by Lara Adrian
It took a moment for her to realize that Rutledge's hand had been smoothing her hair, now coming to rest lightly on her shoulder. She looked up at him, horrified that she should have allowed him to touch her, to comfort her.
She jerked her shoulder from under his palm. “Never lay your hands upon me again,” she seethed, mustering all the venom she could. “I've no need for your brand of consolation.”
“I reckon you'd rather let that coward Nigel comfort you, is that it?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I'd rather you killed me as soon as touch me.”
“Well, then, I shall bear that in mind, my lady, should the urge strike again.”
He started to walk away.
“Bear this in mind as well, scoundrel,” she called after him. “The day you are dead shall be the happiest day of my life. I vow I shall shout with glee to hear the news!”
Spinning on his heel, he stalked back to her in two long strides. “And what then, my lady? Please, do not deny me the whole of your wishful fantasy. Will you wed Nigel? Bear the rotten fruits of his loins?”
At that, her hand shot out to strike him, but he caught her firmly by the wrist.
“You defend him,” he said quietly, “and yet he took little convincing to abandon you to your fate.”
“It would seem you gave him little choice.”
“He had a choice...and he made it. Think on that when next you see him.” He released her arm and with a gentle brush of his thumb flicked a tear from the tip of her nose. “Waste no more of these on Nigel--or your father--for neither is deserving.”
Cursing herself for trembling under even his merest touch, she struggled to find her voice, holding fast to her anger. “How can you speak of worthiness? What honor can you claim?”
His brow creased. “None at the moment, my lady. As I told you at the tourney, 'tis honor I seek.”
“Nay,” she whispered. “You seek vengeance. You'll find no honor in that.”
He seemed to consider her comment for a moment. “Perhaps not,” he conceded, “but that I must find out for myself. So it would seem you are right. I have no honor. However, noble intentions aside, my lamb, had the tables been turned, I would never have left you in the hands of someone like me.”
Raina's cheeks flamed as she looked up into his face, which at the moment seemed to reflect no mockery, no malice. It was an honest remark, and one that left her shaken, unsettled. Without another word he simply turned and strode away, leaving her to stare after him in shock.
He beckoned a man to his side with a crook of his finger. “See to this mount's wounds and tether it behind me for the ride north. Tell the others we leave at once.” He turned back to Raina with a courtly sweep of his arm. “After you, my lady.”
Chapter 7
The woman had spirit, Gunnar had to credit her that. But she was also tired and the hours she had now been with him had done their share to batter even her hardy constitution. He supposed it was fatigue more than willing surrender that made her tread after him in silence, obeying his order to remount with nothing but a withered glare in his direction.
He pulled her up onto his destrier and had her ride before him, securing his arm about her waist and holding her closer than needed as they rode out of the clearing and onward, to what was to be their evening's shelter.
As the land stretched out before them and time dragged on toward dusk, Gunnar fought a desperate inner battle to ignore the closeness of his unexpected captive, concentrating instead on plotting his next move. To his consternation, however, the only move he could envision at the moment was bedding the woman, who, with every stride of his mount, bounced innocently against his fast-tightening loins.
The airy silk of her bliaut ruffled in the wind, occasionally leaping out to brush his wrist and arm. Her braid had since fallen out completely, leaving her hair fragrant and billowing against him. Her narrow waist nestled against the crook of his elbow, and he was powerless to prevent the image of its delicate curve from forming in his mind. She was a fascinating abundance of temptations, each one too fine for a man like him.
Spurring his mount, Gunnar angrily thrust the notion aside, telling himself it was the night wind and not her hair that smelled so deliciously of roses and honeysuckle, that the heat of anger and not the lifeblood of a vixen warmed her skin, searing his hand.
When her body finally relaxed against him and her breathing deepened in weary sleep, curiosity won over duty.
Like the thief he had been forced to become, Gunnar casually moved his arm from about her waist until it rode under the buoyant fullness of her breasts, stealing the opportunity she would surely never grant him. Then, breathing deeply of her scent, he closed his eyes against her softness, telling himself that the core of her appeal surely lay in the simple fact that he needed a woman.
Badly.
* * *
Wynbrooke lay cloaked in the inky blackness of midnight as they approached the ruined castle and nearly deserted village, but evidently the sight was still enough to make Raina's breath catch in her throat. Gunnar had felt her come awake sometime earlier, though she hadn't found cause to speak until now.
“Where are we?” she gasped, her thready voice filled with wariness.
He supposed it was an eerie, awesome sight on first glance--even in darkness--but it had been a long time since Wynbrooke had set his blood to ice.
At first he might have felt some trepidation, some dread upon looking at what remained of his home. He had, in fact, visited this place often to remind himself of why he was alive, his purpose on this earth. Countless times he'd come here and simply stared out from the shadows at the rubble and the desecration; a silent, contemplative observer, never approaching the keep, never making his presence known to the handful of people who remained in the village.
But for many years now, the sight of Wynbrooke did not shock him. It did not move him. Like the years of battle and staring death full in the face, this no longer had the power to disturb him.
And so, when Raina asked, “What is this place?” he answered her with complete lack of emotion: “'Tis your father's doing.”
He clucked to his horse and led his band of men forward, deliberately skirting the sleepy cluster of ramshackle, wattle-and-daub huts as he and the other men rode up the hill and through the open gate of the crumbling curtain wall.
Wynbrooke, being a modest keep, had just one bailey, a wide grassy courtyard where as a boy, Gunnar had chased chickens and later, young girls his age. A small stable flanked the far side of the bailey Gunnar recalled; now all that marked its existence were a few charred timbers and blackened stone. The mews were gone, the great hall, nothing but rubble--everything sacked or burned. Only the tower keep remained standing.
The place he had once called home was an abandoned and lonely pillar of thick gray stone.
Standing in the shadow of that grim monument, he felt Raina shiver in his arms and vaguely registered his men muttering under their breath about sleeping in a tomb. For an instant he felt a chill sweep over him. Night air, he reasoned, and dismounted without comment. He turned and gathered Raina into his arms, setting her on her feet before unfastening a rolled blanket from behind his saddle and handing it to her.
“Secure the horses in here for the night, then find yourselves a place to bed down,” he ordered his men, taking Raina's hand and starting with her toward the keep.
“You can't mean for me to sleep in this ruin.” Her voice was pleading as she shuffled behind him, scarcely able to keep up with his long strides.
“You'll be safe here.” He reached for the iron latch on the door, only to realize that the great oak panel had been smashed off its hinges. The blackness that greeted him at the top of the stone stairs was merely a yawning portal to a dank and musty room.
A bat took flight as they crossed the threshold, flapping over their heads and out into the night. Another quickly followed. Raina's startled yelp echoed in the cavernous chamber, and she buried
her face in Gunnar's arm until the tiny creature had passed.
“Come,” Gunnar ordered softly and guided her farther inside, using a thin sliver of moonlight that shone in from a crevice to help him find the spiral stairs leading to the chambers above. He held Raina's hand tightly as they mounted the steep, circling steps, trying to batten down the queer tremor that began a steady rise in his chest with each advancing footfall.
Unbidden images sprang to life in his mind: the grating rasp of d'Bussy's sword, the wicked laughter, his mother's crumpled body, and the blood. Jesu, the blood. Grinding the heel of his palm into his brow did nothing to ease the pain throbbing there nor the guilt that chewed at his conscience.
“P-please,” Raina whispered from behind him, “I don't wish to stay here.”
His lips curved wryly and without humor in the dark. “The idea holds little appeal to me, either, my lady, but I reckon 'tis the safest place for us to stop and rest for a few hours.”
They crested the stairwell and Gunnar stalked toward the first chamber, his footsteps heavy under his purposeful gait. A sheen of sweat beaded his upper lip and brow as he neared the entrance, dread clutching his heart almost as strongly as Raina now clung to his hand.
“Wait here,” he said and moved to stand before the threshold, clenching his fists at his sides and steeling himself against what he might find within.
The door was slightly ajar, ironically so, as if the last occupant had departed quietly, without disturbance. He reached out to place his palm against the iron-banded oak panel, cursing himself for the way his hand was shaking and at the same time thankful for the darkness that concealed it from Raina's view. With little pressure, the door creaked open on its ancient leather hinges.
Gunnar's gaze swept the room in quick assessment and he let out the breath that until now, he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
A cool wash of moonlight filtered in through open shutters on the window of the far wall and with it came a lazy night breeze. He breathed in, shallowly, surprised to find the air carried no smells of death or fire, only the fragrant perfume of summer.
In the pale moon glow, Gunnar could see that the rough-hewn, plank floor had been cleared of old rushes, all evidence of the destruction that had visited here thirteen years ago seemingly scrubbed clean.
His father's armor coffin was gone; his mother's distaff and spindles, too. The stone walls of the chamber, which had once been warmed with colorful tapestries and the Rutledge banner were now barren. The brazier was emptied of its ashes and long unused, home now to an industrious spider that had laced the hollowed opening in the far wall with an intricate web. The large bed in which his parents had slept was the only furniture yet remaining in the room, though stripped of its bolsters and straw mattress, it was now little more than a dust-covered, wooden frame, too cumbersome to have been removed from the keep.
But the room did not seem looted. Someone who must have cared for his parents had removed all traces of d'Bussy's desecration. And Gunnar was fairly certain he knew who it had been.
Turning to regard Raina over his shoulder, he beckoned her forward with a curl of his hand. She stepped out of the darkness and to his side without argument, evidently preferring even his dubious companionship to being left on her own in the corridor. They entered the room together, Raina so close behind him he could nearly feel the press of her breasts at his back, her breath coming rapid and shallow against his skin.
He heard her footsteps halt near the center of the room as he made his way to the open window and peered out over the courtyard below. The men had already started a fire and were gathered around it, drinking from their flasks and chewing on chunks of dark bread.
“Are you hungry?” he asked idly of Raina.
“Nay.”
That quick, firm denial was belied by a tiny growl of her stomach. Gunnar turned from the window and started slowly toward her. She stood unmoving, staring at him expectantly, fearfully, and clutching the rolled-up blanket to her like a shield. Despite the balminess of the summer air, she was shivering.
Gunnar passed in front of her and drew his blade to clear away the cobwebs from the fireplace. “You can make your bed here, by the hearth,” he directed. “Perhaps while I'm out I will find some kindling to make a fire.”
“You're leaving me here? Alone?” This last word she fairly gasped, in what sounded to him like utter disbelief.
“Aye,” he replied, sheathing his weapon. “But don't think you'll be able to slip away while I'm gone. I shall be sending one of my men along to watch this door in my absence.”
She took a hesitant step toward him. “Where are you going?”
“I've a bit of business to take care of,” he answered with deliberate vagueness, and moved for the door.
All at once, he felt her capture his hand between hers. He froze, stopping dead in his tracks.
“Please.” She clutched his fingers with desperate tightness. “Don't leave me here.” She took a small breath, her voice naught but a whisper behind him. “I'm frightened.”
That naked admission shocked him almost as thoroughly as the feel of their hands, so incongruously entwined together. Where was the hellion who had claimed she'd rather die as soon as look at him? What had happened to the virago who had put herself between her father and Gunnar's blade without so much as batting an eye?
He whirled on her, heated and ready to pose those very questions to her himself.
Looking into her close, upturned face was a mistake he realized too late. Even in the darkness he could see her rosy lips, parted slightly and trembling, looking too damned soft for his peace of mind. Her eyes met his, wide and beseeching under the delicate wing of her brows.
Inexplicably, he longed to trace his hand over the smoothness of her cheek, the graceful line of her throat. Longed to touch her hair, sift the silky tresses through his fingers and feel her body pressed to him in a soothing embrace.
And for a moment he was tempted to stay.
But what he had to offer her wasn't comfort and it had nothing to do with allaying her fears.
“God's wounds,” he muttered, his anger directed more at himself than her. With gruff aggravation, he extracted his hand and scowled at her through the darkness. “Stay put and no harm will come to you.”
With that, he pivoted on his heel and quit the room, slamming the door behind him in his haste to be away from her before he changed his mind about leaving.
* * *
Raina regretted her words the moment they left her lips and Rutledge's irritated response only furthered her humiliation. Why she thought his odious presence would be a comfort to her, she didn't know.
If she truly felt even half the loathing for him she'd attested to in the woods, she would have welcomed his absence. She certainly would not be listening to his departing footsteps, nor positioning herself in the window that she might watch as he crossed the bailey to his group of men and called for one named Cedric to post guard outside her door. Raina scowled, staring after his retreating form as if to bore holes in his broad, arrogant back as he mounted his destrier and rode out of the bailey and into the night.
With him gone and nothing left at which to direct her ire, Raina reluctantly returned her attention back to her temporary sleeping quarters. Mercy, but it was a dark and depressing cell, devoid of life and not much better than the rest of this ruined and forgotten keep.
'Tis your father's doing.
Rutledge's words as they had arrived came back to her like a splash of cold water: startling, confusing. Chilling.
She had no misconceptions that her father--like any baron of his day--was at times forced to wage war and seize fiefs in the name of his liege. But this keep had seen more than war. This place, with its mass of destruction and absence of life had been more than conquered. It had been obliterated. Why?
Weathering a chill that spread from her limbs to her heart, Raina came away from the window and moved farther into the room, searching fruitlessly for some
thing with which to light a fire in the brazier. The room was suddenly too cold, too dark.
Raina hated the dark.
It made her think of her mother; made her relive endless days as a little girl spent outside her parents' bedchamber, listening as her mother wept, alone in that large cold room, door bolted, shutters closed, heavy curtains drawn around the bed, refusing food, refusing comfort. Refusing to admit anyone into her bouts of private despair, including her only child.
Darkness, to Raina, meant an early autumn day in her fifth year, when she had been trying on her mother's jewelry and heard her parents returning home early from a tourney. She'd scurried into the garderobe and closed the door, standing silently in the cool, dark compartment. She'd heard their voices, filled with anger and growing louder as they ascended the stairs to their chamber. She'd heard the door slam, heard the hatred in her mother's seething accusation: “I am no fool, Luther. I know what you've done. For pity's sake, he was an innocent man!”
Her father's voice was desperate, pleading. “Margareth, my love, don't you understand? If I am guilty of anything, 'tis only of loving you too dearly.”
A clatter of pottery hitting the floor punctuated her mother's hitching sob. “Don't touch me! You're a monster, Luther. A blackhearted, jealous monster and I despise you more now than I ever did.”
Raina could still hear the loud crack of a hand striking a cheek and the deafening silence that followed, though to this day, she wasn't sure who had delivered nor who had received the blow. That evening, after declining supper and retiring to her chamber with a pot of honeyed mead, her mother had taken ill.
By morning she was gone, and her father, enraged and distraught, rode out that very day with his army in tow.