“The Dragon will not be pleased with this turn of events,” the Wolf said, almost to himself. “To have his puppet sheriff slain in the midst of a kidnapping, with an unholy wedding pending and a conflict with a brother he thought long dead … all at a time when the secrecy and stealth of his actions should have commanded the utmost priority? Nay, the sheriff’s untimely death will not please him. Not that it pleases me—” he added with a pointed glance at the two penitents. “But knowing it will please him less and prick Prince John’s ears to attention sooner, takes away some of the sting that should have been applied to both your hides. You, Gil Golden, are still guilty of disobeying direct orders; and you” —the piercing gaze launched a dagger in Sparrow’s direction —“should have had better sense than to go chasing after Gil on your own.”
“There was no time—”
“There was no mischief to be made, you mean, in sharing the hunt with someone else. Suppose Gil had been a traitor seeking to sell information to the Dragon’s camp? Suppose the pair of you had been caught and plied with milord D’Aeth’s special talents for prying secrets? Or suppose you had spilled headfirst out of a tree and lain somewhere broken and bleeding the night long with no one the wiser for your absence?”
“No one would have mourned the loss,” Sparrow said petulantly and kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot.
“To be sure,” the Wolf agreed, narrowing his gaze to suggest a cataclysm had not been entirely avoided, “no one will mourn either one of you if your recklessness brings the hounds too near Thornfeld. The abbey is not so darkly steeped in legends of druids and pining ghosts as to have completely escaped the memory of local foresters—some of whom might be only too willing to lead the Dragon’s men here in exchange for a coin or two. We will have to double the guards for insurance.”
“I will see to it,” Friar nodded.
“Aye, and while you are about it, see to fetching these two a pair of stout shovels. My nose has been telling me it is long past time to fill in the old privy trenches and dig new ones. That should quench their sense of adventure for the time being.”
Friar grinned. “Their ‘scents’ of all else too, I warrant.”
Gil looked dismayed, Sparrow was plainly indignant. Neither was foolhardy enough to protest the punishment, knowing it could have gone much worse for them. Still, Sparrow would not have been Sparrow if he had not delivered the final, parting comment. Luckily the breeze was kind enough to delay the words “like a pissed newt” from reaching the Wolf’s ears until he and Gil were safely around the corner of the pilgrims’ hall.
The Wolf was still scowling—perhaps not in exact accordance to Sparrow’s description, but near enough to deserve fair comparison—when his morning solitude was interrupted a second time. He was seated on the cracked stone lip of the cistern, his head bent over in concentration, his fingers working dexterously with knife and whetstone. The small, thin blade of his poniard glittered on each stroke; the sound of the steel scraping slowly along the stone could have been likened to a whispered warning.
The cistern and its extended stone trough had at one time brimmed with water from an underground well, but now held only the stains and decay of mouldy leaves. The circular portion was in the full sunlight, the trough in the shade of an old drooping yew. The Wolf was seated midway along the trough, his vest set aside in deference to the warm day, his linsey-woolsey shirt gaping open to the waist. It was apparent he had recently come from the Silent Pool; the dark chestnut hanks of his hair curled damply over his shoulders, and his feet were bare, stretched out at the end of his long legs to bask in the heat of the sun. His tall deerhide boots were folded on the ground beside him, and within an arm’s reach away, his longbow and quiver of arrows; beside that, a brace of neatly skinned, gutted rabbits.
The sight of him caused Servanne to stop so suddenly, the hem of her skirt fluttered forward several inches before creaming back around her ankles.
The ruined monastery boasted few chambers where either privacy or comfort from the damp and decay could be found. Servanne and Biddy had been taking their time strolling to the stream and back, not the least bit anxious to relinquish the warm sunshine for rancid gloom. Biddy had harangued an ill-tempered Sparrow until he had relinquished the missing trunks, and the plain velvet gown Servanne wore, if a little wrinkled from mishandling, was at least clean and cut in a prim enough style to discourage more than a cursory inspection. The neckline came close up to her collarbone, the bodice was tight to extreme and embroidered stiff enough to obscure all but the slightest hint of shapely breasts beneath. The sleeves were long and full from the elbows, the waist rode low on the hips and was encircled by a girdle of hammered gold links.
Plain, had been her critical opinion, and with the addition of a starched white wimple: prudish. Unworthy of attracting the notice of a flea … or a wolf.
Servanne released the breath she had been holding and gauged the distance from the trough to the door of the pilgrims’ hall. Twenty paces, no more, and most of it dappled in soft, musty shadow. Unfortunately they would have to walk past the cistern to reach the hall, but since it could not be avoided, it would be best accomplished with haste.
Servanne lifted a slippered foot and inched it forward. The gray eyes came slowly up from the whetstone, tracing an impudently bold line from the toe of her shoe to the pink stain on her cheeks.
“God’s day to you, ladies,” he said, his tone so sweet it left crystals on his tongue. “I trust you slept well last night?”
Biddy harrumped and swelled her bosom for battle. Servanne sniffed the air as if the leaves were not all that smelled rotten in the heat of the sun.
“The accommodations are deplorable,” said Lady de Briscourt icily. “The company is crude, unbearable, and utterly without conscience. I did not sleep a wink last night, and therefore see nothing to give God thanks for.”
The Wolf responded with a lazy grin. “You might want to give thanks your virtue is intact. Conversely, your lack of sleep may be due to regrets that it is not. If you wish to reconsider, I would be only too happy to oblige.”
The audacity of the remark was as unexpected as the tingle that skittered down Servanne’s spine. She had indeed lain awake most of the night, turning and tossing restlessly upon her wretched little sleeping couch, cursing each errant needle of straw that thrust its way through the ticking. Most of all, she had cursed the man who had caused her body to suffer through one shivered memory after another, all unbidden, unwanted, unconscionable. He might well have been physically in the bed beside her, for his face and body had never been more than a despairing groan away. She had not been able to will him, force him, or dream him away. Her lips had lost none of their bruised tenderness, and her breasts had ruched with treacherous insistence each time they had brushed a pelt or blanket. As for the relentless aches elsewhere in her body … they did not bear thinking about. Most certainly not now, not when her tormentor was but a few paces away, grinning like the predator whose name he bore, making her acutely aware of each flicker and stroke of the tanned, tapered fingers.
“How long do you plan to keep us prisoner?” she demanded.
“Ah, rebuffed again,” he murmured. “Perhaps in a week or two, you will have a change of heart.”
“A week!” she gasped. “Two! Have you not delivered your outrageous ransom demands to Lord Lucien?”
“I have delivered my demands to the man who calls himself Lord Lucien,” he countered smoothly. “I have also offered to relieve him of the task of disposing of you should he be entertaining second thoughts on the marriage. It is a great deal to contemplate in the short time since we plucked you from the road; the choices too tempting to deliberate in haste.”
The tint in Servanne’s cheeks burned darker. “There is no choice, m’sieur. You will hear from my lord within the week.”
“Really?” He folded his arms across his chest. “May I ask why you sound so confident?”
Servanne lifted her eyes from the forest of dark hair
s that covered the hard, banded muscles bulging through the opened shirt … and almost forgot the question.
“Th-the wedding,” she said lamely. “The preparations have all been made.”
“Have they, indeed. What an inconvenience not to have the bride present for the service. Perhaps I could offer yet another compromise: a marriage by proxy. I could take the place of the groom here, in the forest, while some equally affable damosel stands your place at the castle. In this way, he could carry on with the feasts and entertainments he has undoubtedly already paid for in good coin, while we”—the wolfish smile stole across the insolently handsome face again —“we could find some way to celebrate the union in our own fashion. As I mentioned before, the Dragon and I are much alike in countenance and bearing. Not so much so as Mutter and Stutter, but near enough to give you a healthy idea of what to expect when you draw back the sheets in the bridal bed.”
Servanne’s belly turned a slow, sluggish somersault. Beside her, Biddy’s mouth gaped open in shock and she sucked in enough air to have stirred the leaves overhead.
“On the other hand,” he continued blithely, bending over to pull on his boots. “There are some things we do quite differently, and I should hate to think your pending days of wedded bliss might suffer from an unfavourable contrast.”
Servanne’s face, throat, and breasts were now burning. The Wolf, seeing her discomfort, stood up and walked slowly toward her, stopping close enough for her to detect the scent of leather and greenwood that was a part of his overwhelming maleness. He had shaved earlier in the morning, and the reason for sharpening the edge of his knife was evidenced by the two clotted cuts beneath his chin.
At that precise moment, Servanne would have rejoiced in seeing ribbons of blood flowing from ear to ear; a greater ecstasy would be to carve them there herself.
At the same time, she felt a sudden shifting in the weight of her emotions. If this verbal jousting was the best he could do—and would he not have done his worst last night if it had been his intent?—surely she had little to fear for all his arrogant boasting. A man who had kissed a woman the way he had kissed her, yet had done nothing to carry the threat further, was likely to be no threat at all! If any of a dozen knights of her past acquaintance had found her in their arms and won half the liberties this rogue had stolen, neither pleas nor beating fists, nor gouging knives would have deterred them from taking what they wanted then and there. And not one in a score of knights of her acquaintance had a tenth of the motive for revenge this Black Wolf declared himself to have.
Perhaps he should have raped her. She might have begun to believe his claim to be Lucien Wardieu.
Expressing her newfound indifference to his petty vulgarities, Servanne sighed and turned to Biddy. “Now I understand what you mean when you say all men judge all things in life by the size of the brain they carry between their thighs. The smaller the brain, the dimmer their judgment, the larger the voice they use to convince the world they are giants among men. How true. And how sad.”
She tucked her arm through Biddy’s and, without a further acknowledgment of the Wolf’s presence in the sunlit courtyard, strolled sedately past him and entered the shadowy sanctuary of the pilgrims’ hall.
Biddy, light-headed from the amount of gasping and spluttering she had done to maintain her silence out-of-doors, barely managed to keep from swooning until they were in the privacy of their chamber.
“Lost, I tell you!” she wailed. “We are lost! He plans to ravish you and kill me, and leave our bones to rot upon the road for some unlucky traveler to stumble over.”
“Oh, Biddy—” Servanne was feeling none too steady herself. “Not now. I can hardly keep my head up.”
“From shame, I should not wonder!” came the instantly revitalized retort. “What did the rogue mean: rebuffed again? Did something happen last night you did not tell me about?”
Servanne was grateful for the need to touch the flame of one candle to the wick of another before there was enough light to see clearly through the gloom. To buy another few moments, she tipped the second candle and dripped the hot wax onto the stone, making a secure seat for the base.
“Nothing happened. We walked. We talked. He tried to convince me he was in England on an honourable mission for Queen Eleanor—no doubt to gain my support for whatever other heinous crimes they intend to commit before they are all caught and hung. Aside from that …”
Biddy’s eyes were as bright as polished steel and twice as keen when it came to parting half-truths from outright lies. Servanne was hiding something and she had a fairly good idea what it might be. The girl had not blushed so much since her wedding to Sir Hubert, and then only for as long as it took her to realize a bride’s bed was not made of rose petals, nor a man’s attentions necessarily as rewarding as all their grunting and sweating might promise.
“Curiosity is a curious thing in itself,” Biddy said, deflated by the knowledge her lamb might somehow be suffering a malaise not able to be leeched out or cured. “It tempts us all to do the things we know can only harm us the most. Rarely does anything good come of knowing what lies beyond the bend in the road. Rarely do we like what we find when we dare to take it, but by then, it is already too late to turn around and retrace our steps.”
“Must it always be so, Biddy?” Servanne asked softly. “Is there no risk worth the taking?”
Biddy came quietly up behind her. “I would be the first to agree he is a handsome beast, my lady, but a beast nonetheless. He will have no use for you once the deed is done—the challenge for his kind is in the pursuit, not the surrender.”
Servanne stared at the heart of the candle flame, her eyes stinging, her breath dry in her throat. Biddy was right. No good would come of knowing … well … of knowing. It was odd and unfair that a man who was a beast should be so much more of a man than she had ever encountered before … but there again, what good would come of knowing?
What good would come of knowing, Friar wondered as he stood near the edge of the embankment and waited for Gil to belt the last of his washed, sodden garments into place. Dusk was well on its way to becoming night and there was little to distinguish between shadow and tree. Gil had finished the filthy task he and Sparrow had been set to and nearly ran all the way to the Silent Pool to strip and scour away the stench and slime of the privies. Judging by the haste with which he dressed, Friar suspected Gil had marked the glowing approach of the horn lantern as it shifted and throbbed through the trees. Friar had brought it as a precaution, not against a twisted ankle or misjudged footfall, but out of deference to Gil’s sharp eyes and quick bow-hand. It was not wise to be a shadow moving among shadows, not in these woods, and more particularly not when Gil Golden was out of sorts with all mankind.
Friar stepped out into plain view and raised the lantern above his head. “I thought I might find you here. Sparrow …?”
Gil shrugged. “He will probably stew in his own juices a day or two longer to punish us all.”
Friar spared half a smile and set the smoking lantern down on the rock. The light it emitted was minimal, and not so dramatic out in the open as it had been in the heart of the forest darkness. The thin sheets of pressed horn that guarded the weak flame from draft produced a glow the colour and pattern of cobwebs where it was flung across the stone. Everything it touched took on the pale colour of ash—everything save the bright, coppery sheen of Gil’s hair.
“You will catch your death of a cold in those wet clothes,” Friar remarked, noting how the linsey-woolsey and the deer-hide shed fat droplets with each move Gil made.
“I have survived worse.”
“So you have. Moreover, I can see this newest escapade will only bolster your already considerable estimation of your abilities.”
The golden eyes flickered up angrily. “I am not a child needing a lecture from you, good Friar.”
“Your behavior last night would argue the point.”
“My behavior,” Gil spat, starting to push past th
e other man, “is none of your concern.”
“It is when you take unnecessary risks to threaten not only your own life, but the lives of every man in camp. Gil!” He reached out and grasped an arm as the master archer strode past, but the leaner and lither Golden whipped around with a curse and yanked his arm free.
“Would you be here having this motherly conversation were it anyone else but me?”
Friar absorbed the curse and the anger without batting an eye. “You are not any other man, Gillian. And if you were, I would hasten to suggest our vaunted leader would not have been so lenient on you as he was. It was a damned stupid thing you did to go off on your own, and you know it!”
“I can take care of myself,” Gil seethed, cinching the belt so tightly around her waist that Friar could not help himself from glancing down at the small, firm breasts where they jumped into prominence. “Do you not forget: I joined this troop and lived as one of you—fought as one of you … killed as one of you when it was necessary, for several weeks before any of you were the wiser.”
How could Friar forget? Gillian had concealed her secret well, coming among them as a man, sharing the rugged duties in camp as well as on raids, her skill with the longbow winning unreserved respect and admiration from the rest of the men. It was Sparrow who had uncovered the ruse, and Sparrow who, oddly enough, had been her staunchest defender when the vote was placed before the others whether to allow her to stay or to send her away. The daughter of a local bow-maker, her knowledge of the area had been a strong point in her favour. Her unabashed and single-minded hatred for Nicolaa de la Haye had not hurt her cause either.
Friar had simply been relieved to know he had not been affected by his early years cloistered with monks who slipped back and forth between each other’s chambers in the dead of night. He had been fighting an attraction for “Gil” since the outset; discovering she was a woman made it a good deal easier to accept, although at times, relief aside, Gillian’s bold bravado made him want to take hold of her and shake her until her teeth rattled.
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 17