The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  “So,” he said with a booming roar—at least that’s how it sounded—“what am I to do with you?”

  The chill plunged deeper into her spine. What did that mean: do with her? Hadn’t she spent the whole first part of this evening assuring no man should do anything with her?

  To this awful end.

  She shoved her foot into her slipper. Cold, wet mud slopped out the sides. “My thanks for saving me, sir, but there is nothing you are required, nor invited, to do with me.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I am truly grateful for the risks you have taken here,” she added. “Not only to your person, but any reputation you might have.”

  He didn’t appear overly concerned about that last, considering that nothing about his grey-eyed, taut-bodied regard changed. He didn’t appear very pleased. She didn’t have many choices. She cleared her throat.

  “You wouldn’t be pilgrimming towards Saint Alban’s Abbey, now, would you?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, I didn’t think so.” She took a breath. There was one other option, much closer, although she did not know the way herself. But perhaps this knight did. Of course, it was not the safest option. Papa had always said Lord Aubrey of Hippingthorpe, who had estates nearby, was a man with a ridiculous name and a most dangerous temperament.

  Well, Gwyn decided, pushing her foot deeper into the cold muck filling her slipper, danger was really quite relative now, wasn’t it?

  She looked up at her saviour. “You wouldn’t be able to direct me towards Hippingthorpe Hall, would you?”

  The smallest flicker altered his gaze. “Are you to name every stop along the road to York?” he asked coldly.

  She drew back, hugged her tattered cloak around her shoulders, and lifted her chin a little bit. “No. Of course not. My apologies for all the…troubles. May I recompense you?” She began fumbling with the bag of silver tied around her waist.

  “No.”

  “Are you certain? Your tunic was torn, and…?” She drifted off as he crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her like he might some heretofore-unknown insect.

  “Well, then,” she remarked brightly and turned on her heel. With great dignity, she began hiking down the highway, a lone, dark, limping figure, damp skirts clinging to her knees, which she kicked away on every alternate step.

  “For certes, I stepped onto a strange path when I left the house tonight,” she muttered, pushing unruly strands of muck-covered hair out of her face. “If I thought life was a thing in my control, I have been proven wrong.” She fumbled to remove the heavy clump of fabric that edged its way higher and higher between her legs. “And I do not like that.”

  Behind her, Griffyn ‘Pagan’ Sauvage stood for a long time, staring down the road. A breeze crept up and blew persistently around the hem of his cape.

  The last thing he needed, the very last thing in all the world, was another burden. Tonight of all nights.

  Griffyn’s mission was clear and uncomplicated: Prepare England for invasion. Lure the powerful, enlist the merchants, persuade the wise, and bribe the fools, but come hell or high water, clear the way, because Henri fitzEmpress, Count d’Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and rightful king of England, was poised to blow through the country like a tempest and conquer it from Sea to Wall.

  Landing in secret on the English coast six months ago, Griffyn had met with dozens of war-weary lords since then, men balanced on the edge of a knife, and convinced them Henri’s blade was the sharper. He had done things no other man had been able to do, and he was planning to do them one last time, tonight, in the most vital meeting of his entire mission. At a remote hunting lodge half a mile off the king’s highway. One carefully-arranged meeting with the most powerful baron in Stephen’s realm, the earl of Leicester, Robert Beaumont. Turn him, and they had the country.

  The name of that hunting lodge? Hippingthorpe. The very place she’d asked to go.

  Could she be more in the way? Literally, in his path.

  The fate of two kingdoms rested on this meeting. Turn Beaumont and England would fall like chaff.

  And Griffyn could finally go home.

  A flash of pain eddied into his chest. Dimmed by time, it was always there, a burning ache: home. Sweetly scented hilltops, primeval forests, and heather bracketing the everlasting moors. Mountains and seas. Wild, windswept, home.

  He did not need a distraction. Not tonight, not ever.

  He watched her lone, dark, limping figure diminish in the distance for a moment longer, then cursed softly and swung away.

  Chapter Five

  Gwyn sniffed and peered optimistically up the highway. Then she scowled. St. Alban’s did not appear to be any closer. Then again, she’d only been walking for about ten minutes.

  “I suppose I’ll have to sleep in a hollowed tree stump tonight, and hope no wild boars find me too tempting to resist.” She wrinkled her nose. “With the way I smell, I’ll attract them from all around.”

  She glanced up at the sky. Clouds were moving in. Her brows came down in an angry glare. “Perfect. I could have predicted a storm. Of course it would rain. Why not send a cloud of locusts and splay me with boils next? ’Twould be a fitting end to this wretched night.”

  She was trembling from head to soggy foot, chilled from the outside in. Her fingertips were numb, her knees trembling from cold and spent emotion. Lifting a hand, she wiped her nose and scrubbed at her eyes, which were beginning to leak. “No crying,” she ordered in a furious whisper. “You brought this on yourself. Headstrong, foolish, wretched girl.”

  She kept walking, stumbling through mud puddles and over a small crest in the road. Her legs wobbled and threatened to give out fully. Part of the reason became clear when she looked down: the heel of her slipper had given out completely.

  She plunked herself on the ground and wrenched it off. Accursed thing. What good was a pair of shoes if they couldn’t stand up to a night of combat? Her dress was torn from collar to waist, and she clutched feebly at the shreds of silk, trying to pull them tighter, feeling colder and more alone than she ever had in her life.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The question came from above. She craned her neck back and stared into the pewter eyes of her saviour. He sat astride his raw-boned horse with an easy grace, and against the backdrop of night sky and blowing tree limbs, appeared even more the mysterious presence he’d been when he stepped out of the shadows and saved her life.

  She lifted the slipper into the air. “My shoes are wet.”

  The grimness in his face shaded with something else. “What are you doing?” he asked again, his words a deep rumble of masculinity.

  “I’m going north.” Hot tears pushed against her nose.

  He nodded, then paused. “That’s a very general area.”

  She tried looking fierce. He appeared undeterred, kept staring at her with those unfathomable eyes. She began again with frigid dignity, her only defence against the panic and tears welling up inside her. “I wish only to go north and am beset with people who wish otherwise. May I not simply walk along the king’s highway—”

  “No.”

  Angry tears pricked harder.

  A dark gaze slid down her cloak and up again. “You are not safe on the highway, and certainly not alone.”

  She could feel the tears coming, poking hotly at her nose. “That is unfortunate, because that is what and where I am. And it comforts me. Being alone is a common state. Whereas sitting in the mud is not.”

  He shifted on the horse and when he spoke this time, it was softer. “So come with me.”

  “I don’t know where you’re going.”

  He laughed, a low, pleasing sound that smoothed the edges of her fear. “You don’t know where I am going, mistress? I am going to warmth and a bed. Whereas you are going into certain danger, if you continue on alone.”

  “I am well used to being alone. What I am not used to is my feet hurting as they do, or my dress sticking to me as it does, and…Perditi
on!”

  She stared glumly across the highway. Wind rustled the reeds and grasses along the side, making a soft hissing sound. Dark clouds were rolling in, blotting out the stars. She glanced up to find him, of all things, smiling. She frowned darkly “Think you ’tis amusing?”

  “Nay.” He shook his head back and forth, a swipe of enigmatic darkness against the blackening skies. “I just…did not expect such…candor from a maiden.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I’ve had much exposure to many of the things men do so well.”

  He arched a brow.

  “Poor governing and rich cursing,” she responded to the silent enquiry with an airy nonchalance. Mud pressed against her buttocks.

  “Rich cursing,” he mused, his gaze travelling over her hunched figure. “And poor governance. What else, I wonder?”

  “Being witless when it comes to direction and a distinct desire to not ask for help,” she said in a warning tone.

  It did not seem to deter him. His slate-grey eyes were warmer now, almost blue, and fairly danced with mirth. “But I am not lost, mistress.”

  “I am.”

  “Thank heavens you are with me, then.”

  She snorted in a very unladylike way. It was sinful really, Gwyn decided glumly, getting to her feet. Such handsome amusement in the face of her plight.

  She glanced back down the road and caught sight of a hand peeking out of the bushes. Small and white, it could have been anything at this distance. But she knew it was a hand. A dead man’s hand.

  It was too much. She squeezed her eyes shut as her belly rolled over. Her head lolled to the side and she stumbled sideways a step.

  He slid off his horse and was at her side, steadying her.

  “I am sure I can make my way if I could but find my horse,” she said weakly. His hand rested on her back, his hip pressed up against hers. He pursed his lips as if about to speak, but said nothing.

  She started disentangling herself; the heat from his body was too unsettling. As she pulled away, her hair tugged as it caught on the innumerable and exposed metal rings of his mail hauberk. They stared at one another through the webbed strands of dark hair, then, with a faint sigh, he bent to disentangle her. She waited patiently while he unlaced each curl and set it free.

  “You could lash goods on a ship with this kind of netting,” he muttered at one particularly stubborn knot.

  A trickle of soothing heat ran around the edges of her heart again and she sighed. Startlingly long-lashed eyes lifted and peered through her hair. “You are fine, mistress?”

  The pain in the back of her skull started travelling forward. “Absolutely fine.”

  He loosed the last curl and arranged it around her face in soft, knotted waves. “You might have just flown away.” His breath floated past her ear as he spoke.

  “W-what?”

  “You could have simply flown away to escape. Your hair is as soft as a bird’s feather and as black as a raven’s.”

  She blinked vapidly. “Raven?”

  “The bird?”

  “Oh, ravens.” A wave of nausea rolled through her. Her head whipped with a new surge of pain, and she moaned softly. “My head hurts.”

  “Be gentle with it.”

  She pressed her hands against her temples. Watery mucus flooded in her mouth. “By all the saints, I am a fool,” she muttered.

  “We’ve all been the fool one time or another, myself more so than the rest.”

  She couldn’t respond. Her stomach was roiling and rolling, its contents burbling and burping and demanding to be freed. St. Jude, not in the middle of the king’s highway!

  “Oh God,” she moaned softly, her head lolling to the side.

  He lowered her gently to her knees. Palms splayed out in front of her, she knelt on the ground like a dog and rocked back and forth, filling the air with soft moans.

  “Go ahead,” he murmured, lifting the hair that had fallen in front of her face. He tucked it behind her ear, but when the curls slipped out, he swept them up and kept them in his hand.

  “Oh, I can’t,” she cried, then did.

  After, he led her to a hollowed tree trunk filled with fresh rain water and cleaned her up. He helped her wash her face and hands, cooled her head, and made her laugh twice, which was really more than she could have expected, given the circumstances.

  “Well then,” she said in a shaky voice, after it all was over. “I suppose we can see to the defence of the bridge now.”

  He stared a moment, his jaw opened slightly, revealing even, white teeth, then he started laughing. Rumbling, self-assured masculine laughter. “They wouldn’t have a chance against us, Green-eyes.”

  She laughed weakly. “None a’tall.” Then she passed out.

  Chapter Six

  When she came to, she was sitting on something soft. Moss. She ran her fingers over it, then realised she was propped against the crunchy bark of a tree. She sat up. Her saviour was crouched on the balls of his feet, watching her.

  “How long?” she murmured in a broken whisper.

  One of his shoulders lifted and fell. “A moment. Two.”

  “Good heavens.” She pushed herself straight. “My apologies.”

  He rose and brushed his hands across his thighs. “Not required. You’ve had a fright, a fight, a serious knock to the head, and almost got married. ’Tis enough to send any maiden swooning.”

  “I didn’t swoon,” she retorted, stumbling to her feet. “I fainted, which I have ne’er done before.”

  “Mmmm.”

  She looked at him glumly. “What now?”

  He clucked to the black behemoth of a horse standing a few paces away. The fur-knotted beast came and her saviour mounted with a graceful swing of his body. He leaned over and extended a broad, calloused hand. “You do not think too highly of men, Green-eyes, but your choices are limited. I will not take you against your will—”

  “Then—”

  “But I will not leave you.”

  Nothing could have stopped it. Tears began pouring from her eyes en masse, like passengers fleeing a sinking ship. She lowered her head and the tears dripped down her cheeks and off her chin. She heard a muffled curse, then felt herself being lifted into the air, slid against the warm fur of a horse, and deposited on an even warmer lap of hard muscle. She started mumbling through the cascade of tears.

  “I have to g-get home.”

  “Where is home?”

  She snuffled. “Saint Alban’s.”

  There was the briefest pause. “You, a monk? I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  She smiled just a little.

  “Well, ’tis too far away with a storm coming and Endshire’s men on the highway,” he murmured. “And I have places to be. I’ll take you somewhere safe and warm and dry.”

  “But—”

  “And later, I will ensure you get to Saint Alban’s.”

  “Your word, sirrah?” she pressed. “You’ve no idea how I need to be home. Have I your most solemn word?”

  “My most solemn word, lady. I know all about needing to be home.”

  “I can never repay you.”

  “You never have to.”

  Fear and exhaustion corded together and pushed her over the cliff of decency and common sense. She had dim memories of gripping the only ballast available, his torn tunic, and burrowing into the granite-hewn structure that lay beneath. Through a fog she recalled pressing herself into the warm hardness of his body, unmindful of the iron rings digging into her skin. One hand went up around the strong column of his neck to steady herself, and her face rolled into his chest, where it lodged for a good two minutes. All in all, a less-than-comfortable ride. Or it should have been.

  It was not. Although his thighs were as hard-packed with muscle as the arms that surrounded her, his lap was as welcoming and warm as a fur-laden bed. She wanted to snuggle in deeper, and only the dim knowledge of a morning to come kept her from following the impulse.

  His arms wrapped on either side of
her loosely as he held the reins low on Noir’s withers. He clucked every so often, sometimes to her, sometimes to the horse. Noir responded by quickening his pace, she by nestling further into his body, purposefully forgetting about the dawn.

  And she talked to him. She talked because the night was dark and a storm was rolling in. She talked because panic was nipping at her heels and if she stopped, she’d slip into insanity. Reason enough, but still a weak excuse to tell him all the mundane details of her life.

  In fact, she realised in a dim corner of her mind, she was pouring out information like a water spout, just as if he cared. Perhaps, she reflected later, he had asked some small, leading question to still her panic, but that was a poor excuse to chatter nonstop until the man’s ears were numb and his mind mush. She talked about big things and small, about how she hated dealing with merchants and how she loved marinated mushrooms.

  When his replies came in the form of nods and “ummm’s”—which could denote disinterest but, to judge by the look in his slate-grey eyes whenever he dropped them to her, was tolerance—she spoke haltingly of how she missed her mother, how she was sometimes irritable when she meant to be kind to her friends, her father, who was now dead too, and how she was coming to accept the fact that she was terribly, crushingly alone.

  She talked herself back into a calm, then bounced atop his muscled thighs in silence. After a moment, she pushed back her hair and angled a careful glance up.

  He was staring at the sky. She looked up too, but clouds scuttling across the sky were of little interest, so she looked back at him, her gaze travelling over a face that was turning out to have fine, noble lines and a most disconcerting handsomeness. Not that she cared, of course. Still, one could not help but notice, for goodness sake.

  Without warning he dropped his gaze. “What is your name, mistress?”

  She stiffened. The unguarded Countess d’Everoot had already proven to be a mighty temptation. Sooth, just six months ago the Duchess of Aquitaine had to flee from three matrimonial-minded abduction attempts on her travels home following her divorce from the King of France.