Conqueror (6 page)

She was unlike anything he’d ever known before, and he was totally unprepared.

He was not a child, for heaven’s sake. At twenty-six years of age, with seventeen years of exile under his belt, in disguise and courting death, he was a spy for his king. The things he’d done in the execution of those duties were undoubtedly more challenging than managing one lost waif, no matter how beautiful or spirited or…well, simply no matter anything.

And yet, here she was, on the back of his horse. Distracting him.

He’d never been distracted before.

He suddenly realised she’d been talking.

“…and I couldn’t think when I saw them there, Marcus’s men. All I knew is that I was doomed.”

He looked down at the top of her dark, tousled head. “You didn’t appear to think all hope was lost, mistress, the way you stood in the middle of the road and ordered them on their way.”

“I was angry,” she explained. “That’s all that was: bravado, and anger. But I knew I was dead. More sure of it than tomorrow’s sunrise. Then you came. You saved me.”

He shifted on Noir. His mission had nothing to do with saving anyone from anything. This was about settling old scores, about taking back what was his. It was about conquest. The last thing he needed was an indebted woman, particularly one whose trembling body was pressed up against his, her slender, pale arm thrown around his neck.

“I’m no saviour, mistress,” he gruffed.

She cocked her head up. Green-eyes peered at him sidewise. Definitely, he did not need this.

“You just saved
me
,” she pointed out.

“We saved each other, then,” he allowed gruffly.

“You would not have needed any saving if it weren’t for me, Pagan,” she persisted.

A corner of his mouth twitched. “’Tis so.”

“Then I’m indebted.”

He lowered his gaze slowly. “Guinevere, ’tis best if you don’t see me as the saviour of anything.”

Her body was moving slightly now, not so rock-hard and rigid as it had been. This was encouraging, and disturbing, for it was leading his mind in directions he had no desire to go. A female body warm and pressed against him, swaying with every step Noir took. Into him. He glared at the tips of Noir’s furry ears and took a long, controlled breath.

A sudden shift of her weight brought his attention back down. She’d bent forward and cupped her forehead in her palms. He tugged Noir to a halt. “Your head hurts.”

“Only when I breathe,” she whispered.

He swung a leg over Noir’s rump, and dismounted, then rummaged through one of his saddlebags.

The dark, comforting space below Gwyn’s down-turned head was suddenly invaded by a pungent odour as he nudged a silver flask in front of her face. “Saints assoil me, knight,” she complained, lifting her head. “What in perdition is that?”

He lifted his eyebrows, then pushed the flask closer. “Say ’tis medicine and you’ll be closer than many others who call it by another.”

Gracing him with a suspicious slant of her eyes, she sniffed again. “It smells like something my dog would cough up.”

He laughed. “You’re priceless.”

“No one has placed a bid as yet.”

“Their loss. Drink.”

Levelling a doubtful gaze at her would-be leech, she tilted back her head and drank. The liquid ran hot through her throat, raking its way down in a fiery blast.

Griffyn watched as she tipped sideways, her hair flying as she sputtered and slipped halfway off the saddle. His hands flashed out and closed around her hips. The flat bones shifted under his thumbs. One long, slender thigh dangled beside his ribs. His fingers pressed into curving, soft roundness and for a heartbeat, all his world contracted to become womanly flesh and desire. He watched her heart-shaped face as she lifted it, wiping her dripping chin as she moved, rasping and astonished. A waterfall of black hair swung behind, fluttering over her face before settling around her shoulders. He let her slide to the ground.

Her neck was arched back the slightest bit, her eyes wide. Unsteady came her breath, he could feel it on his cheek, his jaw. Erotic. Her bodice lifted and fell, revealing tempting curves and satiny skin with each unsteady inhalation. He drew in a slow breath and removed his hand.

Bedraggled she was, but Griffyn knew women as well as he knew war, and beneath the dirt staining her skin was the face of a goddess. Her body, an expanse of silk and rose he’d seen full well before covering her in his cape, proved the splendor went on, over rounded breasts and down a curving spine.

“What was that?” she sputtered, her voice still raspy from the fiery drink.

He grinned slowly. “You tell me.”

She glanced at the bottle, back at him, and a smile spread over her face, turning the delicate features into a breathtaking vision of loveliness.
“Good.”

Dirt-stained, disheveled, homeless lass, she was. She was also the funniest, most surprising female he’d happened upon in many a year.

And he was in danger of losing himself underneath the vision of himself as saviour to the homeless lass.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said, then lifted her into the saddle again, this time ignoring the way her hips felt under his hands
.
He remounted behind her.

“So, are you in orders?” he enquired, more from a desire to focus his mind away from her body than from any true curiosity, “or was there some other reason for going to the Abbey?”

She laughed. “It was just…a way out. A way out of the city…away from Marcus…” She trailed off.

“Just away, is it then?” he said in a low, comforting rumble.

“Aye,” she admitted in a small voice. His thigh shifted under hers.

“Umm.”

She was relaxing further. Aside from the clues provided by reasonable, tear-free conversation, he could feel the weight of her increase against his arm as she leaned back. He flexed his arm the smallest bit to support her.

She chatted on, her words becoming a tinkling, background music. He was surprised it did not aggravate him. Reaching up, he unclasped the pin holding his cape and slung the heavy woollen material around her shoulders, covering her bedraggled dress, which was beginning to tempt his mind in directions he had no desire to go. Her cape he slid off and threw over Noir’s rump, a tattered, bloody mess.

“…which is why,” she was saying, her forehead wrinkling, “for me to cry in the face of brewing storm clouds tonight is such a plaguesome mystery. I mean, I do
not
cry. And so, ’tis most odd.”

“Perhaps you were not crying about the storm.”

Those impossibly green eyes turned slowly up to him. Rolling in fat tears that did not, as she had predicted, overflow, the emotion brimming in them was anguished enough to speak. So it was not necessary for her to say what she said next, because he knew it already.

“No, I believe I was crying about something else altogether.”

Good God, he could lose himself right here, on the back of his horse.

And that was unacceptable.

Recall your mission
, he counseled himself grimly.

And not the one for Henri fitzEmpress. A more private, well-simmered vengeance, seventeen years in the making: Destroy the House of de l’Ami.

They sat at the edge of a small clearing. Lurking around its edges was the deep, dark forest, with its sharp-edged black trees and small scurryings in the undereaves. In the middle of the clearing squatted five or six daub-and-wattle huts. And in front of the ragged half-circle they created roared an enormous bonfire.

Gwyn sighed in relief, then considered it more closely. That was a great deal of wood and peat to be burning so wastefully. Some dim recollection coalesced in her mind. She looked to Pagan.

“What is the bonfire for?”

“All Hallows’ Eve.”

The night when the portal from the Other World to this world were opened, the only night in the year. Magic flowed, spirits dwelt.

The smokey greyness of his eyes was unreadable in the darkness. “Warm and safe and dry,” he reminded her.

“If you say.”

“If you behave.”

Her eyebrows went down. “Behave?”

“Don’t talk too much. Can you manage that?”

She dropped her head to the side. “Of course.”

“Good. And a ride to your Abbey tomorrow.”

“You?”

He swung off Noir just as the door to the largest hut swung wide. A thick band of yellow firelight spilled out over the muddy earth.

“No. Them.”

Two figures appeared in the doorway, one behind the other. Large, broad-shouldered figures who seemed to be holding blunt-edged weapons of some sort. Aloft.

Pagan said something in the guttural Saxon tongue and that’s all there was to it. The men lowered their weapons and came out with welcoming gestures. Gwyn could understand nothing of their Saxon-held conversation, but it was clear Pagan was not worried.

She rested her hands on Noir’s furry, warm withers, patting his neck while listening to the murmurs of the men’s conversation, watching Pagan. He stood unaffectedly, a day’s growth of stubble roughening his face. He put his foot up on a log. The leather of his knee-high black boot rose up his calf, dully reflecting the firelight. One mailed forearm rested on his bent knee as he nodded and laughed at something one of the men said.

Gwyn found herself smiling too, and her belly did a little flip when he turned his dark gaze back to her. He said something to the men, then started over, his stride long and confident.

They walked together into the warm hut. Eight or so souls stood and sat in the small open space at the centre. It was crowded, but not uncomfortably so. Over the firepit near the centre hung a black cauldron, and inside the contents bubbled and burped. To the right, behind a half-wall, Gwyn could hear a cow shuffling in the hay.

All the faces were staring at her. She smiled. They didn’t exactly smile in return, but neither did they brandish swords. They were dirty faces, unkempt, but they did not appear hostile, nor like they wanted anything from her, and for the moment, that was sufficient.

One of the women, the blunt-nosed, square-shouldered matron, came forward and, with a nod, indicated Gwyn should sit at the table. A bowl of hot stew was plunked down in front of her. Small flecks of colour swirled in the dark brown broth, carrots and onions. Alongside lay a chunk of day-old rye bread.

“My thanks,” she exhaled in true, great gratitude.

Pagan nodded to her. “I’ll leave you here, then, mistress.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled, then tried to hide it. How embarrassing. Certes, he had more important things to do. She had no claim on him. “Of course.”

“Tomorrow morn, Clid there,” he said, gesturing to one of the square-shouldered men who had greeted them, “will be your escort to Saint Alban’s.”

She swung her leg over the bench. He was already backing towards the door. “I cannot express my thanks, Pagan. I owe you more than I can ever repay. You saved my life.”

He shrugged. “Your virtue, more’s the like. I don’t think your life was in any danger, mistress.”

“Oh, truth, sir, ’twas. For I’d have killed myself before I married Marcus fitzMiles.”

He paused, gauntleted hand on the door jam, and grinned over his shoulder, just like a friend would do. “Me too.”

She pushed to her feet then, feeling reckless and unruly and everything she hadn’t let herself feel for a dozen years. Crossing to the door, she kept her eyes on the dirt floor and fumbled with the bag of silver tied round her waist, shocked at how weepy she felt.

“Lady, please.” A touch of impatience sharpened the masculine rumble of his words. He turned and walked out.

“I am simply looking for a way to recompense you,” she explained helplessly to his back.

The length of his mail-clad body stilled, then he turned and strode back to within inches of her. He swept up the hair by her ear with the edge of a warm, calloused hand, and leaned in. “Smile.”

Something hot flashed through her body. “Sir?”

“Smile for me.”

He could have said anything. In that husky voice, his long fingers brushing back her hair, his breath warm on her skin, he could have said he was a traitor to the king and she would have smiled. And when she did, slowly, hesitantly, a corner of his own mouth crooked up in reply.

“I have been recompensed,” he murmured.

Something hot and cold and shivery came down like a rainstorm through her body. Every breath she tried to take came rushing back out again. She could hardly listen to his next words, with his muscular body pulsing heat onto hers, his lips just by her ear, whispering words that were all of sense, nothing of the animal arousal he’d just awakened in her.

“Take care here, Raven. Don’t talk too much. Don’t ask too many questions. Hide that silly pouch of silver and whatever you’ve got in the other one.”

He ran his index finger briefly along her jaw. It was a careless gesture, but it made the hot-cold chills explode like fire through her blood. She reached out and her fingertips brushed his mailed forearm.

“Don’t go. Yet. Please.”

And like that, deep inside of Griffyn, something that hadn’t moved for a very long time suddenly shifted.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her outside, propelling her behind Noir, using the horse as a shield between them and the huts. His intention was clear, and he barely dared breathe, waiting for her refusal. Let her pull back the slightest bit and he would step away, forget the whole thing, interpret her unsteady breathing as fear, her trembles as exhaustion.

But God
, he prayed silently,
please let her move not so much as an eyelash.

Why was his blood hammering so? Why was it hard to draw breath? He had barely touched her on two occasions, touches so innocent he could have performed them in a crowded room and barely brought a gasp. Why?

Because something about this small, courageous wisp of a woman was plunging into recesses of a desire he’d never known existed, and his arousal pulsed hot and hard and inassuagable inside him, all from the feel of a curving spine and the sight of a delicate, dirt-stained face.

Without a thought for custom or destiny or anything other than the green-eyed angel pressed against his horse and panting, he bent his head to taste the trembling lips. Sliding his thumb slowly down her neck, he brushed his lips over hers.