Medieval Rogues (67 page)

Genuine fear couldn’t be feigned. If she didn’t fear Brant—totally and completely—Torr would suspect that she’d helped him escape.

“Where are you taking me?” Faye demanded, her voice sounding strained.

“Wherever I wish.”

“Let me go. Please.”

Never
, a voice inside Brant answered.
You will always be mine, my treasure
.

“I will not tell anyone you are free. I swear it, upon my soul.”

She might keep his secret. As long as she could. However, once the guards at the top of the stairs regained consciousness, they would pursue her for the full details of his escape. Furious, wanting Brant recaptured as soon as possible, Torr might permit his men to wrest information from her through any means.

A frightening thought.

“Brant.”

“You will come with me, milady.” Faint light stole into the shadows below. “Quiet, now,” he said. “I do not wish to draw any more attention.”

“
You
do not,” she muttered.

He resisted a smile. “I would hate to injure anyone else—or have to kill them. If you obey me, we can avoid bloodshed.”

She quivered against him, but said no more when he propelled her down the dank stairs. He halted several steps above a stone landing separating the upper and lower portions of the stairwell. To the left, an arched entry opened into a torch lit corridor. Once, judging by the hinges still bolted to the stone, a door had barricaded the steps up to the tower chamber. While that door no longer existed, the passage threshold was the ideal place for Torr to post guards.

Pausing too, Val glanced back at Brant, as though seeking direction.

Turning Faye, releasing her just enough to nudge his body around in front of hers, he pressed her back against the wall.

Holding the knife to her neck, he tilted his head to listen to the sounds coming from the corridor. Wretchedly difficult to concentrate, with her breath fanning across his neck, short, nervous pants that forced her breasts against his tunic. Despite his need to focus, his gaze dropped to her bodice. The sight of her bosom, squeezed against him, sent wanton heat surging through his loins.

A trembling sigh broke from her lips. The sound rippled inside him with delicious aftershocks, for she’d made sounds like that when they’d coupled.

Narrowing his gaze, he mentally shut out the sensual barrage. ’Twas not only his life under threat, but hers. He had vowed to protect her. He would.

A sound echoed in the near distance. Brant strained to hear. Clipped footfalls. Laughter.
Guards
. From the increase in the noise level, he deduced they were walking toward the stairwell.

He glanced at Faye. Judging by the glint in her eyes, she’d heard the sentries as well. Her cool stare conveyed an outward façade of obedience, but he sensed mutiny simmering within her. He fought the gut-wrenching urge to dip his head and kiss her. To thwart her fury with stronger magic of his own. To insist the intimacy they’d shared was very special to him, and always would be.

Brant drew back. Now wasn’t the time for tenderness. Knowing Faye, she would take advantage of such a moment to knee him in the groin and bolt toward whoever approached.

A warning growl rumbled from Val. The footfalls were louder.

Drawing the dagger from her throat, he motioned for her to move away from the wall. Her gaze spitting fury, she nonetheless seemed to remember his threat to cause injury or kill if need be, for she complied. He locked his arm around her waist, hauled her across the landing, and forced her down the lower stairs. Val scampered ahead.

From the corridor above, he heard two men talking. Any moment, they would reach the opening into the stairwell.

“Faster,” he growled in Faye’s ear, rushing their descent. The rustle of their garments seemed eerily loud, as did the scratch of Val’s claws.

Their legs tangled. She wavered.

Whipping the knife away from her neck, he steadied her before she pitched forward. He pulled her back against him, ignoring her indignant huff.

“Who goes there?” a man bellowed from the corridor.

Cold air gusted from the dark stairs below, bringing the earthy scents of dirt and horse. Further down, the stairwell opened into the bailey.

The guards’ footfalls sounded on the landing. “Who goes there? Answer!”

Brant shoved Faye onward.

Steel rasped. The guards had drawn their swords. “Halt!”

Pounding footsteps echoed.

“Run,” Brant snapped. His and Faye’s harsh breaths echoed back from the inky darkness. They were descending into near blackness, when the shadows began to thin.

A stout, wooden door came into view.

Brant grabbed the iron handle. He yanked the door open. Sunlight streamed into the stairwell. As he dragged Faye into the bailey, Brant glanced over his shoulder, to meet the gaze of a guard several yards behind.

“Milady!” the man cried.

“Stay back,” Brant growled, pulling Faye toward the thatch-roofed stables. “If you do not, I will kill her.”

Another armed guard broke from the stairwell, his expression grim.

Stones skittered beneath Brant’s boots while he continued his determined path toward the stables. “Do as I tell you, Faye,” he snarled against her hair.

“Do I have a choice?” she shot back.

Ears pricked up, Val loped toward the stables, where horses drank from a long trough. Brant’s destrier stood tied to a nearby post. A gangly stable hand, a lad of about twelve summers old, paused in the midst of running a brush over the horse’s gleaming coat. Such thorough grooming denoted possession.

Torr had already claimed the destrier for his own.

Bastard.

Struggling to control his anger, Brant glanced back at the guards in pursuit. More sentries stalked him now. Step by step, they backed him toward the stables.

Val’s excited barks, along with nervous whinnies, came from the direction of the water troughs. Val, it seemed, was doing his best to provide a diversion.

A wry smile touched Brant’s mouth before he spied a man running along the wall walk, heading toward fellow guards. No chance now of a quick, surprise escape. Dread, as hard as stone, plummeted into Brant’s gut.

Val brushed against his leg. Tongue lolling, the little dog darted toward the surrounding men and growled, clearly looking forward to a fight.

Brant’s gaze locked with the closest guard’s. “Tell the lad to ready my destrier.”

“Release the lady. Then we will discuss your horse.”

Brant snarled. He forced Faye’s head higher with the knife. A little moan broke from her, while her hands flew wide, fingers outstretched in shock. Her body quivered against him.

“Ready my mount,” Brant said. “
Now
.”

His gaze sharp with concern, the man looked from Brant to the destrier. The stable hand stood wide eyed, his mouth gaping. The brush dropped from his hands and landed in the dirt.

A shrill wail erupted to Brant’s right. Maidservants drawing water from the well stared at him in horror. Hands flailing, an older woman dropped her basket of washing. “Lady Rivellaux,” she sobbed, collapsing on the well’s stone rim.

Snapping his gaze back to the guard, Brant said, “I will count to three. If you do not give the order to saddle my horse—”

“Please!” Faye gasped.

“One.”

“Brant,” she sobbed. “Do not—”

He ignored the sharp stab of his conscience. “Two.”

Crying out again, the woman covered her face with her hands.

The guard cursed, then nodded to the boy. “Go.”

The young man disappeared into the stable and quickly returned with the tack. His face ashen, he dragged over a wooden mounting block and began to saddle the destrier. Another lad led the other horses back into the stable.

Each jingle of metal, each
creak
of saddle leather, wore upon Brant’s fraying patience. Tension, as thick as invisible fog, stretched across the bailey. The passing moments seemed suspended, gripped in an eerie spell that threatened to erupt into bloody confrontation.

“Hurry,” Brant growled at the boy.

While Faye trembled in his arms, guards herded the maidservants toward the bailey wall, while they in turn comforted the weeping woman. Huddled in the far shadows, clinging to cloth dolls, children condemned Brant with their unwavering stares.

The wall walk, he noted, was now crowded with guards. Archers sighted along arrows nocked into bows. Sweat dampened Brant’s upper lip. The archers would try to slay him as he mounted the horse. If not before.

“Horse is ready,” the boy said.

Walking backward, Brant dragged Faye with him. Her legs buckled, but he halted and steadied her so she regained her balance. A kindness, he realized, that cost him distance between him and the nearest guards.

Signaling to Val, Brant pulled Faye to the destrier’s side. The little dog paced to and fro, teeth bared and growling, while Brant checked the saddle and bridle’s fastenings. Then, his arm firm at Faye’s waist, he whisked her around the horse’s hindquarters into the space between the animal and the stable, removing them from the archers’ clear sighting range.

Keeping watch on the lads peering out from the building’s shadows, Brant lowered the dagger from Faye’s throat. “Get on the horse.”

Outrage sizzled in her gaze. “May you roast in hellfire.”

He bit back the commands that would force her to his will. Her lips parted, no doubt to verbally flay him, but he caught her around the waist, yanked her to him, and covered her mouth with his own. His tongue forged deep, plundering the remembered sweetness of her. Reminding her of their shared pleasure.

Her rigid body lurched in his hold. She screamed beneath his mouth. Then, with a stubborn, yielding little groan, she surrendered to him.

I love you, Faye
, he told her with his softening kiss.
I love you, my treasure, and always will
. His eyes stung with the fierceness of his emotions.

Breaking away, he pushed her back against the horse’s side. Breathing hard, eyes glazed, she stared back at him, desire etched into her beautiful features. She blinked, clearly trying to discern what had just happened. Seizing that moment of compliance, he sheathed the knife and pushed her up into the saddle. He whistled for Val. Bending down, he snatched up the little dog and swung up behind Faye.

The guards were everywhere. As thick as flies on a corpse.

Eyes narrowing against the wintry sunshine, he studied the pebbled ground between the stable and the gatehouse.

Between death and freedom.

Faye squirmed against him. He sensed her intentions before she slid part way out of the saddle, intending no doubt to drop to the ground and run. He snaked his free arm around her, pulled her securely into the V made by his thighs, then said, “Take Val. Tuck him into that leather bag by your leg.”

She crossed her arms. Her shoulders hunched in blatant refusal. She’d obviously figured out he couldn’t reach around her to stow the dog; he risked her shoving him off the horse.

Sighing through his teeth, Brant loosely wrapped the reins around his hand. With the same hand, he withdrew the dagger and set it against her neck. “Take Val.”

“I hate you,” she snapped back. “Oh, how I hate you!”

The last word ended on a sob. Brant forced himself to ignore the crushing pressure in his chest. Once they had escaped Caldstowe, he would explain his actions to her.

Right now, he had a more vital concern: to get them both out alive.

Twisting a fraction, her face white with anger, Faye took Val from his arms and lowered him into the leather pouch. Val’s fuzzy little head popped out of the top. Bright eyed, he peered around him, nose wriggling.

Straightening in the saddle, Brant looked out over the guards standing in the bailey. “I warn you,” he said in a cold, clear voice, “lower the drawbridge. Stand aside.”

“
Meslarches
!” Torr’s roar rumbled across the bailey.

Several guards cringed.

An answering urge to flinch—so well learned over months as Torr’s lackey—welled inside Brant. Lip curling, he denied the impulse.

Torr stepped from the forebuilding and slammed the door. Sunlight struck his face, revealing the snapping rage in his eyes and the brutal set of his mouth.

He stormed toward Brant.

Flexing his fingers on the knife handle, Brant tamped down the questions boiling inside him: how Torr came to possess the journal, why he’d kept it secret, and what he intended to do with it. Later, in the final confrontation that had only one resolution—Brant’s death—he would have his answers.

Before the blood ran from his broken body and he drew his last breath, Brant would know the truth: for himself, and for Royce.

Torr marched ever closer. Brant focused on the calm conviction that had filled him from the moment he’d broken his blood oath. No longer would his will be enslaved to Torr’s command. Never again would his sense of duty, honor, and integrity be twisted by this corrupt bastard.

“Out of my way!” Torr snarled, shoving a guard out of his path. Stones crunched beneath his boots, the sound akin to snapping bones.