Innocent's Champion

by Meriel Fuller

  She shook her head. ‘But it’s not solving the problem in the long term, is it? Ansel can’t watch me every hour of every day. He has other work to do and John is sneaky—he would have found a way to get to me, somehow. Finding my brother is the only solution, believe me. I’m sorry, Gilan, I know you don’t like this, but you are my only hope. You have to let me come with you.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Like a pall of dense grey smoke, cloud clumped on the horizon, then edged across the limpid sky above, obscuring the silver arc of the moon. To the west, brilliant streaks of the dying sun dimmed suddenly, then veiled and, at the bottom of the towering cliffs of the gorge, the light darkened.

  ‘Matilda, you have to go home,’ Gilan said. A single raindrop touched his face, a cold pinprick. ‘Where Henry is going…where I am going, is no place for a woman.’ Was it his imagination or did he hear the note of resignation in his voice?

  ‘But—’ Matilda protested, attempting to decipher the contours of his face. All she could see in the growing blackness was the decisive flash of his eyes, the glimmer of his hair.

  ‘Besides, it’s unheard of, a woman travelling with a group of men who aren’t related to her, or part of her household.’ He cut across her answer, his tone deliberately stern. ‘I told you all this before.’

  Edging closer to her horse, she clutched on to the bridle beneath the animal’s chin, as if to give herself the extra strength she needed to argue with him. ‘But, Gilan, I’ll stay dressed as I am!’ As if to emphasise the point, she yanked her hood more securely over the velvet fall of her hair. ‘No one would ever guess I was a woman.’

  Somewhere, high above them, an owl hooted, calling to its mate, a haunting, lonely sound.

  A jolt of desire scythed through him. I’d know, he thought. The woollen leggings fitted snugly to her shapely calves; the tantalising curve of her bosom pressed against the voluminous tunic. And it wasn’t just her figure beneath the clothes, he thought, it was everything about her: the graceful, efficient way she walked, the fragile curve of her jawline, the exquisite smoothness of her skin peeking out from beneath the hood.

  ‘They wouldn’t guess, would they?’ she asked.

  He would be a fool if he agreed to this. It was wrong, all so wrong. Women weren’t supposed to roam about the countryside dressed as the opposite sex; they were soft, vulnerable creatures who needed to stay within the relative safety of their castle walls. But Matilda’s home wasn’t safe and now she was pursuing the only solution open to her in order to rectify that situation. Most women would have probably resigned themselves to their fate long ago, had they found themselves in a similar position, but not Matilda. She was so different and he could only approve of her tenacity and determination. She had defied him, but strangely, he applauded her defiance, admired her. Her obtuse, stubborn behaviour had burrowed deep within him, sneaking beneath the ironclad coating that surrounded his heart and coaxing it back to life.

  He sighed, sticking one foot into his stirrup and swinging up into the saddle, tanned fingers wrapping around the rubbed leather of his reins. ‘No, I suppose they wouldn’t guess,’ he said finally, looking down into her expectant face. This was wrong, all so wrong. She should be tucked up in a cosy manor somewhere, a doting husband looking at her fondly, a trio of children playing at her feet. A slew of rain chased between them, spattered against his cloak; drops of rain glittered on her cheek. ‘I will pass you off as a guide—do you know where the crossing is over the river into Wales?’

  ‘Er…yes, why of course I do!’ she blurted out inanely, a surge of joy coursing through her at his tepid agreement, squashing down the flicker of doubt that rose up momentarily. She had been over the crossing once, with her father, and that had been several years ago. But surely the memory would come back to her once they neared the river.

  ‘Mount up, then,’ he ordered her. ‘I want to catch up with Henry before this rain becomes any heavier.’ He glanced at the rolling black clouds above their heads.

  She sprung into her saddle with all the agility of an acrobat, her face bright with hope. ‘Thank you, Gilan,’ she said, wriggling her hips in the saddle to adjust her seat. ‘I know this wasn’t an easy decision for you, but I promise you, I won’t let you down. I’ll be safe enough, you’ll see.’

  Raindrops sluicing down his skin, trickling down beneath the collar of his tunic, he dug his heels into the muscled flanks of his horse, doubt clagging his throat, a sour taste. She would be safe from Henry and his soldiers, he would make sure of that, but would she be safe from him? Tugging his eyes from the plush curve of her upper lip, a traitorous leap of memory surged through him and he turned his face into the strengthening rain, praying for self-restraint.

  * * *

  The rain continued to batter down. As the pair rode down the gorge, Matilda’s horse plodding docilely after Gilan’s springing destrier, the raindrops hammered down relentlessly. Soon, the intensity of the downpour made it difficult even to see a few feet in front of them; it was lucky that they only had one path to follow.

  Matilda bowed her head, very much aware of how fortunate she was that Gilan had agreed to take her along. She wasn’t entirely sure what had persuaded him in the end; he had been so adamant at Lilleshall that she should stay at the castle and he was certainly not the sort of person to give in to feminine wheedling. Blinking up through rain-soaked lashes, the water stinging her eyes, she studied his figure riding up ahead: immense shoulders, powerful back, sitting easily in the saddle, and his bright golden hair, pale and luminous, shining out through the greyish gloom. What had made him change his mind? Despite her own assurances, she knew she would be an encumbrance to him, but then, what choice did he have? Miles from anywhere, there was no one apart from him to take her home and make her stay there, and his duty lay with Henry. He hadn’t time to take her home and then double-back. Thank the Lord he had caught her at this point and not at the start of the journey when he would have surely marched her homewards by the scruff of her neck.

  The water had begun to seep through the thin wool of her hood and crawl uncomfortably down her neck. She wiggled in the saddle, the coarse wool of her leggings damp, itching against the delicate skin of her thighs. ‘Gilan!’ she called out. ‘Can we find some shelter? This rain isn’t going to stop.’

  He drew on the reins, reluctantly, shifting his hips round to face her. Matilda sat on her horse, every part of her dripping, saturated with water: her faded hood, her long, spiky eyelashes, her clumsy boots. Behind her, frothing rivulets of water tumbled down the sides of the gorge, gathering momentum, carrying small rocks in their bouncing streams. Such a gorge, with its loose, fissured rock, would be notorious for landslips; it wouldn’t be long before a large boulder came down those sides, dislodged by the force of the rain. He didn’t want to be around when that happened.

  ‘How much farther until we are out of here?’ he shouted at her.

  ‘Not long.’ She raised her voice against the clattering rain. This part of the land was familiar to her, at least. With her family, she had travelled on a regular basis through the gorge to visit an elderly aunt of her mother’s, on an estate nearer to the sea. Swiftly, she quelled the pang of nostalgia that rose within her; no, it would not do to dwell on those halcyon days when her father had been alive, when her brother was her constant companion. Those days were over, they could never be brought back.

  ‘Matilda!’ Gilan yelled at her. A look of pure, intense sadness crossed her face and tugged at something deep within him.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, throwing him a wan smile, kicking her horse so that she drew alongside him. ‘There’s a group of caves at the end of the escarpment, on the face of the cliff. We can shelter there.’

  Gilan nodded silently, his face shining with rain, the water highlighting the carved beauty of his cheekbones. He held on to his reins, indicating that Matilda should lead
the way, gritting his teeth as her knee brushed his as she moved past him.

  They emerged from the narrow path of the gorge some moments later. The land opened out before them in a sodden vista of flat plains and drainage channels, the rain moving across the flat countryside like a fine-needled curtain. Gilan screwed his eyes up, searching for a flash of red and gold, a sign of Henry, but found none.

  ‘This way,’ Matilda said breathlessly, steering her horse up to the right, through an area of low scrub and gorse. Beyond he could see several dark fissures marking the limestone at ground level: caves, and lots of them. She paused in front of the largest gap in the rock face: a triangular opening, as tall as a man and as wide as a barn door. Her horse lowered its head, then stretched its neck to try to reach a sparse crop of grass spurting out of the rocky ground. Hesitating, Matilda observed the cave in dismay, the full reality of the situation into which she had so willingly thrown herself suddenly taking shape before her with sharp intensity.

  What had she done?

  A horrible, debilitating realisation tugged at her brain. She had been so pleased with herself, so happy that Gilan had agreed to take her along with him, that she had failed to consider even the most basic details of the journey. As the rain continued to pour down around her, she sat ramrod straight on her horse, frowning intently. Her hands froze around the reins, courage failing with every breath. She was about to share this cave, this very small space, with a man she barely knew. A man she had met only yesterday. A man whose devastating presence sent reason flying, a man whose unexpected kiss had made her senses reel, a kiss that she now could not forget.

  Behind her, Gilan jumped down from his horse. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he said, the rain funnelling down over his hair, dripping off the ends of his ears. As she stared down into his silver eyes, her heart squeezed, gripped by longing, a yearning that she couldn’t explain, couldn’t even begin to understand. Her chest quivered with fearful excitement. Suddenly the prospect of dealing with her brother-in-law didn’t seem so bad at all.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Er…look, maybe we should keep riding after all, at least then you can find Henry. We’ll waste too much time if we shelter here.’

  Hanging the reins of his destrier over a rock, Gilan threw her a sideways look, frowning. ‘Henry would have no intention of riding in this weather,’ he said. ‘Believe me, he would have sought shelter far sooner than we have. We’ll find him easily in the morning, he won’t be far ahead.’

  ‘Then, why can’t we see him? Why can’t we find him?’ She swept one hand across the vast plains, disconcerted by the edge of shrill desperation in her voice.

  He frowned, coming towards her and placing one hand on her horse’s neck. ‘Why are you so concerned? It will be much more difficult for you to maintain your disguise once we find him. At least you only have me to contend with at the moment.’

  And that was precisely the problem, she thought. Alone with him, she felt decidedly unsafe from her own desires. Shifting miserably in her saddle, cold water seeping through her thin tunic down the length of her spine, she tucked her chin down into the damp folds of her hood, avoiding the drilling power of his gaze. ‘I think maybe you were right, Gilan,’ she managed to splutter out. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I should go home.’

  The hot brilliance of his eyes swept over her, openly mocking. ‘You’re changing your mind?’ he said, incredulous. ‘After all that effort you’ve put into persuading me to take you along? You decided to change your mind now? Why?’

  She flinched slightly as his words rapped into her. How could she tell him? How could she tell him that being this close to him sent her whole body into a flutter of excitement, of anticipation? Even now, with his hand on her horse’s neck, close to the curve of her knee, her senses ran amok, scatting wildly, shredding her train of thought, her calm composure. His presence turned her into someone she had never been, the type of woman she feared, a woman who was out of control, a slave to emotion, to feeling.

  ‘I…er, well…’ She shrugged her shoulders, eyeing the mouth of the cave warily. ‘I thought it was better if we carried on, that’s all.’ Even to her own ears, her excuse sounded lame.

  ‘That’s not it. You were the one who suggested we find shelter,’ he pointed out, raising one eyebrow, watching the shudders rack her slender frame. ‘And you’re freezing. It’s madness not to stop now. Why do you suddenly want to carry on? To go home?’ He tilted his head to one side, a quizzical look on his face.

  She pursed her lips, and sighed. ‘If you must know, I’m not in the habit of doing things like this.’

  He smiled, teeth flashing white in the gloom. ‘Which bit? Riding around the countryside dressed as a boy, or sleeping in a cave with a man you hardly know?’

  Sleeping in a cave with a man you hardly know. His words pressed down into her; a flush of hot embarrassment coursed through her limbs. ‘The…the last one,’ she muttered, closing her eyes in shame. Oh God, why had he made her admit such a thing?

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he answered, reaching up and encircling her waist with strong hands. Before she even had time to squeak a protest, he had lifted her down, keeping one hand on her upper arm to steady her as he propelled her towards the dry innards of the cave. ‘I’ll keep well away. You’re safe from me.’

  Turning away from her, he returned to his horse, unbuckling the saddlebags slung on to the rump of the animal, the lie scorching through his conscience, a flare of brilliant light. But if he had any respect for Matilda, or any sense of civility at all, then he would listen to the voice of self-restraint in his head and keep his distance.

  ‘You stay here whilst I try to find some dry wood.’ He pushed Maltilda into the dark confines of the cave, shoving his saddlebags to one side. ‘You might want to take off those wet things,’ he added, casting a critical eye across her thin, sodden clothes, her hood drooping forlornly around her pale face. Already she was shivering, a bluish cast to the skin around her mouth. Ripping open one of the saddlebags, he rummaged around and extracted a woollen blanket. ‘Here,’ he said, shoving it at her crossed arms, ‘you can wrap yourself in this when you’re done.’

  His words blazed a trail across her raw senses. Undress? Was he completely mad? It was bad enough that she was alone in a cave with him, but to be naked and alone in a cave with him—that was sheer foolhardiness. She lifted one finger to her mouth, touched her bottom lip, experimentally. His devastating kiss still lingered there, luscious and full-blown; she would do well to remember what he was capable of. She wrapped herself tightly in his blanket.

  He returned some moments later, grinning, clutching a bundle of sticks. His sudden smile lit up his face, made him appear younger, more boyish somehow. ‘I found a dead tree that had fallen into one of the other caves. There’s enough wood to keep a fire going all night.’

  ‘Great,’ she replied tonelessly, standing back in the shadows, desperately wriggling her icy toes to try to regain some feeling in them. How stupid she had been to not wear woollen stockings beneath her leggings; in her haste to leave Lilleshall, she had shoved her bare feet into the rough boots without a second thought.

  Gilan crouched down at the cave entrance, placing a pile of dry leaves and sticks on the rocky ground. Extracting a flint from the leather pouch that hung from his belt, he struck a spark, immediately coddling it within the leaves, feeding the small flame until it grew and seized on the dry wood criss-crossed around it.

  ‘There,’ he said, satisfied as the flames reached higher. ‘I’ll go and fetch the bigger branches now.’ He jerked his head up at her, taking in her appearance in one swift glance: the lumpy boots poking out of the bottom of his blanket, the bulk of her hood pushed back across her shoulders in an effort to hide it. ‘It will give you time to change out of those wet things.’

  ‘They’re almost dry,’ she protested, clutching her hands across her stomach a
wkwardly. ‘It’s hardly worth my while.’

  In the flickering shadows of the cave, his eyes sparkled with diamond fire. ‘Matilda, either you remove your clothes, or I will do it for you. I’ve seen men twice your size cut down with the cold and suffer with it. I’m not doing this to deliberately thwart you, I’m telling you to do it for your own good. ‘

  And with that he lowered his head beneath the low stone lintel across the opening, and disappeared.

  Watching his receding back, Matilda clamped her lips together mutinously. Typical! Dispensing orders as if she were one of his foot soldiers, not some noble lady! And then the outrageous threat that he would remove her clothes if she refused to do it! As if he would do such a thing! She watched the flames, her hands clutched around the edges of his blanket, not wanting to think, not wanting to move. Exhaustion made her brain swim; her eyes smarted with tiredness.

  The heat from the flames rose up, touched her face like a balm. She sighed, closing her eyes briefly. It seemed a long time since she had delivered Katherine’s daughter, a long time since she had had any sleep. And yet, the thought of any sleep at all with Gilan in the cave seemed outrageous, laughable, somehow. Sinking to her knees before the dancing flames, she picked up a stray stick, poking at the innards of the fire to send up a shower of sparks, aware of the tension stringing through her body, the wet garments sticking uncomfortably to her flesh.

  The cave entrance flickered with the fire’s lambent glow as Gilan dragged the heavy branch up through the gorse. The horses were quiet, chomping steadily on a small patch of skimpy grass growing to one side of the cave. Leaving the branch, he went over and made sure their reins were tied securely.