Never Kiss A Stranger (5 page)

“I was waiting for you, Piers,” Alys said, her face softening in a manner that caused an uncomfortable sensation in Piers’s gut. “Only I didn’t know ‘twas you, of course. It could have been anyone, any man in the whole of the
land, but”—she took a deep breath and let it out happily around her bright smile—“it’s
you
.”

Then Piers felt his eyes narrow. Surely this could not be a trap laid by Bevan and Judith Angwedd. Regardless, he would not take any chances.

“You obviously have me confused with someone else,” he said to the still-smiling girl. “Good … er, night, Lady Alys.”

“Wait!” she called to him again, but this time, Piers kept walking, out of the ring and down the opposite side of the hill to the south east. He had no time to decipher the riddles of a female just out of the nursery. She was obviously anathema to her family, having been sent off to the old ruin in the middle of the night alone. Perhaps they
wanted
someone to abscond with her, and take the brat off their hands. Well, it would not be Piers.

Christ! He was exhausted enough to drop, but now it looked as if his rest was yet miles away. He was not relishing sleeping in an open forest again.

“Would you
wait?”

He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see the girl running to catch up with him, dragging her sack behind her with one hand and holding on to her monkey with the other. Her fine, long cloak flapped around her legs. Clearly, she was not dressed for foot travel.

“Go back to the ruin and wait for morning, Lady Alys,” he commanded, never slowing his pace. “I’ll not wait for you, and should you become disoriented and lose your way, you’ll die in the open alone.”

“Won’t you at least accompany me back to Fallstowe?” she gasped exasperatedly.

“No.” Absolutely not. As he had already told the girl, he had heard tales of the powerful Sybilla Foxe. And he also knew of her cat and mouse with King Edward. The
lady would demand his name and then likely imprison him as a kidnapper and defiler of women. Or mayhap she would listen to his tale and then turn him over to Judith Angwedd. Any matter, Piers doubted Sybilla Foxe would want the slightest connection with a man who had serious business with the monarch sniffing around Fallstowe’s walls, looking for a chink in which to topple the woman’s hold on her family’s demesne.

Piers had enough problems of his own to deal with. He only needed to get to London, as quickly as he could, and alone.

“I’ll not go back!” she called the warning to him while still struggling to keep pace. “You can’t leave me—I’m your
wife!”

Piers didn’t answer her, only kept walking. His head started to pound again. She was clearly unstable. If she continued to follow him, she would be parallel to Fallstowe again within the hour. Having likely fallen far enough behind as to become frightened by that time—not to mention cold and tired—she would see her family home and give up.

Good-bye, Alys Foxe. And good riddance.

The forest was dangerously bright when Piers found a suitable den in which to sleep the majority of the daylight away. In the juncture of two massive, fallen trees, a dam of old pine branches and dead leaves had made a natural lean-to and Piers threw his pack into the fortuitous shelter with a sigh. He would not risk even a small fire now.

He stretched his arms above his head, hearing every muscle in his body moan. He would climb into the den that looked just big enough to accommodate his body, eat some of the old bread and the last bit of the cold,
salted fish from his pack, and then gratefully fall into unconsciousness.

At least he had shaken silly little Alys Foxe. She had disappeared from Piers’s rear horizon along with Fallstowe’s dark, foggy silhouette, and he was relieved that he would not have to contend with her disjointed ramblings about the two of them being married.

Piers shook his head in disbelief as he crouched down to inspect the wounds received by the unusual Layla. The bites weren’t as deep as he’d first feared, although they throbbed like black hell. The cuts were already scabbed over within rings of vivid bruises, and so he simply wrapped them tightly in some of the bandages given to him by the monk.

Married.
Lady Alys Foxe, married to Piers Mallory, common dairy master and notorious bastard son of the lord of Gillwick Manor. If little Alys had only known what a close call she’d had, she’d likely have wet her underdress. And he was certain Lady Sybilla would not have been amused in the least.

Married!
Ha!

No one would marry you save a goatherd, or mayhap one of the goats. Crude, penniless bastard.

So now he was to contend with the voices in his head alone, but at least with them Piers felt no compulsion to answer. He heaved a great sigh as he rocked from his heels to his backside, drawing up his knees and pulling his pack toward him, rifling through it for his sustenance.

Warin was to have you drowned upon your birth, but his heart had been softened by our little Bevan. He chose to simply forget all about you! Isn’t that amusing? You should thank my son for saving your life!

Even though Piers was relatively certain that his father’d had no such malicious intentions toward him after his
birth, it was true that Warin Mallory had largely forgotten his second son was alive. Piers’s mother had died when he was only six, and Warin had the decency to keep him in the manor’s dairy. Now he was master of that enterprise, but he knew it was not a courtesy stemming from the circumstances of his birth. He was simply the best at what he did, and even cruel Judith Angwedd had made begrudging mention of his talent.

“Peasant blood will tell,” she’d sneered.

He could still remember that first, traumatic year without his mother, leaning his face against the warm side-belly of a cow and sobbing soundlessly while he milked. Sleeping with the other village orphans in the lofts of the stables, learning to fight for what was his out of necessity, and then later, for coin. There had been no one to protect him after his mother was dead, and there was no one to aid him now.

He choked down the last bite of the day’s ration of bread—the stuff was like eating wet wool—and took a swig of wine from his jug. He sighed and corked the jug, replacing it in his pack and shoving the bag deep into the tree den. At least now he could escape into sleep.

He had just crawled into his makeshift bed when he heard a horrendous crashing through the underbrush of the forest. Satisfied that his hiding place would not be discovered by any happening by on the road just beyond the tree line, Piers squirmed farther back into the shadows and closed his eyes.

He heard a squealing chattering, and more rustling of leaves.

Likely just some forest creature, out to break the fast,
he told himself and squeezed his eyes shut more tightly.

“Piers! Piers, where are you? Do you see him, Layla? Neither do I. Pie—eers!”

His eyes snapped open.
Surely not.

“Piers, I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m frightened.”

Piers frowned. She did sound rather fearful.

“Where are you, dammit?”

Or perhaps she wasn’t.

He couldn’t let her wander farther into the woods to die. Well, no, he
could,
but then he would be no better than Judith Angwedd. He would point her back toward Fallstowe, grudgingly give her a bit of his dear supply of bread and wine, and send her on her way. ‘Twas full daylight now, and she would be on Foxe lands within the hour. Two, at most, should she wander a bit from the straightaway.

He was just about to undertake the massive task of moving his exhausted body when the monkey dashed into his den, scrambling over him to sit on his bicep, and then screaming like the devil, bouncing up and down and flailing at him with her long, surprisingly powerful arms.

Piers shouted with surprise and, yes, a bit of fear—he didn’t want the fucking thing to bite him again. He threw the beast out of his den with a swipe of his arm that sent the monkey rolling with an outraged shriek and then fought his own way out of the shelter. Better to face the fiery little thing out in the open.

The monkey, as well.

When Alys saw Layla streak from beneath the fallen trees, chattering indignantly, she knew her wayward husband was found. She dropped her sack, crossed her arms over her chest, and tapped her foot, waiting for him to emerge from behind his curtain of curses.

He was still in his monk’s robe, but as he gained his feet in a cloud of crumbling leaves, twigs, and colorful
phrases, Alys noticed that he seemed much larger in the brightness of day. And the dappled sunlight was not kind to his face, bringing out in sharp relief his injuries against his obvious fatigue. His hair was a worse disaster than she’d been able to glimpse in the moonlight—as if he’d fallen into a den of blade wielding badgers. She thought he was older than she’d originally guessed—possibly thirty. And while perhaps in other circumstances he could have been described as pleasant looking, to Alys he looked dirty and hairy and hardened and bitter. And quite possibly very angry.

But no matter for that—so was Alys.

“You mean-hearted bastard!” she said to him before he could have chance to speak. Layla ducked her small head under Alys’s veil and into her neck. “I could have been killed following you like that!”

“I know!” Piers shouted. “That’s why I told you to stay behind!”

“How could I stay behind not knowing where my husband was going, or when he would be back for me?”

“I
wouldn’t
have been back for you,” Piers growled.

“See? And I don’t know where our lands are, or even my family name!”

“Your name is
Alys Foxe,”
he said very slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to someone not in possession of their right mind. “And I have no lands.” He paused and then muttered, “Yet.”

“No lands? But”—she broke off, frowned, and then realized what he was saying—“I’ve married a commoner?” Alys howled with laughter and clapped her hands, causing Layla to clutch at her head to keep from being toppled to the ground. “Sybilla will be completely furious!”

“I fail to see why marriage to a commoner would
please you,” Piers said, and then he shook his head and stuttered. “We’re not married!”

Alys rolled her eyes and sat down, still chuckling. Oh, Sybilla would just turn
blue!

“We
are
married. Don’t pretend you don’t know the legend of the ring—everyone in the whole of England knows it! Do you have anything to eat?”

“I do doubt everyone knows it,” Piers sneered. “And didn’t you pack food in your run-away-from-home-sack?”

Alys wrinkled her nose and felt her cheeks tingle. “Well yes, some biscuits and honey with a bit of milk in a jug. And some chicken and ham. And two boiled eggs. But I’ve already eaten them.”

He stared at her, a hint of concern creasing his brow. He didn’t look quite as dreadful when he wasn’t shouting or cursing. “How long were you at the ruin?”

“I don’t know, exactly.” His frown increased while Alys tried to think. “Ah, ‘twas most likely near midnight when I arrived.”

Piers blinked. “Midnight. Of …
last night?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you ate everything before I arrived?”

Alys felt her cheeks glowing now. “I was arguing with Sybilla and missed my supper. And I didn’t eat
everything,
as you so crudely put it—I have some dried figs and a pomegranate left.”

“A
pomegranate?”

Why did it seem like he was mocking her? “Yes. I’m saving it for Layla. I’ve read that monkeys prefer fruit.”

“You’ve read that—” He broke off, seeming too furious to form words. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and Alys could see his nostrils flaring. In the pose he almost looked like a monk at prayer.

Perhaps a monk with a mangy dog on his head.

After several moments he looked at her once more, having seemingly regained his composure. “It is winter in England, Lady Alys. You and I are on the cusp of a barren forest where, despite the tales of magical wood people who roam through it unseen, survival is not only difficult, ‘tis unlikely. You have followed me against my advice and now expect me to care for you because you have no rations, save a few pieces of exotic fruit that likely cost more than what I see in a year, and which you are saving for a monkey.”

“Well, I’m sorry you were so poorly compensated at your work, but she has to eat, Piers.”

“I’ll eat her
and
her fucking pomegranate!”

He looked so outraged that Alys couldn’t help but laugh, especially since Layla took that moment to voice a timid and worried-sounding yip. Perhaps it was only fatigue, but she was finding him to be quite witty when he was angry. She laughed and laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.

“‘Twould be … only fair … since”—Alys gasped around her peals—“she’s already … had a taste of
you!”

To her surprise, Piers started to chuckle. In a moment, they were both grabbing their stomachs and wiping at their eyes. Layla scrambled down from Alys’s shoulder and removed herself to the sanity of the fallen trees, wringing her hands and chattering nervously. It was several moments before their chuckles dwindled, and Alys sighed contentedly, pleased at how much better she felt. Besides being hungry, of course. But she daren’t bring up that subject again to her prickly husband so soon.

“So, do we sleep now?” she asked, pleasantly, she thought.

He shook his head. “I sleep. You walk.” He pointed a
long arm toward the way she’d come. “That direction. ‘Tis unsafe for you here.”

“Why is it unsafe? I daresay I’m much less likely to have misfortune befall me while I’m under your protection than if I should be traversing the countryside alone.”

He again shook his head, more emphatically this time and with a pained-looking grimace, as if the mangy dog on his head was beset by fleas. “No. See you the scars I bear? They were given to me by a man who meant to see me dead. If he is not already looking for me, he shall be soon enough. ‘Tis why I travel at night. Alone,” he added with a stern frown.