The Dark Knight (28 page)

“I do.” Her hands twisted nervously in her lap. He had blackmailed her father into the betrothal. She would be this man’s wife within a matter of mere days. A week ago she would have felt like dancing with happiness, knowing that her wedding day was at long last upon her. Now the thought of marriage to Faulke Segrave filled her with dread. So much for the idea of a reprieve at her father’s castle. What would her father expect her to do in this situation? What
could
she do? “I would—”

Faulke held up one hand for silence and cocked his head to one side. A moment later he called out, “To arms!”

Instantly all of the men were mounted with their swords drawn while Faulke turned his back to her and drew his own sword. Avalene heard the sounds of approaching riders and held her breath, straining to see into the gathering darkness that shrouded the road. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart pounded as she waited to see if the road would reveal Percival and his men, or just their bodies.

At last she heard Richard call out to his cousin to identify his party in the fading light. A few moments later she scanned the faces of each of the incoming riders, and then she pressed her palms to her forehead and let out a sigh of relief. She did not take time to wonder how Percival and his men had escaped Richard’s hunting party. Instead she wondered why she was so relieved they had escaped. She would never see them again. They were criminals who had abducted her from her family. They deserved to be caught and punished.

She shook her head. Despite her wounded feelings, despite
everything
, Percival and his men had taken good
care of her. If she had stayed another night at Coleway, her aunt likely would have forced a scandal. Marriage to Coleway’s steward would have been the result. There was no sin in being grateful to Percival for rescuing her from that fate, even though he had done so for his own reasons. Not that it mattered anymore. She would soon be trapped in another marriage that could prove even more disastrous.

She watched Richard dismount, his features set in a hard mask. He and Faulke moved aside to speak in quiet tones, even though it was obvious the search party had failed to capture their quarry. She used that time to study the two men and discovered that Faulke looked much more like his cousin than she had initially realized. It was an unfortunate realization, as she had taken a rather strong and immediate dislike to Richard. One side of Richard’s lip curled upward more often than was seemly and she had never cared for men who sneered at anything. Sure enough, Faulke’s lip curved into the same expression as he listened to Richard’s report and another shudder of foreboding went through her.

What if she could not bring herself to like her husband even a little? What if she could not submit to him, as was her duty? She felt an alarming gagging sensation at the back of her throat just thinking about it. Oh, good Lord, what if Faulke came to realize that he repulsed her?

Some measure of fear must have shown on her face because he held up his hands with the palms facing outward as he walked toward her, a gesture men often used when they approached a skittish horse.

“Do not worry, the coward has fled,” he told her. “He must know by now that we have you, and there is nothing he can do against so large a force to steal you away again. You are safe, my lady.”

She was surrounded by soldiers who were loyal to the man who would soon be her husband. They had chased off the man who had supposedly wanted to imprison her. She should feel safe. At the very least, she should feel gratitude. All she could think about was the growing revulsion she felt at the thought of kissing Faulke Segrave.

“Lady Avalene?” His brows drew together as he tilted his head to one side. “Is something wrong?”

Everything is wrong!
She shook her head, even as she looked away from him. Even as the memory of the kisses she had shared with Percival tormented her with the certain knowledge that they would always be a measure of comparison that this man would never meet. Her gaze moved over Faulke’s men and she vaguely realized they were making camp. She seized upon the activity as a way to occupy her mind with something other than lewd thoughts, thankful that her voice sounded almost normal. “Do your men need any assistance with the meal? I could help look for dry wood.”

“Nay, we carry dry tinder and kindling, and the men will have to range out to find wood that is not soaked through.” He pointed to the furs. “I would rather you stay here where we can keep an eye on you. In fact, I must insist upon it.”

She supposed it was considerate of him to explain his reasoning, but it did not change the fact that the lean-to had just become her prison. Percival had not made her feel like a prisoner. She bowed her head and remained silent, wishing she could silence the voice in her head. At last Faulke turned and walked away.

She wasn’t certain how much time had passed but the camp was mostly set up when an odd sensation came over her, a feeling of being watched. She tried to examine what she could still see of the darkening forest without
being too obvious about what she was doing, but she saw nothing.

The odds that Percival would come back for her were almost nonexistent, but she could not seem to shake the feeling that she was being watched by someone other than Faulke’s men. It was a warm, shivering feeling she had every so often that felt familiar, as if she would turn around and find Percival walking up to greet her.

It was a foolish notion, of course, likely born of fear coupled with long hours of sitting in wet, clammy clothing. She was starting to hallucinate, seeing movements out of the corners of her eyes then turning to find nothing. She didn’t want to find anything … or did she?

She tried again to imagine what she would say to Percival if she should ever see him again. One question in particular plagued her. “Why am I still alive?”

The murmured words startled her, having come forth without conscious thought. And yet that was the question her mind returned to over and over again. Why had the king sent an assassin to Coleway, only to abduct her? He could have killed her that first night when he came to her chamber. Why didn’t he?

Only two answers came to mind. Either the king had ordered her to be taken alive to be imprisoned in the Tower, just as Faulke suspected, or Percival had become immediately enamored of her and found that he couldn’t bring himself to carry out her murder. The latter possibility was so fantastical that the notion would have been laughable, were it not a matter of her own life or death. Her ego was not so inflated as to think she had unwittingly captured the fancy of the most cold-blooded assassin in England. Percival had been playing a part, nothing more. And that was assuming Faulke had told her the truth, which raised yet another prospect. Perhaps the man she knew as Sir Percival really
was
Sir
Percival. What if Faulke had lied to her, just as he said Sir Percival had lied? Faulke could be trying to trick her into going willingly into a forced marriage. What if there was no betrothal?

The possibilities fair made her head spin. She lifted her wrinkled hands to rub away the ache in her temples, but her troubled thoughts of Faulke and Percival retreated when a spark of orange fire caught her eye. Soon the flames began to lick away at the black night, a feeble, fluttering dance at first, but eventually the flames rose higher and stronger with the promise of bone-deep heat. The smell of wood smoke and the sight of the fire drew her as easily as they would a moth. The unspoken order to stay in the lean-to was forgotten as she made her way to stand near the flames. The men who were tending the fire glanced up at her, exchanged a look, and then said nothing. She supposed the sound of her chattering teeth decided the matter.

By the time her hands were warmed there were three sizable fires spaced across the clearing, with cook pots hung on spits and the smell of porridge in the air. One of the soldiers offered her a cup filled with a hot gruel made of barley and dried beef. It was a simple meal but warm and nourishing. She thought it odd that Faulke had not shown her the courtesy of bringing her meal or offering his company while she ate, but mostly she was grateful that he left her alone.

When she finished the meal she handed her empty cup to one of the soldiers but remained standing by the fire ring. The heat from the flames continued to seep through her and she all but hugged the fire in an attempt to dry her clothing.

The flames were like snowflakes, she decided. No two were alike and their unending motion soon held her enthralled. The night was quiet with only the sounds of the
crackling fires and she stared into the one before her, mesmerized. She caught herself just as she swayed forward and decided it would be a good idea to sit down.

Oddly enough, the soldiers nearest her looked just as captivated by the flames, and then she glanced toward Richard and Faulke and realized they were seated as well. The day had been exhausting for everyone, it seemed. One by one the soldiers lay down to sleep, even though most did not bother to spread out their bedrolls beforehand, and many simply seemed to slowly fall over. Her own eyelids felt weighted with lead. She thought about the lean-to and the furs that would make a soft if not entirely dry bed, but the fire was warmer. It was a little strange that she didn’t recall when she had lain down, but the damp, mossy ground made a surprisingly soft pillow against her cheek.

Her last thought before she fell asleep was that something was wrong. She was just too tired to puzzle out what the problem might be.

“All of them are still alive,” Armand said in Italian. He dragged another soldier across the campsite by his collar and propped the man into a seated position against a tree. The soldier roused a little and put his hands up as if to push Armand away. Armand simply slipped the loop of a leather ribbon around one of the man’s wrists. The ribbon was actually part of a set of reins, one of many sets they had dismantled to use as bindings to tie up Faulke’s men. Armand wrapped the rein around the tree, and then tied the end to the man’s other wrist. The soldier’s head slumped forward onto his chest. “Shall we take their horses with us?”

“Aye,” Dante answered. He looked toward Avalene, where she lay sprawled on the ground near one of the campfires. Rami held her head in his lap and stroked her forehead, his movements gentle, as if he were tending to an injury. Dante had not allowed himself to touch her yet, but he knew she was not injured. The knowledge did little to calm his fury. “Rami, go cut the girth on
each saddle where it cannot be easily repaired. After you are done, help Oliver string their horses on lunge lines.”

“Aye, my lord.” Rami gently laid Avalene’s head on one of the furs he had dragged over from the lean-to, then rose and skipped off to carry out Dante’s order.

“I will need you to take charge of some of their horses,” he told Rami. “Can you handle six or eight on a line?”

Rami grinned, clearly delighted to be given a man’s job. “Aye, my lord!”

Dante surveyed the campsite. Most of the soldiers had been hog-tied with their own reins, their arms bound behind their backs and their legs bent at the knee so their ankles could be tied to their wrists, rendering them completely helpless. A few others, Faulke and his cousin included, had been tied to trees. Fewer still had roused too easily from the effects of the poison so they had been gagged as well as tied to ensure their comrades stayed unconscious as long as possible.

Everything went so smoothly that he was almost disappointed. A good fight would have been preferable. He was ready to spill a little blood.

He walked over to the tree where they had tied Faulke Segrave and stared down at his enemy. Only long years of mental discipline had kept him in the shadows at Segrave’s camp. A good hunter did not rush into a den of lions unprepared, and Dante was a very good hunter. There was little question that Segrave would be a formidable opponent in a fair fight, but Dante had never played fair and Segrave was now at his feet, at his mercy.

Here was the blood he would most like to spill, especially after he had watched Faulke put his hands on Avalene. His reactions to Segrave’s impersonal touches were worrisome, to say the least. Strong emotions were never good for a man in his position, and what Segrave had
made him feel went far beyond jealousy. Rage would be a more apt description, but even that word sounded too tame, too harmless for the fury that had burned through him when Segrave had lifted Avalene into his arms, when he dared speak to her of bearing his children. His blood was far from cooled, but seeing Segrave bound and helpless appeased his temper and allowed him to once again view his rival through somewhat dispassionate eyes.

Segrave’s head had fallen forward, his breathing cluttered occasionally by a soft snore. Instinct told Dante the most obvious solution to this problem was to slit the throat of every man wearing Segrave colors. Unfortunately, he had sworn that he would not harm Faulke. That meant his men enjoyed the same immunity. Besides which, murdering his men was not the way to gain Faulke’s cooperation concerning Avalene. Given all he had learned that day, it would take a miracle to talk Segrave out of his determination to marry her.