The sun set soon after. Nicholas hoped Steffan hadn’t left the path, for they’d never know it. It was all they could do to keep going as the way narrowed in front of them and they had to dismount and walk single file between the thick growth of trees.
“Let me go!” Catrin twisted her body in a vain attempt to break Steffan’s grip.
Gillian flew at him from the side, his knife clutched in one hand, the fingers of the other outstretched to claw at his face. Her fingers connected first, and she raked her nails across his cheek, gouging him from cheekbone to chin.
As the blood ran down his face, he screamed and disengaged one hand from about Catrin’s waist. Striking out, he caught Gillian in the side of the head with his fist. The force of the blow spun her around before she sank to the floor.
“It’s your turn now, bitch,” he growled, yanking Catrin by the arm and reaching toward her with his free hand. She evaded his grasping fingers, crying out at the wrenching pain as he twisted her arm again. “There’s nothing like battling a woman to fire my blood,” he said, his eyes wild with lust. “Perhaps once I sink my rod into you, you’ll know your place.”
His words sent panic crawling up Catrin’s spine. Redoubling her efforts, she fought him as he tried to drag her across the floor to the bed. Somehow she had to break free of him before they reached the bed, for she knew she’d be no match for his strength and weight once he had her pinned to the mattress.
Despite her resistance Steffan pulled her ever closer to the bed, past where Gillian still lay in a crumpled heap. The sight roused Catrin to greater fury. She kicked out, her foot jarring hard against his thigh, but she couldn’t reach high enough to hit him in the vitals.
The blow had made him flinch, however, so she tried again. She battered at his legs with her foot, making her toes throb, and continued to struggle against his hold. In desperation, she sank her teeth into his hand.
Ignoring the way her stomach heaved, Catrin held on like a terrier with a rat, the taste of blood and sweat on her tongue making her gag. Steffan roared with pain, but she held on. With one last, frantic kick, her toes connected with his manhood. When he folded at the waist, hands dropping to cradle his injured parts, Catrin backed away and raced to Gillian’s side.
Startling her with his resiliency, Steffan lurched to his feet and lunged for her again. Catrin had no choice but to abandon Gillian and lure him outside. Perhaps then she could hide and club him with a stick or a rock—anything to stop this madman.
She ran out of the hut into the moonlit clearing, Steffan hot on her heels. Shivering as much from fear as cold, she hastened into the shadows beneath the trees, frantically searching for anything she might use as a weapon. Her fingers closed around a broken branch just as Steffan caught up with her.
She struck out at him with the jagged end of the stick, poking him hard in the chest. “Come to me,” he screeched, the sound terrifying. The moonlight washed the color from his face, making him a ghostly nightmare brought to life.
Panting, her heart pounding in her ears, she feinted with the stick, hoping he’d lose his footing. Instead he dived beneath her guard and carried her to the ground. The momentum of his body sent her skidding painfully over the rocky soil on her back, his weight atop her driving the air from her lungs.
Tiny spots of light flashed before her eyes against the night sky. She couldn’t draw a breath. Her mind spinning, she felt consciousness slipping from her grasp. She groped alongside her for a rock—anything. But she found nothing.
By the time he lifted his weight off her chest, her fingers had begun to go numb. She gasped, air burning its way into her lungs.
Steffan sat back on his heels, straddling her, one hand holding both of hers above her head while the other tugged at her clothing. “I must have you now,” he muttered, his eyes glinting in the moonlight.
He jerked her skirts up, bunching them at her waist. Raising his weight off her, he forced her legs apart and fumbled with his own clothing.
The searing heat of Steffan’s manhood against her skin was the final indignity. Bucking, shrieking, Catrin fought with every bit of strength she could conjure up. She’d geld him before she was through, she vowed, if she had to use her bare hands to do it!
It seemed they’d been plodding along for hours, the night black as pitch, when Nicholas’s horse began to whicker low in his throat. “They must be up ahead,” Nicholas whispered, groping for a sturdy tree and wrapping the reins around it. “We’d better go on without the horses.”
Stumbling over the uneven ground, they climbed up the track. “Are you sure there was only one man?” Ian asked Rannulf.
“Aye. And I doubt there’s an army waiting for us up ahead, either,” he said wryly. “It’s too remote. Who in their right mind would come out here?”
A scream split the darkness, bringing to a sudden end the muffled nighttime sounds. Nicholas could have sworn his heart stopped beating for a moment.
Moving as one, they raced up the path, slipping and scrambling for purchase on the weatherworn rocks. They burst out into the moonlit clearing as another shriek arose.
His mind working furiously, Nicholas took in the scene in an instant. The dark outline of a man’s torso was silhouetted against the backdrop of the moonlit sky. He struggled with someone pinned beneath him, his victim’s legs flailing wildly.
’Twas all Nicholas needed to see. He shoved past Rannulf, toward the pair writhing on the grass.
Leaping the last few yards, he hit the man—Steffan, he noted without surprise—square in the back, sending him flying.
In the brief moment before Steffan sat up, Nicholas stared down at Catrin. The silvery light washed the color from her face and highlighted the fear. Her clothes were nearly torn to shreds.
It was all he needed to stir him to a blood lust such as he’d never felt before.
Roaring his rage, he grabbed Steffan by the tunic and jerked him to his feet. Steffan didn’t even have a chance to straighten before he planted a fist in his face and forced him to his knees. He grinned at the satisfying crunch of bone beneath his knuckles. “Get up, you coward,” he snarled, motioning with his hands for Steffan to stand. “I’ve not even started with you.”
Breathing noisily through his crushed nose, Steffan lurched to his feet and, clasping his hands together, swung them at Nicholas’s head.
Nicholas evaded the blow easily, taking advantage of Steffan’s momentum to knock him to the ground. There was no challenge to this, he thought, disgusted by the whimpering sounds stealing through Steffan’s lips. He waited impatiently for Steffan to regain his feet, then stalked him around the clearing. “Fight back, damn you,” he growled. “Or do you only hit women?”
His body swaying, Steffan simply stood and stared at Nicholas, his only response to the insult the fire flaring in his eyes.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you, you miserable son of a bitch? Once I’ve beaten you bloody, I’m going to rip off your—”
Teeth bared in a terrible grimace, Steffan dived at him.
Finally. Nicholas smiled, the exultation of battle rushing through him. There was no challenge—or honor—to pounding on a puling craven who wouldn’t fight back. Steffan would die tonight, one way or another, for the things he’d done to Catrin.
Their hands at each other’s throats, they rolled across the rocky ground, their struggle punctuated by grunts and moans.
Catrin stifled a whimper when Ian helped her to her feet. She absently tugged the remnants of her clothing over her nakedness, for she couldn’t tear her gaze from Nicholas. Rage tautened his features, giving him the face of an avenging angel.
She wanted Steffan to pay for his sins, but she’d seen enough violence done tonight—and she didn’t want any harm to come to Nicholas. She couldn’t bear it if he should be hurt
“Can’t you stop them?”
“It’s his right,” Ian said. “Don’t expect me to interfere—unless it looks like Talbot needs the help.”
>
Rannulf looked around, his expression frantic. “Where is Gillian?”
Catrin grasped his forearm. “She’s inside. Steffan punched her,” she called after him as he raced toward the cottage.
Catrin gasped as Steffan rolled Nicholas toward the open edge of the clearing, where the earth dropped away into a steep ravine. She started forward, only to be brought up short by Ian’s hand on her arm. “Let them go. Don’t you have any faith in him?”
She didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t look away. Every time Steffan landed a blow, which fortunately wasn’t often, Catrin winced as if she felt it herself.
Steffan’s hands closed about Nicholas’s throat. Nicholas pried them off, then grabbed Steffan and flipped him away. Instead of coming back toward Nicholas for more, Steffan scrambled to his feet and suddenly backed away from him toward the ravine.
The moonlight showed Steffan’s fear, and utter madness writhed in his eyes. As he stepped ever closer to the edge, Nicholas dropped his hands, offering no threat.
Steffan began to babble, disjointed phrases that made no sense, his voice rising with each word until he shrieked like a madman.
“Come away from there,” Nicholas shouted, slowly drawing nearer to him.
Steffan’s tirade abruptly ceased, the last shriek echoing wildly through the hills. “You’ll never take me,” he said, voice calm. He looked back over his shoulder as though judging the distance.
“Don’t!” Nicholas leapt the few yards separating them as Steffan, arms flailing, stepped to the brink.
“Nicholas!” Catrin screamed. The two men lost their balance and pitched over the edge.
Her heart thrumming with dread, Catrin rushed to peer into the ravine, Ian at her side. The earth and rock had crumbled away, leaving a sparse fringe of vegetation hanging above the abyss.
Moonlight glowed eerily on Steffan’s body, sprawled at an odd angle over the rocks jumbled at the bottom of the gully. He didn’t move. But Catrin saw no sign of Nicholas.
A moan rising out of the shadows dappling the cliff face drew her attention. She lay on her stomach and leaned out farther, her fingers gripping tightly to the dead weeds hanging from the edge. She scrutinized the shadows. There—something moved, a mere trace of dark-on-dark motion halfway down the steep embankment
“I think he’s alive,” she called to Ian.
Sliding carefully to the side, she made room for her brother to join her. “Nicholas,” she called.
She inched forward to improve her view, then rolled back quickly when the earth began to crumble away beneath her. But the brief glimpse had convinced her ’twas indeed a man’s shape draped over a narrow ledge far below.
She grabbed Ian’s arm. “I see him. But I don’t know how we’ll get him up the cliff. Did you bring any rope?”
Ian crawled out for another look. “Back in my gear—” He gauged the distance. “But I don’t think it’s long enough.” He rolled away from the edge and to his feet in one smooth movement. “I’ll get Rannulf and the rope. You talk to Talbot, see if you can get him to answer,” he said, heading for the cottage.
“Nicholas, can you hear me?” she called, crawling on her hands and knees to peer down again. “Answer me, damn you.”
“If you don’t move away from the edge,” he replied, his voice rising faintly out of the darkness, “I’ll wallop your backside when I get up there, woman.”
“I just might let you,” she replied, earning a weak chuckle.
She heard Ian and Rannulf behind her. “He’s alive,” she said, relief making her shake suddenly. She grinned. “He’s well enough to threaten me.”
His back pressed against the cold, damp rock, Nicholas pulled himself upright, dragging his right leg. He clutched it just below the knee, grimacing at the shafts of pain radiating from the joint. ’Twas only by God’s mercy he’d been able to detach himself from Steffan’s grip and grab the clump of bushes growing out of the rocks to slow his descent.
He’d stopped rather quickly, though, he thought with a grim smile, his leg twisting hard beneath him as he grabbed the bushes and swung onto the narrow ledge. But he didn’t believe it was broken—it just hurt like hell.
“Ian’s getting a rope,” Catrin called. “Are you hurt?”
“Not enough to matter. Get me a rope and I’ll be up there before you know it.”
He heard the muffled sound of her voice as she conferred with the others, then the blessed slap of a rope hitting the cliff. “Can you reach it?” Ian asked.
Nicholas inched away from the wall and looked up. The end of the rope swayed enticingly five or six feet above him.
“It’s close enough.” He’d scaled sheer castle walls fully armed. He’d manage this.
Bracing against the rough stone, he stood slowly, trying to shift most of his weight to his left leg. When he looked down and saw Steffan, his body broken on the rocks, he didn’t care how his knee felt.
He’d won. Catrin and Gillian were safe forever from that fiend—assuming Gillian was all right—and he’d survived.
He couldn’t ask for more than that.
Gritting his teeth, he stretched as far as he could, but the rope dangled just beyond his reach. He crouched and then launched himself upward. The rough bite of hemp into his palm was a pain he’d suffer gladly, he thought, wrapping his fingers about the line.
Hanging by one hand, the muscles in his arm and shoulder protesting the effort, Nicholas pulled himself up and grabbed the rope with his other hand. Slowly he climbed hand over hand up the cliff, his right leg banging painfully against the weathered rock the entire way.
Rannulf caught him by the back of the belt and hauled him up over the edge. Before he had a chance to open his eyes, Catrin’s sweet weight settled against his side.
“Thank God,” she murmured, pressing kisses over his face. He opened his eyes when he felt a teardrop land on his chin. “I thought you were gone.”
He raised one shaking arm and brushed his fingers over her cheek. “You should know by now I’m not so easy to be rid of.” He sighed, holding her tightly against his trembling body. She buried her face against his chest. “Did he harm you, love?” he asked, dropping kisses on her hair. “When I saw him—”
“I’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Just take me away from here.” She began to sob.
“Don’t, love. I cannot bear it,” he whispered into her hair.
Raising her head, Catrin swiped away her tears on her ragged sleeve. “’Tis just that I thought I’d lost you.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “It would take more than the likes of him to keep me away from you,” he murmured.
They lay huddled together for a time, listening as Rannulf and Ian conferred in low tones, then Rannulf hastened back to the cottage.
After a few moments he returned, carrying Gillian in his arms. “She’ll be fine, with some rest,” Rannulf said, setting Gillian carefully onto the ground next to them.
Catrin sat up and the two women clung to each other briefly.
His knee protesting the movement, Nicholas pushed himself upright. “Is that bastard dead?” he asked, tilting his head toward the ravine.
“I think his back is broken,” Ian said. He coiled the rope and slung it over his shoulder. “Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving wretch.”
“Does anyone want to climb down there and get him?” Rannulf asked.
“Let him rot,” Nicholas said. “’Tis no more than he deserves. Rescuing his corpse isn’t worth risking our lives.” Slowly rising to his feet, he let Catrin bear some of his weight, holding her tightly against him. “We’ve got far better things to think of,” he said with a tired smile. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Nicholas settled back in the thronelike chair in his chamber at l’Eau Clair, tightened his fingers over the heavily carved armrests and sighed. He couldn’t help but recall how impressed he’d been by this chair when he’d taken the wardship of l’Eau Clair last year.
He’d been a shallow creature then, too easily swayed by the appearance of nobility…too stupid to know his own mind.
And his own heart.
Even when he left court for Wales—was it only a few weeks ago?—he’d cared too much for the opinions of others, of the king, and too little for his own worth.
Other men had protested the king’s petty tyranny…and some had survived his subsequent wrath.
Nicholas grinned. He’d not be so compliant again!
Though he couldn’t be sorry the king had sent him on this journey, for through it he’d gained his heart’s desire.
From this day onward, he’d let the woman with a warrior’s heart be his guide. If he followed her lead, he couldn’t go wrong.
A light rap on the door heralded Catrin’s entrance.
“Still lazing about, I see,” she teased with a pointed look at his bandaged leg.
He rose slowly to his feet. “Not for long.”
“Nicholas! Sit down at once!” She hurried to his side and tried to nudge him back toward the chair. “I didn’t mean it—’twas a joke, nothing more.”
He wrapped his arms about her, savoring the way she nestled into his embrace. “I cannot sit here, wondering if you…”
She poked him in the ribs. “If I what?”
“If you meant the promises you made to me, the last time we were in this room,” he said with a glance at the bed.
Her cheeks flushed. “Nicholas—how can you speak of that now?”
His arms still around her, he limped back to the chair and pulled her onto his lap. “How can I not speak of that which is most important to me? You made a vow to me, Catrin. You swore you would be mine, be my love, the mother of our children.” He cupped her chin in his hand and gazed into her eyes. “Will you honor your promise, milady—or will you be forsworn?”
Catrin stared into Nicholas’s violet eyes, warmed to the depths of her soul by what she saw there. Love, respect, acceptance…this man—this warrior—knew her for who she was, and loved her in spite of it.
Sharon Schulze Page 25