Danger's Kiss (43 page)

“Bloody hell!” the constable hissed between his teeth.  He looked anxiously around him, then whispered tightly, “What the devil have you done?”

Nicholas’s heart pounded like a death knell.  “What do you mean?” he murmured.

The constable cursed again under his breath.  “I mean, who is...”  He nodded to the corpse.  “That?”

Nicholas swallowed hard.  There was no point in lying.  Sooner or later their perfidy would come to light.  If only he could explain everything...

The constable was a reasonable man, after all.  He’d taken the trouble last night to alert Nicholas to Desirée’s imprisonment.  Like Nicholas, he had a strong sense of justice, as well as a penchant for mercy.  That was why Nicholas had chosen him as his constable.  Surely if he knew the whole story...

But there was no time.

Nicholas clenched the constable’s arm, beseeching him with an earnest gaze, “Give us an hour.  We’ve done no wrong.  I swear.  I’ll send you a missive from...wherever we go, revealing everything.”

“Damn it!  I...”  The constable shook off Nicholas’s grip, then rubbed his palm over the back of his neck in aggravation.  “You’re putting me in an awkward position.”

“I know.  But trust me just this once.  Give me an hour.”

The constable’s mouth worked in indecision as he studied Nicholas’s eyes for any sign of trickery, but Nicholas continued to hold his forthright stare.  Then he bit out a vile oath.  “That body’s already as cold as a gravedigger’s arse, isn’t it?”

Nicholas nodded.

“And when we cut it down, see who ‘tis, there’ll be some hellish knot to untangle?”

“Possibly.”

“Shite.”  With a final glance at the corpse hanging from the gallows, the constable blew out a weary breath.  “One hour.”

With a brief sigh of relief and a nod of thanks, Nicholas turned to the executioner and called out, “’Tis
your
vigil this time.”

The executioner took up his post before the gallows to watch over the body for the prescribed hour.

Nicholas clapped a grateful hand on the constable’s shoulder.  “I won’t forget you.”

The constable shook his head.  “To hell with
me
,” he muttered pointedly.  “Don’t forget your damned satchel.”

"
A
church?” Nicholas asked with a laugh.

Snug beneath the covers of their enormous bed, with a purring cat at her feet, Desirée made ticklish circles atop Nicholas’s chest with her fingertip.  He seized her fingers, making her stop.

She’d expected, after their deception four months ago, they’d never be able to return to Canterbury.  But after Nicholas sent his missive of explanation to the constable, the man had painstakingly unraveled Philomena’s fabric of lies, revealing the truth about the mischief at Torteval.

Lord William’s nephew, a decent man, had subsequently inherited the holding.  At the constable’s suggestion, the new lord had seen that Desirée’s kidnappers were appropriately punished for their crime, and he’d issued writs of pardon for Desirée, Nicholas, and even Hubert.  Ultimately, the constable, for all his hard work in Nicholas’s absence, was granted the position of shire-reeve of Kent.

Nicholas didn’t seem to mind, and Desirée couldn’t have been more pleased.  They’d survived the last four months by fleeing to Winchester, where Nicholas had taken up his old trade as a butcher.  A widowed noblewoman had offered Desirée a sizable sum to teach her three children to read and write.

But Desirée had begun to miss the walled cottage with the lovely garden and the warm hearth and the enormous bed, and so, at the new shire-reeve’s invitation, the two of them had returned to Canterbury.

That had been a fortnight ago, and now that they’d swept the cobwebs from the cottage, tended the overgrown garden, and frightened away the bed fleas with hours of impassioned trysting, they needed to find something to occupy their time and earn a living.  A
lawful
living.

“Aye, a church at the crossroads,” she told him, turning in the bed to drape her leg coyly across his hips, making him grunt.  “But not just an ordinary church.”

He lifted a brow.  “A church built by a lawman and an outlaw.”

“
Reformed
outlaw.”

He gave her a dubious smirk, but she wasn’t discouraged.  She knew with the right...distraction...she could talk him into anything.

She coiled a lock of hair at the nape of his neck around her finger.  “’Twould be a refuge of sorts.”

“A refuge?”

“Aye, for foundlings, wayward orphans, unwanted bastards...”

He chuckled.  “Like us?”

“Exactly.”

He snorted.  “You’d have to build an entire village to house all the unwanted bastards.”

“They won’t be unwanted for long.  We’ll reform them.”

“Reform them?  Us?”

“Aye.  You’ll deliver sermons to frighten them out of a life of crime.”

“I see.”

“And I’ll teach them survival skills.”

“Survival skills.  You mean like Fast and Loose, Three Shells and a
—
?”

She yanked hard at his curl, making him grimace.  “Nay.  I mean cooking, sewing, counting, writing.  Things that will make them useful.”

He frowned.  “Useful to whom?”

She eyed his delectably muscled arm and decided to punctuate her answer with a path of kisses.  “The townspeople.  The nobles.  The craftsmen.  Anyone who will hire them for their keep.”  She nuzzled his shoulder, placing a final kiss there.  “Like you did for me, Nicholas.”

Her furry accomplice, Snowflake, chose that moment to clamber up the covers and give Nicholas’s jaw a coaxing nudge.

He grimaced and pushed the cat back on his haunches, giving him a thorough scratching.

“I spoke with the shire-reeve yesterday,” she cooed, walking her fingers up his arm, “and he said he’d be grateful for anything to reduce the crime in Canterbury.”

“Is that so?  And is he willing to
pay
for this church of yours?”  With Nicholas’s store of coins gone to cover the taxes of the poor, they had just enough to live on.

She snuggled against him, combing her fingers through his hair.  “I don’t think we have to worry about that.  Ever since the Miracle of the Gallows
—
“

“The what?”  He stopped petting Snowflake, and the cat jumped off the bed.

“That’s what the townsfolk are calling it, you know.  Evidently, ‘twas unbearable for them to consider they might have been gulled by sleight of hand.  They’ve decided Philomena’s death on the Sabbath was some godly miracle of justice.”

“Mary, Mother of...”

She traced the shell of his ear with her fingertip, making him shiver.  “So considering your newfound status as a miracle worker, I figure the citizens of Canterbury will be most happy to make ongoing...donations to your church.”

“You,” he said, arching his brow, “are an incorrigible thief.”  He flinched.  “And stop doing that.”

“What?” she teased, running her finger lightly over his ear.  “This?”

With a growl, he rolled her onto her back, pinning her arms beside her head.  She grinned.  This was pleasant distraction indeed.

“By the Rood, you’re a wicked lass.”

“On the contrary, miracle worker.  Haven’t you heard?  I’m practically a saint.”  She arched her hips upward in a most unsaintly way.

He groaned as his loins stirred to life against her.  “If you’re a saint, Desirée, then you must be the saint of unrequited desire.”

“Oh, is it requiting you want?” she teased.

His eyes smoldered with lust.  “You know ‘tis.”

It was so difficult to resist him when Nicholas looked at her like that, all smoky and sultry and inviting, with his wry smile and his darkly twinkling eyes and that tempting lock of hair that insisted on falling across his brow.  But she hadn’t won her battle yet.

“What do you say, Nicky?” she asked, coyly dipping her eyes.  “Will you build me my church?”

He gave her a lopsided smile and sighed.  “I’ll think about it.”  Then his grin faded and his gaze softened.  He released one of her wrists to stroke the side of her cheek.  “And what do
you
say, my precious saint?”  His touch was as gentle as spring rain, and his eyes glowed with affection.  “Will you be my wife?”

Her lips quivered, and her eyes welled with joyful tears.  His wife?  She’d expected to be his maidservant and his mistress, but she’d never asked for more.  His
wife
.  She could think of nothing more perfect.

Still, she refused to surrender so easily, not while he yet owed her a church.  She gave him a little shrug.  “I’ll think about it.”

His brows shot up in surprise.  Then he nudged her thighs apart with his own.  “You think about it very...”  He pressed his cock against her.  “Hard.”

All her restraint dissolved then like mist in the wind.  She knew Nicholas wouldn’t be able to say her nay, any more than she could resist him now.  Happier than she’d ever been in her life, she embraced him with welcoming arms, opening her heart to him and offering him the haven of her body.

In return, he carried her off on a voyage to the very brink of heaven.  As they strove together in selfless devotion, they left their sins far behind, and in the rarefied air of ecstasy, their spirits were reborn.  The darkness of the past was forgotten, illuminated by the flames of their love.  And all the promises they made in the depths of their passion, they kept, every single one.

R
ose let her gaze drift over the white wimples and gray habits of the nuns and pondered for the first time what life in a convent might be like.  Now that she’d fled her betrothed, one of the options left her was joining a holy order.  Most women her age shuddered at the thought.  Internment in a convent was a common threat issued to wayward daughters.  But Rose had heard favorable things about the church.  In the service of the Lord, a woman might enjoy a great deal of freedom and, ‘twas rumored, aspire to great power.

And what of the disadvantages?  As far as she could see, there were only two—celibacy and boredom.  After the abomination she’d witnessed in the stable, celibacy seemed desirable.  As for boredom...

She was still reflecting upon her future, absently stroking Wink, when her eye caught a flicker of silver from the darkest shadow in the deepest corner of the room.

She hadn’t noticed the man before.  His black cloak and dark leather chausses made him seem part of the smoke-seasoned timbers of the inn.  Even now she couldn’t see him well.  His eyes were hidden by the hood of his cloak, which revealed only the lower half of his face—a grim mouth and a square, black-stubbled jaw—and yet somehow she felt he watched her.

A forbidding thrill shivered along her spine.  She turned aside, raising her hand to her face so she could peer at the stranger in secret from behind her fingers.

His boots extended beneath the table in a lazy, almost insolent manner, and except for occasionally running a single finger along the rim of his cup, he scarcely moved.  But when he lifted his arm to drink, she saw it again—the glint of metal.

Her heart bolted into her throat.  He wore shackles.  He was a criminal then.  She’d heard about men like him, dangerous men who chose to go on pilgrimage as punishment for their crimes.  She gulped.  What might his villainy be?  Theft?  Adultery?  Murder?

Maybe going on a pilgrimage hadn’t been such a wise decision after all.