Fairest Of Them All (12 page)

“Elspeth!”

At the piercing shriek, Austyn shot straight up out of a troubled sleep. Leaping to his feet in a crouch, he wrenched his sword from its sheath, prepared to defend the nearby tent from a horde of slavering Englishmen or some other terrible foe more likely to have emitted that unearthly cry.

“Elspeth!”

His sword arm went limp with relief as he realized the cry had come from within the tent Twas not some bloodthirsty banshee come to claim their un-shriven souls, but only his wife bellowing for her maid.

Carey and the priest came stumbling out from the pines into the misty dawn, the priest gripping a crucifix as if to ward off some supernatural threat, Carey fumbling to notch an arrow in his bow.

Austyn nudged the bow to a less lethal angle before he could skewer one of them. “Stand down, Carey. We’re not under attack from the English.”

Carey ran a hand through his disheveled hair, still gasping for breath. “The English? I thought a pack of mad dogs had fallen upon you.”

The priest shuddered, his gaze darting wildly from bush to bush. “Dogs? I thought it was demons.”

“Elspeth!”

No amount of reassurance could stop them all from blanching at the renewed vigor of that scream. Austyn’s hand dropped instinctively to his sword hilt.

Carey stumbled backward with an involuntary cry as Austyn’s wife popped her head out of the tent. With the tent flaps hugged close around her throat, her homely face appeared curiously disembodied.

“Could I trouble you to summon my nurse, sir?” she inquired sweetly, blinking up at Austyn as if she hadn’t just startled a decade off his life. “I require her assistance to dress for the day.”

“ Twould be an honor, my lady,” Austyn gritted out between clenched teeth, hi truth, he would have summoned Beelzebub himself to stop her infernal squawking.

He was spared the task as the stooped maid came bustling out from the trees, gripping something he assumed to be a bundle of clothing under her cloak. At the sight of Austyn guarding the tent, hand on sword hilt, an alarmed squeak escaped her and she almost dropped her burden.

She bobbed an ungainly curtsy, chins quivering. “If it wouldn’t trouble ye overmuch, might I pass, sir? I thought I heard the musical sound of my lady’s voice bidding me—”

A slender arm shot out from the tent, jerking her inside.

Carey gaped at the place where she had stood before noticing the folded cloak at their feet. He nudged it with a bare toe, shaking his head sadly. Carey’s crestfallen realization that Austyn had not shared the bower of delight he had so lovingly prepared didn’t goad Austyn’s temper nearly as much as the smirk of triumph that appeared on the priest’s narrow face.

Holly arched her back, preening like a satisfied cat as she massaged her unbound breasts with the flat of her palms. Morning sun filtered through the tent wall, caressing her naked flesh in tingling fingers of warmth.

“Oh, Elspeth,” she moaned. “I don’t know if I can bear it another day.”

Holly would have liked nothing better than to sleep away the morning, but the temptation of stealing a few unfettered moments with her nurse standing guard had proved too strong.

Elspeth’s wry nod toward the rumpled pallet dampened Holly’s innocent pleasure. “One look at ye with yer wee belly aH tucked in and the rest of ye all tucked out and I’ll vow that husband of yers won’t leave ye to sleep alone another night.”

As if invoked by Elspeth’s words, Austyn’s imposing shadow fell across the tent wall. Holly crossed her arms over her naked breasts, besieged by sudden, painful shyness. Her husband had been pacing around the tent in impatient vigil for over an hour, halting every few circuits to growl out a reminder of the passing time.

Admitting with a pang of resentment that her brief liberation had come to an end, Holly spread her arms, inviting Elspeth to mummify the natural exuberance of her breasts. When that was done, Elspeth fetched the pot of cold ashes she had smuggled from the fire and rubbed them in her mistress’s hair, dulling its ebony gloss. Elspeth held the hand mirror while Holly added the finishing touch to her disguise by drawing a fingerful of ashes across her upper lip. Holly hoped such subterfuge would become unnecessary once the sun had coarsened her skin.

From outside the tent, a masculine throat cleared with the force- of a thunderclap. The mirror slipped from Elspeth’s trembling hand, striking the edge of the iron pot

Austyn’s voice reverberated with exaggerated patience. “If you care to eat while we take down the tent, my lady, you’d best finish your primping posthaste.”

Fearing he might yet storm their citadel or tear the tent down around their heads, Holly hissed, “Quick, Elspeth. My gown!”

Holly snatched the narrow tube of her chemise down over her hips while Elspeth dropped the cotte over her head. She batted the smothering bulk of its padded skirts away from her face, then clawed her way out of the drooping bodice. The overtunic was a subtle shade of apricot that had once warmed her natural blush to peach. Sighing wistfully at the memory, she yanked the skirt this way and that around her hips, then twisted to peer over her shoulder for a troubled look at her backside.

Elspeth wrung her gnarled hands. “ Tis a mite crooked, my lady. I had very little time.”

“ Twill have to do,” Holly replied, snatching up the mirror.

She was less concerned by the fit of her skirt than by the need to break her fast Not only was that odd pang in the pit of her belly still troubling her, but she had deduced without Nathanael’s help that if she could eat enough to fatten herself up, there would be no need for padded skirts to maintain her disguise.

She surveyed herself critically in the hand mirror, noting with dismay that its glass had cracked in the fall. A thin schism divided her ravaged reflection into two halves.

Austyn’s shadow loomed once more against the tent wall. Holly laid aside the mirror, defiantly dabbed a drop of myrrh oil in the hollow of her throat, and called out with calculated malice, “Coming, my lord.”

Austyn struggled not to recoil as his bride swept out of the tent The bright morning sunlight showed her even less mercy than the mellow afternoon sun. Pity tempered his irritation at being kept waiting. It must be a terrible blow to her that the eternity she’d spent preening had yielded no more pleasing results.

He was mystified to note that on the contrary, she looked excessively pleased with herself. The smile she shot him was almost coy. “Did you make mention of food, sir? I’m ravenous. I feared perhaps you were trying to starve me.”

“Of course not Twas simply so late when we halted . . .” Austyn trailed off, already regretting his confession of the previous night He’d been reluctant to divulge his secret, but feared it might wound her tender feelings if she believed her appearance alone had dissuaded him from bedding her.

She tilted her pert little snout in the air, sniffing eagerly at the aroma of roasting meat “ Tis never too late to indulge the appetite, sir Nor too early.” Hefting her skirts to reveal a pair of slender ankles that should have been too delicate to support her bulk, she trotted briskly in the direction of the food.

Austyn studied the saucy sway of her hips, bedeviled by a sense of unease. He would have almost sworn that unsightly bulge was on her right flank yesterday. He was distracted from that thought by the twitching of his nostrils. Twas not the scent of roasting hare that tantalized them, but a more elusive fragrance ribboning through the air. He shook his head, dismissing the absurdity. It seemed his wits had all but deserted him since the day he had first heard the name of Tewksbury.

Austyn was to rue that day anew as he and Carey leaned against opposing trees, glumly watching his bride pack away her third cold meat pie. She sat on a low stump, her knees spread wide so that her skirt might catch any morsel that escaped her avid attentions. Thus far it had gathered only the sparsest of crumbs. Austyn was beginning to understand how she’d managed to achieve such an impressive girth on such a delicate frame.

The hare Carey had shot and roasted had long since been reduced to a pathetic skeleton. Austyn tilted his head in reluctant fascination as he watched her eat He was loathe to admit it, but her gluttony did possess a certain sensual elegance. She ate with the decadent abandon of someone either blissfully oblivious or blatantly scornful of the critical scrutiny of others. His gaze was drawn to her puckered lips as she sucked the grease from each finger in turn with mesmerizing thoroughness.

“Good God,” Carey said, snapping him out of his reverie as she delved face first into another pie. “I’ve never seen such piggery. She eats like a horse.”

“I feared she was going to eat my horse. Tis fortunate we shall reach Caer Gavenmore by nightfall or we’d all starve.”

“Or be eaten,” Carey muttered darkly.

The possibility of meeting such a fate seemed less unkind to Austyn once their journey got under way and the hours in his wife’s company crawled past. After traveling only a few leagues, Austyn began to suspect that a vindictive Booka had wiggled its way into the tent during the night and replaced his long-suffering bride of yesterday with an insufferable harpy.

When she wasn’t whining, she was complaining about the unseasonal heat When she wasn’t complaining about the heat, she was demanding they stop for another meal. Or a drink of water from a fresh running stream. Or a moment of privacy in the bushes. When she wasn’t making impossible demands, she was bemoaning the godforsaken ruts in the narrow path. Or the bumpiness of the worsening terrain. Or the increasing bleakness of the Welsh landscape.

Her incessant bleating not only was setting Aus-tyn’s teeth on edge but was kindling everyone else’s temper as well. When he inadvertently called her “Ivy” after her third rendition of “How much farther have we to travel?” the entire party, including her mousy nurse, swiveled in their saddles and shrieked “Holly!” at him.

He had subsided, scowling fiercely. His own comfort in the saddle was severely impeded by the perpetual state of arousal provoked by the hint of myrrh that still haunted the breeze. He had thought Rhiannon banished from his life, but perhaps the vindictive witch had simply devised a more diabolical means of torture.

As they wended their way up a steep, rocky hillside, Carey drew his mount alongside Austyn’s. “Wretched little tyrant, isn’t she? Tis no mystery now why her father sought to rid himself of her company. You should ride straight back to Tewksbury and demand more gold.”

Austyn forced a shrug that was far more light-hearted than he felt He was beginning to fear he’d made a terrible mistake. “The shaping of character is a delicate task. Her father probably coddled her every whim to console her for the curse of her looks.”

Carey shot a dark glance over his shoulder. “ Tis a pity he got naught for his efforts but an ugly brat”

“Perhaps maturity will mellow her temper.”

“If you don’t strangle her first.” All it took was a wry flick of Austyn’s gaze to make Carey blanch. “Oh, Christ, Austyn, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Austyn smiled to reassure him. “Don’t apologize.

As well you know, it takes more than a bit of nagging to tempt a Gavenmore to murder.”

“Sir Austyn? Sir Austyn, I say, are we nearing the end of our journey yet? Twill be nigh on to noontide soon and I’m growing quite faint with hunger.”

At the sound of the querulous voice, Austyn’s smile tightened to a wince. “Mayhaps I spoke prematurely . . .”

Holly had never been so miserable in her entire life.

The mountainous terrain made any semblance of comfort impossible. Her persistent squirming only succeeded in wadding up a lump of cloth that seemed to take malicious pleasure in poking her in the spine with each torturous clop of the horse’s hooves. She had obediently kept her face bared to the sun as the hours passed; now each lick of the afternoon breeze stung her cheeks with tongues of flame.

Her gluttonous attempts to plump herself up had done nothing but bloat her belly and make her drowsy. Yet the food had failed to sate the empty ache in the pit of her stomach, and with her nerves plucked like lyre strings, she found sleep to be even more unattainable than comfort

She had spent half the journey poised on tenterhooks, expecting a horde of murderous Welshmen to spring out from behind every knoll, and the other half nursing the even grimmer suspicion that Gavenmore possessed no such reinforcements. That her papa had surrendered her without so much as a whimper for naught.

No one had dared speak to her since Nathanael had urged his donkey to her side shortly after the noontide meal. “Splendid strategy, my child,” he had murmured up at her, his long legs flopping over the animal’s flanks. “A man finds nothing so repugnant as a shrewish wife.”

Holly had fixed him with her haughtiest glare. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about”

Try as she might, she could not keep her gaze off the broad, forbidding planes of her husband’s back. He had been the very soul of patience with her, yet she feared his tolerance would not last Especially not if he discovered her deception. As they passed beneath a gnarled arch of branches, the portal to a forested slope, Elspeth’s dire prophecy of being murdered and left to rot beneath a blanket of lichen seemed less absurd than it had in the rolling meadows of England.

Holly’s gaze darted from tree to tree, seeking escape from her own sinister musings. The Welsh landscape was as foreign as the circumstances she’d unwittingly thrust upon herself. Ancient oaks towered over their heads, bearing little resemblance to the sprightly birches and elms of Tewksbury. Their ponderous canopy faded the sun’s rays, creating an eternal twilight of damp shadows and ferny hollows. A carpet of moss blunted their horses’ hoofsteps to a sibilant hush.

Holly’s imagination rapidly succumbed to the for-esfs dark enchantment Instead of the throaty warble of some unknown bird, she heard the sly giggling of faeries mocking her predicament The musical cadences of a waterfall tumbling over stone became the piping of some goatish Pan luring a maiden to her ruin. The twisted trunks of blackthorn and alder leered at her like faces frozen in anguish, the captive spirits of other travelers foolish enough to profane this hallowed forest.