A Knight's Temptation (46 page)

“The nerve. The—!”

His eyebrow arched. “We have an agreement?”

She set the bowl of pottage on the floor with a
thunk
, then folded her arms across her bosom. He tried not to notice the way her indignant posture framed her breasts.

“I do not bargain with knaves,” she said.

How wicked that he found pleasure in her refusal. “Ah. So I am undressing you myself.” He started toward her.

With a little squeak, she pushed herself up, wobbling like a twig in a storm. “I will bathe myself.”

“Are you certain you can manage?”

Her eyes glinted like gemstones. “I
will
manage.”

Still, he took her arm and led her to the fire. Her stiff, angry steps were stronger this time, but he heard her muffled groan of relief when she reached the chair and dropped down on it.

Her chin raised to a stubborn tilt. “You will turn your back.”

Brant shook his head. “You may need assistance.”

“I am not a witless child.”  She paused. Her tongue darted out over her bottom lip. “If I need help, I . . . shall ask.”

He tore his gaze from the dewy shimmer of her mouth. The way his blood heated, he should immediately accept her concession. With a curt nod, he said, “Very well.”

Crossing his arms, he turned to stare at the fire’s shadows dancing on the opposite wall. They shifted on the rough wooden wall . . . and the blanket-strewn pallet.

From behind him came the rustle of fabric.

He stared at the wall, but his vivid imagination conjured images of her drawing the clinging gown up her legs. Up her pale thighs. Up to her waist, as she prepared to pull it over her head—

More hushed rustling.

He blew out a breath and forced himself to count to ten.

Water trickled. She must have dipped a cloth into the bowl. A whisper followed. Fabric gliding over bare skin.

He swept a hand through his snarled hair, the faint hiss astonishingly loud. Sheer torture, this was. A fierce enchantment of sound. He would have to control his imagination before it corrupted all of his noble intentions.

Closing his eyes, he fought to mold his thoughts in a fashion far less tantalizing.

Ten toothless, wart-spotted old hags.

Nine toothless, wart-spotted old hags—

Val nuzzled his leg, then sank his teeth into his hose.

“Ow!” he snapped, and half turned to scowl down at the little mongrel. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the lady with her eyes shut, holding her hair atop her head with one hand, sweeping the cloth over her neck with the other. She had pushed her bodice down to expose more skin, but had not slid it past her breasts. Before he could look away, his shameful gaze snapped to her legs, to see she had not drawn up her gown, after all.

Yet.

He snapped his attention back to the wall. Balled his hands into fists.

Tried to imagine incredibly foul-looking hags.

Water splashed. Another rustle.

“I . . . I am going to remove my gown now.”

Argh!

A silent cry for mercy welled up inside him. “You . . . need me to help you?”

“
Nay!
  I . . . Do not turn around.”

“Fine.”

“Swear that you will not!”

He almost smiled at her panicked voice, but she sounded like she might faint with distress. “I swear, upon my honor.”  What shreds remained of his honor, anyway. Brant tried to block out the betraying slide of cloth, even as Val butted against his leg. He crossed to the tray on the pallet, snatched up more bread and fed it to the dog.

Even Val’s chewing did not disguise the rasp of fabric. Devilish anticipation niggled inside him, tempting him to turn his head. To spy upon her in this vulnerable moment, despite his vow.

She could hardly stop him. And he was quite sure her body looked nothing like an old hag’s.

Tension pervaded the room, thick as invisible smoke. He had to block out the noise, stop his mind turning the shifting shadows into two lovers locked in an intimate embrace, shifting and rolling. He had only one recourse left: conversation.

“You asked before what happened to Val,” Brant said.

“Aye.”  She sounded a little breathless, but also grateful he had offered to break the strained silence.

“I was on my way to a tournament near Glastonbury,” he said, his voice sounding like someone else’s. “I found him lying on the roadside. His front leg was twisted at an odd angle and bleeding.”

“Mercy!”

“I vow he ran under the wheels of a cart. Rather than have to care for him, his owner left him to die.” Brant frowned down at the little dog, sitting beside his feet, looking up at him with expectant brown eyes. “As clever as he is, Val has a habit of getting into mischief.”

“Why did you name him ‘Val’?”

“’Tis short for Valor. No one deserves the name more.”

A frustrated huff came from behind him, then more rustling.

“Milady, are you managing—?”

“I am fine!” she shot back, before the last words had even left his lips. “W-what happened next with Val?”

“I thought at first he was dead. When I rode past, he struggled to raise his head. His whole body shook when he looked up at me. In his gaze, I saw his agony. However, I also glimpsed something more . . .”

The room had fallen strangely silent. Even the fire seemed to pause its greedy crackle. “What?” she asked, the word a wisp of sound that prickled the hairs on his skin like a lover’s caress.

He could not quite explain exactly what he had seen in the suffering animal’s eyes. A haunted acknowledgment of abandonment, mayhap. An acceptance that death was inevitable. Yet, also a compelling will to live. Whatever he’d seen, it had touched him and refused to let him ride away.

“I could not leave him. I got down off my horse, wrapped him in a blanket and rode to the nearest town, where I paid a surgeon to remove, then seal, his leg.”  He swallowed, trying not to remember those horrific moments when he had shuddered through every yelped cry of Val’s agony. “There was no other option, if I was to save his life.”

Still, she said nothing.

“I bandaged the stump, bought salve from a healer to mend his flesh. At first, Val could not walk, but he soon learned. He adapted to his new condition. One does, when one has no choice.”

“Mmm,” she said softly, as though she understood—and agreed.

He swallowed down the keen ache of a rare, common bond shared by strangers. His imagination, again, that he was coming to resent. He had not spoken of Val with anyone else. Now he had, and the sense of emotional vulnerability was as uncomfortable as his soggy boots.

“Are you finished, milady?”

“Almost.”

The slight catch in her voice made him turn. She had cleansed her wound, judging by the water’s crimson tint. She had also donned the dry gown. While the bodice gaped at the neck and the hem dragged on the floorboards, it adequately covered her. Her damp clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

She sat on the chair, one hand gripping the table’s edge as she stretched forward. Her other hand was poised to open his saddle bag.

Rage flared inside him. He stormed toward her.

Eyes widening, she nonetheless flipped back the leather flap. Her fingers had just brushed his spare pair of hose when he reached her, snatched the bag away, and glowered down at her.

“My possessions are forbidden to you.”

“You have the gold cup in there, do you not?” she said, pushing up from the table. Discomfort flickered across her features, but she stood firm. He narrowed his eyes even more, lowering his face until it was a mere breath away from hers. Her parted lips quivered, but she did not step back.

Foolish, foolish woman.

He tossed the bag onto the chair. It landed with a
thump
, the sound ominously loud.

“Answer me,” she demanded. Her bodice gaped a little more. Refusing to deny his voyeuristic inclinations any longer, determined to warn her in a primitive way she would never forget, he allowed his hungry gaze to slide down her face, down over her lips, down to the drooping fabric barely concealing her cleavage.

She gasped and clutched the front of her gown.

“Be forewarned, milady,” he rasped like a man ruled by lust. “Touch my saddlebag again, and there will be consequences.”

Her face paled.

“If you forsake my privacy, I will forsake yours.”

Indignation sparked in her gaze. “How ridiculous to speak of privacy when in this small room there is none.”

A slow, daring grin curved his mouth. “Ah, but I turned my back, did I not, as you bathed and changed your garments? I respected your womanly modesty. I gave you what solitude lay within my power. I could as easily take it away.”

“You would not dare.”

He said nothing, just stared at her. Long enough for the shrieking wind and rain lashing against the tavern to accentuate the tense silence.

“There you are wrong. I
would
dare.”

Her lips tightened with disdain. “Indeed?”

Her blatant provocation broke the remnants of his restraint. Here, now, this lady would learn her lesson. He was not a man to concede to any woman.

Holding her defiant stare, Brant grabbed his tunic’s hem and yanked the garment up and over his head to reveal the linen shirt plastered to his torso. He tossed the tunic on top of his saddlebag.

Her gaze fixed to his chest. Then, blinking hard, her gaze snapped back to his.

She stood resolute.

A silent, admiring laugh welled inside him. Stubborn, was she? Well, he could be equally so.

He unfastened the ties at the top of his shirt.

Sliding his hands down to the hem, he slowly pulled the garment up over his head, a groan breaking in his throat as the fabric peeled away from his body. Cool air brushed his naked belly and chest.

Wadding the shirt into a ball, he met the lady’s shocked stare. Her face reddened before she jerked her attention away. Her body as rigid as a wooden post, she turned. With careful, unsteady steps, she started back to the pallet.

A hint of remorse stung him. “Wait. I will help you.”

She flicked her hand in dismissal. “I do not want your help. Do not fear. I will not misjudge you again.”

***

Faye lay on the lumpy pallet, covered by a musty-smelling blanket, listening to the wind beat against the tavern’s outer walls. Every now and again, the closed shutters at the window rattled and an icy gust invaded, as though the storm might indeed break past the barriers locking it out.

Strange, that she thought she knew how the raging tempest felt. For in the cloistered chamber in her heart, a storm raged too—a maelstrom of relentless, conflicting emotions that refused to let her exhausted body succumb to sleep.

Only slightly muted by the wailing wind, voices carried up from the tavern room downstairs. Laughter erupted, followed by women’s shrill giggles. With a heavy sigh, Faye tugged the blanket up over her head, careful not to touch the painful gash on her cheek. She rolled over on her side to face the fire.

The pallet rustled when she moved. Lying beside the man—Angeline’s wretched kidnapper—on a makeshift bed of blankets, Val’s little ears pricked up. He gave her a curious glance before his eyes drifted closed again. With a sigh of his own, he went back to sleep.

Faye tried to ignore the supine figure of the knave who had taunted her earlier with his brazen masculinity. Anger still prickled in her veins from his crude threat. Yet, shame upon her, she could not keep her gaze from drifting over him.

He lay on his back, eyes closed, his dark, tousled head pillowed on his saddlebag. A patched blanket covered him from mid-waist to the tip of his bare feet poking out from the blanket’s hem. Before stretching out on the floor, he had donned clean garments. His others lay spread out on the hearth tiles beside her shift, gown, and mantle. The arrangement of rumpled clothing looked oddly intimate.

A tingly flush skittered over Faye’s skin. She snapped her gaze away. Far wiser to look at something else.
Anything
else.

The firelight dancing on the walls.

The light gleaming on the stoneware bowl on the table pushed into the corner.

The texture of the door panel.

How shameful that her gaze returned to
him
.

Beneath the blanket, his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. One broad arm lay draped across his abdomen. The other stretched out alongside his body, within grabbing reach of a dagger. He had told her the weapon was for their protection, in case a drunkard decided to climb the stairs and challenge the door’s rickety bolt.

How tempting to believe the knave really was concerned about her safety. In truth, she doubted he cared for much more than the gold she felt quite certain he had stowed in his bag, and his little dog who looked upon his scarred countenance with such doting adoration. The rogue had no doubt chosen to rest his thick skull upon the wretched bag so she could not search it during the night while he dozed.

Faye glowered at him, the embodiment of cold-hearted, treasure-seeking selfishness. The body of a ruthless ruffian.

A magnificent body, though, ’twas.

A betraying awareness warmed her belly when she remembered the muscled perfection of his torso kissed by firelight. Very different to Hubert’s flaccid softness. Unfair, mayhap, to compare her aged husband’s physique to this warrior knave’s. Yet, where Hubert’s belly was rounded with age as well as indulgence, this man’s looked as firm as polished stone. Where Hubert’s skin was ashen from lack of physical exertion in the sun, this rogue’s glowed with a bronze luster.

If she squinted, just a little, against the fire’s light, she could again imagine him standing there, bold as sin—

“You are not able to sleep, milady?”

Shock raced through her. His eyes were open.

His keen gaze fixed upon her face. His hair shifted across the saddlebag while his head tilted slightly to one side. A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. Did he know the traitorous thoughts that had almost materialized in breath-snatching glory in her imagination?

Heat burned her cheeks. Inwardly scolding herself for blushing, she said, “The storm is fierce tonight.”