The Rose of Blacksword (27 page)

“It’s hardly quarreling I have in mind,” he said in a slow, husky tone.

It was enough to send all thought of ointments and wounds flying right out of her head, to be immediately replaced by other thoughts far too wicked to be proper. But she refused to respond to his innuendo and instead addressed the real topic that rested so uneasily between them.

“I have thought long on what you said last night,” she began, lowering her eyes from his unsettling gaze.

“And have you come to a conclusion?” he asked lightly, although she detected an edge of tension in his voice.

Rosalynde took a slow breath and deliberately moved to his side. Her hands trembled slightly as she poured a palmful of the ointment, then began intently to apply it to his back. She was relieved that he did not stop her but only twisted his head slightly to keep his eyes on her face. Still, she knew she could not avoid answering his question.

“I need time,” she finally whispered. “Just a little time,” she hastened to add before he could reply. “If you knew how dangerous your position is—”

“You apply your medicine to my back even now. Do you think I do not know how dangerous it is for me here?” he snapped back.

Her hands fell away from him and he turned to face her. Only inches separated them. “I am your father’s newest slave.” He said the word as if it tasted foul upon his tongue. “You promised me a reward. You took the handfast
vow with me. But once here you deny it all.” His angry eyes bored into hers. “You are my wife. I’ll take only that as my reward.”

“But he will never have you as husband to his only daughter! Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “You have no title … no lands.”

“And if I did? Would he have me then? Would you?”

The words that had risen in her throat died suddenly at such a strange comment from him. It was beyond comprehension for a noblewoman and a commoner to wed. It was simply unheard of. Yet in the long moment that they stared at one another she thought once more how unlike any common man he was, even from the first time she had laid eyes on him. His bearing was too noble. His pride too apparent. Then her brow creased suspiciously even as unreasonable hope welled in her breast.

“Who are you?” she murmured. She stared at him as if he were someone she’d never seen before. “Who are you and how did you come to be on the gallows of Dunmow?”

He stared back at her too, and for a moment she thought he might reveal some startling story to her. Perhaps he was a prince bewitched, as in the tale of the two sisters and the bear. Or else a nobleman tormented by a jealous and vengeful sprite. Yet just as her rational self knew that there were no sprites and no bewitchings except in stories and legends, she also knew that for all her hopes to the contrary, he was unlikely to be any more than he appeared: a blackguard and a rogue. Charming at times. With a rare streak of compassion, even. But he was a rogue nonetheless, and her father would never see him as suitable.

He shrugged and his eyes seemed to become harder, as if he deliberately wished to shut out the past.

“I am Aric. From Wycliffe. I told you that before.”

“Who was your father?” she pressed. She was suddenly angry at his apparent evasiveness and his threat that still hung over her.

“My father was a man of no great note,” he replied after only a moment’s pause. “I was the last of my mother’s children. Wycliffe held naught for me, so …” He shrugged as if that should explain the rest. But it explained nothing, and Rosalynde became even more angry.

“Wycliffe held naught for you? Probably because you’d already stolen everything of value that there was. Then you moved on until finally they caught you in Dunmow.” She grabbed the stopper and slapped it back into the mouth of the vial. “Yes, I promised you reward! Yes, I wedded you, knowing you were already condemned to die! But I never thought you would … you were …” She stumbled over the words, for even to her they sounded exceedingly foolish. She’d not expected him really to be a thief or a murderer? It was only the secret wishes of a child, she realized.

But not only of a child, the unwelcome thought came to her. She had played the woman to his man. The wife to his husband. And the very intensity of that joining—the never-suspected pleasure of it—had blinded her anew. She wanted him to be more than he was because … because it somehow made what they’d done together seem a little less wrong.

“You never thought I would be around to demand that I be paid?” He finished her sentence with his own conclusion. “Can this be true?” He grabbed both of her arms and gave her a hard shake. “What a truly heartless wench you are,
Lady Rosalynde
. So tell me, why do you hesitate to tell all to your father? If you are so certain he will punish me with death, why not tell him all and be finished with it?”

“I do not want you dead!” Rosalynde cried in answer to the last of his questions. “But if you hold fast to this mad course of yours—”

His grip changed at her stammered-out words. His hand tightened, but now he only pulled her a little nearer. “If not dead, then alive? But I have to question why. Why, Rose? What will you gain by my presence at Stanwood?” His eyes swept her pale, frightened face. One of his hands moved to pluck a bit of straw from her hair. Then he ran his knuckle lightly along the curve of her cheek. “Could it be that my thorny little Rose wants both the sun and the storm?” He smiled at her look of bewilderment, but there was no warmth in his eyes.

“I am not acceptable to you as a husband,” he explained mockingly. “But as a lover …” He pulled her up against him then, and the heat of his body and hers together sent a fiery shiver through her. As much as Rosalynde wished to deny his insulting pronouncement, the flare of desire that curled up from her belly would not allow it. The sin of lust. Once more it was upon her, surprising her when she least expected it, catching her fast in its unrelenting grasp. Dear God, she prayed frantically. She had not known it could be so strong. Never could she have known.…

With a jerk she pulled herself away from him, shaking from the terrible turmoil of emotions he had stirred in her. “You are a conceited oaf!” she cried in self-defense. “A disgusting … a disgusting bastard—”

“Yes, a bastard, but also your rightful husband,” he ended her frustrated litany before it had properly begun. “When shall you admit as much to your father?” He tormented her with a mocking half smile.

For an instant Rosalynde was tempted to do just that: tell her father the whole truth and let him do what he would with Blacksword. The heartless brute deserved
whatever sentence he received. But just as quickly the image of him bound beneath the cruel bite of the whip chased away her vengeful thoughts. He was arrogant and presumptuous and a knave of the first rank, but something in her simply could not bear to see him suffer further. With a supreme effort she choked back her angry words and instead tried to recall why she had originally come out to speak to him.

“I’ve a proposition for you,” she stated as calmly as she could. When he only gave her a skeptical glance, however, her tone became more shrill. “If you will just hold your tongue. For a little longer,” she added quickly before he could interrupt. “I promise you, I will manage to find you a suitable reward.”

There was a breathless silence. A horse shifted in its stall a little beyond them, but all else was still.

“You know the reward I want.”

“I’ll get you a horse. And gold too. I promise. I can’t be sure about any weapons, however.” She stared up at him, hoping against hope that for once he might be reasonable. But her hopes were dashed by his next few words.

“That’s not enough.”

“Then what, by all that is holy, will be enough?” she exploded, forgetting to keep her words quiet.

The answer he gave was clear, though he did not speak a word. But his eyes spoke volumes as they slipped over her slender figure, lingering at her breasts before raising to her lips. To her dismay, however, the emotion that sent her pulse racing at such an unwarranted perusal was neither insult nor shock. Instead a shameful wave of desire radiated up from her nether regions and she felt an insane stab of longing for him. She was mad to feel so, and he was a devil to inspire such lust in her. Yet she could not will such powerful feelings away.

“You are mad,” she whispered. “Truly mad.”

“Perhaps I am,” he said, advancing on her slowly. “But I don’t think so. There’s very little that a man needs, my wild Rose. As a woman it behooves you to understand this. A full belly.” He rubbed his own flat stomach languorously. “Shelter from the cold.” He cast a wry expression around him at the snug stable. “A woman to ease himself upon.” His grin lost its sardonic edge as his eyes bored into hers. “And the chance to choose his own path.”

She backed away from his predatory approach. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I notice you make no mention of honor.”

He shrugged, then stopped. “Honor is not something a man needs. Rather it is something he either has or does not have.”

“And you have none!” she accused, though her lips trembled as she spoke.

“I have enough,” he countered. “Certainly far more than you.”

At that she grew angry once more. “I came to you today to honor my promise. To assure you that you shall get your reward—your
rightful
reward.”

He gave her a keen look and started to speak, but then stopped. For a moment longer he studied her. Then in some vague, hardly discernible manner he seemed to relax. “How long is a ‘little longer’?” he asked noncommittally.

Rosalynde was suddenly wary. What was this change in him? Why was he offering her compromise? For an endless moment she did not answer him for she sensed a trap. He was up to something. Yet with no other options available, she had no choice but to agree. After all, it was the very agreement she’d come here to get.

“You’ll wait a few days? Or even a week or more?” She
stared at him suspiciously. “You’ll keep your silence and go about your duties as any good servant might?”

“Slave, Rose. Not servant. I am slave here now, but only because I choose to be.” He picked up his shirt, all the while watching her. “There are all sorts of enslavement, however. Some better than others.” He grinned then. “Some
much
better than others.”

Her heart was pounding as he turned to leave, and she was sorely perplexed by his odd choice of words. There was something prophetic in them, she was certain of that. But as much as she wished to believe that it only meant he had changed his mind about his new role at Stanwood, she was nonetheless filled with a foreboding that he meant something else entirely. Something that had to do with her.

It was only the sight of him donning his shirt that pressed her to shake off her strange feelings.

“Wait. I’ve a fresh chainse for you. And a tunic. Yours are not clean,” she finished lamely when he gave her a searching look.

He took the clean shirt without comment, relinquishing his other to her. Once it and the dark-green tunic were settled over his wide shoulders, he favored her with a faint smile. “Thank you, Lady Rosalynde,” he said in a most courtly manner. Yet there was a taunt in his words nevertheless. His gray eyes held with hers for a breathtaking moment before he turned and sought out the stable marshal.

Once her breathing had slowed to a more normal pace, Rosalynde tried to find something positive in this the most recent of their confrontations. He had agreed to keep silent and that was good, she thought as she stood there in the empty work space. He also appeared to be settling into his role as a stableman. Certainly he had pleased the old
stable marshal with his first task. Things might work out well after all, she speculated. Yet as her hands gripped his ragged shirt and she felt the remnants of his lingering warmth, as his scent of skin and sweat and her own ointment drifted up to her, she trembled. He was cooperating for the moment, she realized, but he was still the same man as ever. Strong-willed. Single-minded. Possessed of an appeal that was surely the mark of the devil. He outraged her with every word he uttered and every glance from his flinty gray eyes. Yet he made her blood sing.

She wanted to fling the grimy tunic away. But instead she balled it up and tucked it under her arm. Then with her pale face set in a frown, she hurried away to the many other tasks that awaited her.

It was almost midday before Aric saw Rosalynde again, crossing the dusty castle yard. He held tightly to the rope in his hand and murmured a soothing word to the tall destrier that tried to prance away from him.

“Easy, my fine fellow. Easy.” He patted the steed’s velvety muzzle even as he determinedly held the great creature’s head down. But his eyes never strayed from Rosalynde until she disappeared into the kitchen sheds.

“Hand me that mallet,” the marshal said with a grunt as he muscled the high-spirited animal’s hind leg up. The horse started forward and would have dumped the man on his back but Aric anticipated the move, and with a swift downward pull on the rope, he stilled the beast. It took only another few minutes for the marshal to complete his farrier’s duties. As he backed away from the heavy horse, he mopped his brow with the sleeve of his stained tunic. “That ’un’s the worst of the lot. T’others will be easier.” Then he squinted at Aric. “I’m thinking you’ve been around horses.”

Aric ran one hand down the tall bay’s neck. “Some,” he replied noncommittally, his mind still on Rosalynde.

As the day progressed and he worked beside the stable marshal, first with the horses and later handling the heavy metal bars that would be worked into hinges, spear points, and wheel rims, his mind veered constantly to the woman who had brought him to this new low point in his life.

No, he admitted honestly. This was not the lowest point in his life. That had come when he’d stood on the gallows at Dunmow waiting to die. He might be a slave now—her slave, even—but at least he was alive. And he intended to stay that way. The skin on his back burned like fire every time he stretched too far or bent over. But that only served to strengthen his resolve. He would stay alive and he would ultimately wreak vengeance on his enemies. And all through the innocent aid of one slender, dark-haired maiden. She’d saved his life; now through their marriage he would gain the power needed to find those who had sought to murder him.