Enough of women. It was time for war.
EVA felt him leave the clearing, felt his absence the whole time he was gone in an ambient, echoing way, as you might know you were in a room without any furniture, even in the dark.
Everything had come true, just as she’d foreseen. She’d given Jamie everything, her body, her secrets, her heart.
All he’d had to do was look at her with those dangerous eyes, kiss her with his scarred mouth, show her a piece of his shredded heart, and she’d given him all. She’d unleashed the river and told him everything.
Almost.
Thirty-nine
Her shame knew no bounds.
She washed briefly, but no amount of scrubbing could remove the evidence of last night. Her debauchery. It throbbed between her legs. Pounding, scorching memories of Jamie and his body. His confident, sensual assault of her body. His hands, his powerful legs, his lips on her—
Worst, he was ignoring her. He had reverted to some cold, gruff, efficient being, with a demeanor more steely than the sword hanging at his side. There were no little half smiles that made her heart sway, no dry rejoinders that made her want to keep talking because he so clearly wanted to listen. No making her feel seen.
They rode swiftly through yet another bright spring day, slowing only to rest the horses.
“I hear you tried to wrestle six men to the ground when they rode off with the curé,” Jamie said to Roger as they went. Jamie’s arms hung deceptively easy and loose, one bent to lightly hold the reins, the other to rest his gloved hand on his thigh. High boots and his cloak covered but did not conceal the truth of his muscular body, nor did the linked mail of his armor.
Gog beamed at him. “Aye, sir.”
Jamie smiled faintly. “Did you not consider you might have been killed?”
“No, sir!”
Eva sniffed. Jamie glanced over briefly. “If you had been hurt, Roger, what would your lady have done?”
Roger looked confused. He followed Jamie’s glance. “Eva?” Roger laughed. “Why, she’d have hunted them down until they were hanging from gibbets she hammered herself.”
Ry joined in Roger’s laughter, and even Jamie smiled. Eva lifted her eyebrows. “You all think this is so funny? Your chivalry, Roger, it is blinding.”
He turned to her, baffled. “I wasn’t being chivalrous, Eva-Weave.”
“This I know.”
Jamie ignored her and said to Roger, “And you are certain the six who attacked us were the same men who took Father Peter?”
“Most assuredly. I know, because one of them said, ‘Oh, Christ’s mercy, he’s only a boy. Can’t a couple of us knock him down?’” Roger grinned. “Then they did.”
Eva shook her head. “This helps not even a little bit, such foolishness.”
“Bravery.” Jamie said it quietly, but Roger seemed to sit straighter in the saddle. He did not, though, openly counter Eva.
“Yes, yes, this matters so much to you men, I know. You all must be so wonderfully brave, in the foolish things you do.”
“Better than not being brave,” Gog said, his smile undampened. “Eva, truth, you are sorely mad to complain suchly. What are we doing in England in the first place?”
She pushed back a few sprays of hair that had pulled free and were tickling around her face. “To secure Father Peter before evil men like Jamie do.”
Jamie showed no response to this impolite observation.
“Just so,” Roger agreed. “We are in England, running dangerous men to ground to rescue the curé. We chase him. You chase him, Eva. What do you call that?”
“Foolish?” she suggested, to please him.
He smiled. “And brave. Sooth, Eva, if I learned it, I learned it from you.”
She sniffed. “You are foolish to say that.”
“And you are brave.”
“We are a lot of fools.”
“Better than being a lot of cowards” was all Gog said, still grinning.
Eva stared at his familiar profile. He was moving away from her, like a ship from a dock. It was visible in everything, his actions, the way he disagreed so impolitely with her sensible thoughts, and . . . in the bright sunlight . . . was that, was that . . . blond stubble on his face?
She felt shocked. He was becoming a man, and Jamie . . . Jamie was his teacher.
Anger built to unsustainable degrees. She turned to the object of her enmity with a most noxious glare. “Certainly you know a great deal about such things, and yet you do not tire of them.” Her voice was so low-pitched it was almost a hiss.
Jamie’s head inched around. “Of what?”
“Foolishness.”
He reined abruptly to a halt. “Ry, ride on ahead with Roger, would you?”
The two took measure of the look Eva was giving Jamie, and the look Jamie was decidedly not giving Eva, and happily cantered off. When they were a dozen yards away, Jamie turned.
“Now, Eva, what were you saying?”
The mocking politeness of his tone was almost more infuriating than that Gog admired him. Than that she had bent for him. That his hand had been...
Her glare turned glowerlike. Her entire face, in fact, heated up. “Would you not say you occasionally indulge in foolishness, Jamie?”
“Let me consider a moment . . . Aye. When I first laid eyes on you and did not bind you hand and foot. And tie you to that tree.”
She nodded coldly. “And I ought to have stuck you with my little blade when I first had a chance.”
His eyes went hard. “Aye, Eva, if you could have, you should have.”
“You,” she snapped, “who would kidnap a priest. You, who are in league with the devil, you should beware.” She was close to snarling, she was so incensed. It was impotence, she realized with a sinking heart. She could not make him care the way she knew she cared. “For if I ever find less than a yard separating us and have a blade in my hand—”
“Consider very carefully what you say next, Eva.” His voice was lethally quiet. “For if I do not like it, you will be sorry.”
“You have been threatening me since the moment I met you,” she snapped.
“And delivered on them last night.”
There it was, out in the open, like a dead bird fallen onto the path between them. She practically reeled backward, stricken speechless.
His eyes were merciless. “And I shall deliver again and again, if you give me cause.”
Oh, dear Lord, she deserved to die, the way her body turned wanton at the mere suggestion he might touch her again. Again and again.
He reined his horse around in a spirited pirouette. “You’ve had my mark from the start, Eva: I am no good. Believe it. Do not tempt me again.”
Her jaw dropped. She yanked it shut. “Tempt you?”
He skimmed her body with a level glance before returning to her eyes. Level, yes, and worst of all, dispassionate, neutral. Untouched.
“Aye. For I will take you, Eva; then I will toss you aside. I vow it. That is all I am made of.”
Forty
Ragged lines of people and merchants and carts were pushing up to the gates of Gracious Hill, an ambitious little village that had sprawled into a fair town.
The spring fair began on the morrow, and the town bustled. It was filled to overflowing, and the meadows outside its walls were filled with tents and cook fires, a camping arena for merchants and shoppers from miles around.
Despite the general atmosphere of celebration, though, something dark and watchful was in the air as they rode through the tents. In these restless times, butting up against civil war, trouble came in many forms. Freebooters and bandits haunted the dark woods, because outlawry was a much safer bet than trusting your fate to a hot iron in hand or the ability to float in cold water, but there were other threats as well. Trouble came more often from renegade lords who preyed upon their own subjects. And now, armies were on the move.
All in all, it was safer to be inside walls come nightfall.
Jamie
was ambivalent about town. Gratified at the prospect of drinking freshly brewed ale and sleeping in a bed. Eager to get a good wash.
On edge, at being within walls. Trapped.
And towns stank to the high heavens. Out riding, away from large groups of people and their accumulated filth, it was easy to grow accustomed to only the faint musky odor of one’s own body and fresh air. But in town, the wastes of the world converged. Sewers running down the edges of the cobbled streets. Tanner cast-offs. Entrails. Unwashed bodies packed close together. Fires burning. Dog shit, cow shit, human shit. An unmitigated, malodorous mess.
They drew near the gates.
“Ready?” Jamie murmured, turning to Ry; then his eye fell on Eva. He went still for a few beats of his heart.
She was tossing her hair, running her fingers through it, fluffing it. Despite all the rigors of the last few days, it fell like a silky, dark curtain around her fine-cut face and proud shoulders. She pushed her cape over one shoulder and, with a twist of her fingers, slightly loosened the ties of the bodice of her gown.
His heart tightened. He’d had the privilege of unlacing her last night, but had he taken full advantage of the ability to run his fingers through her hair, to make it do . . . that? Hardly. Hair had been a low priority when his hands were on her.
Given another opportunity though, he vowed to attend it with devotion, to make it do . . . whatever she’d just made it do. Be like a flowing black river.
She hooked her arm through his and tipped her face up.
“I am full of readiness. And lest you think to ‘make me so sorry,’” she added, “do not regard this as temptation. You’ve no need to prove anything to me. I am well acquainted with what a bad man you are.”
They stepped to the gate, next in line.
The porter surveyed their faces while his counterpart began a search of horses, weapons, and packs. He took in Jamie’s weather-beaten cape, dirt-caked boots, and soiled tunic, and his face took on a suspicious slant. The hint of gray mail showing at Jamie’s wrists, added to the gleaming swords hanging from his belt and Ry’s and Roger’s, kept his tongue in his mouth, but he looked disposed to refuse entry to the small group of well-armed men who looked the part of troublemakers.
“State yer business,” he snapped.
Then his gaze moved to Eva and her river hair and her loosened ties and the softness that lay beneath. For a second, he froze. Then he sniffed, like a rabbit. He jerked straight and his eyes lost their skeptical, suspicious regard. They became positively warm.
Jamie said, “Our business is the fair.”
Eva nodded and smiled. Jamie was fairly certain what occurred next was more due to that crooked smile than anything he did or did not say.
“It’s a right fine fair, sir, and you can’t do better here in the west. But you’ll not find lodgings easy like,” the porter went on, returning Eva’s smile. He was missing two teeth, top and bottom, right side. It formed a narrow doorway into his mouth. “The town is nigh on full up. You might try up north end, near Chandler’s Way. Under the arch, on the left. There’s a woman that takes in lodgers, but she’s up the hill, and somes don’t want the extra walk, or even know she’s there. Clean and honest she is, and right good board to boot.”
He nodded and his smile broadened, pleased with his own information and, no doubt, the way Eva’s smile grew in response.
The porter looked back at Jamie, then Ry and Gog, who were lashing up bags and packs that had been searched. They all looked dirty, dangerous. Even blond Roger, with his puppylike enthusiasm and gangly limbs, had a hardness to him, come from years of living on the run, which was now translated into a hard gaze aimed at the gate porter as each moment of inspection continued.
The porter’s gaze narrowed back to suspicion and mistrust, a much wiser state for a gate porter to be in than wide-eyed and informative with lust. “And where are you all from?”
“What is your name?” Jamie asked sharply.
The porter’s face turned more sullen yet, but the commanding tone fetched a dour “Richard.”
Jamie bent close, so no one behind them heard, but ensuring Richard the gate porter, who also bent slightly forward, heard every nuanced syllable. “I am from the king, Richard Porter, and I am on a mission. If you detain me a moment longer, I may recall your name. To the king.”
The porter stayed bent at the waist a moment after Jamie had straightened, a stunned look on his face. Then he jerked upright.
“Pass on, then. Halfpenny each,” he announced, but he did not look into Jamie’s face again.
Jamie tightened his elbow on Eva’s arm and practically swung her like a dancer under the archway, dumping out the coins for the toll as he passed. Ry and Gog followed a moment later, bags searched, nothing but a hoard of weapons found. In other words, no contraband goods to be sold at fair, snuck in and therefore untaxed.
There they stood, just inside the stone walls of Gracious Hill, their first target met. It was a breathing moment, and they all used it as such.
The town bustled as people moved from shops to homes to taverns in one last burst of energy before the evening slowdown. The westering afternoon light hit the three- and four-story-tall buildings high up, but little made it as far down as the cobbles and dirt. The tops of the buildings shone glory-bright, amber light pulsing on the dark brown of crisscrossed timber frames and thatched roofs. Down on the cobbles, it was all cool purple afternoon shadows and murmuring voices and the smell of hay and iron from the blacksmith and hot suppers being cooked by the bakeshops.
Eva stood beside him, looking around, her arm still tucked in his. It seemed unconscious. But Jamie was highly conscious of the way her slim fingers curved over his mailed forearm, featherlight and firm.
“It has been years for me, Jamie,” Ry murmured, looking around. “I recall this main thoroughfare, but beyond that, I do not recollect Gracious Hill enough to say where to start.”
Jamie nodded absently, peering up the High. He too knew the town from a few visits on various tasks, but that was years gone. The king kept a house here, with a tavern belowstairs, cover for the lodgings it provided his mercenaries when on mission or the hunt. But all that ensured tonight was a place to stay. It gave no directional for locating an outlaw ransoming off a priest.
“Once, I knew this town,” Eva said blithely.
“Why do I find myself unsurprised?” Jamie murmured, looking down.
“Because you are by nature a wise and suspicious man. Now, attendez, for here is where you shall see our little alliance paying fruit.”
“Bearing fruit,” Roger muttered. He stood rigid but ready. Alert, gaze scanning between the faces and the shoes of the people passing. Orphan watch.
Roger would prove useful, if Jamie could ensure his alliance. Which he probably could. Roger was ready to come together. A few moments alone, some truths, an offer, and Gog was his. No ropes, no threats, no problems.
Eva, though . . . Eva was a different matter. Entirely. In every way. From her broken-down shoes to her fine eyes and the honed, beautiful edge of her mind. A different flavor, a different kingdom, a different matter entirely. She was a flower amid their weeds.
All around, people were hurrying, busy about their business of buying and selling and cooking and carrying well water in great buckets. Eva stood still amid the bustle, her eyes half-closed, face tipped slightly up to the golden blue sky. Then, without warning, she snapped her eyes open and started off down the street of shops.
Jamie grabbed for her arm.
She stopped and sighed. “You worry a great deal, Jamie.”
“You give me so much to worry on, Eva.”
She made a little sound of impatience “Come if you wish. But stay back,” she added, “if you have any desire to discover where our quarry has gone.”
He let her arm slide free.
Ry stepped to his side. “I suppose we should be prepared to be struck repeatedly on the backs of our heads at any moment?”
&n
bsp; “Let’s,” Jamie agreed grimly. “It might prove useful to know if there is a back entryway to where she has gone.”
“I’ll reconnoiter.” In a trice, Ry had ducked into the back alley.
Jamie turned to Roger. “Have you a need for ribbons?”
Gog threw him a startled look. “Not a’tall, sir.”
“Let’s go see.”
Forty-one
They crossed to the far side of the street just as Eva tipped her head through the open doorway of a shop, then slipped her slip of a body inside as well.
Many goods hung at the doorway of the shop across the way, where Jamie stopped to keep watch. Ribbons and needles and silk bits were piled high. Jamie positioned himself just to the side of the counter, affecting to examine the goods, while Roger stood beside him, an inch shorter and still years to grow, peering with undisguised interest at the ribbons and other bright things.
“Do girls truly desire such things?” Roger said, his voice incredulous.
Jamie smiled faintly. “Indeed. Do you not regard them?”
All around, women and girls trotted through the streets, sternly pointing or flirtatiously smiling or happily laughing, but they all had ribbons in their hair. On their dresses. No matter how poorly attired they were, there was always enough for a bright ribbon.
“I see them,” said Roger in a low voice, his gaze trained on the girls from beneath his errant lock of hair, and Jamie heard the longing in his voice.
“Does your mistress not wear ribbons?” But Jamie knew well Eva did not have a ribbon anywhere on her body.
“Nay, sir. She hasn’t . . . the time. We didn’t spend much time in towns.”
As Roger spoke, his head swiveled to follow the passing of a pair of young women in capes and hoods and long, glossy hair, who returned his look over their shoulders. They turned away and giggled, heads together, their curving backs to Gog, but their footsteps slowed by half. Jamie could almost feel the tension and desire rising out of Gog.
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