by Lynn Kurland
Warren staggered back as if Richard had slapped him. Then he turned tail and ran.
“Warren, he didn’t mean that,” Jessica said, appalled at what she’d just witnessed. She’d watched Warren watch Richard for two days. It was obvious he worshiped his brother.
“How do you know what I meant?”
The freezing blast from that voice made Jessica feel as if she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. She shivered as she turned to face Richard.
“You hurt his feelings.”
“As if I care,” he said flatly.
“He’s a child!”
“So was I and no one—” He shut his mouth with a snap and glared at her. “Come inside. Just looking at you makes me cold.”
He spun on his heel and walked away. Jessica gathered up her skirts and hurried after him.
“What did you mean, ‘so was I—’”
He turned so fast, she plowed into him. He jerked back as if he’d been bitten. Jessica looked up into his stern face and winced at the fury she saw there. His scar was white along his cheek.
“’Tis none of your affair,” he said through gritted teeth. “Your place is to obey me and remain silent. If I want speech from you, I’ll demand it.”
“I’m not your slave!”
“You’re a woman.”
With that, he turned and walked off. Jessica watched him go, torn between the desire to walk off the other way or follow Richard to give him a piece of her mind. Richard stopped, then looked back over his shoulder. He made a curt motion for her to follow him. Jessica chose to do so. Finding her way out of medieval England would certainly be much easier after she’d had a warm bath, a hot meal, and had toasted herself in front of a fire for a few hours.
She followed Richard up a set of winding stairs. A room opened up off the first flight.
“Gathering hall,” he said, gesturing without looking back at her.
Jessica didn’t have time to stop and look. She was too busy running up the stairs after Richard with his long-legged stride. They came to a landing with a doorway on the left, another doorway on the right, and more stairs leading up.
“To the battlements, such as they are,” he said, waving his hand at the stairs. “Garderobe, on the left.” He flung open the door on the right and walked inside, leaving her to follow.
Jessica did, hoping she was up to what she was going to see. She was very surprised. The rest of the place might have been in a shambles, but this room had been seen to.
A large bed was shoved up against one circular wall and it came complete with canopy and bed curtains. A fireplace was set into the opposite wall. But it was the alcove that drew her immediate attention. Medieval builders had certainly known how to do up window seats right. She walked over to where the wall had been cut away to provide such a cozy retreat.
It was perhaps five or six feet across, with stone benches set against each wall. It was twice as deep as it was wide, which had to mean the outer walls were at least twelve feet thick. That didn’t say much for twentieth-century plywood housing.
Heavy wooden planks covered what she assumed was a window. Richard pushed past her, pushed up the bar across the shutters, and flung them open. A blast of icy ocean air hit Jessica square in the face and made her shiver. It didn’t seem to faze Richard. He stood with his hands against the sides of the unpaned window and breathed deeply. She tried to look around him. He didn’t help her by moving.
“Might I look?” she asked.
He stepped aside without comment. Jessica looked out the window and caught her breath. She hadn’t realized how much of a cliff the castle sat on, or how violently the water churned against the shores here.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
“The savagery pleases you?”
She looked up and felt as if she were seeing her unwilling host for the first time. Gone was the arrogant lord who seemed to think of no one but himself. In his place was a man whose mask had slipped. Whatever bitterness drove Richard de Galtres had been brushed away by the tangy sea winds. If possible, he seemed almost at peace. The lines of his face were softened somewhat, increasing his dark handsomeness a hundred times. Not even the scar detracted from his good looks.
Maybe the historians hadn’t been so far off, claiming that he’d built his keep this way so nothing got in the way of him watching the sea.
She looked up into his eyes and noticed for the first time their strange colors—more green than blue, or maybe they were more gray than green. They were the colors of the sea and for a moment she half wondered if she’d stepped into some kind of fairy tale and landed herself in an elven king’s hall. It would have been very easy to fall under his spell when he looked as he did at present. She wondered in the back of her mind if he was as passionate about everything else as he apparently was about the ocean. Maybe her star had been a better guide than she’d suspected. There was something in Richard de Galtres’s eyes, something powerful and steady.
She had the feeling that he didn’t lose very many battles.
What would it be like to be the prize he fought for?
He suddenly reached past her and slammed the shutters home. He threw the bar over them for good measure. When he turned toward her, the harshness was back in his face.
“The sight was too much for you,” he said curtly. “I’ll build a fire, then you can pass your time doing something less frightening, such as my mending.”
So much for fairy tales. Maybe she needed to eat something. She was obviously starting to hallucinate.
She hugged herself for warmth as she followed Richard across the room.
“I can’t sew.”
He looked up from where he knelt, placing logs in the hearth. “I beg your pardon?”
“I can’t sew. Not very well, at any rate. Maybe I could help your architect with the hall. My father was an architect.”
“Architect?” he echoed.
“Carpenter,” she clarified.
“The mason needs no wench to fetch him water when he thirsts. He can fetch it himself.”
“No, I mean help him plan the building,” she said patiently. During her father’s lifetime, she had spent hours watching him design buildings. She had worked for him summers and holidays for years. She’d even planned a thing or two by herself. She could help Richard with his hall.
Richard fed the small blaze he had started, then pushed it under the logs. Then he stood and looked down at her, a mirthless smile on his face.
“Stay and ply your needle. I need no hall that stands crooked.”
“I wasn’t going to build it, I was going to help plan it.”
“Impossible.”
Jessica looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Why?”
“You’re a woman.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said, a dark frown settling on his brow, “that women are capable of sewing, bearing children, and making a man’s life hell. And you aren’t even capable of sewing.”
Richard left before she had a chance to do anything besides gape at him. So she was only good for making a man’s life hell? Well, she wouldn’t stay long enough to do that for him. He and his clothes could rot together. She was getting out of there at the first opportunity. There was nothing redeeming about her host. He might have been handsome in a rough, uncompromising kind of way, but his personality more than made up for that. Besides, she had no intention of making Burwyck-on-the-Sea her home, despite the view.
She brushed the dirt away from the hearth with her foot, then sat down and held her hands to the blaze. She would get warm, then make other plans.
She had just begun to relax when the door opened again. Richard came in and held out a bundle. She took the cloth and looked up at him.
“Food,” he clarified. “Eat. You’ll—”
“Be a bother to me if you don’t,” she finished for him. She took a deep breath. Just because he was rude didn’t mean she had to be. “Thank you. T
his was very kind.”
He looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t expected gratitude and didn’t know what to do with it now that he had it. Then his expression darkened and he glared at her.
“Thank me by eating. I’ve enough problems without adding to them the worry of a starving woman.”
And with that, he banged out of the room.
Jessica sighed deeply. It was going to be a long couple of days. She looked around her, wondering just where it was she was going to sleep. She seriously doubted Richard would give her his bed and she was even more certain she wouldn’t be sleeping in it with him. She looked down at the floor. It was immeasurably cleaner than Hugh’s floor, so she might manage to sleep on it a night or two. It couldn’t be any harder than the ground had been and she’d survived that.
Besides, it wasn’t going to be for long. She’d give herself a chance to rest up, then she’d make her move. Richard wouldn’t mind getting rid of her and she sincerely hoped he wouldn’t mind the loan of a horse. She’d leave him a note and tell him where she thought she was going, and he could pick up his horse later.
But for now, Richard had a point about eating and she would take that small order and run with it. She didn’t want to be faint when the moment of truth arrived.
6
Richard woke, chilled. The fire had burned to nothing but ashes and the coolness of the wood floor beneath him had seeped into his bones. Then he heard the noise and knew it had been more than cold to disturb him.
“Damn.”
The curse was uttered in a whisper and accompanied by the sound of an appendage making contact with something unyielding. Probably a toe against a trunk. Richard listened to Jessica stumble around his chamber and thought about rising and chastising her before putting her back to bed. Then he heard her rummaging about for clothes and his curiosity was aroused—as well as his ire. Where was she sneaking off to in the dead of night, especially after all he’d done for her?
As if it weren’t enough to have fed her and given her shelter, he’d even gone so far as to give her his bed! He wouldn’t have if she hadn’t looked so bloody tired and he hadn’t been overcome by another nauseating wave of chivalry. Her look of gratitude might have been reward enough for any other man. Indeed, Richard had to admit that it had made the floor seem comfortable enough.
Until sometime during the second watch, when his shoulder had begun to ache from an old injury and the poorly healed axe wound in his thigh had set up a throbbing that had fair lifted him from the floor.
Chivalry. Ha. What a useless virtue.
He should have spent yesterday ignoring Jessica, but instead he’d found himself run fair ragged seeing to her comfort and his hall both. As if he’d had time to do aught besides see to his affairs! His new squire, Gilbert de Claire, had arrived and demonstrated a sullenness that even Hugh would have had to admire. Richard knew he should have sent the boy home the moment he’d clapped eyes on him, but his sire had done Richard a good turn or two and Richard had felt the obligation weigh heavily enough upon him that he’d bitten back his censure and vowed to give the boy time.
Of course he’d had less time than he would have liked, thanks to the moments he’d spent during the day fretting over his guest. ’Twas certain that he couldn’t have cared less what she thought of him. But if he treated her poorly, she would give the king a poor report of his actions and then where would he be?
Likely in his comfortable bed, snoring contentedly.
The moment the door clicked shut he rose. She might only have been crossing to the garderobe, then again, she might have been leaving. He would no doubt be well rid of her.
Then he was suddenly assaulted by very vivid memories of pulling Hugh off her. Jessica was far too beautiful to be wandering about without someone to look after her. He still hadn’t had the chance to learn why she found herself roaming about by herself. Her shrewish tongue was enough to frighten away any sensible man, but surely she had value at least to her sire. Her beauty alone would have been enough for a profitable match. Shrewishness could be beaten out of her.
Though the thought of any man touching her thusly somehow didn’t sit well with him. He suspected Jessica would be slow in forgiving anyone who laid a hand on her. Richard suspected he would be quick in slaying anyone who did the like. He was hardly pleased with the irritating flare of protectiveness that surged through him when he thought of her, but he was hard-pressed to ignore it. Damned annoying impulse.
He crept down his stairs and followed her across the moonlit bailey. She was heading toward the stables and, somehow, that didn’t surprise him. The woman had a penchant for horse thievery. Richard stopped at the edge of the building and leaned against the rickety wall, watching Jessica as she continued down the row of stalls. She stopped and looked at Horse. Richard shook his head in wonder. The wench had a good eye for horseflesh at least.
Jessica looped a rope around Horse’s neck and led him out. Richard pulled back into the shadows and continued to watch. It wasn’t as if she’d make it out the gates with the beast. The portcullises were both down. But there was no sense in pointing that out to Jessica at present. He might have been tempted to do so, but he found himself tempted far more by the sight of her standing in the moonlight, trying to woo his gelding.
The full moon cast its silvery glow over her like a cloak, darkening her hair and caressing the fair skin of her visage. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen hair like hers before. Those riotous curls tumbled down over her shoulders with a complete disregard for symmetry. He watched as she blew a curl off her forehead in exasperation, then reached up and put her hands on Horse’s face, holding it so she could look at him. Horse reached out and began to nibble on her hair. Jessica laughed softly. The sound so took Richard by surprise that he could only wince as the simple joy of it pierced him in the heart. He’d seen the bleakness in her eyes, yet still she could laugh? Oh, how he envied her!
“Come on, baby,” Jessica crooned. “Be a good horse and let me ride you. You can find your way back, can’t you?”
Her speech was yet another thing Richard couldn’t quite puzzle out to his satisfaction. She claimed to be from France but he’d never heard French such as hers spoken there and he’d traveled the length and breadth of the country. He understood her well enough, but she sounded like a foreigner who hadn’t quite mastered the tongue. Where was she from, if not from France? Who was her sire, to let her roam as she wished? How had she come to be on Hugh’s land without a mount? Why had she looked on the verge of tears for two days as they traveled home?
And, more to the point, why was she trying to steal his horse in the middle of the night?
A crunching sound made his head snap up of its own accord. Horse was chewing contentedly as he followed Jessica across the courtyard. Stupid beast, Richard thought to himself. Led about by an elfin creature who offered him food. Richard was tempted to let her take him. It was more than obvious that she’d ruined him for anything useful anyway. Horse should have been digging in his hooves and remaining firm. Instead, he trailed after her like a bleating lamb wanting suck. Jessica gave him another bite of apple and praised him for his obedience. Richard followed, torn between grudging amusement and exasperation. He’d known it the moment he clapped eyes on her. The woman was going to be nothing but trouble.
And that was precisely just the kind of woman he wanted to avoid.
Jessica pulled up short at the portcullis. Richard leaned against the wall and watched the expressions cross her face. First there was surprise. Then she frowned. She reached out and tried to push the gate up. Richard shook his head. He caught the eye of a guardsman leaning over the wall and waved him away. Jessica dropped Horse’s lead rope and used both hands to try to lift the gate. Richard wanted to smile, but the habit of frowning was too firmly ingrained in him. He settled for a silent snort of rusty humor. The wench was daft. Didn’t she realize that two dozen men couldn’t lift that gate but a few inches?
Obviously not
. That, more than anything else, made him realize that Jessica Blakely was not at all what she claimed to be.
By the same token, he quickly eliminated the things she could be. Not a servant. No serf would have cheek such as hers. Someone’s mistress? Possibly, but he had his doubts about that, too. The look of relief on her face when he’d said she could have the bed to herself had been too spontaneous for a practiced courtesan. And the fact that she was stealing his horse to get away from him led him to believe she had no desire to stay and become his lover. It would have been a simple thing to warm his bed in return for food and a roof over her head.
An outlaw? Now, that was something he could readily believe. He could see Jessica ensconced in the deepest reaches of the forest, leading a band of ragtag peasants to freedom and glory, poaching their lord’s finest without any concession to the law. Aye, an outlaw wasn’t too farfetched. The thought was almost outrageous enough to make him want to laugh, something he was certain he hadn’t done in years.
He folded his arms over his chest and watched as Jessica gave up and rested her forehead against the wooden gate.
“Horse thieves are hanged, you know,” he remarked.
She jumped at least half a foot, whirled around, and looked at him, her hand over her heart. “I didn’t see you.”
“Obviously.”
“I wasn’t stealing,” she said quickly. “I was borrowing.”
Richard pushed off from the wall and walked over to her, stopping but a hand’s breadth from her. He looked down at her and had the sudden urge to gather her into his arms and kiss that look of astonishment off her face.
By the saints, he was going daft.
“Come back inside,” he said, picking up Horse’s rope. “’Tis too cold out for you.”
“You know, I’m getting really tired of you telling me what to do.”
“You don’t seem capable of thinking for yourself,” he pointed out. “Didn’t you realize the gates would be closed?”