Behold the Dawn (24 page)

“I have to be in Constantinople today. I thought an early start—”

Marek.

She stayed where she was, leaning against the chair, hoping Hugh would think her still stunned.

“And is it usually that you leave for your journeys in the middle of the night?” asked the man-at-arms.

“My good man, haven’t you noticed? ‘Tis only a few hours from dawn!”

The soldier grunted.

Mairead inched closer to the window, still clutching her cheek, her head bowed so that her hair fell past her shoulder and shielded her face. Marek looked up at the window and seemed to see her. He lifted his voice just a notch. “So can I be on me way, sirrah, or have you any more complaints about the unholiness of the hour?”

The man-at-arms waved toward the gate. “Get on with you.”

“Thankee.” Marek glanced again at the window. “And since I seem to be such a bother to you, I’ll just wait ‘til I’m outside the gate to be checking me girth, eh?”

“Move along,
garçon
.”

Mairead blew out softly. He would wait for her. He would be waiting for her outside the gate.

“Lady Mairead cannot leave until my husband returns,” Eloise insisted. Mairead turned to see the restraining hand Eloise had clamped on Hugh’s sleeve. “Do you hear me, you great oaf? If she’s married to that ruffian Marcus Annan and you lay a hand on her, he’ll kill you! Are you aware of that?”

Mairead cast a quick glance round the hall. Only three knights, including the one called Bertrand, attended their master.

Ducard stood near the half-opened door, one hand upon the latch, looking rather lost amidst these knights’ intrusion. He caught her gaze, and his huge eyebrows lifted enough for her to see into his eyes. His head bobbed, and he stepped farther into the room, pulling the door with him until it stood all the way open.

She understood. He was giving her the opportunity to run away and leave before his poor mistress worked herself into any greater a fettle. She tensed, her hand falling from her cheek.

“Lady Mairead.”

She jerked around. Hugh had shaken off Eloise and now stood a mere step away, his hand outstretched, his eyes as dark and fearsome as she had ever seen them. “I offer this hand just once, my vixen. Come of your own will, or come of mine.”

She did not move. She fought the urge to look again at the door, and looked instead at Eloise. Her hostess’s face was splotched red, her gray eyes blazing. She shook her head vehemently. Her hands dropped to her sides, and she gestured with her fingers to the open door.

“I’ll ask just once,” Hugh rasped.

She looked back at him, and her whole body ached with the hammer of her heart. “No.” She ran, lunging forward, landing on the balls of her feet with each step, every sinew, every muscle strained to bursting.

Hugh swore. “Stop her!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Eloise swinging a fire iron. “Go!”

Hugh caught the iron in an upraised hand and wrenched it away, but it gave Mairead a few precious seconds. She was already through the door by the time a crash of mail armor against the floor indicated that perhaps Ducard had been able to stop one of the men-at-arms. The others pounded after her down the hall.

Her cloak swelling behind her, she ran as she had never run in her life, through the great doors Bertrand had left open upon their entry and into the yard. The waiting men-at-arms looked up only when their horses started, and by then she was halfway to the gates.

One of her pursuers shouted, “Stop her!”

Behind her, voices clamored and more footsteps ran. “Marek!” A heavy hand grabbed her shoulder, nearly knocking her to the ground, but she twisted loose and kept running.

She was only paces away, and still the gates remained shut.
Marek!
Her breath came too hard for her to cry aloud. If she had to stop to open the gates, she would be caught, and that would be the end.

Then, slowly—so very slowly—the gates ground open to the length of her arm. One last burst of energy surged in her veins. Ignoring the searing of her lungs, the stiffening of her calves, she threw her body forward.

And then she was through, and the gate was dragging shut. Airn’s gray flank shone in the darkness before her.

“Get on!” Marek’s voice strained as he struggled to keep the gate closed.

She mounted the too-long stirrups and waited until Marek had vaulted into his own saddle. Then she leaned against the courser’s dark mane and released him into the night.

The gate crashed open behind them, but the men did not pursue. They would have to find their own horses, and even then they must wait until morning to locate any tracks. By then she would be halfway to safety. Halfway to Annan.

Chapter XVI

AFTER PARTING WAYS with Gethin in the middle of the night, Annan had ridden until dawn, then ridden yet farther, his bones stiff and shot full of dull, familiar pains. His mind would not rest, would not allow his body to rest. He rode through the day, stopping only to allow the charger to drink at the river. Now, as he reined to a stop in a village on the far side of Shaizar, the depths of night once more surrounded him.

He did not utter a sound as he dismounted in front of the only inn to be found this side of Stephen’s castle, but his heart groaned inside him. His body ached with an intensity he had not forced upon it in many a year. He should have halted long before this, but he had kept riding, hoping that when at last he stopped to rest, his weary muscles would forestall the insistent whisperings of his mind.

The charger blew through its nostrils, flecking his arm with moisture as he lifted the reins over its head. He had pushed the horse too far, something that was fast becoming a habit. He rubbed the back of a weary hand against the animal’s jowl. Was this to be another casualty he had failed to name?

What would the Lady Mairead say to that?

His shoulders were too heavy to lift in a shrug, so he left the thought unanswered and lumbered to the entrance of the inn.

His dogged knocking upon the rough-hewn door roused the innkeeper from his bed. The slump-shouldered Syrian stood in the doorway, one hand holding the waist of his breeches. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate a stable behind the house and spoke in heavily accented French: “When you’ve done with your mount, there are two rooms in back of the house. Take your choice.” Then, grunting, he shut the door, to presumably return to the warmth of his own coverlet.

Annan left the charger with an armful of provender and, with his saddle over his shoulder, made his way through the darkness to a back door. The inn was drafty and dirty, and he had to nearly double over to pass through the doorways. But the musty straw on the floor would be thick enough to keep his joints from grinding into the ground. Tonight that was all he cared about.

He dropped the saddle in the corner where an uncovered window revealed the diamond glintings of stars. For a long moment, he stood at the window, arms at his sides, and let the night breeze cool his face. He felt a hand shorter tonight, as though the weariness that weighted his bones was dragging him down to the grave.

His lip twitched. That was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? For the hand of God to bring an end to the pointless existence he had been leading since—when? When
had
it started? When had he become less than meaningless? Was it all the years he had spent hiding behind his sword? Was it the choices he had made at St. Dunstan’s?

Or was it before?

He dropped his head, his chin coming to rest on the collar drawstrings of the linen tunic Lord Stephen had given him. The breeze ruffled his hair. He had always been turbulent, violent, hot-tempered. War and blood and the fire of battle had been his sirens since boyhood. If his sister-in-law’s death after his brawl with his brother, and later the destruction of St. Dunstan’s, had not been the defining point in his life, then was it not inevitable that sooner or later he should have been shaped by another travesty just as violent?

Yes.
The answer was yes.

“Then why did Heaven not stamp me out while I was yet in my mother’s belly?” He lifted his head and stared into the wide infinitude of night.

Gethin had wanted him to help correct the past. But that was something he could not do.
Would
not do. Even if he was convinced it was the right thing to do, his history was a book he refused to open. Heaven would bring its own avenger to deliver justice to Father Roderic. Annan was not party to it.

But if his quarrel with Father Roderic had ended long ago, it yet remained with some of the man’s followers. He reached down to unbuckle his sword. Hugh de Guerrant, for one, would find his blade ever sharp.

He cast the sword and belt against the wall, next to the pile of straw on which he would sleep, and was unapologetic for the muffled clank. Loosing the dagger at his back, he tossed down his cloak for a pillow and dropped onto the floor. The smell of decay and the prick of the straw against the side of his neck would not be enough to rouse his weary body this night.

But even behind his closed lids, sleep did not come. Within the next few days, he would be once again within sight of Lord Stephen’s home. Mairead would be there—safe. She
would
be safe in his absence. Stephen had pledged his life on it, and Annan could not allow himself to doubt it.

He pressed his lips in a firm line. If she were not safe, his enemies would find a battle fire rising inside of him, terrible to behold.

He rolled onto his back. How was it that this woman—this insubstantial, wide-eyed countess—could rouse that fire in him as nothing and no one had ever been able to? That all-consuming urge to protect, to defend?

It was a possessiveness that was rash, at best. She was his wife only in that she claimed his name. His only take on the bargain was a dowry in gold that he didn’t want and could only spend in folly. What he wanted—

He stopped himself and let his breath out in a long, slow murmur. What he
wanted
was to catch her hair in the roughness of his fingers, to crush her against him and let her feel in the beat of his heart that she was safe, to breathe in the scent of her until it drowned out the stench of blood and smoke and death that had filled his nostrils for so long.

When he had left her in her chambers at Stephen’s castle, he had kissed her hand. And when he had straightened, he had seen a look in her eyes that perhaps he would have understood were he better versed in the ways of women. He had thought he had seen more than mere regret at the departure of the one best suited to protect her.

And when he had promised that he would return for her—as if there could have been any doubt—and she had lifted her face, her lips parted in an unutterably guileless expression, he had seen hope. Hope for the life he could never give her? Or were his own unjustified longings to keep her by his side coloring his perceptions?

The scampering of a rodent made an empty scratching sound in the street. He exhaled and rolled onto his side, his eyes coming open to stare at the square of gray light on the floor beneath the window.

He knew it was impossible. Even could he offer home and hearth to a woman such as her, he could hardly turn his back on the black past. It would invade even the sanctuary of her arms, and it would destroy him yet again.

“But am I not destroyed already?” He spoke aloud to the darkness, the words hissing past his teeth.

With her, he could almost—almost—forget Roderic and Gethin and St. Dunstan’s. With her, at least there was the potential of happiness, was there not? With her, he was almost able to believe his inability to reconcile with Heaven did not matter. And that was worth something, maybe everything.

The wind droning among the rafters was his only reply. He lay for a long time, listening to its whispers—whispers that only seemed to confirm those in his own mind. After a time, he closed his eyes.

He did not know how many hours had passed when he was roused by the sound of horses outside his window. Habit led his hand to where his dagger lay at his side, and he listened in the darkness to the steady clop of two horses passing. Someone with a Scottish accent murmured to them, “’Ey there, watch me toe.”

He raised his head from the warmth of his cloak.
Marek?
But the speaker said nothing more, and a moment later the horses halted near the stable.

Brushing sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand, Annan propped himself on an elbow and listened harder. Could it have been Marek? If he had survived, he was supposed to have gone to Lord Stephen’s.

No. He shook his head and lay back down, this time on his back the better to hear. Marek couldn’t be here. If the rascal were yet alive, he would know better than to leave Mairead by herself against instructions.

Still, he waited, until at last the grate of the front door opening and the heavy Syrian accent of the innkeeper interrupted the wind. The Scot’s voice spoke again, too low to discern words, but loud enough to know that its texture could well enough be Marek’s.

As the voices continued their hushed discussion, footsteps started down the hall. Annan rolled onto his elbow, watching the door, listening. Those footsteps—too light to be that of any man—were the rhythm to a song that could only be made by the whisper of a woman’s gown against her legs.

At his door they stopped, and the bar bumped open as the drawstring was pulled in from outside. The door swung inward, creaking on worn hinges, and in its place stood a woman, her arms at her sides, her hair long over her shoulders.

She entered and eased the door shut behind her, muting the murmur of the voices in the front room.

It was Mairead. He didn’t need to see her face to know it was her. He just knew. He could hear it in the way she breathed, could smell it in the scent of her hair even from across the room.

For a moment, they didn’t move, they didn’t say anything. Then, slowly, he rolled to his feet, the straw crackling beneath him. With the dagger still loose in his hand, he started toward her.

“Annan—” Her voice was muffled, afraid.