An Honorable Rogue (21 page)

'Oh? Where was that?'

'Rennes, last Michaelmas. We go there now.'

'Rennes.' Ben said, hiding his delight at this discovery. 'What a lucky chance, we go there too. via Josselin. Do you leave this morning?'

'Aye.' Sir Eudo glanced doubtfully at Gien. 'If you are right to ride, boy?'

'I'm well enough, just a little bruised.'

Ben smiled. 'Let us go together.' Normally, news that thieves were at large would not trouble him overmuch; he had also dealt with the Duke's enemies perfectly satisfactorily on his own. But Rose's presence changed matters. Ben would breathe more easily if they travelled with an escort.

'Yes, let's,' Rose said as Ben slid the bread platter towards her. 'It will be good to have company. But you will have to be very patient with me, I'm afraid."

Eudo frowned. 'How so?'

'My legs have seized up.' Grimacing, she smiled at Gien. 'I am learning to ride, you see, and as yet I am not very good at it. This morning I can hardly walk. So I am very sorry, but you will have to go at my pace.'

At her words, some of the worry seemed to leave Sir Eudo's expression, and Ben knew that he and Rose had their escort to Rennes.

The road to Josselin was densely wooded and the leaf canopy thick. The sun highlighted a patch of beech mast here, a tangle of briars there. They rode the entire day in pairs, with Ben and the knight riding out in front and Gien and Rose bringing up the rear. Sir Eudo had removed his helmet and it swung by a strap from the pommel of his saddle, bouncing slightly with the motion of his grey. His elongated shield hung on his left.

Squinting over his shoulder. Ben was relieved to see Rose managing very well without the leading rein. He had been keeping a discreet eye on her, and throughout the day she and Gien had been chatting like old friends. The words 'Fulford in Wessex' and 'Adam' and 'Cecily' had come to him over the soft thud of the horses' hoofs and the jingle of bits.

Gien was a pleasant boy with an easy manner about him. and Ben found himself grimacing as he wondered if Rose would be encouraged to reveal her marriage ambitions. He sighed--was it possible Rose might have considered this journey without the lure of marriage to Sir Richard? Perhaps the lure of life with Adam at his new holding in Wessex would have been lure enough? He had made a grave lapse of judgement when he had raised her hopes of marrying Sir Richard, and he could only pray that he could set it right.

'Pretty girl, your Rozenn,' Eudo said.

Ben stared. 'Rose? She's not mine.'

Sir Eudo's eyes were sympathetic. 'But you want her to be?'

Firmly, Ben shook his head. 'I've no ambitions for settling down."

Eudo regarded him thoughtfully. 'She knows this?'

'Rose knows me better than anyone. We have been friends since childhood. No, sir, you've read us wrong. I am a lute-player, it is in my blood. Rose, on the other hand, has ambitions for hearth and home.' He shrugged. 'A minstrel is not in a position to offer her such. She wants a knight."

Eudo gave a self-deprecating grimace. 'Not all knights have land, lad.'

'The one she has in mind has vast acres." The story of how Rose had been abandoned as a baby was on the tip of Ben's tongue, but it occurred to him that Rose was starting a new life, and was anxious to leave her past behind, so he bit back the words. He could only hope that she would not discard him along with the rest of her past when she discovered how he had misled her.

'Eudo?' Gien's voice had both Eudo and Ben reining in.

'Aye?'

'Do we reach Josselin tonight?'

'No, tonight we sleep under the stars.'

Rose tucked a strand of hair beneath her veil and looked about them with wide, anxious eyes. She was leaning forwards, clinging to the pommel of her saddle as she had done on the previous day. In fact, she had such a poor seat that Ben knew that she must be saddle-sore and was nearing the end of her limits.

'No no,' she said. 'Ben will know of a reputable inn nearby. You do, don't you?'

'Sorry,
cherie,
not unless you can keep going for another two hours or so.'

She groaned and, waving Gien past him. Ben reached for her reins. 'But there is a good spot for a camp a short way ahead.'

'Wh-what about wolves'? Aren't there wolves in these woods?'

Wolves
had
been sighted hereabouts, as well as wild boar. There had even been tales about bears; of the three, Ben would far rather face wolves, but he was not about to mention the other wild animals. In any case, he was far more concerned that they might be being followed.

Another party had been riding out of Hennebont that morning but, having lost sight of them in the market square. Ben was not certain which road they had taken. They could not have taken the Josselin road, though, for, if they had. surely they would have overtaken them?

Aloud, he said, 'Rose, we will build a fire--wolves fear fire.'

'They do?"

'Yes, really. There's water ahead to wash in. and we can make you a shelter. You will be as snug as you were last night.'

Rose's look named him a liar, but she made no further protest and after a moment Ben kicked Piper back into a walk and they trailed after Eudo and Gien.

A jay broke cover and flew across their path. Piper danced sideways. 'Steady, boy.' he said, while he searched in his mind for a story that would lift the tiredness from around those beautiful eyes.

They had chosen a small clearing in a hazel copse just off the road and were about to make camp. As Ben had promised, there was a stream, plenty of dry kindling with which to start a fire, and the hazel bushes could be used for a makeshift shelter. Ben always carried a couple of stitched hides with him and could fashion a tent of sorts in no time.

'Worth a king's ransom, I should say,' Eudo went on. 'Gift, was he?"

Ben gave him a sharp look. 'Piper is exceptional,' he agreed, wondering if Eudo imagined he had stolen him. 'Duke Hoel chose him for me when my previous horse became too old for the road."

Eudo let out a low whistle. 'You must have played a damn fine tune, to earn such a reward."

Under the pretence of loosening Piper's girth, Ben turned his back on his companion--partly to conceal his expression and partly to eye the road along which they had come. 'Several, actually,' he said, careful to keep his voice conversational. 'At the turn of last year Duke Hoel put me in charge of the entertainments at his Christmas court. Got in tumblers, dancers, jugglers...you name it, the Duke had to have it. Kept me run off my feet from Christmas Eve until well after the Epiphany."

The empty highway made Ben uneasy. Instinct was telling him that the other travellers had been bound for Josselin too. So where the devil were they? Their own party had been going at such a slow pace they should have been overtaken. Unless the others were deliberately concealing themselves--and why should they do that? Of course, they might have been taking another route, but Ben did not think so....

Twilight found the four of them sitting in the clearing around the embers of their fire. Ben was strumming softly, dark head bent over his lute; Eudo and Gien sat on the other side, picking over the bones of a couple of trout that Gien had caught. It promised to be a warm night.

With her belly full of fish--Rozenn had baked them in leaves--and the bread and apricots and fresh white cheese she had bought at the market in Hennebont, Rozenn's mood had lifted and she felt more relaxed than she could have imagined. A week ago she would not have believed it possible, but here she was, miles away from civilisation, about to spend the night in a wood with Ben and two strangers, and she really did feel perfectly content.

Wrapping her arms about her knees, she tipped back her head and looked up at the sky. The branches and leaves made a dark pattern through which she could see the stars. It would make a good design for an embroidered coverlet, she thought, dark stems of branches crisscrossing a mid-blue fabric with white stars peeping through like flowers...

'It doesn't look as though it will rain,' she said.

The firelight flashed on the varnished surface of the leopard's-head lute. 'No, no rain tonight." Ben said.

Rising, Rose went to inspect the tent. It stood a little to one side of the clearing and Ben had made it, for her apparently, by bending several young hazel branches together and tying them fast. Then he had slung a couple of hides over the frame and secured them with rope and pegs.

Crawling inside. Rose pushed experimentally at the sides. Given that Ben had put it up so swiftly, it seemed sound and it would keep any rain off. But whether it would keep out wolves, she had no idea. No, she would
not
think about wolves or she would never sleep.

When she crawled out again, Eudo and Gien had vanished. Ben lifted his head, fingers moving lightly over the lute strings, 'It meets with
madame's
approval?'

'Yes, thank you. 'Did Ben intend to share the tent with her, or was he planning to sleep under the stars with their companions? Hoping he would sleep with her, but too shy to ask. Rose dragged her pack to the tent entrance. 'Where are Eudo and Gien?"

'Washing.'

Fumbling in her pack, Rose found her comb and settled herself cross-legged on her cloak. Under cover of the gathering night she watched as Ben filled the glade with music--a gentle floaty folk tune she had heard many times. His high cheekbones were highlighted by the fire, and his eyes, always dark, seemed full of mystery.

Absently, she ran the pad of her thumb along the tines of her comb. As was his habit, Ben had pushed the sleeves of his tunic up so they did not tangle with the lute strings, and the fingers of his right hand moved deftly over the soundboard, plucking, strumming, while the fingers of his left slid up and down the frets on the neck. Music streamed out of him. like an endless river. It had always been so. Ben and his music, he simply could not stop. Tonight Ben was not being paid, yet he played on. He would be a minstrel to his dying day.

As Rose regarded his downbent head and the naked skin at the nape of his neck, his fringe flopped forwards and something within her twisted. It felt like yearning, but surely it was too painful for that? It felt like...

If only Ben were a knight, she thought. I would far rather marry Ben than Sir Richard who, pleasant thought he is, remains an acquaintance. What would it be like to be Ben's wife, to be on the receiving end of all that charm day after day...?

It would be bliss.

Even though he is such a flirt, even though he would
never
settle?

Yes, perhaps with Ben, even the so-called act of love might not be unpleasant. Rozenn could hear echoes of the Quimperle washerwomen as they beat their laundry against the rocks in the river and boasted of their husbands' prowess; she could hear the soft murmuring of the woman at the Bridge last night....and...her cheeks burned as she recalled the way that she had responded to Ben's caresses.

No! Be practical. Think about the discomforts of a life with Ben. remember the uncertainties. She would never know where she was going to lay her head from one day to the next. No, the minstrel's life was
not
for her.