What A Scoundrel Wants (16 page)

She wanted food, but she dared not leave the wall where Dryden left her. Stranded like a boatman without oars, she urged her senses to drift across the massive hall. A hundred people, maybe more. A high ceiling, by the way the voices swirled and echoed, and lined with muffling tapestries. Every word repeated three times over, an aural sensation that fatigued her when she tried to follow conversations.

A hundred bodies and the hissing flames of a few scattered fires heated the room. Sweat dampened the skin beneath her arms, and the high collar of her gown chafed a ring around her neck. The humid, cloying heat, thrice-echoed words, and sumptuous aromas bullied her senses and left her disoriented.

But she could not leave that spot.

She rolled her shoulder blades into the wall, but having absorbed the heat in the hall, the stones provided no relief. She pushed harder until her bones chiseled deeper. The sharp bite of pain, the pinch of her skin between bone and rock, grounded her and focused her dizzied senses. She pressed her palm into the soft give of her abdomen.

Where had Dryden gone?

Perhaps she should have saved congratulating herself until after he returned with good news—that Finch had capitulated before the nobleman’s firm command, news that Ada would be released as soon as the penitent sheriff found keys to his dungeon. She knew better, of course. But any fanciful thought was better than contemplating the possibility that Dryden had abandoned her.

Worse yet, she feared when he might prove half the man she left tied to a tree.

She could not leave. She could not find her way home. She could do nothing but remain pressed against the wall and wait for Dryden to keep his word. She slowly exhaled to release a rising swell of dread.

A commotion, signaled by the herald of two cornet players, began at the end of the hall. The scrape of wood over flagstones suggested the rearrangement of furniture. Shouts piled on laughter. Applause followed.

“’Tis the subtlety.”

Bones and muscles leapt from her skin. Before thought, she pounded a fist into Dryden, connecting with his shoulder. “Do not surprise me!”

“Forgive me.”

She liked the genuine sound of his apologies. None of Hugo’s cruelty. None of Will’s teasing. “Did you locate Finch?”

“He’s with an entourage at the other end of the hall, but I have yet to speak with him.” Dryden took hold of her hands and curled her fingers around a fat slice of bread. “Here, eat this. I took it from a pantler.”

“Gramercy.” She lifted the fragrant piece of oat bread to her nose, inhaling the sultry, salty warmth. Her mouth watered, but she ate the offering with delicate relish.

“Shall I signal the cupbearer for ale or wine?”

Meg frowned. Although she appreciated his attention to her needs, she questioned his lack of acuity. They hardly needed to raise more of a fuss than they had by simply arriving. Yes, she wanted to eat and drink with everyone else, but this was not a moment for revelry. Dryden’s lack of nerve niggled, forcing the need to question otherwise sound decisions. She wanted to push him, to force him into action.

“No, the bread will do,” she said. “How goes the subtlety?”

“They are bringing it to the center of the hall on a cart. It stands several hands high, sculpted into the shape of a swan.”

She raised her brows. “I wonder where they secured more sugar.”

“And in time for the festival. I’m impressed.”

“The sheriff has resources, apparently.” She grimaced, remembering the purpose of their presence. “Makes me fearful of what we face by being here.”

He grunted, a noncommittal sound that grated her thinning patience. “The steward has signaled to have the table linens changed, which means the entertainment will arrive shortly.”

Before Dryden finished his sentence, the crowd burst into heady applause. Music filled the hall, the sounds of lutes and drums. “Who goes?”

“Tumblers first, with the mummers waiting for their turn.”

An irrepressible smile touched her lips, recalling the spectacle of feast times from her youth. One spring, she had accompanied Ada and their father to Lord Whitstowe’s castle for a May Day celebration. The tumblers wore parti-colored tunics decorated with samite ribbons, the gold threads of that silken fabric shimmering with every outlandish trick. Fools, masking their faces in gold and white porcelain, roamed the crowd in search of victims for their happy chicanery. With Ada at her side, she had hooted and cheered with the assemblage, just as the sheriff’s reveling guests did.

Bitterness joined with nostalgia. Remembering how she and her family had been, years before, dug deep furrows in her heart.

Feasting citizens sang in rounds, filling the teeming hall with varied accents. High sopranos soared above resonant basses, as the tone-deaf struggled to find their way. Dryden turned his body. The pose and his lowered voice forced an awkward intimacy. “Meg, I have identified a member of Finch’s entourage who concerns me.”

“Who?”

“He is Gilbert, my father’s youngest brother.”

“What do you suspect, milord?”

“Should Stephen and I die, the lands of both our families would revert to Gilbert. That he dines with the sheriff within days of my father’s murder makes me suspect an alliance. Finch could manipulate my uncle to secure a wealthy, landed pawn.”

“Manipulate him? You do not believe him capable of the crimes?”

“Gilbert is…Gilbert is a dullard with certain…proclivities.” A delicate lace of pain decorated his voice. “He has yet to think of an idea that does not involve perversion or vice. If he is happy and his appetites are satisfied, he would follow any strong leader.”

“Then you are in danger, as is your cousin.”

Hesitation stretched between them. “Yes. I had not believed such a possibility. Otherwise, to be honest, I would not have chosen to confront him directly.”

Her hopes sank. The ally who possessed power enough to walk into Nottingham Castle not only suffered a humiliating lack of initiative, but he had good cause to flee the scene entirely. His authority would do nothing to free her sister.

Dryden leaned nearer. “But I’ll attract less notice if I talk to Finch during the performances. This is an opportune moment.”

“You insist on talking to him?”

He laughed softly, a sound of embarrassment she had identified before. “Not much of a champion, am I?”

“Milord, I said nothing of the kind. You have been a tremendous aid to me.” But the blush burning her cheeks betrayed the truth, she knew.

“I’ve been reluctant, but I cannot abide this plot.” A pale glimmer of outrage cloaked his words. “My father is dead, your sister is missing, and these men are ready to do worse. Some among these revelers stand to lose their security if Finch acquires an excess of power. He’ll not act against me before a hundred witnesses.”

She almost heard a question amidst his declaration. But ready to make an effort despite the perils he faced, Dryden stepped forward. At last.

Applause and shouts greeted the magnificent subtlety. Cupbearers continued to make their rounds with jugs of ale, while ewers provided basins of water for the guests to wash their hands. Within moments, even before the jesters finished their performance, the subtlety would be a memory, cut and served to a hundred gluttonous mouths.

Waiting outside the hall with the other entertainers, Will nervously stroked the edge of the mask he wore. Its sharp-edged porcelain delicately nibbled the pad of his thumb. He watched the mummers with the curiosity of a slumbering old man, bored by their silent patterns of motion and dance. Impulse and instinct urged him to find Meg.

What he would do once he found her…He found no ready answer. Doubts and conflicting desires tapped tiny fissures into plans that had been as firm as solid rock.

Nottingham had not changed in the mere days since his last night spent within its walls, and neither had it changed since his first weeks in Robin’s band. Mineral-rich water, seeping through the city’s sandstone foundation, advanced the tanning, dying, and brewing trades, elevating the local populace above that of a mere center for agricultural trade. The market attracted hundreds of people, augmenting the native population on a weekly basis and wringing currency and materials from the countryside, which each new sheriff invariably bled from the public. And he was looking at the gluttonous result of that cycle.

No, Nottingham had not changed. As he assessed the blasé manner with which its influential citizens indulged in the harvest festival, he wondered if it ever would. The peasants would not charge the gates and demand justice, not even when their families and friends stood threatened by the mounting power of another corrupt sheriff.

But he had changed. Gone was the indifference he had studiously courted and nourished. He shook his head. How had Robin managed to organize any means of resistance? How, without losing his mind in the face of such apathy, Will’s included?

Securing his mask, he watched for his cue and bounded into the center of the long rectangular array of tables. Two other jesters in matched costumes feigned pushing the mummers from the floor. A fourth man jumped atop an ambry and juggled bread loaves, his madder red boots rattling the few plates stacked on open shelving. Set upon by the angered steward, the jester sprang from the cabinet and ran around the hall. Laughter chased him as doggedly, blurring the line between truth and farce.

Surrounded by fools, Will bowed overdramatically to all corners, searching for quarry and enemy both. He identified Finch and Carlisle at the head table, surrounded by a dozen well-armed sentries. Between bows, he found Dryden slinking toward the sheriff’s party.

Tracing the nobleman’s path back to its origins, he spotted Meg. She pressed against a wall, veiled and partly cloaked by a pair of overlapping tapestries. The hard angles of her shoulders revealed a woman locked in the grip of a cold fear. Likely, she was irritated at Dryden for not having delivered Ada already.

A jester streaked past, hauling a squealing mummer over his shoulder. He crisscrossed the interior of the rectangular tables, displaying a surprising measure of strength for his thin physique. When another jester approached him, Will set about mimicking the performer’s every motion, from the angle of his wrist to the tilt of his head. The man grasped the diversion, and together, they increased the intricacy of their play.

His impromptu partner snatched the leg of a pheasant from a sallow young woman’s hand and challenged a duel. “Have at me, knave!”

Will skittered back and chanced upon an empty platter, his mock shield. Shouts of encouragement skewered the air as they dueled. Each smack of the pheasant’s chunky leg against the burnished silver platter echoed dully, like a skull hitting marble.

Repelling the man’s silly, elaborate assault, Will jumped from side to side. He thumped the inside of the platter with his fist. “Is that all you have?”

The jester took his turn to play the mimic. He bounced from one foot to the other, the point of his cap jerking in opposition. “I have much more to give, but ’tis better saved for strumpets.”

“This strumpet?” The juggler exchanged his baguettes for a squat, heavyset woman.

“Indeed!” Will’s opponent tossed away his weapon and seized his new prize. “The night is for loving, not fighting!”

Indignation dyed her face red. The jesters paid no mind, twirling her amidst bawdy shouts. Another half dozen women, some willing and others dragged forcibly from their benches, joined the riot of farcical dancing.

With an eye on Dryden and Finch at the front of the hall, Will used the moment to escape his spontaneous role as an entertainer. He fled across the herb-scented rushes, bounding over a table to escape center stage. Because tapestries along the long north wall shielded him from observation, he removed his mask. The warm, cloying air within the great hall felt cool after so many minutes concealed by porcelain, his own breath doubled back on his skin.

Meg clung to the same location, adhered to the marble. She tunneled bone white fingers into the stones at both sides of her hips. She was panicked. Maybe frightened. Dryden had yet to return, and doubts appeared well on their way to gnawing her calm. To be stranded without an ally or a means of escape—even she could not stand tall in the face of such a nightmare.

Memories of the vulnerable woman he saw twirling in moonlight resurfaced, the woman who sought colors she would never again see. Sympathy and a grudging pride twisted knots in his head, in his joints and muscles. Stubborn, infuriating woman.

The familiar compulsion to protect her from an indifferent world—or, more often, from her own rash defiance—stood the wide breadth of Christendom away from his best interests. How easy, how painless his task? He only had to drag a blind woman past three dozen feasting mouths to Finch’s seat and present his trophy.

Reaping the rewards, both his return to the sheriff’s good graces and a guarantee of Marian’s safety, should have been promise enough to compel him. Instead, Will wanted to put her hands to his face and make promises. Promises he would actually keep.