Oh, how she missed him, how it had been to be adored by him, his hands, his lips, his—
She snapped herself out of those thoughts and met Bron’s concerned gaze.
“Thank you, Bron,” Minnette offered, knowing there were many things she needed to say to the woman. “And, I am sorry.”
Bron arched a golden brow, one that perfectly matched the shimmering blonde of her long, lustrous hair. Hair she would have had to shear off once she’d taken her vows.
“Sorry for what?” Bron asked quizzically.
“That you were caught up in Elric and Glenn’s ridiculous plan,” Minnette said, annoyed at the men who were really to blame for it all. “If they had simply asked me to leave, I might have listened. They did not need to abduct me like a prime goose they could pluck from the market stall.”
Bron smothered a giggle, her warm brown eyes twinkling. “While I think that oaf was high-handed and thoughtless, he did what he thought he had to do.”
Minnette sniffed, lifted her chin. “Oh? What was that?”
“Glenn knew that Glidden had been there to see you that morning. Perhaps, he and Elric thought the only way to spare you that man’s felonious attentions was to take you without leaving any evidence. I assume that was why they took me; because they assumed, rightly, that I would tell Mother Mary Lucas about their presence and your disappearance.”
Struck by what Bron was saying, Minnette worried her bottom lip. Her thoughts were rife with unanswered questions and frustrating answers.
“Why could he not tell me that? The moment we arrived, he left again. Could he not take a moment to sit with me and tell me what his plan was, or even that he had killed the man who had abducted me previously?” Once she began, she couldn’t stop. “To think, I could have gone to Chatteris months ago, if only I had known I was free of that man and his threats. I could, even now, be with my aunt, a woman I have never known because my maman had kept her from me.”
Bron came to sit beside Minnette, her hand on Minnette’s knee.
“Tell me about your aunt. What do you know of her?”
Closing her eyes, Minnette allowed the warmth and comfort of Bron’s presence to fill her. While the woman was still a stranger to her, as she had shared little about her life before the convent, she felt as though Bron was wise beyond her youth.
“Nanette DeMorney, Maman’s sister, is the second daughter of a French duc. Maman called her flighty, careless, wild, and she refused to marry any man her father chose for her. When grandpere demanded she marry a man twenty years older than her, Nanette fled to England. Last we heard of her, she had planned to settle in Chatteris, a small village near Cambridge.”
Bron’s eyes were twinkling again. “She reminds me much of you.”
“I am glad you are with me, Bron,” Minnette admitted, squeezing Bron’s fingers.
Bron offered a gentle smile that softened the sharp angles of her otherwise lovely face.
“I am glad as well. Though, the circumstances could have been better,” she drawled, her eyes narrowing.
She is thinking of Glenn, no doubt.
“That oafish Scot. I should have stabbed him twice, and not just in the arm,” Bron grumbled, shocking Minnette.
“You stabbed him?”
Bron’s face flushed bright red and she shrugged before blurting, “I did not know who was there in the dark. I could not see him, though, now that I know him, I would have stabbed him either way.”
Minnette tried not to laugh, but the image of the deadly and stealthy Glenn being caught off guard by Bron brought tears of mirth to her eyes. Laughter escaped and she let it go, her heart lighter than it had been in too long.
Bron’s eyes were wide as she watched Minnette giggle as though she had lost her mind.
“Twas only a small stab wound. I doubt he even notices it,” Bron murmured, seeming put out by the thought. She wanted Glenn to think of it, to think of her.
Another knock on the chamber door cut off Minnette’s moment of merriment.
“Tis only Mina,” the girl called, and Bron left the bed to let her in. Mina was carrying a laden tray, which she placed on the small table beneath the window.
Mina bowed a deep curtsey before saying, “Supper. Soup, fresh bread, and fruit tarts.”
Her mouth watering from wafts of deliciousness rising from the tray, Minnette slid from the bed and made her way to it.
“Thank you, Mina,” Bron said.
“Will there be anything else, milady?” she asked Minnette. Smiling, Minnette answered, “Thank you, no.”
Curtseying again, Mina left the chamber and the two women tore into the food as though they hadn’t eaten for ages.
“I feel like I am never full,” Minnette confessed around a bite of bread.
The Fire and the Sword (Men of Blood Book 2) Page 34