Captured by the Warrior (14 page)

And then, out of the darkness, a hand, a warm rough hand, grasped her fingers.

Wild fear made her lunge backwards, trying to escape the grip, but she only succeeded in wrenching the muscles in her shoulder. The hand held her fast, began to lift her sodden weight out of the moat. Nay! Nay! She shook her head in dismay, despair. This could not be happening! The moment her feet touched the flat grass beyond the bank, she sprung at the dark shape, pushing, twisting to free herself. At her back, the sound of hooves, of raised voices.

‘Nay!’ she yelled at her captor, unable to push her matted wet hair from her eyes as both her hands were held by now. ‘I’ll not do it! You cannot make me do it!’

A hand came over her mouth, sealing her speech. ‘Hush now, it’s me. Come on!’ The dark, looming shape took on more familiar lines, the broad shoulders, the high cheekbones…Bastien?

‘What are you doing here?’ Relief sapped at her knees; she stumbled alongside him over the rough ground, aware of his arm around her back, supporting her. His horse waited on the edge of a copse of trees, patiently cropping the grass.

‘Up!’ He hoisted her drenched form on to his horse, swinging his body into the saddle behind her. The hem of her skirts dripped sparkles of water over the animal’s side, highlighted by the eerie light of a low three-quarters moon. Bastien kicked his heels inwards, urging his horse to move quietly into the shadow of the trees.

Her mind was rife with unanswered questions, cushioned against a background of pure, unadulterated relief.
‘What are you doing here?’ she murmured, pallid and wilting against him, grateful for the support of his wide, hard chest at her back.

Hot breath fanned against her damp ear. ‘Talk later,’ he whispered. ‘The sound will carry easily in the night air. Hopefully they’ll think you’ve drowned in the moat. Which, of course, is nothing less than you deserve.’

Alice’s gown stuck uncomfortably to her in wet, cloying folds, making her restless, muscles tense. ‘What is this place?’ She clasped her arms tightly about her chest, trying to stop her teeth chattering.

Bastien shrugged his shoulders, glancing up at the crumbling stone walls, the shaggy green ferns sprouting from precarious heights. ‘An old keep, by the looks of it. It should give us some shelter for the night.’ The moon had risen high, its unearthly light slanting across the inner walls, illuminating Bastien’s rugged outline as he looked across to her.

‘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 strand 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.