Nicolaa’s thick black lashes lowered slightly. “Perfectly, my lord.”
“What?” Wardieu ground his teeth at the sweetness of her voice. “What did you say?”
“I said … if you want the chit that badly, by all means have her.”
Wardieu was instantly on his guard. It was not like Nicolaa to give in so easily, and certainly not with regard to another woman. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a low, iron-bound oak door leading off the corridor and, after thrusting it open and ensuring the small room was empty, he grabbed Nicolaa by the arm and ushered her inside. It was a storeroom of some kind, with shelves lining the walls holding an assortment of crockery jars and twine-bound stacks of parchment. Light from a low, arch-shaped window covered in panes of pressed horn, reduced everything to the texture and colour of pond scum with the exception of the two angry faces, livid and occasionally blue-white through flashes of lightning.
“Admit it, my love,” Nicolaa seethed. “You find the chit interesting.”
“She has a comely enough face,” he agreed.
“Comely?” Nicolaa backed up closer to the window. “You find pale and insipid … comely? I vow she will prove to be a frigid little cullion—did you not see the way she shrank from your touch? The first time she sees you naked, I warrant there will be a stinking puddle around her feet, especially if your brother was less than feather-gentle with her.”
Wardieu grasped her shoulders between his hands. “You will be civil to her, Nicolaa. You will be sweet as honey and do everything within your power to see she feels welcome.”
“And if she does not? If she decides she would rather run away back to Wymondham?”
“She will not,” he said evenly. “We will both endeavour to ensure she will not.”
“I do not like her!”
“You do not have to like her. You do have to accept her.”
“Never.”
Wardieu’s hands squeezed harder. “She is to be my wife.”
“A temporary inconvenience.”
“Perhaps.”
The green eyes glanced up sharply. “What do you mean … perhaps?”
Wardieu smiled thinly and released her shoulders. “She has good blood. Sir Hubert had strong ties with William of Pembroke and, in fact, it was the old marshal himself who gave final approval for the marriage in Richard’s stead.”
“So?”
“So …” He arched a tawny brow. “One simply does not toss her from the ramparts at the earliest convenience. One might even consider it prudent to breed a child or two on her first. Bloodmoor needs an heir. The future of the De Gournay name and title must be secured.”
Nicolaa gaped at the golden-haired warrior open-mouthed. On more occasions than she cared to remember over the past fourteen years, she had been obliged to seek the skills of herb-women versed in the ways and means of scouring unwanted seeds from the womb. Wardieu had made it abundantly clear he wanted no part of fatherhood. One of the carefully guarded secrets she had paid heavily to learn was that he habitually made gifts to D’Aeth of the women foolish enough to boast of carrying his seed. Now, suddenly, he wanted heirs? Now, when her own womb had been scoured so many times she was barren?
Controlling her fury, she turned her face into a lightning-bright flash of illumination from the window. Rain was beating as savagely on the horn panes as her heart was beating within her breast, and she was thankful for the diversion.
“You made certain promises to me,” she reminded him tersely.
“They have been honoured. You have more wealth, more power, more influence than any other woman in the reeve. And you know full well as soon as your devoted husband relinquishes his soul to the Devil—what in God’s name is keeping him alive, I would ask?—you shall have a good deal more.”
Nicolaa angled her face enough to slant her eyes up at him. “Sheriff?”
“I can think of no man better suited to the task. Even Prince John agreed, on his last visit, there is good reason for the people of Lincoln to fear and respect your wrath. Methinks he fears you a little himself.”
Nicolaa knew she was being placated, thrown tidbits to sooth her vanity and win her cooperation. Then again, it was good to know he felt a need to placate her.
“I will have full claim to the title? Full power? Full authority?”
“You will be able to order the flesh stripped from any deserving lout between here and London if the mood suits you. Even an undeserving lout, for that matter, if it pleases you.”
Nicolaa experienced a flush of giddiness at the thought of the power lying within her grasp. Onfroi had been a weak and indecisive agent of the king. He actually grew pale and belched vomit while witnessing the putting out of eyes or the paring of flesh with hot knives. Once, when she had ordered the chest of a murderer split open so that she might hold the warm, beating heart in her hands, Onfroi had swooned away like a virgin.
“Money?” she asked, looking up again.
“As much as you can levy in taxes without cheating John of his due.”
Seeing the faint smile on his lips, Nicolaa’s temper prickled to the surface again. “It will hardly compensate me for all these years of loyalty and compliance.”
Wardieu laughed outright. “You are loyal only unto yourself, Nicolaa. As for being compliant”—his gaze roved down to the voluptuous outline of her breasts—“I do not recall ever having to force you into my bed, nor ever demanding a pledge of faithfulness from you.”
“I was as faithful as I could be under the circumstances,” she said, taking exception to his sarcasm.
“Circumstances that included a groomsman hung like one of his stallions, and a seneschal who makes D’Aeth look like a gamecock?”
Nicolaa moistened her lips. “I was not going to pine away my life waiting upon you to send for me. Furthermore, I do not recall you ever going too long without a maidservant or two clawing at your shoulders.”
“You always had Onfroi.”
“Onfroi? Saints assoil me, a pity the arrow could not have struck lower—at least he would have died with something hard sticking out from between his thighs.”
“Such loving concern,” Wardieu mused. “And him lying so near death the monks have twice anointed him in preparation for the shrouds. Have you no sympathy for his suffering at all?”
“Because the fool lies there spitted like a capon, am I supposed to hover about him wiping away the snot and breathing air befouled by fever and pus? Is it any fault of mine he was shot in your stead? Indeed, perhaps it is you who should be hovering and chanting mea culpas.”
“Perhaps. Although we cannot be certain the arrow was intended for me.”
“Not for you? Then who—me?”
“It is likely, is it not, for my brother to have recruited a few local malefactors to help familiarize him with the forests again? There was a face yesterday … one of the archers he had placed on the abbey walls … it bore a scar on the cheek.”
“A thousand men bear scars,” she retorted dryly.
“Shaped to the initial N by a loving hand?”
Nicolaa turned fully around. The significance of the N was directly related to a quirk of her own vanity; it was the brand normally reserved for women whose beauty was deemed to be a threat in some way.
“Are you implying he numbers women among his archers?”
“Only one that I saw, and then only if mine eyes were not too blinded by the passions of the moment. Is it so entirely outside the bounds of reason to believe a woman could learn to hold a bow as well as a man, or that a woman could have just as much reason to hate as a man? On the other hand, the culprit was using a longbow to keep my ballocks properly shriveled to the saddle; not an easy weapon for a man to master at the best of times.”
“A longbow?” Nicolaa asked, visibly shaken. “You are certain it was a longbow?”
“It is a difficult weapon to mistake for any other,” he commented wryly. “Besides being identical to the one we found in the woods after Onfro
i’s tragic mishap—the same one that made you pensive enough to consume two full flagons of wine.”
Nicolaa stared out the window, her eyes clouding with a memory. “There was a master bowyer in Lincoln several years back, the only one skilled in the making and firing of the Welsh weapon. He had a daughter … a daughter whose skill equalled his own …”
Wardieu waited, intrigued to see something that might have been construed as fear flicker across Nicolaa’s face.
“But no—” She snapped out of it and faced him again. “As I recall, they were all arrested—the father, mother, and two other daughters, not so sharp-tongued, but equally guilty of … of plotting insurrection against the crown. They died, the lot of them. It could not be her.”
“Just like it could not be my brother out there in the woods?”
A particularly loud and close crash of thunder sent Nicolaa flinching away from the window.
“All the more reason why you should have ordered your men into the woods,” she said angrily. “The chance to rout them would have been well worth the risk of a few losses.”
“Does my brother’s presence in Lincoln trouble you so much?” Wardieu asked. “Does his presence bring back such fond memories?”
“I never complained of him as a lover,” she countered archly, well aware of the effect her words would have. “Does it not trouble you to know there is someone else now who will doubtless compare with your skills, both as a lover and a fighter?”
The finely chiselled nostrils flared and he gathered her roughly against his chest. “You made the same comparison and ended up in my bed, not his.”
“I may have had different grounds on which to base my choice.”
Wardieu’s grip tightened and Nicolaa was not surprised to feel his arousal surging up between them, nor to hear his breath come harsher and faster in his throat.
“Will you tell John of your brother’s return?”
“I may be left with little choice in the matter.”
“He will not be pleased,” she predicted, her own breath forced to rasp through rapidly drying lips. “No doubt he will throw one of his wretched, foaming fits and threaten to burn all of Lincolnwoods to the ground in order to rid the forest of any threat.”
“I think I can convince him otherwise,” Wardieu murmured tersely, aware of the greedy haste in Nicolaa’s fingers as she tore at the fastenings of his codpiece. “Especially once I point out to him the value of having a band of dangerous outlaws on the loose in Lincoln.”
“Value?” she gasped. “What possible value could there be?”
“What value in a band of traitorous malcontents? If nothing else, I would have just cause to conduct a very thorough search of the entire demesne … thorough enough to rid my lands of any sympathizers, and costly enough to justify an increase in tithes.”
Nicolaa moistened her lips. “And … as sheriff of Lincoln—?”
“It would only be natural for you to assist me in routing these cutthroats and thieves.”
Nicolaa groaned and arched her head back as Wardieu’s knee insinuated itself between her thighs. His mouth savaged the curve of her throat; his hands tugged at the pins holding her hair plaited in a thick coil at the nape of her neck. Thunder crashed and reverberated outside the thin-paned window and lightning slashed across the sky. Nicolaa rode the hard muscles of his thigh with the same tempestuous urgency, her breath hissing from between clenched teeth, her body vibrating with sound and fury.
Wardieu ripped the seam of her bodice, exposing the blue-white flesh beneath. A nipple, hard as an arrow tip, dark as desire itself was barely suckled into a brutal mouth before she was sobbing his name and sinking weakly to her knees in orgasmic delirium.
Wardieu followed her down, amused as well as revolted to see that the more forceful he was, the more pain he inflicted, the louder her cries and moans of ecstasy. Despite her ability to drain him to the bone with her carnal skills, Nicolaa was beginning to grow tiresome in her demands. Making her sheriff would appease her appetites in some ways, but there was still the problem of her insatiable jealousy to deal with. Unfortunately she knew too many secrets and was too cunning to have them safeguarded only in her head, otherwise the problem could have been solved long ago with a simple slash of a knife.
The shocking reappearance of the dragon ring after so many years made it abundantly clear he could not take the chance of any more incriminating evidence being uncovered. While Nicolaa may not have kept the ring to hold against him, he had no doubt she would have kept evidence of another kind linking him to Robert Wardieu’s imprisonment and his brother’s attempted murder. She would not have forgotten, nor would she ever let him forget their treacherous collaboration all those years ago.
Proof of his suspicions, if he needed any further, came each time her body shuddered and her lips trembled around the name, “Etienne … Etienne … !”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As the menacing, fully armed troop of mercenaries rode across the narrow strip of raised land—the only dry approach to Bloodmoor Keep—Servanne’s senses were flooded with an array of disquieting emotions. Fear, most certainly, was taking its toll. The sheer size and sinister foreboding of the tall castle ramparts would have started a far stouter heart than hers quaking. The castle was a huge, sprawling monstrosity perched on the edge of a sea cliff, its many tourelles and spires etched against the low ceiling of sullen clouds like hands upraised in desperation. Seagulls screamed into the bite of cold sea air, their cries shrill and echoing over the incessant rumble of the surf beyond.
Servanne had spent the night in the abbey at Alford, shamelessly indulging in another long, hot bath before curling into her bed of furs and cushions. It took Biddy three attempts and a half-hearted lecture on slothfulness to finally rouse her, whereupon she bathed again, to the horror of the monks who were permitted the luxury only four times during the year.
Undine was saddled and waiting for her when she emerged from the abbey chapel. A final, solemn benediction from Abbot Hugo sent her on her way, the promise of a warm morning quickly giving way to the return of bitter winds and a bleak, mottled sky. A spate of stinging rain drove the women beneath the awning of a huge oak barely ten minutes into the journey, but the delay was brief; Wardieu was adamant and the cavalcade was under way in earnest before midmorning. Onfroi de la Haye seemed just as adamant about clinging to life, and he rode, swathed in a bundle of furs, in a small jouncing cart at the rear of the procession.
Rolling hills gave way to fertile valleys, stands of dense game-rich forest were broached and left behind. The few travelers they met on the main road took one furtive look at the De Gournay crest and scrambled off to the side, careful to keep their heads lowered and their eyes anywhere but on the tawny-haired knight who rode in the lead. Once, when Servanne happened to glance back, she saw a peasant woman spit contemptuously into the settling dust. Apparently she had not been alone in her observation, for a moment later a thundering of hooves signaled where a rider had turned back and was pursuing the horror-struck woman into the deeper woods.
Servanne at first thought nothing of the incident. Peasants and serfs were more often than not terrified of their lord. He owned their lives, owned everything they possessed. They could be killed at his whim, broken, maimed, or crippled at his pleasure; their daughters and wives could be raped, sold, or given away as the lord saw fit if tithes were not paid on time, or any one of a thousand private laws were broken. There was no recourse for any but the rich and titled gentry, no means of appealing a sentence regardless of its harshness in relation to the pettiness of the crime.
Sir Hubert, a kind and just lord, had nonetheless always given his full support to his seneschals and provosts when they ordered thieves hung, traitors blinded, and petty offenders mutilated, beaten, or starved to death by way of an example to others. A lord’s livelihood depended upon the unquestioning obedience, respect, and servitude of his vassals and serfs, and to show leniency to one was to invite rebellion in
another. Servanne had never questioned the functioning or fairness of the system that put so much power into the hands of the rich and privileged. Conversely, she had rarely seen such powers abused to the extent of trampling a woman underfoot for the act of spitting. Nor had she ever been betrothed to a man who accepted the report with a faint nod of disinterest before resuming his conversation with his mistress.
As a result, Servanne was increasingly wary of keeping company with anyone other than Biddy or Sir Roger de Chesnai. Not that she would have been eager to strike up conversation with any of the glowering, brute-faced knights who rode escort to the cavalcade. To a man they ran their eyes like dirty hands over her body at every opportunity, lingering over breasts and thighs.
The moor flanking either side of the steeply banked road that led to Bloodmoor throbbed and glowed with wildflowers in every shade of red, from palest pink to the bloodiest crimson. Long grasses rippled like waves on the ocean; here and there, gaps in the density of weed and wildflower showed the icy glitter of water and treacherous mud slicks hidden beneath. The closer they rode to the castle, the taller the outer walls seemed to grow. High and crenellated with jagged square teeth, their harsh lines were dotted with the heads of alert, well-armed sentries who patroled the walls. Their steel helmets caught whatever light was available, dotting the ramparts with pinprick flashes as heads drew together to speculate over the arrival of the lord’s new bride.
A tremendous groaning and creaking could be heard halfway across the moor as the foot-long rusted iron links of chain winched the outer drawbridge open. Horses’ hooves sounded like the clatter of drums as the party trooped three abreast beneath the raised portcullis gate, their heads barely clearing the spiked points of the thick bars. The inner gate was opened, the huge beams of oak requiring the strength of ten men to push open beneath the overhang of the studded barbican tower. Stone walls slit with meurtrières welcomed visitors at eye level; funnel-shaped spouts of iron were cemented into the stone arch above which one could imagine huge copper ladles filled with bubbling oil waiting to add their warm greetings.
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