by Sue Wilson
"He woos her like a love-sick pup," he complained.
"And, like a pup, soon he'll exhaust himself with the game." Aelwynn squirmed among the furs, beckoning him back to her side.
"He's in danger of being led astray," Gisborne pressed. "You said yourself, the runes have foretold it."
"Not by that whelp. She's nothing. If you want her so badly, you have only to wait for her."
"You presume to have such a hold on him?"
Aelwynn's lips curled back from her teeth, a feral, self-sure grin as she trailed her nails down the length of his thighs.
"Yes," she whispered. "I do."
~*~
Sweat trickled from his forehead to his eyes despite the cold, stinging him into alertness. With effort, he lifted his head to the bleary vision of his wrists bound in leather thongs, the smear of blood like red bracelets circling raw skin. Memory and pain churned up from the black, bottomless pit where they had left him. Stifling a hopeless cry, he let his head sag back.
Mistakes...one after another...all leading here to this dismal fate...arms stretched overhead, body swinging in slow, monotonous rhythm, feet dragging shallow troughs in the snow. Mistake to come here...or was it? A sheriffdom was all he wanted. Nottinghamshire. So dearly bought. And the cost, now far more than coin.
Grief clogged in his throat. He swallowed it, mouth and tongue swollen, parched and weakened by thirst.
Smoke and mist hung in the air, layered one upon the other, freezing the acrid stench of blood and burned flesh in his nostrils. Tears coursed hot and unheeded in the fine network of lines that had begun to gather about his eyes. Through chattering teeth, he forced sound into the desolate silence. A cry. A single, endless, keening wail. The rooks perched in the tree limb above him set up a refrain of caws, beating the air with their black wings as they fled toward the canopy of the forest. Bare, ice-shrouded limbs.
Sherwood. January.
They had left him here to die.
In sleep, the Sheriff moaned, tossed his head upon the pillow, and covered the vision with an arm slung over his eyes. Dream is all, he told himself from the twilight place between sleep and waking. Only a dream. Something over and done with years ago. Never to be repeated. And yet the fragments of images dragged him under again. The darkness of oblivion battled with the stark, hoary white of the nightmare. His body, at once, remembered. The fire of the whip on his back-
No! A nightmare. No more than that. Not happening now! "Not now," he mumbled, thrashing against the loops and ropes of sheets that bound him.
"Yes...now..."
The woman's whisper broke near his ear, warm, throaty, chasing chill away. He felt her hands pull at the twisted linens, smooth across his chest in a heated caress. The ice of his dream world melted. Pain vanished-all but the unrelieved ache she had left with him. His passionate, reluctant surgeon. That he remembered.
"Thea?" he murmured drowsily.
His eyes struggled to open, fighting the leaded lethargy of sleep and the temptation to give himself-sore body, weary mind-over to the deliberate strokes of strong, sure hands. A woman's fragrant heat stretched out beside him, and he moaned softly, lids sinking shut. Did he really want to wake when he could have this dream?
Fingers spread wide, drawing hot stripes down his chest and belly. An ungentle touch met his straining sex, circled it with the tight promise of ecstasy, then abandoned him.
He groped for her, found tautly muscled thighs spreading above him and the moist cauldron of relief hovering close. He arched up, wanting her, groaning as his shaft pressed into the heat. His hands slid up her thighs and cupped her buttocks, drawing her down.
"Now, Sheriff..."
His lids fluttered open, then froze wide in horror. A silver blade glinted in the darkness, beginning a downward arc. Before he could move, cold steel met the base of his throat with a quick bite of pain.
"Almighty Christ!"
Instinctively, he jerked away. Arms flailing, he knocked the woman's hand aside, sent the dagger skidding across the rush-strewn floor. Through the glare and distortion of guttering candlelight, he grabbed what he could-coarse, brittle hair; scratchy wool tunic; a woman's wrist, tendons straining against his grip.
"Guard!"
He struggled to hold her, rewarded only with an ear-splitting yowl. Outside, the clatter of armor rose and the yowl became a curse, punctuated by the rending of cloth. The woman wrenched away from him, hurtling headlong into the shocked sentry, still rubbing his eyes from sleep. In an instant, she bolted through the open door.
"After her, fool!"
The Sheriff hauled himself to his feet, drew on braies, and staggered after the departing guard. Mildthryth caught him at the doorway, her solid bulk forbidding his progress.
"Out of my way, Millie! Let me have at the murdering whore!"
Two hands banded his upper arms, and the maidservant pushed him back into the solar. "Keep your wits, man! She's nigh whittled your neck from your head!"
He saw his own wild reflection in the woman's steady eyes. Maddened intent drew his features into a grimace of rage, and lungs labored like bellows. The truth of her words struck late, as if time were not measured properly in the haunted hours past midnight. He felt the hot collar of blood puddling in the crook of his neck, smelled its metallic odor, touched its wet stickiness with the tips of his fingers. Only then did sensation return fully-a lancing sting, a humiliating reminder.
"Did you see her? Know her? Was she one of mine? A castle woman?"
"Sh-sh. Though I came as quickly as I could, I saw nothing."
Nottingham raked his hand through his hair, scraped the last remnants of sleep from his face, and tried to reel in the runaway thoughts battering behind his throbbing brow. "Not-"
"Not my lamb!" Mildthryth was adamant. "Now put those thoughts behind you." She mopped at the cut with her tunic hem and shook her gray head to dispel the accusation. "There's not so much hatred in her 'twould let her do such a thing. My lady is fast asleep."
The Sheriff would have argued Mildthryth's certainty, but none of the brief flashes of memory fit his suspicion. Now he wondered how he could have been so easily fooled.
The tense, over-muscled thighs had not matched Thea's slender strength. The coarse hair shared nothing of the fine, burgundy-laced silk that tumbled to Thea's hips. The scent this other woman had left clinging to him, the ripe odor of hatred and musk and unwashed skin, bore no resemblance to Thea's delicate lavender fragrance. And more telling even that that-the sheer impossibility that Thea would ever come willingly to his bed.
The ring of Gisborne's nailed boots shattered his introspection. "Cousin, the watch has been alerted, but I fear..."
Nottingham guessed the truth before Gisborne finished. "She's fled."
"Or hidden herself well." Gisborne strode across the chamber and retrieved the dagger. He turned the bone-handled blade over in his palm. "Crude...a peasant's weapon."
"It would have done the job well enough."
Gisborne nodded and scuffed through the rushes, following the dotted path of blood to the bed where he held up a wadded handful of scarlet-stained sheets. "Sliced you like a pig at market, did she?"
The Sheriff waved Mildthryth and her solicitous attentions aside. "A scratch, Cousin. A pinprick, nothing more."
Disbelief shadowed Gisborne's face, and ice-colored eyes peered down the aquiline nose with a hint of disdain. "Do you reckon her motive? Could be you left the little butcher unsatisfied?"
Nottingham bounded up the steps to the sleeping alcove. "Give me that!" he said with a snarl and snatched the bloody linen from his lieutenant. "This miserable place could be crawling with assassins for the care you and your men take. Imbeciles clothed in mail, snoring to wake the dead-that's who guards my door? Damn you, Guy! If your soldiers are so ungainly they can't capture a woman without tripping over their own boots, can you at least find and arrest that sonorous idiot who preferred to sleep the night away at my expense? Find him, if you can find
no one else! Let the bastard see if he'll sleep as soundly hanging from irons in the dungeon."
Two-handed, he shoved Gisborne on his way. The iron-banded door thudded shut. "Damn them," he swore between strident breaths. "Damn them all." Weak as jelly, his knees buckled, and he collapsed on the top step leading from the alcove.
Mildthryth flew to his side, hands daubing, comforting, fluttering about like plump pigeons until he caught them between his own. "'Tis more than a scratch," she protested. "Let me call her."
He wanted that. Deep in his vitals, every humor that sang in his veins cried out for that-the deft, practiced hands that would expertly stanch the flow, then bandage him with soft, lingering caresses. He wanted that, and every dream of her taking root in his mind, in his loins.
He shook his head fiercely. How much of that dream had he ruined tonight, driven to rash action by a surfeit of wine and thwarted longing? Would she even come to him if he bade it-she, with her strong, stubborn will? Maybe all that was left to him was the nightmares. Maybe it was all he deserved.
"No, Millie. You'll not say a word to her of this mishap. A scratch is all. See? The bleeding has stopped already. Praise your saints my mysterious, fleet-footed lover had such poor aim."
Inside, his gut swam, doubts and suspicions tossing in waves of watery fear. He quelled the sea of shredded nerves and buried deep the rising swell of unanswered questions.
Looking into Mildthryth's eyes, Nottingham forced a smile of reassurance. "Go back to your mistress. Let her sleep. It's a trifling thing."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thea had not slept so soundly since coming to Nottingham. Dreams of Sherwood wrapped around her and carried her far away to a secret place, where water spilled from a high ledge over moss-carpeted rock to form a clear pool below. She stopped there after a day of gathering to bathe and rest before returning home. It was a summer day's ritual, reward for hard work, a simple self-indulgence to glide beneath the water's cool surface and imagine herself a woodland nymph ruling over her private sylvan paradise. Overhead, the sun filtered through a canopy of birch and oak, dappling the shaded pond with light. Leaves rustled in the halcyon breeze; birdsong and the babble of water were the only sounds.
She lay back on her bed of grass and let the sun dry her skin and hair as the peaceful sounds lulled her into a drowsy state of contentment. In her sleep, she sighed and snuggled into Nottingham's warmth. Her leg crossed his muscular thigh, and her hand rested squarely in the center of his chest, measuring the strong and steady thump of his heart.
He would not die on his own.
Thea bolted upright in bed, head swimming with the after-images of broken sleep. God, be merciful...the man was even in her dreams! Her heart beat erratically, and for a moment, the phantom presence of his naked thigh brushed the inside of hers. At least it was only a dream. Around her, the memories of the past night were all too real.
She slid back down beneath the covers, flinching as the furs grazed her sensitized flesh, reminding her of his touch. The sheets and pillows smelled of his spiced scent; even her skin and hair had soaked his fragrance from him and mingled it with her own. And if that were not enough, her shift had slipped to reveal the faint purple streak that mottled her breast. She ran her thumb along the bruise, remembering his mouth there and the strange, unfamiliar heat of his tongue seeking places Brand had never dared.
Small salvation that she had denied the Sheriff more. For a time she had wanted him, madly, without reason, and her denials had seemed pitifully small and transparent. In truth, she wanted him even now.
A fiery ache surged through her, ripe with the longing for fulfillment she had known last night. Her face grew warm and the heat of her blush bled furiously down her neck and through her breasts. God in heaven, who was he that his well-practiced touches had been so shamefully adequate for her? And what had she become, giving herself to such unquenchable need, and in the light of morning, lingering over every detail?
"Naught but a fool," she answered aloud. A fool who had forgotten the honest love a husband once pledged her, who was all too willing to bask in the Sheriff's accomplished artifice. A fool given to wanton lust that erased Brand to a pale, watery image, that drew her inexorably toward Nottingham's magnetic darkness. That was the Sheriff's most significant victory. Somehow he had become less a danger to her than her own traitorous feelings.
In believing him to be anything remotely human, she had forgotten everything important to her. Nottingham had eclipsed not only her memories of Brand, but also her vow to him to keep the people of Sherwood from harm. And if she had not lost her love for the wood and its simple folk, she had certainly abandoned her heartfelt commitment to them by lying with their oppressor. How easily she had let herself be ruled by unreliable passion and a heart too easily softened by the Sheriff's gentler moments!
It would not happen again. She cast aside the memories that had insinuated themselves in her mind and made her body tremble with forbidden longing. She had let down her guard with this man, and it simply would not happen again. It was time she made herself useful.
If she were condemned to this place, she would create every opportunity to undermine him, and if he had any genuine feeling for her, which he claimed, she would use that against him. She would keep her ears open, ask the right questions, and plumb the secrets of the Sheriff's stronghold until the tyrant was exposed as the traitor she knew him to be. And if God were merciful, her renewed purpose would drive out every demon with which Nottingham sought to curse her.
Robin of Locksley could not have hatched a better scheme himself if he had thought on it a sennight, and yet serendipity had given him exactly what he needed: an insider in Nottingham Castle, an intimate of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who had supposedly proven her loyalty by saving the Sheriff's life.
True, Nottingham was cunning and intelligent and far too distrustful a man ever to take such a thing as loyalty for granted. Thea was as suspect as if she wore Lincoln green and had a quiver of arrows slung across her back. But she was careful and clever enough herself. And there was something in the Sheriff that needed to trust her, as much as she needed to seek the truth behind his charade of political servant.
Thea closed her eyes and smiled, imagining the potential injury the Sheriff had invited upon himself by insisting she attend him as his personal physician. She could easily slip an evil philter into his favorite claret to unman him for a night, or season his soldiers' evening stew with roots potent enough to ensure a dire case of flux in the fields the next morn. It would serve him right, the smug, supercilious bastard.
Even more gratifying would be to hear the ever-guarded Nottingham indict himself with a slip of the tongue. If only he could learn to trust her, to take her into his confidence, as a man would with a woman he loved-
No. Not loved. He was incapable of that.
Opening her eyes, Thea looked around the chamber, and her will faltered. Could she possibly succeed at such a plan when she had heard nothing from the Sheriff in two weeks' time but foul-humored complaints and disconcertingly effective amorous invitations? Could she even escape this room with armed guards posted outside? And what of the unknown number of soldiers between her door and the castle gate?
She could muster no resource but her will, but she had that in abundance at one time, and she could have it again. Nottingham was not so omnipotent that he could crush her spirit. After all, he had made two mistakes already without realizing it. The first was bringing her here to begin with; the second was insisting that she stay.
A knock sounded at her door, and Thea clutched the shift to her breast. Her heart burst in loud rhythm beneath her ribs. Panic and anticipation mixed, leaving her weak and uncertain. Would he visit her again so soon? He was a determined man, but he did not seem to be a glutton for rejection.
"Go away!" she called out, knowing she was not prepared for their eventual encounter.
The door opened a crack and Mildthryth's kindly face peered in from the other s
ide. "'Tis only me, lamb, wondering if you'd be having a bit to eat. I've brought a tray-fresh bread, still steaming-if you've an appetite for it."
Thea's lids fluttered closed, and she mumbled a quick prayer of thanksgiving. Smoothing the bodice of her shift to cover the telltale mark on her breast, she gestured for the woman to come in.
"You are an angel, Mildthryth, a godsend."
Mildthryth thrust a well-cushioned hip against the door and backed into the room with the tempting tray. "Ah, well, surprising the sense of things that comes to me. Dear Warrin, God rest his soul, used to say I had the Sight, but 'twas only what came from living with the man for nigh a lifetime. 'Twas nothing to know he'd stayed overlong at the Trip whenever a keg was tapped fresh."
She set the tray down and dusted her hands on her tunic skirt. "Now you, lamb, I wouldn't be needing the Sight to know you didn't partake of the Sheriff's venison and drink last night, for you're nigh as headstrong as he. When you left here yesterday evening for his chambers, I feared for the man's skin, I did, such a cold rage you were in. So you threw his dinner in his face, did you?"
"Just the wine," Thea muttered. She reached for a chunk of bread, tore it in half, and offered a piece to Mildthryth.
"No more than he deserved, I trow." The woman accepted the bread and bit into the crusty piece.
Thea shrugged. "It was a disastrous evening, by his own admission."
"Then that would explain the demon from hell I saw last night. He came crashing through the corridors, his sails full of spite, lashing out at whoever dared cross him. Such a fit of hissing and spitting I never saw, and I've seen my share. And since he came from your chamber, lamb- " Mildthryth broke off suddenly. "Did he hurt you, child?"
Thea looked up, startled by the bluntness of the woman's question. Mildthryth's cherubic face had turned serious, silvery brows drawn together and her eyes sobered with concern. After a moment, Thea replied with a silent shake of her head.