Kathryn Kramer (11 page)

The tip of his tongue stroked her lips as deftly as his hands caressed he
r body.  In response, she moaned, turning her head so that his mouth slanted over hers and his tongue sought to part her lips.  She mimicked the movement of his mouth, reveling in the sensations that flooded over her.  She wanted to feel more, to know more about this glorious new experience.

Sheltered together in the woodsman's hut they clung to one another
. Alandra wanted to savor his tender assault, relish the feel of his mouth against hers.  In all her dreams she had never imagined a kiss could be so overpowering. Nicholas ignited a fire in her blood, a hunger that was not for food.  Instead a new craving teased her, one of which she was not familiar.

Nicholas's desire was not any less fierce than hers.  He had known desire before
, but never like this.  Even Morgana had not sparked such a flame.  His reaction to Alandra's nearness, to the soft, innocent mouth opening to him, trembling beneath the heated encroachment of his lips, was explosive.  So much so that he was shaken, giving in to a shiver that was nearly as violent as Alandra's had been.  For one moment he nearly lost his head completely.  His hands pushed her back slightly as his fingers fumbled at her bodice, searching for her soft flesh.             

She shivered and her skin
flushed as his hand rested on the full mound of her breast.

Suddenly  a flash of lightning crackled nearby, b
ringing Nicholas instantly and disagreeably back to reality.  Reluctantly, he lifted his mouth from Alandra's and drew his hand away.

"Dear God!" 
Nicholas groaned as he moved away from her.

The
spell was broken.  Alandra was horrified at how she had so completely capitulated to his advances.  But then he was quite adept at lovemaking, was he not?   Particularly with other men's wives!  Glaring at him she ignored the clamor in her own body and blamed what had happened entirely on him!  Philanderer that he was he had known exactly what he was doing.

"How dare you!"  she rasped. 

Nicholas regretted the incident.  Now was no time to become emotionally entangled.  Worse yet, the kiss had revealed to him that she was most definitely not like Morgana.  No toy to be trifled with. 

"I'm sorry, Alandra."

"As well you should be!"  Frustration and rage welled up inside her.  How self-satisfied he must feel to know how easily he could ply his charms on her.  She'd allowed him to kiss her without even a show of resistance.  It was humiliating.

"I should never have betrayed my promise."  He felt the tension in her.

"No, indeed you should not
have."  But of a certainty it wasn't the first time he was guilty of betrayal, she thought.  How many times had he gone back on his word?

"God's bones, I might not have stopped with a kiss.   It will not happen again."  He had seduced so many women at court that he had lost count.  But Alandra was an altogether different kind of woman.

"Indeed, it will not!" Her hand came up to press against her quivering mouth.  She was not so naive that she did
not know what he had intended. "If you ever lay your hands on me again..."

It was in that inopportune moment that he spied the handbill.  Having been disturbed by their close bodily contact, it thrust  imp
udently up between her breasts.

"What is this?"

Alandra  reached for it, but she was too late.  She watched in stunned surprise as he plucked it out and quickly read it.

"So you know."

"Yes, I know!"  For a moment she could hardly catch her breath as she waited to see what he would do. Now that she  knew the truth, she was doubly dangerous to him.

Nicholas touched his bottom lip as he eyed her up and down.  She knew.  What was he to do about it?  Silence her?  "This poses a serious problem."

"I'm sure it does." 

Hastily
, she took a step backwards.  But Nicholas caught her wrist. 

"It is not what you think!  I'm not a murderer!" 
he explained, throwing the broadside to the ground.

"Oh no?"  Despite her appre
hension, her tone challenged him.  "Oh no?  Then why are you running away?"

"I....I was cornered by my enemy, my rival. 
I didn't have the chance to explain.  I was caught in a situation that boded ill for me."  He clenched and unclenched his fists as he remembered that night.  "I didn't want to see him dead."

"Not even so that you could have his wife?"  Alandra asked coldly.  She vividly remembered the way
he and that haughty blonde had looked upon each other.  Only her husband had stood in their way.

"It happened so quickly."  Nicholas' head  began to pound violently
and he put his hand to his temple.  "I admit that I went to the Black Unicorn to meet her but only so that we could talk.  She was upset."

"I don't doubt it!"  Alandra said wryly.

"Suddenly her husband was charging at me, and though I refused at first to draw my sword, he wouldn't let me be.  He goaded me on.  We fought and........"

"You ran him through."  Hearing him tell the tale
, she nearly believed him.

"I must have, though I do not remember dealing the blow.  All I know is that
Lord Woodcliff fell.  He was  dead."  Nicholas clenched his jaw.  "Lord Stafford came rushing in shouting accusations, ready to throw me to the wolves to further his own ambition.  I fled the inn.  Looking for a way to escape I spotted your play wagon and the rest you know."

"Aye.  You ducked into our wagon thinking to make use of  poor
simple
folk by lying!"  And yet had he told them the truth, what would have happened then?  Would they have shielded him?  Or turned him over to those on the chase?

"I had to tell a convincing story, Alandra.  And had you been in my place you would have done the same.  Deny it!"  Now it was he who challenged her.

Alandra stared at him.  For the life of her, she couldn't say that she wouldn't have done the same thing had she been on the run.  Still, she didn't completely trust him.  How could she.  "Let me go," she said softly.  "Let me go back.  You have no need of me.  Not really.  You could....."

His tone was curt, cutting off her plea.  "I can't.  Not yet.  Not until I get safely to my estates.  Once there, once I am among my own, I will see that you return to your father and the others.  But only then."

Alandra could see that there was no changing his mind.  "So, until then I am your prisoner," she said bitterly.

Nicholas smiled sadly.  "I prefer to think of it as your being my companion, to make my journey less lonely and dismal, Alandra." 

Abruptly, he turned from her and went to fetch the horses.  Alandra bent to pick up the broadside and stuffed it back inside her bodice,

"Now, if you will be so good as to mount, we will be on our way again."
he said, holding the horse’s reins.                                         

Alandra wanted to say no, wanted to tell him to go to the devil, yet for some reason she found herself climbing upon Pedant's back.  What if he told her the truth?  What if the old lord had been killed in a tussle?  It wouldn't be the first time nor would it be
the last that such a thing happened.  London and the surrounding areas were filled with such incidents.  As Shakespeare said, it was a brutal world.  Did she  want Christopher to be beheaded for what had happened?  Not really. 

"I'll go with you," she said, turning up her chin proudly.  "If....."

"If what?"  Nicholas waited warily.

"If you promise you'll return Will's horse
.."

She spoke so solemnly, so determinedly that Nicholas chuckled.  He'd expected her to be like Morg
ana, grasping and greedy.  Instead, what she proposed was more than fair.  "It's a deal." 

That agreed
, they once more set off down the road.

Chapter Fifteen

It was to be a wet and dirty ride to Bodiam, thro
ugh muck and mire, and they were not the only ones caught by the storm.  Several wagons and carts were stuck in the muddy road. Soon the narrow paths became completely impassable except on foot or horseback.  The waters of the Rother threatened to rise and possibly overflow their banks.  Despite this, Nicholas was insistent that they continue, promising Alandra that once they had arrived at their destination there would be a bath and a warm fire.  It was a pledge that she threatened to hold him to.

Alandr
a watched the road in silence, lost in her thoughts, reliving Nicholas's kiss a dozen times or more.  Her emotions were in a turmoil, for his warm lips on hers had awakened a myriad of sensations she hadn't been prepared to feel.   Oh, she could pretend she was not attracted to him, but that would have been a lie.  She was, and the acknowledgement of that truth made her realize that he was even more dangerous to her now than before.   Emotions could be treacherous, could land a woman in terrible peril. Were she not careful she might end up being putty in his hands, believing anything he told her, doing all that he said.

But it would not come to that.
Alandra had her pride.  Deep down, she knew he was a womanizing swain, nobleman or not.  The kind of man who meant trouble to a young woman such as she who so wholly gave her heart.  She was looking for love, not for a tumbling.  She was no match for the other women he had no doubt known.  She was not such a fool that she did not know there was much more to love than midnight trysts, moonlight and kisses. 

But there was more at stake here.
Alandra and Christopher were worlds apart.  He was a nobleman and she one of the common folk.  Even though they had been thrown into each other's company, there was a wall between them that could never be scaled.  And what of the trouble he was in?  It was the kind of predicament not easily gotten out of.

Oh, Christopher.  Christopher.
  Strange how she always thought of him by the false name he had assumed.  But then, perhaps it was far better for her to call him by his alias, lest she inadvertently ruin everything by a careless mistake.             

Alandra was a practical dr
eamer, or so her father and Shakespeare always said.  She had a romantic soul blended with a mind that always bowed to common sense.  Nevertheless as she traveled, she allowed herself to wonder what might have happened if she and Christopher were equal.  Were he a glove-maker's son like Will, or a genuine actor as he professed to be, she felt certain there might have been a chance for the mutual attraction between them to ignite, to blaze as brightly perhaps as a hundred stars.  But he was not a glover's son.  Remembering the broadside that had rested beneath her bodice close to her heart, she was brutally reminded of that.  Nicholas Leighton was a nobleman, albeit a wanted one.

Alandra watched the passing scenery with a strange feeling of loss, knowing that once Christopher had reached his final destination she would more than likely never see him again. 
She had not cared before but truthfully she did now.  He was an interesting man, a fascinating companion, though  not a man without faults.  He was stubborn, prideful.  And yes, a man who knew himself to be irresistible to women.  As to the more serious sin of murder, she wasn't of a mind now to judge him, not after what he had said to her.  Let him prove his innocence.  For good or ill she'd give him a chance.

Nicholas could sense Alandra's eyes on him.  Right from the first he had suspected that the haughty manner in which she treated him was partly a ruse to hide her blossoming attraction to him.  He had purposefully made use of
those feelings for his own purposes.  Now he was sorry.   He didn't want to hurt her.  She deserved better than that. 

Men often divided women into two groups, those who were for marriage and
those whom a man used to satisfy his lust.  Alandra was not the latter but a woman with brains, spirit and virtue.  The kind of woman one seldom met in London and rarely at court.

"Once this is over I'll send her back and that will be that!"  he said beneath his breath.  Yet at the same time there was a voice deep within him whispering that he didn't want to let her go.  There was so much that he could teach her about love and life.  A whole banquet waiting to be savored.  Together they could....but no!

With a daughter so wondrously fair Murray would have suitors vying for her hand.  Alandra would come to her marriage bed the virgin she was now with only a kiss to remember him by, and he in turn would try to put her from his mind.  It was true that her nearness had thrown him temporarily off guard, but that would not happen again.  As soon as he met with his brother, he would do all he could to set things to right again.  It would be as if they never met.

Mud-splattered and weary, Alandra and Nicholas soon approached
Bodiam Village at the edge of Bodiam Castle, and found a ripple of unrest flowing through the usually tranquil place.  Much to his alarm, Nicholas could see armed men walking about the streets as if they expected trouble.

"What's wrong, Christopher?"  She knew a sudden fear for him.

"Perhaps everything!" he answered, knowing that whatever happened he could not endanger her.  She was innocent of any wrong doing.  "Alandra, leave me.  Go to the castle and ask for my brother.  Tell him what has happened.  Instruct him to take you back to Boughton Monchelsea.  Go now!"

"No!"  Despite her previous hopes that he would come to justice she now had a serious change of heart.  Above all else
she didn’t want him to be beheaded or hanged.

"I said go!"  He clenched his jaw in frustration.  God's teeth but she was a frustrating lass.

"And I said that I won't!"  He read gentleness and caring in the large copper moons of her eyes.  "We made a bargain, you and I.  It's not finished yet!"

"Ah lass, lass, I'm grateful for your loyalty.   That she remembered him kindly was somehow desperately important.  "But you must not get involved in any of this.  I should have sent you back no matter what I feared you would tell the others."

All his well-intentioned words might as well have fallen on deaf ears, for Alandra was staunch in her determination to support  him.  Somehow she could help him, she insisted.  It had often been said that two heads were of much better use than one.

"Stay here.  I'm going to see what I can find out....."

Leaving Nicholas behind in the barn, Alandra made her way into the village, and mingled with the crowd.  An old woman crossing the cobbled streets of the marketplace, holding a basket of freshly baked bread aloft, paused to reveal part of the story.  The townsmen had been put on the alert for a murderer, having been told that the suspect would most likely be headed toward Bodiam.  It was their intent to apprehend him and so prove their loyalty to the queen.

"'E's the lord of the castle," the woman said, pointing in the direction of the fortress that rose nearby, a structure of gray stone towers and turrets.  "I've seen 'im myself, I 'ave.  There's been a warrant for 'is arrest.  Signed by the Queen 'erself."

Alandra pieced together the details from the fragments that she learned from the villagers.  Lord Owen Stafford, certain that the guilty man would head to his own lands to try to raise a force of armed men, had sent his own retainers to mingle amidst the crowd, some disguised as tinkers, tailors or farmers, others boldly displaying their arms.  It was a trap,  the villagers said anxious to impress her with their knowledge.  The castle itself was crawling with armed guards--all Lord Stafford's men.  Alandra realized that Nicholas's journey had been all in vain.  All that he had done was to walk straight into a trap and she suspected that few of the men of the village would have defied the powerful hand of Stafford despite their supposed loyalty to Nicholas.  A man on the run had no friends.  Except now for herself, Alandra thought, casting the villagers a disdainful glance.

She thought wryly that Nicholas would have been better off in
London where there were always those on the opposite side of the law who could be bribed to offer aid.  In London the narrow, twisting streets would have given him at least a chance of escape, but in the village his prospect was much less favorable. 

Hurrying back to the barn
, she quickly told Nicholas all that she had learned.  "And so if you try to clear you name, visit your lands or try to get your hands on any money, you'll be arrested.  It is as simple as that."

"And what of my brother?  Do you have any news of him?" 

Nicholas had the look of a defeated man, an expression Alandra could not bear.

"For the moment he is safe, though far away from Bodiam by now.  I beli
eve they said he has gone to Norfolk."  She saw the gleam in his eye that meant trouble and knew what was on his mind.  "You must not contact your family in any way, for Owen Stafford is waiting for you to do just that."

His anger exploded as he thought of the snare he was in.  "And just what am I to do?  Roam about the country like a bloody vagabond? 
Turn myself into a lamb?  Act the coward?  I have little money left.  No place to go.  How long before I'm arrested as a jobless wanderer?"  He threw back his head and choked out a laugh.  "Imagine the jest Stafford will make of that."  He did not tell her that his property had obviously been stripped from him too.  For all intents and purposes he was a pauper; that was all he trusted himself to reveal.  "Owen Stafford has won the chess game, or at least his turn at play."

"Maybe not!"  Alandra gave
serious thought to the matter. "You could go back with me."

"What?"

"You are being hunted, but were you to seek out Elizabeth and tell her all, perhaps she would use clemancy and....."

"No!"
he cut her off. Elizabeth would be furious with him, as much for his dalliance with Morgana as for Lord Woodcliff's fate.  Despite her age, the queen viewed all of the men at her court as hers.  It was an unspoken rule.  He had bridged that rule by showing Morgana attention.  It was enough to send him to the Tower.  Moreover, he knew Stafford.  He would do everything in his power to poison Elizabeth's mind against his rival. 

"No!" he said again.
"I can not put myself at Elizabeth's mercy.  In her present state of mind she will show none."  Nicholas closed his eyes.  What could he do?  How could he make himself invisible.

"Then what?"  Alandra's suspicions were beginning to nag at her again. 

Nicholas was inspired.  "I could travel with the players, at least for a time." 

Now it was Alandra who shook her head.  "If we were caught harboring a fugitive it might well mean our doom."  Now that she knew he really had killed Lord Woodcliff,
and after the matter of the horse, how could she even think of it?   "My father and Will would never forgive me were I to bring them to ruin."

"You won't.  I won't!"  He talked rapidly, trying to convince her. 

She did not argue, though her head whirled with reasons why it was impossible.  "How can you be so certain that you won't bring down the very sky upon all our heads?" she asked warily.  He was no actor as would all too quickly be proved were he to set foot upon the stage.  A clever spectator acting as a spy might very well ferret him out.

"What better place to hide than an acting troup
e.  It will give me a perfect chance to dress in disguise.  Using the wigs, fake beards, make up and costumes you carry with you I will be able to look different every day."  Nicholas was now certain that it was his only chance.  "I'll learn the acting trade so that I can change my walk and mannerisms as well.  No one will ever suspect."  He smiled.  "I doubt even my own mother would recognize me in one of your father's costumes."

"We're headed south by
way of the coast."   

"Where else could I be assured a warm room and a soft bed?  What better place to hide while the authorities search for me?" 

"And you would be paid a steady wage."  Alandra was slowly thawing to the idea.  Had Christopher not stolen Will's horse, he would have traveled with the players.  

"Will is always decrying
injustice, but......"  She hesitated. Perhaps for a little while.  At least until Christopher found another way.  "Not a one of them would turn you in.  In fact, you might make friends among our company.  Friends who might even be persuaded to help you.  I know Will Shakespeare likes you.  He told me......"

"You must not tell them about me!"  It was enough that Alandra knew, he couldn't take the chance on letting anyone else in on his secret.

"But I must.....!"   It was Will's company.  He had a right to know.  Hiding Christopher could mean trouble for them all.  It had to at least be Will's decision.

"Please.....at least for a time."

She wondered if he realized just what he asked of her--to betray the others for the sake of his safety.  Yet she found herself agreeing.  "All right, but at the first sign of trouble I must tell Will.  Agreed?"

"Agreed." There wasn't any alternative.   Certainly she set a hard bargain. "I'll give it a try."

Grabbing the reins of his horse, he led it to the barn door only to have his worst fears realized.  He could see that all of the roads had by now been blockaded. So far he had not been seen, but Nicholas knew full well that he would be recognized as soon as he left the barn.  He was well known in this village, with or without his beard.  Even his fable of being newly wedded would not get him out of this predicament.