Lenore covered her face with her hands and swayed against the shutter.
“How could you not help them?” she asked haltingly.
“Have some wine,” he said sharply. “It will steady you.”
Lenore almost choked as the warm liquid poured down her throat, but it did steady her. She wavered to a bench and sat down.
As if he wanted to talk to someone, he told her of himself. His name was Geoffrey Wyndham. He was the second son of an old and aristocratic family. He’d broken with his father, who quaked at the very thought of Cromwell, over drinking and wenching, he said negligently. And having no prospects, he’d followed Prince Charles to France. There he’d raised merry hell and been somewhat surprised when the Prince had embarked for Scotland. Of course, he’d gone along, but he’d found it a cold land and dour, full of ranting Covenanters (here Lenore found herself thinking guiltily of Flora). This ride south to take the throne of England he’d considered a wild, unlikely venture, but then he was given to wild, unlikely ventures and who knew, it might have worked out.
Only it hadn’t.
So now the King was fled and with the dark he’d flee, too, and with luck they’d both make it to safety. Again he offered her wine and oatcakes. This time she took them absently and ate and drank, for she’d need her strength to get Jamie back to the Cotswolds before news of the outcome reached them—if indeed she could do it at all. ,
She pulled a bench over by the window the better to watch through the crack in the shutters. It was hot and dim and her clothes stuck to her, and there was a hypnotic sound to the low voice of the man behind her who —although she did not know it—was watching the light from the crack in the shutters play over her hair and thinking she looked like an avenging angel.
Outside she heard someone bawl, “Did ye hear, ’tis said an angel on a white horse galloped down from the sky and into the town.”
“Aye, I heard it,” answered a coarse voice. “Dashed through the city gates and disappeared, so it goes.”
“Think you it is a sign?” asked the other, awed.
“I doubt it,” grumbled his friend. What else he said was lost to their hearing. Lenore reddened at a chuckle behind her.
“So that’s how you arrived?” murmured her cavalier from his corner. “Faith, it took courage!”
“I’d have come more decorously had I thought they’d let me through,” said Lenore sulkily. “I’ve no pass—I dared not let them stop me.”
“Well spoke.” He nodded. “It seems we are birds of a feather. You flew into town unannounced—and I am about to fly forth from it in the same manner.”
“It would have done you more honor had you stayed to fight beside your King,” cried Lenore, irritated by his insolent manner.
“By now my King has fled also,” he said cynically. “You heard them say it. The pity is that my King had not the sense to see the battle was lost—as I had.”
She turned away from him in a huff and continued to watch out the window.
“Why did you come here?” he asked curiously, after a while. “There must be something that keeps you staring out the window. And surely ’tis more normal for a girl to shun a battle than to seek one.”
“I must get Jamie back before the village knows he went to fight for the King,” she admitted. “For he’s a Scot, and there are those who might kill him for it.”
“And yourself as well,” he murmured. “Since you live with Jamie—even though he’s not taken you to the kirk.”
Stung at that, she said stiffly, “Handfasting’s an old and time-honored custom in Scotland!”
“I don’t doubt it.” He sounded amused. “And clever it was of your Scottish laddie to think of it! I’ll remember that, the next time I’m in Scotland!”
She wanted to throw something at him. Instead, since the dusk had deepened, she said stiffly, “I must go look for Jamie now. Thank you for the oatcakes and wine.”
“Look for him at Barbour’s Bridge—’twas where the King went at the last,” he advised. He gave her directions, and she reached for Snowfire’s reins to lead him out.
“Nay.” His hand closed over her wrist in a grip of steel. “You’ll go without the horse, mistress. I need him to make my escape.”
Lenore drew a deep breath. Somehow she had known it would come to this. “If you do not let me take him,” she said fiercely, “I will cry out and alert the Roundhead soldiers that there’s a cavalier hiding in here.”
“And I will say you’re my doxie and we’ll go to hell together,” he countered imperturbably.
Lenore paused. It was dark in here, but she could still see the wolfish gleam of his eyes. He meant what he said, and what good would she be to Jamie dead? "I—I cannot let you take Snowfire,” she said shakily. "He’s too dear to me.”
Something in her voice must have touched the hard man who gripped her wrist. “I’ll meet you at the south wall, at Barbour’s Bridge,” he said in a changed tone. "And you can ride away on Snowfire. You have my word on it.”
She hesitated, afraid to trust him, but realized she had no alternative. She shook his hand away and flung out. His low laugh followed her as she eased through the doorway, looked up and down to see if it was safe, and then fled down the dark narrow street hugging close to the house fronts, stifling a scream as some roof tiles, loosened by the musketry, crashed down beside her.
Down dark side streets she passed; she could see lanterns waving as groups of Roundhead soldiers searched the houses, looking for Royalists. She could hear the clash of steel, and shouts, and sometimes musket shots as men were taken and dragged out. Lenore started to turn back to warn the dark cavalier but stayed herself. He’d taken Snowfire and she couldn’t be sure she’d ever see him again—let him fend for himself! With a toss of her head she pressed on, and whenever she passed a group of soldiers she cried out frantically, “Jamie, Jamie! Have any of you seen my little brother? He’s wandered off! He’s about so high.” She indicated knee-height and rushed on.
Always, they let her pass.
At the city gates she was stopped, but again the same ruse worked when she asked anxiously if she could but step outside and call her little brother and then come back in again, for she feared the dark outside. A gruff middle-aged officer peered into her face in the lantern light and said, “Let the wench out to look for her brother,” when the guard would have stopped her. Reluctantly the guard let her pass. Others, she saw, needed papers to get through. She wondered how her dark cavalier would fare.
Out she went and found her way along the south wail. The going was slippery with gore, and there were sights that made her stop and retch. Townsfolk passed her, mournfully carrying back their dead. And Roundhead soldiers, grimly bearing back their wounded and their dead. She wandered about, peering into the faces of the fallen, looking anxiously into a face here, bending over a body there. But of course, she told her thudding heart, Jamie was fled to those low hills over there. Surely he could not be hiding in the town, for there he was sure to be discovered.
She was a long way from the city gate now and stumbling over the uneven ground. Suddenly in the darkness there was a soft hoof-fall behind her and a low whinny. She turned sharply about, peering into the dark. Snowfire nuzzled at her arm, and almost at her side, so silently had he approached, was her dark cavalier from the town.
But a very altered cavalier. The moon came out for a second from behind its cloud cover and gleamed on that dark determined visage. Nothing else seemed the same. Gone was the plumed hat, the lace boothose, the satins and velvets and froth of Mechlin at the throat. Instead that same dark mocking face looked out at her from under a sober Puritan hat, and his collar was as plain as his clothes were drab and serviceable. Then the moon slipped back behind those low-hanging clouds and Snowfire was only a white shape in the darkness.
“Faith, you’re monstrous changed,” she observed in a tart voice that belied how glad she was to see him and how thankful she was that Snowfire had been brought safel
y through the city gates.
“I watched the street for someone my size and cut him down and dragged him in and changed clothes with him,” he said easily. “Too bad I had to slash this coat with my blade. It’s ugly enough without that.”
She shuddered, thinking of that sudden pouncing from the dark, the swift and silent blade . . . the bloody aftermath.
“ Tis a good disguise,” she agreed faintly. “And I thank you for bringing my horse to me.”
“It was nice of me, wasn’t it?” he agreed. “When I could so easily have ridden away and left you.”
Lenore tossed her head. “Snowfire’s devoted to me. He’d have broken free and gone home to me at the first opportunity.”
“Oh? That’s nice to know.”
Lenore was hardly listening. She was casting around her helplessly for Jamie, and so overlooked something light and steely in his voice that might have given her warning. “I don’t know where Jamie could have gone,” she said, her tone forlorn. “Think you he may have fled with the King?
“ ’Tis possible but hardly likely. Those who fled with the King will not be newcomers to his cause, but his own friends who were with him in France, I don’t doubt.”
She looked about her at the dark, low hills. “Then maybe he’s out there?” she asked hopefully, trying not to see the horrors over which she stepped as he dismounted and followed her, leading Snowfire. In the brief flashes of moonlight she was shudderingly aware of bodies tumbled about, missing arms and legs, the ground slippery with gore. Suddenly her voice died away. In that brief gleam as the moon had flickered through the clouds again, she had glimpsed a face ... a face she knew.
“Jamie,” she cried in a soft agonized voice, and knelt beside him and now the treacherous moon that had hidden him from her came out and showed him in sudden vivid light. He lay on his back with arms outflung. His eyes were open and the same clear blue, his hair was just as gold. He might have been resting, his body flung onto the turf on a summer’s afternoon after playing at bowls.
Except for the hole in his leather jerkin which was stained dark red with his blood. Except that the blue eyes which gazed up at the scudding moon saw nothing, would see nothing ever again.
“He’s dead,” observed her cavalier conversationally.
She looked up at him through a blaze of scalding tears. “I’ll take his body away,” she choked. First her blessed sister taken from her—now her beloved Jamie! “He’ll have decent burial in the churchyard!”
“Ah, that you will not,” the man beside her said silkily. “For to bear him away is to proclaim you were with him—and that’s to hang for treason yourself. And that I’ve no mind to let you do. We’ll away at once, for I hear soldiers coming and there’s no time to lose.”
“I won’t leave without Jamie!” Lenore sprang up, snatching at Snowfire’s bridle.
The tall cavalier sighed and his fist clipped her jaw. Not terribly hard, just hard enough that she slumped senseless and he reached out with his other arm and quickly caught her as she fell. Mounting swiftly, he swung Lenore up before him on the big white horse. Snowfire was rested now but nervous and eager to be away from this scene of blood and carnage; when Geoffrey dug his heels into the horse’s flanks Snowfire responded violently. Away toward the low hills they thundered with only a shout and a musket ball behind them before the line of trees had swallowed them up.
PART TWO
* * *
THE CAVALIER
CHAPTER 4
Lenore came to groggily, with a pain in her jaw and the jolting realization that she was lying flung face down across a saddle, her long hair streaming. She gave a strangled cry, and a voice she seemed to recognize said solicitously, “I hope I didn’t hurt you too much, but you needed convincing and I hadn’t time to do it more gently.”
She choked in fury as memory came flooding back to her. This madman had hit her—and stolen her horse! That he had stolen her as well had not yet occurred to her.
“Let me up,” she gasped, and a strong arm obligingly swept her up so that she found herself seated sideways in front of him with his arm supporting her. As she wriggled she realized that it was not only supporting her, but it was wrapped around her waist in a steely grip. Her hip was pressed embarrassingly tight against his hard thigh. She glared up into that dark face that gave her only half attention as his keen gray eyes narrowly watched the track for sign of soldiers. “If you’re stealing my horse, at least have the grace to let me off. I’m going back.”
“Ah, that you’re not, mistress,” he murmured. “Must I put you to sleep again to convince you?”
In fury she bent and sank her teeth into a muscular forearm. His other hand came around and jerked her head up by her long hair and he cuffed her lightly—but hard enough to whip her bright head from side to side. For the moment she had his full attention.
“Wild I know you to be,” he said in a low voice, every word increasing in coldness. “And foolhardy, too. But staying alive is a habit of mine that I plan to continue. And I’d remind you, mistress, before you decide to scream, that Cromwell’s men are all about. D’ye hanker to be dragged back and questioned?”
“I’d tell them nothing,” Lenore declared fiercely, her fearless violet eyes meeting his hard gray ones in the moonlight.
Geoffrey gave a low contemptuous laugh. “On the rack? Would you not? Or perchance encouraged by hot irons?” She fell into silence at that. Even brave men told their secrets when their bodies were broken on the rack.
“I see I have reached you,” he remarked dryly. “Don’t look' so despairing. Don’t you know there’ll be people in Worcester who sympathized with the King and will give your lover a decent burial?”
At that reminder of Jamie—who in the heat of the moment she’d forgotten—she fell to weeping and swayed precariously.
His sinewy arm tightened about her. “I wonder,” he muttered, half to himself, as he bent and pushed her down to avoid a low-hanging branch, “had I fallen, would any have wept for me?”
“Of course not!” she sputtered, dashing the tears angrily from her eyes. “You steal horses and strike down women!”
“Only on rare occasions,” he said coolly. “And if you keep your head and manage to stay silent. Mistress Lenore, I’ll even take you with me!”
Anger temporarily glazed over her grief. He sounded as if she should be grateful he’d kidnapped her! “Where are you going?” she demanded haughtily.
“Now, that I’m not certain as yet. Away. Somewhere there are fewer soldiers, if I can find it.”
“They’ll be on all the roads.”
He nodded. “And we’ll need to rest this horse if he’s to keep a good pace. About now, I should think. This looks to be a good place.”
He halted in a small copse and slid from the saddle, taking her with him. She tried to jerk away, but the arm locked about her kept a tight grip.
“No, Mistress Lenore, you’ll not be leaping astride and riding away like the wind,” he said grimly. Taking a short leathern thong from his pocket with his other hand, he tied her right wrist tightly to his own left wrist, kept the end of the thong in his hand and sat down. Perforce, Lenore sat down with him. “I’m going to sleep for a few minutes,” he told her, leaning back against the bole of a tree and stretching out his long legs.
“Sleep?” she cried indignantly. “How can you sleep with soldiers all about, hunting us?”
“Easily,” he said, his tone imperturbable. “With luck there’ll be no soldiers ride by, and you will wake me with a touch if you hear anything. Agreed?”
She did not answer and he closed his eyes, while Lenore, uncomfortably aware that her thinly clad thigh was pressed close to his lean, hard-muscled leg, tried to wriggle away. Instantly one eye opened and he took hold of her other hand, pulled her half across him, and threw his arm about her. “Hold still,” he commanded. “Your life may depend on my being able to stay awake for long hours this night.”
Indignantly Lenore remain
ed where she was, annoyed by the implied familiarity of his arm about her, even more upset by the weight of her soft breasts resting against his leather-clad, rhythmically breathing chest. There seemed to be nothing to do about it but fume, so she remained there as stiffly as she could, hating the intimacy he had forced upon her and trying to hold her whirling thoughts on Jamie’s tragic death.
Around her the woods were quiet and dark. It was hard to believe a bloody battle had been fought not so far from here.
In about twenty minutes her cavalier roused himself. “Ah, a good nap,” he said and, untying her wrist from his, stretched mightily.
Lenore who’d been tensed and waiting for this opportunity leaped up. She had almost made it onto the white horse’s back when a pair of strong hands seized her by the hips and pulled her back. With a violent kick she knocked the cavalier off balance and they landed, rolling on the soft grass beneath the trees They came to a halt with his arms locked around her and herself pinned underneath him. His dark face was so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. It smelled fresh and heady, like the tang of wine She told herself that was because he’d been drinking and tried to struggle from beneath him.
But he’d no mind to let her go at this point.
“Ah, it’s a soft creature you are. Mistress Lenore,” he murmured, one of his arms beneath her moving so that his warm hand traced along her spine and up the back of her neck until his fingers twined into her red-gold hair. “And indeed I’d prefer to enjoy you on the spot, rather than to take you on a wild ride cross country just to escape some soldiers who’d like nothing better than to kill us both, but you see, that’s the way it is.”
He rolled off her, while keeping his fingers twisted in her hair and pulled her to her feet none too gently. “I do not like to tie you, mistress for if they catch us, you might have a chance to escape while I hold them for a bit, but . . . I’ve need to have my attention elsewhere and not upon your sweet body. Could it be you’d give me your word not to try to escape?”
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