‘Will they come after us? Will they find us?’ Her fingers clenched nervously against her stomach.
He caught the fear in her trembling tone, and scowled, moving swiftly over the bumpy ground to pick up sticks for a fire. There would be time for questions later, after he had made sure she was warm and dry. ‘Nay, it’s unlikely. I think we’ve put enough distance between us.’
She sagged visibly at his terse reassurance, vaguely wondering if her legs would hold her. Their journey had been long and hard, conducted at full gallop, Bastien’s heavy arm about her offering some security. Despite being used to riding, her whole body ached from the effort of trying to stay on the horse, the muscles in her cheeks stiff from the icy wind blowing into her face.
Alice hopped from one foot to another, aware of a frozen numbness creeping up her legs. Shame washed over her, as she watched Bastien hunch down over the small pile of sticks, shame at her own stupidity, for not believing him. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for being there, at the edge of the moat.’ Her breath jagged on a rising sob, and she bit her lip to stop herself descending into a mass of quivering weeping. ‘If you hadn’t come…’
Crouched down on the earth, he paused in his efforts to light the fire, locked his head on one side, his eyes fierce. ‘It was a foolish thing to do! You could have been killed!’
‘Wh-what?’ Shuttered by the cold, her fuddled mind refused to grasp his meaning.
He stood up, stepping towards her. Dry bracken crunched underfoot, the sound bouncing up the walls. ‘Jumping off the battlements! What on earth possessed you?’ He stopped, inches away, the silver thread of his cote-hardie gleaming in the moonlight. He had ditched the rough peasant clothes in the forest when he had come around from Edmund’s attack.
‘I…h-had no choice,’ she responded jerkily. An uncontrollable shaking seemed to have taken hold of her, her hands unsteady as she lifted them self-consciously to her face. ‘I…I had to get away before it was too late.’
Bastien shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. Christ, when he had seen her there, perched up between the gap in the stone crenellations, her white veil floating in the air above, away from her, he had thought he was too late. And then, when she had jumped, straight as an arrow, her skirts flying about her slender limbs, it was as if someone had driven a shard of glass direct into the centre of his heart. In that single, heart-stopping moment, he thought he had lost her, would never see her bright sunny face again.
‘I was coming for you.’ The possessiveness of his tone wrapped about her, warming her.
‘Why?’ Her voice wavered. ‘You had no reason to. Especially after we…I treated you so badly in the forest.’
I had every reason to, he thought, yet somehow he couldn’t say the words out loud. Her quiet beauty drew him at every turn; he couldn’t let her go. ‘I knew that Edmund was up to something.’ His answer was bland, but she seemed to accept it.
‘What a fool I was!’ Alice stuttered the words out through chattering lips, bowing her head. She had been utterly and completely betrayed.
His fingers touched her chin, tipped her face so she was compelled to look into those untamed eyes of green. The weak light of the rising moon kissed her skin, turning it to pure alabaster.
‘How could you have known?’ he said gently. God, but she was stunning! Coils of her hair fell down about her face in loose wet tendrils.
Alice rubbed one ear, releasing a trickle of moat water, a rueful expression playing across her features. ‘I should have listened to you…’ She lifted one shaking hand, stretching it out towards his haphazard blond hair. ‘How is it…your head, I mean?’ Her question ended in a violent quivering rippling through her body; she seemed unable to control it.
‘It was nothing.’ He dismissed it easily. Yet when he had come round in that deserted forest, finding her gone, it had been everything. He had picked himself up, ignoring the trickle of blood at his collar, and scoured the area, his steps determined and resolute until he picked up their trail once more.
‘I’d better look at it,’ Alice ventured practically, trying to impart a brisk efficiency in her tone. What was the matter with her? Her movements were stiff, jerky as she came towards him, her stumbling feet like lumps of rock against the mossy floor.
He stopped her gently, wrapping loose fingers about her forearms to hold her away from him, smiling. How like her to concern herself with others when she herself was in trouble. ‘Alice, I think you’re more in need of my help at the moment.’ His eye ran over her shivering, shaking frame, her skin pale and luminous in the rising moonlight, her lips violet-blue. ‘You need to take off those wet clothes.’
‘Oh…’ Doubt creased her forehead. ‘Nay, it’s not necessary. I just need to sit down.’ Her face blazed at the thought of undressing before him.
But already Bastien had moved behind her, his fingers at the knot that laced her gown together. ‘I’ve seen great men felled by the cold,’ he murmured, ‘and I’m not about to let it happen to you, a girl barely half their size. Now is not the time for maidenly modesty.’
Alice closed her eyes, her body resisting, rigid against his vigorous tugging. Bastien was right about the cold, and she couldn’t unlace the gown herself. She had no choice but to co-operate and retain as much of her dignity as possible.
His big knuckles scuffed the soft fur of her V-shaped collar, as his fingers fumbled with the knotted end of the laces at the back of her gown. His heart lurched at the sensation, the delicate tickle of the fur sending his senses raging; inwardly he groaned. The water had swelled the fabric of the laces, tightening the knot fast. As his fingers worked, his eyes travelled up the delicate line of Alice’s spine, to the nape of her neck where her hair drooped precariously, heavily, in its haphazard bun. His heart quickened; he took a deep shuddering breath, as his fingers dipped behind the bodice of her dress, brushing again and again against the soft, cool skin of her back.
‘I suppose it’s quite difficult,’ Alice ventured. Her head lolled forwards; she was so tired. All that fear from before, the raw panic of having to think on her feet, knowing her whole future was in jeopardy, had been replaced by a sapping exhaustion.
‘Aye, you could say that,’ Bastien ground out. A sweet, fresh smell rose from her damp skin; he fought the churning desire in his body, his jaw rigid and set. He told himself what he was doing was entirely necessary; if the wet clothes remained next to her skin, then she would surely suffer. Concerned by the dullness in her voice, her wilting stance, he pulled out his knife, impatiently slicing through the length of criss-cross lacing. The two sides of her bodice fell sideways to reveal her damp, crumpled kirtle, and he seized the shoulders of the gown, dragging the fitted sleeves firmly down her arms, so that the skirts eventually pooled in a heap at her feet.
‘You’ve broken it,’ she chastised him miserably, raising her head in mild protest.
He didn’t reply, merely repeating his actions with the unfitted kirtle. Below, Alice wore a loose chemise, diaphanous in gauzy cotton.
‘It was taking too long—’ he rounded on her ‘—and you’re just too cold.’ He clenched his fists, trying to ignore the enticing shadowy curve of her hips beneath the thin fabric. ‘Here,’ he said gruffly, sliding out of his cote-hardie, settling the heavy fabric around Alice’s shoulders. ‘Come and sit over here, and I’ll light a fire.’ He strode away from her, leaving her to follow. She paused, savouring the weighted warmth of the pleated wool wrapped around her like a balm, stilling her shredded nerves. She tripped in his wake, holding the loose swinging sides of the cote-hardie together with frozen fingers.
Alice collapsed on to the blanket he had spread out for her, wriggling her hips to settle herself comfortably, watching Bastien as he squatted down to light the fire. Without his cote-hardie, the full dramatic length of his legs was revealed; the fine wool of his chausses strained against his big thigh muscles as he crouched over the sticks, striking a flint into a dry bundle of grass. A single str
and caught the spark, flared. Shoving it into the middle of the sticks, Bastien breathed gently on it until flames licked greedily upwards. The sudden heat knocked against Alice’s face, and she leaned into it, like a flower into the sun.
‘What happened back there?’ Bastien sat back on his heels, studying the fire. His voice was quiet.
Alice hunched forward over her bent legs, winding her arms around her shins. ‘Edmund had arranged to marry me to Lord Felpersham.’ Her voice hitched on the memory. ‘Felpersham promised to pay him a great deal of coin for me.’ She pressed her face into the warm fabric over her knees. ‘It was horrible,’ she mumbled into the cloth, her shoulders beginning to shudder. ‘They put something in my drink, I couldn’t walk…’ Huge, great sobs stopped her speech, rolling up from the depths of her chest, racking her slim frame.
‘Don’t…’ Bastien was beside her, arms coming around her back to hug her close. ‘If only I’d reached the castle sooner.’ Hot, blinding rage rose within him, the urge to kill, to kill Edmund and Felpersham for what they had done to Alice. His fingers curled in his palms, tight.
Tears streamed down her face as she turned to look at him. Her lashes fanned wetly against her cheeks. ‘Why are you being so agreeable to me? You warned me, and I refused to listen. I brought the whole thing on myself. What a fool I am!’
‘You were betrayed, Alice, by a man you had known since you were a child. How could you not trust him?’
‘I should have seen it!’ Her tears had stopped now; exhausted, her slim frame still racked with shudders, she rested her head into the wide crook of his shoulder, relishing the rumble of his low voice against the side of her face. ‘We didn’t love each other, but we both knew that. The marriage was one of convenience, but I thought it would work. For my parents’ sake.’ She hunched her shoulders into his big frame. ‘It’s difficult for you to understand.’
‘Nay, I understand.’
‘How?’
He tensed against her, silent. Alice crooked her head up towards him, trying to read his face in the shadows, sensing the tension in his body, the unspoken secrets behind his speech.
‘Now is not the time,’ he replied gruffly. ‘You need to rest, sleep.’ He adjusted his position against the crumbling stone wall, pulling her in more securely to his side. By his head, the limpid green fronds of a tiny fern clung precariously to the stone wall, sifting quietly in the warm draught from the fire.
‘I’ve known Edmund since I was a child; he was my friend,’ she said forlornly, ‘I never thought he’d betray me. I’ll never trust anyone again.’ Her voice was constricted, rigid.
‘Nay, Alice, that’s not the way.’ His low tones hugged her softly.
‘Why not—surely it keeps you safe?’
Aye, but at what cost, he thought bitterly. After Katherine’s death, he had shut himself off from the world, built a strong network of walls about himself, nurturing the memory of his fiancée in glorious isolation, but he had paid a high price. He had become cold-hearted, a ruthless brute with a fearsome reputation. Aye, he had friends, men he could have a laugh and a joke with, but he never trusted any of them completely.
‘Safe, but removed from life, from living,’ he replied. ‘You could never be like that.’ In the short time he had known her, he had come to cherish her bright ways, her ability to put everyone’s needs, however lowly, before her own, her inner courage. He couldn’t bear to think of her shutting herself off, damaged by Edmund’s betrayal, curbing her passionate liveliness, her vitality.
Sparks crackled upwards from the fire into the gloom, illuminating the stone walls around them, coating them in a rosy glow.
‘Why not?’ she responded. ‘You don’t trust anyone. You seem to cope.’
She heard his sharp intake of breath, a tension rippling through his body against her.
‘It’s no way to be, Alice,’ he said finally, his voice hollow. ‘It’s something I’m only just starting to realise.’
Chapter Fourteen
Alice’s eyes snapped open, pure fright arcing through her body. For a moment she had believed herself to be back there, at Felpersham’s castle, trapped at the side of the moat, scrabbling in the mud, helpless. But nay, she was safe. Her parcelled breath expelled slowly; relief flooded her veins. A delicious warmth penetrated the flimsy covering of her chemise; she lay on her back, Bastien’s heavy arm slung over her midriff. The sides of the cote-hardie that Bastien had wrapped her in for warmth had fallen open in her sleep, but she did not feel cold now. The heat emanating from his forearm pulsed through her, setting off small, dangerous flickers of desire. The tension in her limbs softened, her initial fear on waking revolving swiftly into dangerous anticipation.
Slowly, slowly, she twisted her head on Bastien’s tunic, her makeshift pillow, unwilling to wake him, hearing his deep, steady breathing. He lay just a fraction away from her, the heady, intoxicating vibrancy of him heating the length of her body. Her stomach somersaulted, peculiar sensations flipping through her veins. So close! In the moonlight, his tousled hair shone a pale gold colour, his bold features appearing as if carved from stone. She studied his profile: the proud, straight nose that flared around the nostrils, giving his lean face a gentler look; the full dramatic sensuality of his mouth.
She wondered at this man, this man who had burst into her life, so violently, so vividly, that all else seemed to fade dully in comparison. Why had he come after her, when she had refused to believe him about Edmund? He hadn’t criticised her, or chastised her, merely understood. He’d been kind. Aye, he had been kind, a behaviour of which she hadn’t thought him capable, this brusque, athletic man of war.
His eyes sprang open, watchful, attentive, saw her eyes glimmering wide in the darkness. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, his half-awake voice low, slumberous.
I love you. The thought, stark and intense, burst into her brain, a shocking truth. Alice gasped, stunned by the raw, naked simplicity of her feelings.
‘Are you ill?’ Bastien propped himself up on one arm, concerned by her silence. Strands of golden hair fell over his forehead, shimmering in the light of the fire. Over their heads, the wind chased gently through the ruined battlements, a drawn-out, keening sigh.
‘Nay,’ she breathed, ‘it’s nothing, go back to sleep.’ The cote-hardie slipping from her shoulders, she sat up abruptly, unable to think straight, pinioned by his incisive glance. ‘Actually, I think I need something to drink.’ She licked her lips, knowing full well that her dry mouth had little to do with thirst. Rolling sideways, she made as if to stand up, but he held her back, a hand on her shoulder.
‘Let me. I’ll fetch my flagon.’
Bastien returned a few moments later, carrying the leather bottle that had been strapped to the saddle, pulling the stopper out as he handed it down to her. ‘Here.’
She stretched out her arm, accepting the bottle gratefully. The wide, loose sleeve of her chemise fell back along her arm, revealing its white, lustrous length, the delicate wrist, the fragile crook of her elbow. Bastien stared at it, transfixed, his heart beginning to pound. Her skin looked like silk; he ached to touch, to test its fineness beneath his fingers. Sleep chased from him; every nerve-ending came alert, shivering with awareness, with arousal.
Alice tipped the wide-necked bottle up to her lips, drank greedily. She had been thirsty after all. In her haste to drink, trickles of water spilled out from the sides of her mouth, running down over her neck. Bastien followed the sparkling path of the droplets, down, down over the hollowed curve of her throat, down to the low, gaping neckline of the chemise, and took a deep, shuddering breath.
‘Oh dear!’ Alice laughed self-consciously, springing to her feet to hand the bottle back to Bastien, wiping the sides of her wet mouth with the back of her arm.
‘I didn’t expect that!’ She crooked her head to one side, attempting to smile, conscious of a curious tension between them. The air was thick with expectancy. ‘Bastien?’ she ventured, willing him to break the silence.
He didn’t answer. The moon, emerging briefly from behind a wreath of cloud, shone behind Alice’s diminutive figure, highlighting every single, delicious curve of her body through the gossamer fabric of her chemise. The soft indentation of her waist, the tempting push of her rounded breast against the flimsy fabric, the rounded flare of her hips, all were revealed to him with striking, vibrant clarity. The heart-stopping sight of her punched him, hard, in the gut.
Self-control ruptured, blunt need clawing at him, driving out all logic, all sense of right or wrong. The water bottle dropped from his fingers, landing on the mossy earth with a soft thud. Big arms reached forwards, snaring her waist, pulling her towards him, hard, close. Alice didn’t ask, didn’t question; she knew what was about to happen and welcomed it. One rough thumb smoothed away the single pearl of water at the corner of her mouth, before his lips descended, brutal, rough, demanding.
Just one kiss. That was all. Just one touch of her lips to bury that burning need that consumed him, ripped through him like a forest fire. He ducked his head, dark gold strands falling over his eyes, mouth slewing over hers, insistent, demanding. At the cool press of her lips, his blood hurtled faster, his need to claim her threatening to overwhelm him. He was out of control, desire ripping through him like a wild animal, and he knew it.
Alice sank into him, cleaving her body into his, her toes grazing the ground as he hauled her against him, feeling his hardened muscles against her softness. As his mouth roamed over hers, her breath came in short, rapid pants; huge waves of desire crashed over her, relentless. She teetered on the edge of an unknown place, a place of no boundaries, of endless promise. She would go there with him, with this man she loved. The past, the future, nothing mattered any more, only this driving need, this craving that he had triggered within her, for something more than she had ever known.
Captured by the Warrior Page 18