by Kris Kennedy
Bent over the keyhole, Bayard looked back and raked a leer down her gown. “I’m sure we can find some means of payment, Mistress Thread. Come inside, and we’ll discuss it.”
Stunned but unsurprised, she went cold as he plunged the key into the lock.
“No,” she whispered. “I will pay the fee.”
“No you won’t,” said a low, calm, chilling voice from behind.
Bayard tripped backwards in shock and Magdalena spun to find a cloaked man had materialized from nowhere.
“Who the hell are you?” Bayard snapped, grabbing hold of the door handle to steady himself.
The man ignored him and looked down at her. “Is this man bothering you?” he asked.
Magdalena stared. He was tall and armed and dark in every way, anonymous as night, bearing no markings. He wore travel-muddied boots that reached to his knees and a long, heavy cape. A shapeless hood was pulled up over his head, shadowing his face, but little glints of the setting sun reflected in his eyes. At his wrists, silvery mail peeked out from under a long-sleeved tunic.
“Is he bothering you, mistress?” he asked again.
She dragged her attention to Bayard, whose jaw dropped, clearly not anticipating she would seriously consider the query.
“Occasionally,” she said softly.
The stranger grinned.
Bayard’s face flushed deep red. “See here, now, who are you?”
The man turned to him and said softly, “Do you not know?” as if he ought to know.
That brought a pause. Bayard considered him with his jaw half dropped, like a sail sagging on its mast, his breath loud and labored as he stared at this man who did not seem worthy of note, and yet felt so very…worthy of note.
The shadows had deepened, so it was difficult to discern much. His cloak did look costly, if travel-worn. But then, there were many travel-worn men on the roads these days, highborn and low, so that was unremarkable. More than the cloth, though, there was something about him, something that bid one to pay attention. Perhaps it was the tilt of his chin, or the confidence of his mien, or the cultured accent that spoke to at least a passing acquaintance with nobles and royalty.
Certes, assistant reeve Bayard thought the question alone a compelling enough case, and subsided from his puffed-up state with a wave of his hand.
“Of course, a thousand pardons, my lord.” He cleared his throat. “You seem to have caught us at an awkward moment, sir. Dame Thread and I were just finishing up some business.”
“Is that what it was?” The man smiled and put his hand on Bayard’s shoulder. “Stop, then.”
Bayard paled and took a faltering step back. The nobleman took it with him, his hand pressing down hard on the reeve’s shoulder, who stared in astonishment at this apparition of civic-minded dominance.
“Yes sir,” Bayard stammered.
The stranger smiled and abruptly released him, but Bayard backed up another cautionary step before clearing his throat yet again, then tugging down on his velvet tunic.
“Well, now, in consideration of your rather surprising interest in the matter, my lord, I’m willing to leave things go for the time being.” Bayard stabbed his gaze to Magdalena. “But don’t think any dealings with him will save you from the consequences of your impudence,” he muttered.
“No, of course not,” she said, despite feeling entirely as if she had very much been saved from her own impudence by the dark-eyed stranger.
Bayard cast her one last, revenge-filled look, adjusted his cloak, and trudged off like a fat vertical pennant against the pink slash of sunset that sat low and brooding on the winter horizon.
Chapter Three
TADHG LOOKED DOWN at the woman. She wore silk, but it was frayed at the edges. She came to about the bridge of his nose, this plain little merchant in her dark green cape. The hood framed a face that was unremarkable in every way, from its brown hair and clear brown eyes to the faintly freckled nose and a small, anxious furrow between her eyes.
“I thank-you, sir. I do not know why you did it, but I am in your debt.”
He shrugged. “I’ve a soft spot for women telling off port reeves.”
Surprise lifted her eyebrows, then she laughed softly. “Port reeve assistant.”
“They are worse than the other.”
She laughed again. This laugh, it was good. Slow, with a throaty rasp at its base, like the wave that lifts ships. She seemed unaware that her slippers were in a puddle between the widely spaced cobbles. She was motionless but for the green silk of her headdress that danced in little shivers all along its hem. A lock of hair had broken free from its confinement. She reached up absently and pushed it back.
That’s when he noticed her hand was trembling.
It made him want to give her a moment to recover. It was a small enough thing. What harm could come from such a small kindness?
“The man is a fat fool,” he said, to comfort her. Calling people names often had that effect.
“You know Bayard?” She took a breath. “He may be fat and a fool, but he has resources I have not.”
“Well, you certainly threatened him quite convincingly,” he said.
That earned a faint smile. “Oh yes, I am fierce with my words. But I have nothing to back them up. The mayor is as corrupt as he. My threats mean nothing. I have no recourse. There is nothing to be done.” Her words grew softer and softer, until they became almost silvery.
“There is always something to be done,” he said bracingly.
Her eyes touched his. “I have not found that to be so, sir.”
He tipped a tiny bit closer. “Think small, lass, and you’ll find a way.”
She turned her face up, and in the last light of day, he stared down into eyes that were dark and, as it turned out, quite beautiful. “How small, sir? For my hopes are very small indeed, and no course of action has yet opened itself to me.”
“This small,” he said, and held up the little green bundle he’d picked off Bayard the fool while he was backing the man up, hand on his shoulder.
She stared at it swinging from the tips of his fingers.
“You stole that!” Shock filled her words, and accusation, yes, yes, all the expected things. But also the bright, excited note of glee.
He did like gleeful women.
He dropped the pouch into her hand.
She looked at it, then up at him. She had complicated eyes, he realized now, filled with color and deep emotion and, right now, shining at him as if he was some sort of hero. Ergo, eyes to be avoided.
Her mouth, on the other hand…one did not wish to avoid this mouth at all. One wanted to ravish it. The corners of it tilted upward, denting the creamy skin of her rounded cheeks. She was smiling at him, and it was quite a beautiful thing.
How had he ever thought her plain?
“Oh.” Softly, softly, the word came out as an exhale. “Oh.”
He regarded her grimly. Women should not be permitted to go about saying ‘oh’ in such low, breathy ways, not when escaped tendrils of amber-brown hair were being lifted in the breeze and tossed around what turned out to be a heart-shaped face, and certes not when those strands got caught on a lush and full bottom lip. There should be laws against this sort of innocent, powerful allure. One such as she could topple kingdoms of wise men.
Fools, of course, would pass her by
Which meant she was safe enough. Except from him.
Voices broke out from the other end of the quay. They turned. The reeve's assistant was coming back along the quay with an even more officious-looking man in his wake. On their heels stalked several armed men.
Goddammit.
“Mother Mary,” she said in a desperate whisper. “What more can go awry?”
Tadhg shared the query.
There was nothing for it. He made his decision in a heartbeat. Sliding his hands up her arms, he spun her and almost flung her up against the side of the nearest building, then reached up and tore off her headdress.
&
nbsp; “Good heavens,” she cried, her hands flying up to capture the silky veil, but he'd already pulled it off and was tugging off her distinctive cloak next.
“Mon Dieu,” she gasped, grappling for the cloak, but he fisted it together with the veil, down by his hip, then stretched out his other hand and planted it on the wall beside her head, blocking her face from the interlopers hurrying down the quay.
“Kiss me,” he ordered.
Her shocked face stared up at him. “I b-beg your pardon?”
“Kiss me, then run.”
“What?”
“If you kiss me, you're a whore. If you stand there staring, you're a merchant with a pouch of stolen buttons in her hand.”
A second's pause, then she pushed up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.
Dizziness and heat swooped in like hunting birds for Magdalena, dispelling sense and reason and anything else that might have been of use to her at the moment. She had barely touched her lips to his when he descended without mercy, his mouth hard and slanting. There was no prelude, no warning, no kindness or care, no quarter given. She was a whore and he was having her.
He played the ruse exceptionally well.
He plowed her mouth open with teeth and tongue, explored the depths of her mouth with sinful abandon. She could do nothing but cling to him, her hands around his neck, her head forced back, her spine cupped, her body...thrilling.
Madness. Madness, all.
The hand not holding her cloak and wimple closed around her hip and began to tug up her skirts. She made a feeble attempt to stop him, but his grip grew fierce, and he yanked the gown, dragging it up the side of her leg until she felt cool air on her shin and calf.
Her head spun as if she'd been twirled like a top. Picked up by a bird and sent flying.
Her knees grew weak, but she did not break the kiss. She could not. He'd become a field of energy, the way a metal is pulled toward iron, or how one drop of water clings to another. She was affixed to his kiss, to his chest, which she'd somehow pressed up against, to his shoulders, which she'd somehow wrapped her arms around, to his tongue, which was tangled with hers, his hot male breath, his cunning male hand, his hard knee now making all manner of incursions between her thighs, and she, she, reveling in it.
Then—it might have been an hour, or five seconds—he pulled away, took his heat and his kiss and his hard hands and that soaring sensation, took it all away and broke the kiss.
For a second, his head hung beside hers. “What is your name?” he asked softly.
Her name? What was her name? “M-Magdalena.”
He repeated it, "Magdalena," so it became a hot, accented breath of her name, then he slid his hands down to her elbows and pushed her away. She stood wavering, bereft, panting against the haberdasher's wall.
“Run," he said.
She stared. “I—”
He gave her a little push. “Run.”
She turned blindly and stumbled into the alley, hurrying through the labyrinth of back streets linking the seedier parts of town. It was only when she stumbled out to more respectable streets, blocks later, only when she slowed her pace and caught her breath, only then did she realize he’d thrust a pile of coins into her hand as well as the pouch with all her precious buttons.
She stared down in amazement.
It was enough coin to buy fifty passages through the extortion-rich waters of Saleté de Mer.
TADHG WATCHED HER rush away, his body filled with a low humming, heart hammering faster than any kiss should warrant.
He’d had no intention of doing anything remotely sacrificial—intervening had merely prevented them from entering the office and discovering the captain trussed-up like a Christmas boar—but when she’d been so exquisitely disconsolate, so fiercely foolhardy…well, a man had to applaud spirit. And sometimes, help it along a bit.
And thus, he was in precisely the sort of trouble that could from such a ‘small thing’ as a kindness done.
He turned back just as the officials and their guardsmen reached him.
“You scared off my doxy,” he complained in an accent reminiscent of the French court as they grabbed him.
He let them throw him up against the wall, but after searching him and not finding what they were looking for, they were quick to believe his story, that they’d erred, somewhat gravely, in accosting a significant count from a duchy in the south—they were never clear, later, exactly which duchy it was—a man who’d done nothing more wrong than hire a whore.
The reeve was especially penitent after Tadhg made a rather significant contribution to the town’s coffers, to ensure, Tadhg explained sternly, better protection for noblemen innocently strolling down the quay, looking for whores.
The reeve quite agreed. Bayard eyed him in suspicious, sullen silence.
The group spent a few more useless and confusing moments milling in front of the office, Bayard trying to explain what had happened, without actually explaining what had happened, in case his own machinations were revealed.
Tadhg contributed nothing to the conversation. He just watched the door. No one made a move toward it. Finally they marched off, still officious and confused as to what had in fact happened.
Tadhg melted back into the shadows and made his way into the town, to find the street of tailors, and locate Magdalena-Of-The-Complicated-Eyes, to retrieve the blood-red ruby dagger he’d dropped into her basket of greens when he kissed her like a whore against the side of a haberdasher’s shop.
MAGDALENA STOOD UNDER THE SMALL TOWER of the town gates, negotiating with Gustav the head gatekeeper for her little shipment of buttons and accompanying cloaks to go out without paying the port’s excessive and extortionate surcharges. Magdalena far preferred Gustav’s more moderately extortionate surcharges, and he was more reliable into the bargain. Moreover he never propositioned her; he was happily married with six children who needed feeding more than Bayard did.
“That will be a three deniers, mistress,” he said with gallant bow as he swept the satchel she’d handed over into a little wagon behind him. It was laden with other smuggled and untaxed goods, a hooded driver already in position. Gustav did a lively trade.
“It will go out before the bells chime,” he assured her as she handed him the money from the pouch the dark-eyed stranger had stolen for her.
She looked back over her shoulder, into the town, her heart still hammering from excitement.
It oughtn’t be hammering at all, or if it was, it should be from something far darker than excitement. She’d barely escaped a terrible fate at the hands of a very dangerous man. Oh, he had implied he was noble, and fooled Bayard forthwith, but not her. One only need look at him to know he was danger incarnate. All those weapons. The hard gleam in his eye. The thievery.
The kiss.
From start to finish, that stranger was naught but trouble.
And yet…
And yet, the mischievous glint in his eye, the roguish smile, his hopeful spirit…it reminded her of a time in her past when she had been filled with such things.
His kiss, on the other hand, filled her with something she’d never before felt. Her face flushed just thinking of it. The flush spread downward.
“You seem happy this eve, Mistress Thread,” Gustav observed, stuffing the money in a pouch under his cloak before nodding to his deliveryman. The man took up the reins and started off under the lifted gate.
She realized she’d been smiling. She turned around, assembling her face into something more befitting a poor merchant widow.
“It is nothing. A chance meeting that elicited some old memories.”
He beamed at her. Gustav was always happy when he made money. “They must be fine memories then, Mistress Thread.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Very fine. And very old. Hardly worth recalling. Thank-you, Gustav.”
She swung her threadbare cloak out and started back down into the shadows of town, but this time, the shadows of the tall, encroaching buildi
ngs made no impression on her, for she was already long gone in her mind, remembering the kiss of the stranger and the way it had made her feel.
As if she was flying.
Chapter Four
“THERE IS NAUGHT to worry on, my lord,” said the mayor of the little sea-shit town, Saleté de Mer, as he wiped his chin free of duck grease.
Geoffrey d’Argent, Lord of West Sherwood in England and, assuming all went well, soon to be lord of a great many duchies in France, watched the mayor shovel more food into his mouth.
“We have the quay locked up tight,” Mayor Albert assured him as he chewed. “There’s been no word of men seeking passage on any ships to England, but in an excess of caution, we’ve rounded up anyone who looked even remotely suspicious, for you to question.”
“Good.” Sherwood took a restless turn around the well-lit great hall of the mayor’s abode. “And no ships are allowed to leave port until they’ve been searched by my men?”
“No ships.”
“Bien.” His boots thudded softly as he paced the plank floors.
The mayor went back to his repast, which appeared to be never-ending. It was only the two of them, and a few servants and soldiers scattered at the far end of the room. But down here, by the braziers, it was only Sherwood, the mayor, and his endless dishes of duck and goose.
Sherwood took another impatient turn around the hall.
The mayor lifted the edge of a linen tablecloth blotched by old stains and dabbed at his chin. “Never fear, my lord. Your outlaw won’t make it out of Saleté de Mer alive.”
“You do not know this outlaw,” Sherwood muttered as he stopped at one of the tall, narrow windows.
“What is there to know? He runs. We catch him. We hang him.”
Sherwood turned from the window. “And turn him—and anything found on him—over to me, as the king’s representative. Trinkets, keys, coins, messages: everything comes to me.”
The mayor waved his hand. “Of course, of course, you’ve said that several times already.”
Impatience sharpened his words, but Sherwood did not care. Mayor Albert was not assisting him in this mission out of a sense of goodwill or some civic-minded ideal; Sherwood had the weight of King Philippe of France behind him in this. The French king wanted what Sherwood was seeking, and the mayor wanted the king’s goodwill.