by Tamara Leigh
Certain her brother’s men were too outnumbered to aid her, accepting it was too late to have anything to lose, she demanded, “Where is my brother?”
Griffin de Arell stared, and in that moment she realized anger, like fear, had a smell all its own—sharp and acrid, as she imagined fire would taste if one could touch tongue to it. And he had a right to be furious. Were it a man who had bested him in sight of his retainers, his pride would be injured. But that it was a woman and witnessed by his enemy’s men…
“My lady!” Sir Victor again, his tone warning she had gone too far.
But it was too late to turn back. “Where is he, Baron de Arell?”
He drew a breath she hoped was meant to calm rather than ready him to move against her. “Had I to guess, I would say The Boursier has gone down a hole.”
More derision as, before all, he marked her brother a coward.
“Where?” she snarled.
The wolfhound growled again, and when its great head and shoulders rose to the left of Griffin de Arell, she startled.
“Blessed be!” the baron rasped as a line of blood welled on his whiskered neck.
More growling, and now Quintin felt the wolfhound’s hot breath ripple across her dagger-wielding hand and curl beneath her jaw.
“Down, Arturo!” Griffin de Arell bit as Quintin turned her face toward the beast whose teeth were bared and body bunched as if—
“Stand down, my lady!” Sir Victor shouted.
She would have if not for the iron band that turned around her wrist and wrenched her arm up and back. Then her feet came off the floor and she fell back. It was a short fall to the cloth-covered table, but she landed hard amid the sound of toppled goblets and voices that had been lost but now were found—shouts of surprise, outrage, her name.
She had her breath, and her head had not hit so hard she should lose consciousness, but all went black. However, when she tilted her head back, she saw it was only the darkly-clad Griffin de Arell pinning her to the table, jaw hard, eyes glittering.
Only Griffin de Arell. Was there a greater understatement?
She started to breathe deep, but when her chest rose toward his, made do with less air.
“Will you give over?” he asked in a voice so devoid of drollery she did not recognize it.
Surprised she still possessed the dagger, she said, “Will you get off me? ’Tis unseemly this.”
“What is unseemly is a guest drawing a dagger on her host. And cutting him.”
She opened her mouth to berate him for provoking her, but he was right. Fear over Bayard’s fate and anger over the baron’s suggestion he wed her so a De Arell might finally lay hands on Castle Adderstone had caused her to behave in a manner unbecoming a lady.
Grateful the other occupants of the hall now voiced their astonishment so loudly none could hear what passed between them, she choked down pride and said, “Forgive me. I did not intend that to happen.”
“The dagger, Lady Quintin.”
Knowing if she did not relinquish it, he would take it from her, she uncurled her fingers. “’Tis yours.”
“So ’tis.” He swept it from her palm.
She gasped. “I did not mean it is yours to keep!”
He pulled her off the table, and she so awkwardly stumbled against him she would have become a heap at his feet had he not gripped her arm.
Beset by the not entirely unpleasant scent of his man’s body, she lurched back and searched out the Wulfrith dagger he held at his side. And just beyond it, the wolfhound stood, fiery eyes awaiting hers as if he wished her to challenge him.
She returned her gaze to the dagger. In Griffin de Arell’s hand it looked less formidable, shorter and narrower than when she had held it. But that was fallacy. If he chose to wield it, a deadly thing it would be. And not merely because of a slip of the hand.
“The meal is at an end!” he announced, though most were already on their feet. “Be about your duties.”
As the castle folk obeyed, Quintin winced over the cut on Griffin de Arell’s neck, quivered over his flared nostrils, swallowed over the black of his blue eyes. “The dagger is not yours to keep, Baron.”
He slid the blade beneath his belt.
She was tempted to reclaim it, as he must know—perhaps even wished her to challenge him, the same as his dog.
Proceed carefully, she silently warned as she should have earlier. “I spoke true when I told I regretted cutting you. Upon my word, it was not intentional.”
He lifted a hand so suddenly she thought he meant to strike her. Instead, he swept fingers over the cut on his throat and glanced at the crimson streak. “That is the least of your offenses against my person, Lady Quintin.”
True, for she had bled his pride.
“And the last offense.” He pulled the meat knife from her girdle and tossed it on the table.
Chest constricting, she peered across her shoulder. Amid the disarray of those withdrawing from the hall, she found Sir Victor’s gaze that had never before shone with such urgency. He and the other Godsmere knights were surrounded by Blackwood men, and they had been relieved of their weapons.
She moistened her lips. “It does, indeed, grow dark. ’Tis time my escort and I departed.”
“Past time your escort departed.”
Though prepared to be excluded, the fine hairs prickled across her limbs. “Baron, pray hear me. I—”
“Sir Mathieu! See Godsmere’s men are removed from Castle Mathe as hospitably as possible.”
Quintin longed to strain against his hold, but her struggle would cause the Godsmere knights to further risk their lives. Thus, she once more sought Sir Victor’s gaze and inclined her head.
“Very good, Lady Quintin,” Baron de Arell said. “Mayhap you are not a lost cause.” His choice of words were a reminder of when his son had made sport of Bayard’s eyepatch and she had bemoaned King Edward’s hopes for the De Arells.
Lest her control slipped before her brother’s men were clear of the hall, she seamed her lips.
“There is, indeed, hope for you,” Griffin de Arell said as Godsmere’s knights were marshaled outside.
When the doors closed, she looked up. “You have made your point, Baron. And I am repentant. Now, ere more damage is done—”
“I have not made my point, Lady Quintin, and you are not truly repentant. But I will, and you shall be, regardless of the damage.”
“Baron—”
He pulled her after him along the back of the dais, and she did not resist, hopeful he but wished to put fear in her before tossing her out with Godsmere’s men. And greater hope she had when he strode toward the doors leading to the inner bailey. But moments later, she was drawn up the stairs.
Did he mean to allow her what he had earlier refused? Though the possibility ought to gladden her, desperation wound through her. If he now permitted her inside his father’s apartment, it was because Bayard was not there. And if he was not…
They reached the landing, and she followed him down the corridor toward the narrow stairway. But he stopped short of it and threw open the door to the chamber he had said belonged to his senior household knight, whom she now knew to be Sir Mathieu.
He pulled her inside. “Yours for the duration of your stay,” he said and released her.
She whipped around. “What say you?”
The smile that lifted his mouth was far from limp. “As you boasted to Sir Victor, you and I yet have games to play.”
So she had boasted, so sure of herself she had wished him to hear. Now she was not sure of anything save that she had made matters far worse.
“For the disgrace you made of my hospitality,” he continued, “I will be compensated.”
“Disgrace to which you added by landing me on the table,” she snapped.
“Had it not been me, ’twould have been Arturo, against whom you would have fared most ill, for he is young and still much in need of correction—rather like you.”
Anger jerked thro
ugh her, but before she could respond, he jutted his chin at her waist. “Unfasten your girdle.”
Ravishment was the compensation he sought? “I will not!”
She knew big men could move fast, her brother the perfect example, but she was unprepared for the speed with which De Arell did so. The Wulfrith dagger appearing in his hand as if it had leapt there, he lunged forward.
Quintin screeched and threw her arms up, but there was only air where he had been.
“Not your virtue, my lady.” He held up her girdle from which the elaborate scabbard was suspended alongside the simple one that was as absent its meat knife as the other was absent its Wulfrith dagger.
He had cut it off!
“So worthy a blade requires a worthy sheath,” he said and pivoted.
“Baron!”
He lifted a key from a hook beside the door, raised it. “To ensure untrustworthy guests do not take advantage of De Arell hospitality.”
“You would lock me in?”
“Though I care not to be your jailer, especially as ’twould be a poor start to our marriage should our relations come to that—”
“’Twill not!”
“—I will not see my people further troubled or scandalized. Rest well, Quintin Boursier.”
She launched herself at the door, but he was on the other side before she reached it. Then the key turned in the lock.
She landed a fist on the door. “You cannot do this!”
No response, only the firm tread of his retreat.
She struck again. “You cannot!”
Now the quick, vicious bark of what sounded like a small dog, then voices. Not caring to whom the latter belonged, she pounded on the door. Again. And again.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Is she as lovely as Rhys tells?”
Griffin turned to the young woman of ten and seven who had exited her chamber, then glanced at the boy at her side. Though the first was illegitimate, he did not think the two could be closer were their blood mixed from the same two pools.
Three years past, Griffin had received a missive from Thomasin beseeching his aid in escaping the lord to whom her mother gave her in service before abandoning her for a man. The proof provided that she was the daughter of Alice, whom Griffin had loved, had delivered him to the girl’s side. That day, he brought her to Blackwood, not to live as a commoner, which was all she asked of him, but as a lady bearing his name.
Rhys had resented her—for all of six days. Though Griffin was uneasy with expressing affection, when Thomasin had come off the stairs with the motherless little boy on her hip, he had felt fatherly stirrings for the one whom obligation had caused him to claim. And more than stirrings all these years later. Thus, when she threw off her noble side in favor of the common, he corrected her only if improper behavior upset the household. Such had become rare, but he worried how Boursier would take to a wife whose untamed side would test his patience. For Thomasin, more than the possibility of his own gain, Griffin hoped the Baron of Godsmere forfeited all.
With his daughter and son staring at him out of eyes as blue as his own, his hard, angry reaches began to contract, though still Lady Quintin protested her confinement and Ulric’s little dog protested her commotion.
Thomasin peered down the corridor at the door which lightly shuddered with each blow. “Rhys tells she is lovely,” said she who was not as plain-faced as most believed, “that though her hair is rather short, ’tis black as a raven’s wings.”
Ash-black, Griffin silently corrected, as of a raven soaring above a consuming fire, its wings flecked with ash. “She is lovely,” he conceded, keeping to himself the possibility her beauty was exclusive to outward appearance, “as you would have seen for yourself had you been in your chamber earlier.”
Her smile wavered, but she offered no explanation, nor did he require one.
“Why is the lady in Sir Mathieu’s chamber?” Rhys asked.
“And why have you locked her in?” Thomasin glanced at the key Griffin held, frowned over the cut on his throat.
“For her protection.”
Rhys’s eyebrows shot up. “From what?”
Grateful the boy had not completed his sums soon enough to join the meal belowstairs, for it would not do to see his father bested by a woman, Griffin said, “The lady trespassed on De Arell hospitality.”
“You will punish her?”
“Forsooth, I have not decided what I shall do, but for now she remains at Castle Mathe.”
“For how long? She makes much noise.”
“Which the old baron will not like,” Thomasin added.
“She will quiet ere long. As for you, Rhys, come to the solar ere supper this eve. I would speak with you.”
The boy grimaced. “The eyepatch.”
“Of that and other things.” In spite of the humiliation Lady Quintin had dealt Griffin, his son must be prepared for talk of what had transpired in the hall and see clearly what his father might refuse to see if not that he aspired to provide a better example than Ulric had.
Rhys would know the true circumstances that had caused Lady Quintin to draw a blade on her host. More importantly, sense would be made of what had appeared to be a retaliatory attack. Had Griffin not landed her on the table, Arturo might have torn out her throat though he had been ordered down—evidence the dog required more training to overcome abuse suffered at the hands of a traveling merchant from whom Griffin had freed him. These things Rhys must know lest he believe it permissible to transgress against a woman.
“Continue with what you were at,” Griffin said.
“Sums,” the boy groaned. “Thomasin likes numbers. I do not.”
“Still, you progress well,” his sister said and urged him back inside her chamber.
Griffin continued to the solar and, as he entered, the lady’s protests ceased. He paused in anticipation she but drew breath, but silence prevailed.
He grunted with satisfaction—and surprise. He had assured his son she would quiet before long but had not believed she would so soon prove him right. Quintin Boursier’s claws were more easily blunted than expected.
Pacing. From one side of the chamber to the other. From one corner to the next. From the door to the bed. From the garderobe to the window. Mind mercilessly awhirl. Body miserably worn.
“Pathetic,” Quintin muttered and halted before the window, opened the shutters as she had done often these past hours, and let the night air in.
Huddling into her mantle that had earlier been delivered with lit candles, coal for the brazier, and supper viands she had not touched, she stared at the glow beyond the castle’s walls that evidenced Godsmere’s men camped there. And regretted the discomfort for which she was responsible.
Fortunately, before departing Adderstone, Sir Victor had insisted on extra time to gather provisions should De Arell refuse them entrance, forcing them to camp outside his walls. It was terribly cold, but they had tents, blankets, fires, and food to allay the worst of it. But this was only the first night. If the Baron of Blackwood did not soon tire of the game she had challenged him to play, another night they would suffer.
And her mother…
Lady Maeve would become increasingly distraught. Though she only approached the edge of something dark on the anniversary of her beloved husband’s death, what if worry over her daughter’s prolonged absence drew her to that edge? There was only her devoted maid, Hulda, to gently call her back. And what if that was not enough?
Quintin’s eyes teared. It might not be mere days ere she returned to Godsmere. It could be weeks.
Unless you become an exceedingly undesirable prisoner, suggested the Quintin who detested helplessness. Unless you so disrupt Griffin de Arell’s household he happily casts you out. And what better time than the still of middle night?
She closed the shutters. Refusing to allow her gaze to fall on the bed her body longed for, she cleared a throat earlier roughened by shouts and examined the underside of her fists from which she had pic
ked splinters gained from pounding on the door.
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she considered the platter with its cold viands and the goblet she had emptied of wine to soothe her throat. Unfortunately, there were few other items about the chamber to add to her efforts. But she would make do.
She tilted the food off the platter onto the bedside table, snatched up the goblet, and crossed the chamber.
“Awaken, Baron!” She flung the goblet at the door, then the platter, and gave a satisfied smile as the dog above once more made himself her ally.
“Baron!” She slammed a fist on the door, and several times more before she conceded her hands could stand no further abuse and scooped up the goblet and platter and flung them again.
Without cease, she shouted and beat on the planks, causing such a din she would not likely hear the opening of doors, footsteps, or the key in the lock. But he would come.
When he thrust open the door, she jumped to the side and, before his robe-clad figure entirely filled the doorway, ducked beneath his arm.
She had not expected to make it into the torchlit corridor, but there she was, aided by the baron’s underestimation of his captive. A glance to her right revealed a young woman, just past her Griffin de Arell’s son, and coming up off the stairs were men-at-arms. Futility in that direction, gain in the other, she ran toward the old baron’s apartment and felt the mantle tug at her neck. Blessedly, it slipped through her pursuer’s fingers as she flew up the steps and onto a dimly-lit landing.
Griffin de Arell’s cursing and pounding feet drawing near, she lunged for the door ahead and to the right, behind which barking and the scrabbling of claws sounded.
She gripped the handle, but just as she discovered the door was secured against her, she was wrenched back against what felt like a wall. “You are more in need of correction than thought,” the baron rasped.