Scoundrel's Kiss

by Carrie Lofty

  Pacheco tied the last of the dressings. "And what is your connection to her?"

  "We have both come from England and serve Dona Valdedrona. I am... her friend."

  "And more if you'd have your way now?" Fernan asked. "But she wouldn't have you, would she?"

  "Fernan." Pacheco's warning tone silenced him, but Fernan’s smile remained fixed and taunting—reminding Jacob that he had shed his weapons upon entering the Jacobeans' house. Probably for the best "We'll offer what assistance we can and deliver you both to Dona Valdedrona's residence here in Toledo."

  "No, no—please," Jacob said.

  "Your pardon?"

  Jacob stood and pulled on his tunic and mail, his mind turning. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, feeling the ragged scratch of fatigue and grief pressing back. He was far too tired to take care of her any longer.

  The solution was a good one. She would never forgive him, but perhaps she would live and grow strong and escape this terrible half-life.

  "I beg you," he said quietly. "Take her with you."

  Gavriel had been studying Ada's peaceful face, revisiting the violence he had felt in the brothel—that black and deadly surge. He had not held a sword in a year. He missed it, just as he lamented the loss of power, status, and authority that had been his.

  But young Jacob's request snatched him from that picture of false peace. "What?"

  "You are brothers of the Order of Santiago." Jacob met each man's gaze in turn. "And your monastery is to the east, in Ucles?”

  Pacheco nodded. "That is correct"

  "Please, take her with you."

  Old fears slithered over Gavriel's skin. The girl was dangerous. "Absolutely not."

  Jacob drew back his shoulders, a motion that must have aggravated the wound at his collarbone. But he stood straight to look Gavriel in the eye. "You owe me a debt of life."

  "Your actions put us in danger in the first place."

  "I saved you," Jacob said. "Pay me in return by saving her."

  "You're not able?"

  Those same proud shoulders slumped forward. "I... I try. All that I can think and do—it falls short." The boy no longer aimed his pleading gaze at Pacheco or Fernan. Only at Gavriel. "I ask for her sake."

  "No."

  Jacob curled his hands into fists. "You turn on a soul in need? What manner of man are you? What manner of Christian servant are you?"

  Fernan snorted. "More than you can claim, judio."

  The boy leapt. Colliding with Fernan and falling to the ground, the weight of their bodies broke a chair into a heap of splintered timber. Jacob grunted and landed a solid punch before Gavriel and Pacheco hauled him up.

  Jacob sputtered and kicked, planting his boot in Fernan's side. "I will kill him!"

  Gavriel squeezed the back of Jacob's neck until he calmed. "And I'll pretend I didn't hear you say that. The magistrate would not take kindly to a Jew making such a threat."

  Struggling to his feet, Fernan wiped blood from his mouth. "I want him jailed."

  Pacheco raised a restraining hand. "Enough, Fernan. The boy is distressed, and you test the steadiest souls."

  Fernan spit and dabbed his lips with shaking fingers, looking around to wipe them on something other than his robes. "Oh, go ahead and take her, Gavriel. What's the worst that could happen? She's a senseless, voluptuous, completely vulnerable woman who'll depend on your care for all the hours of the day and night" He snickered, but his body was still cowed. "That's hardly any challenge at all."

  "I can let him finish what he started," Gavriel said. "I doubt the outcome would be in your favor."

  Pacheco stepped between them. His age, authority and a single cautionary look quelled the fight. "You behave like squabbling children, not Jacobeans." He pointed to the adjoining room. "Fernan, leave us."

  Gavriel released Jacob and bowed his head. The brief violence had only delayed their master's decision.

  "I ask that you return to Dona Valdedrona's estate," Pacheco said to Jacob. "I'll arrange an escort of knights for you. Return with the girl's personal effects and we will discuss her care in the morning, when tempers have cooled."

  Jacob nodded, still flushed, his eyes keen. He pulled on his boots and strapped a belt around his waist He left the room after one last glance toward the woman on the cot.

  "Master." Head still bowed, Gavriel struggled for calm. "Master, tell me what to do."

  "She will be your responsibility now."

  A judgment A sentence. Not for the first time, he thought that exile would have been the wiser choice. This life of sacrifice and restraint was far too grueling.

  "And if I cannot?"

  "You will," Pacheco said firmly. "And we both know the consequences if you do not."

  Chapter 3

  Ada awoke in the back of a cart. Her head rattled as fiercely as the rickety wheels. Her stomach tightened, that place where hunger met nausea, but she thought she would never be able to use her sticky, swollen tongue again. The side of her face ached with a bruise the size of a fat, ripe olive.

  She sat up, her joints and muscles stiff. Squinting against the sun, she saw a gray donkey pulling the cart Two men riding ahead on horseback wore white robes. The one holding the donkey's tether might not have needed reins; he rode his animal with graceful ease. His tall, lean body absorbed every movement of the horse's plodding steps. The other man, however, fought his mount with stiff and jerking movements.

  Toledo was nowhere to be seen. The jagged mountains that bounded the city looked like pale blue teeth, far behind her on the horizon. Limitless grasslands stretched wide, broken only by dots of windmills, the occasional cluster of distant sheep, and the banks of the Tagus River. Its waters ran quietly beneath the bright spring sun.

  But where was Jacob? The previous night's events were a blur of colors and melodies punctuated with bright moments of fear and anger. More nightmares. They seeped into every breath, even when she abandoned herself to the throes of the tincture. She would never escape if they followed even to that otherworldly place.

  But she distinctly remembered Jacob. He would help her banish the headache that throbbed like goblet drums.

  "Jacob?" His name stuck on her tongue. She cleared her throat. "Jacob, where are you?"

  Overly loud, her rusty voice croaked across the wind-stirred mesa. The horse carrying the awkward man shied and reared, casually tossing its rider.

  "Fernan," said a third man, also on horseback at the rear of the cart. "Other horses would ride your mount better than you do."

  Tired and disoriented, Ada worked to keep up with his use of the Romance language. A Castilian dialect. Well educated.

  "But he's a gelding, Master," said the man called Fernan. "The beast should enjoy my slight imposition a great deal more than that of a randy stud." He stood and dusted half the road from his robes. With a hand pressed to his lower back, he walked toward the spooked horse. It skittered a few steps clear. "Could you assist me, please?"

  The tall man, surely a knight, pulled on the reins, bringing his horse and the donkey to a halt. He swung gracefully to the ground. The flat, endless expanse of the Mesa de Ocana made whole towns appear small and insignificant, but even against that inhospitable landscape, he looked intimidating. White robes did nothing to soften the hard lines of his face. Closely cropped hair as dark as kohl shone with highlights of red and amber, burnished by the rising sun.

  "You've been thrown three times now," he said without sympathy. "Why don't you ride with the woman?"

  "In a cart? Pulled by a donkey?" Fernan straightened his body with a jester's false dignity. "I'm still a man."

  "Then sit a horse like one."

  "Spoken with the patience and charity of a true man of God, Gavriel."

  Gavriel. That man.

  "Hello? Pardon me, but where is Jacob?"

  All three men turned quizzical looks her way. She had used English. Few people on the Peninsula spoke English, and these holy men showed no signs o
f comprehension. She tried the question again in Romance, using their Castilian dialect. "Donde esta Jacob?"

  Gavriel boosted Fernan back onto the horse and tugged the reins, looping them around his own saddle's pommel. One burden discharged—for that was how he stalked about, a man burdened by a great weight—he turned to Ada. "Your friend Jacob is on his way to the capital."

  To make sense of the words, she pushed aside the details of his body: the breadth of his muscled shoulders, the intensity of his dark brown eyes, and the unexpected glint of anger she found there. "To Segovia?" she asked.

  "Dona Valdedrona is at court with King Alfonso, and Jacob went there to meet her."

  Betrayal like a shard of glass sliced into her heart. Loyal, steadfast, and adoring, Jacob had been her only true friend m Toledo. Most were suspicious of her education and talent for languages, while others thought to use her for their ends. She had balanced them all to gain favor with the widowed condesa, relying on Jacob as her trustworthy confidant.

  And when the thirst for another sip of the tincture got the better of her, she could rely on his caring and discretion.

  That he could abandon her for the beautiful young noblewoman, leaving Ada to these men, smacked of the treason her sister had committed—Meg, who had chosen Will Scarlet over her own flesh and blood.

  But if Jacob thought to treat her so cruelly, she would leave him behind as easily as they had England. She owed him nothing.

  "Now I know where Jacob is," she said tightly. "But where are we? And who are you?"

  "We're clergy from the Order of Santiago, on the road to Ucles," Gavriel said. "To your new home."

  "Are you mad?"

  "Keep your voice down, mujer"

  The warm spring wind tossed hair in front of her eyes. She swiped it back, her fingers catching in tangles and snarls. "My home is at Her Excellency's residence in Toledo. My belongings are there, and I demand to be returned at once."

  "Your belongings are with you in the cart," he said. "And we're not returning to Toledo."

  "This is an outrage!"

  He lifted a black brow. Some men would have accompanied the move with a smile or smirk. But his face hardly shifted, pinning her with a steady stare. "I wonder, where would 'home' be today had Jacob not saved you from the auction?"

  The auction. Memories and fears and wants crowded back like a flood. Humiliation chilled her skin but ran hot through her blood.

  "Have none of you a shred of kindness?"

  Gavriel regarded her as would a statue. The elderly man shook his head, a mask of pity shrouding his aging features. "This is for your own good, child," he said.

  "More like, she brought this on herself." Gavriel stepped closer to the cart, his white robes snapping like an unfurled sail. "Before the week is out, you'll bear much worse."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your boy Jacob will come for you in a month. My task is to ensure that you are safe and free of the opium by the time he returns."

  No opium. No release. Only the terrible pains of withdrawal and the desolation of failure when she succumbed again. Always succumbing, because the alternative was simply too terrible.

  More nightmares.

  "You cannot do this!"

  "I intend to," Gavriel said, "with or without your cooperation."

  "You would keep, me captive?"

  "I'll be a kinder master than any who would've had you last night."

  She shot-to her feet in the cart, but two hands as hard as iron clamped her shoulders. For the span of a lightening flash, they were face to face. Like his hair, his eyes contained flecks of other colors—colors of sunset and the high plateau. In those eyes, she saw no glint of sympathy or kindness. Only more anger.

  A looking glass. The reflection of a rage as deep as her own.

  She smoothed her expression to match his and glanced to where fluttering white linen met the tanned skin of his neck, She licked her lips.

  And then she was back in the cart, thrust down by powerful arms. Her backside met wood. She grimaced, but a grin snuck over her mouth. He was not so impassive after all.'

  "We should arrive at Yepes by nightfall, halfway to Ucles. Sit in silence or be bound and gagged." Gavriel stepped back and sketched a mocking bow, one at odds with his stoic face. "Those are your choices."

  Ada glared at each man in turn, resting her scowl on the back of Gavriel's shorn head. He urged the horses to continue an eastward trudge, and she gripped the hilt of her dagger.

  He rode ahead of the others, back straight and eyes on the endless horizon. His agitated mind, however, returned to Ada like a thirsty animal to a stream. Queens regarded their subjects with less hauteur than she did. But unlike a subject, Gavriel was not obliged to lower his gaze or obey her dictates.

  Resentment boiled in his body, every piece of him rebelling against the task Pacheco had assigned. He would have to live with the burden or risk being cast back into the world where his need for revenge would reign unchecked. The Order stood between Gavriel and doing murder.

  His vows had been much easier to keep at Ucles. Except she would be there too, bringing with her all of the temptations life had to offer.

  No. The drowned rat of a woman was just short of a harlot, no matter her fine clothes and patrons. Scrubbed of the opiate, her blue eyes held none of the intoxicating peace he had envied. It had been a lie. She was a woman torn by vice, and the spell she had woven around him at the brothel was thankfully broken.

  He inhaled deeply. He would obey his master and do right by Ada—no matter her reluctance—and take his place as a Jacobean.

  With Fernan marginally in control of his mount and Ada momentarily accepting her confinement, the small party resumed its journey. The plateau stretched east ahead of them, bleached of every color except parched brown earth and pale green wheat and scrub grass.

  How different from where Gavriel was raised in Marqueda, a small city in Leon, the kingdom just west of Castile. Temperate and green, Marqueda supported lush vineyards and citrus and olive orchards. Sitting high on his mount, dwarfed by an endless sky and flat land, he felt exposed, restless.

  He topped a slight rise and gazed on the shallow valley below. In the far distance, a caravan of merchants plodded eastward. Men on horseback flanked three ponderous wagons, their drivers and horses. Sunlight twinkled off weapons and helmets. A flock of sheep milled in front of the lead horses, spanning the road and ambling toward the Tagus River Just to the north. The calls of the wagon masters echoed dully over the grasslands. The lead wagon driver and one of the shepherds exchanged angry gestures, their body language conveying more than Gavriel could hear of their exchange.

  Fernan nickered to his skittish mount Gavriel shot him a dark look. "What?" the other man asked. "This horse is the terror!"

  Pacheco rode alongside him. "What goes?"

  "Seems harmless enough," Gavriel said. "There, the armed men are helping to push through the sheep. Watch the woman while I ride ahead. I wouldn't put it past her to—"

  'To try and make an escape?" She had climbed out of the cart and stood just to the rear of the horses, smiling like an angel. The rough leather satchel she wore looked at home draped across her spoiled garments. She shook her head, sending shivers through unkempt hair. "What would give you that notion?"

  He tugged the reins and swiveled his mount to face her. "Get back in the cart."

  "No. What are you called?"

  "Gavriel de Marqueda. Now back in that cart before I drag you there myself."

  "We might enjoy that." Full lips curled into a wider smile. She spoke flawless Castilian, but her unusual accent fashioned familiar words anew.

  She eased nearer with the grace of a cat He leaned over on the horse, bringing his face to hers. "You'd say that to any man who has what you want," he said.

  "Si."

  "You forget, I'm not a man," he whispered. "I'm a servant of God."

  "And my captor."

  He nodded. "For now."

 
"And for my own good, I suppose?"

  'To be certain."

  She looked to his groin. Her parted lips invited every sin he could imagine, and no amount of prayer or penance could blunt the vividness of his imagination. "For my own good or for yours?" she asked.

  Fernan slid off his mount at the top of the rise, but he had eyes for only Ada and Gavriel. "No one told me there would be merrymaking on this expedition."

  "Keep quiet, Fernan, and take the donkey's leads," said Pacheco. "We must circle this impasse if we're to make Yepes by nightfall."

  "Or we could be attacked by bandits." Fernan pointed behind them. His idiot grin dissolved. "Those ones, perhaps."

  Gavriel jerked around. Nine roughly armored men rode light chargers from the southwest. Their flanking position was loose and undisciplined but retained the hallmarks of their military style. Almohad raiders. Thieves bent on finding human fodder to exchange for ransom.

  To her credit, Ada did not flinch or scream. She propelled herself onto Fernan's horse. Yanking the reins, she swiveled it around with an expert hand, belying Fernan's claim that the animal had been the source of his trouble.

  "We cannot outrun them," Pacheco said. "Nor can we fight them."

  "No, but they can—the guards who ride with the caravan." Gavriel hoisted Fernan up to share his saddle. He circled and wedged a bar across the wheels of the cart to keep it still. "Last chance to behave yourself, inglesa. Or should I waste time tying you to your horse?"

  He could have saved his breath, for she held a jeweled dagger in her hands. A determined expression hardened her features.

  "I'd have cut you if you tried." She looked him up and down with an appreciation only a corpse would miss. "And that would've been a shame."

  Her bottom still smarted from when Gavriel had shoved her into the cart, but Ada rode hard into the shallow valley. Spring winds became a torrent at that speed, flinging her hair and skirts behind her like an army banner. Her colors. She squinted against the full, bright glare of the sun on the pale grasses. The mass of wagons and sheep became clear, closer.