What A Scoundrel Wants (19 page)

“I’m here.”

She found his hip, torso, face. “I heard you cry out. Are you injured?”

He grinned beneath her fingers. “You were worried?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, sweet truth.” Deep laughter filled the confines of their cell. He claimed the back of her head and pulled her near. A swift kiss embossed her lips with the feel and the taste of him. “That’s my girl.”

Possession, being possessed—the give and take fluttered in her blood. “Will, please.”

“One of those bastards clubbed my sore shoulder, of all the foul luck.”

“Is that all?”

“All?” His second laugh surrounded tinges of pain. “Woman, this grieves me.”

“But nothing else? I thought you might have been stabbed.”

“No, nothing else.”

“Your shoulder is never going to heal if you keep doing it such abuse.”

“Me? I didn’t hit myself.”

He shrugged out of his jester’s costume. She found his arm and traveled up to his shoulder, burrowing beneath layers of cloth and leather armor. Smooth, warm skin stretched across bunched muscles.

He hissed. “Leave it be, Meg. There is no light here.”

“I need no light.”

Upon discovering the dressing, she checked for seepage or the tang of a wound mending abnormally. But dry bandages covered an unsoiled wound. She shook her head in amazement.

“How have you managed? You’ve fought time and again. The wound is not healed, but you persist. How are you doing this?”

He laid back and settled on the dungeon floor. “Maybe the lye?”

“And to me? How are you doing these things to me?”

“Doing…
what
…to you?”

She continued to touch him gently, stroking, wanting to massage those muscles until his tension dissolved. “I cannot think with you in my mind.”

“Let me wager,” he said in a whisper. “You ask yourself
why
. Why this? Why now?”

“Yes.”

Releasing a long breath, he sounded bone weary. “The same questions plague me.”

She stretched out beside him on the floor. They touched only where their fingers interlaced, holding hands in the dark. But she confronted the possibility that she had misconstrued his intentions. He had followed her because of his concern for the safety of another woman. An uncomfortable twinge of curiosity was like a tickle in the middle of her back.

“Did you love her?”

“Marian?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps I wanted to claim something of Robin’s for my own.”

“You worship your uncle, though you hate to. Small wonder you might covet all he has.”

“Makes me nervous, what you know of me.” He sighed and shifted on the hard floor. “Right from the first days among Robin’s outlaws, she defended me—even when I had no desire for her assistance.”

“Your poor pride.”

“For certain. Until the weeks before I kissed her, I thought of her as an elder sister. Then our regard for each other…it changed.”

“If God was kind enough to save you from an elder sister, you shouldn’t contradict His purpose and create one.”

He sat up, his low groan resonant with pain and oddly arousing. At the height of his pleasure, inside her, Will had groaned likewise. Those moments goaded and teased without relief, but they seemed like distant dreams. The wish to create that bliss anew throbbed across her senses until sound, touch, smell—all centered on him.

“Meg? I asked, was Ada that dreadful? Before?”

Sensual daydreams skittered away. Blame circled like a wild wind, to her sister and back to Meg. She wanted none of it. She wanted only Will and the freedom to make clean, fresh mistakes with him. Yet her spoiled relationship with Ada remained an affliction, an unhealed wound that crippled her more effectively than her blindness.

“Too much time has passed. I was a different person then, a girl really.”

“You’ll have the opportunity to set it right, if you wish to.”

Close behind Will’s reassurance lingered another, more dire possibility—that one of them would die before having that chance. The only way to keep that from happening was to complete her undertaking. And there in the dungeon, they were closer to Ada than ever.

“An escape, then,” she said. “Tell me you have your lock pick.”

He laughed, that teasing laugh like a breeze. “No, milady. Some harlot threw it into the woods, lost forever.”

“Shall I add that to the tally of things for which I must apologize?”

“You keep such a tally?”

“I should.”

“Acknowledging that you’ve spited yourself in an attempt to spite me—that will be apology enough.”

“I’ll think on it.” She unbound her hair and threaded fingers through the snarls. “Have you anything else hidden in your boots?”

“Jacob’s boots, actually. And indeed I do.”

“Too bad about those principles of yours, Will,” she said, plaiting her hair anew. “You certainly think like an outlaw.”

“Principles, outlawry—I learned from the best.”

And then Meg. The mad girl. Losing her newest champion must have been a miserable defeat. Hugo had once admired her lawless methods, and convincing her of as much brought her willingly to his bed. A few kind lies softened her like tallow left in the sun.

He had hoped that Scarlet used her in a similar fashion. To watch her felled by another opportunist would have been satisfying. But because the gutless bastard had no intention of breaking Meg’s spirit, Hugo would applaud when Scarlet hanged.

But his grin caused him pain. His cheeks throbbed. Memory of the beating he endured in Keyworth, attempting to barter Meg’s shoddy asem, weakened his satisfaction like water added to wine. Identifying her to Finch merely resulted in her imprisonment. Her new lover would hang, true, but Hugo’s doubling anger demanded more.

He strode to the base of Castle Hill. Stalls, tables, and wagons of wares had been cleared in preparation for the coming feast. Women cooked and ornamented the square, while a half dozen men started a bonfire. The common folk, like their betters within the castle walls, gathered to eat and drink a toast to the end of a growing season. Even the soldiers participated, smiling at the girls and accepting cups.

But word of the skirmish inside the castle had agitated the crowd. Hearsay decorated a plain festival with suspicion and worry. Men had not shed their weapons in favor of meat and mead. Women kept their children close, talking amongst themselves and invigorating the rumors with new details. Anticipation, like an arid haystack, awaited a single spark.

Hugo accepted a cup of ale from a half-grown girl, grimacing when she averted her blushing face. But he smiled past the inflamed pain of his bruises and eyed her fresh bosom. At the previous harvest festival, she had likely been running with the other children in careless games. But a twelvemonth brought her to the cusp of maturity. The temptation of that untried body dried his mouth and tightened his groin. A swig of young ale eased the parched tickle in his throat, even as his thirst for a different pleasure strengthened.

“Gramercy, miss,” he said.

She kept her eyes to the ground and nodded.

“My dear, you needn’t be ashamed of avoiding the sight of my injuries.” Blue eyes flicked briefly to his face and retreated. “You are curious what happened to me, I think.”

She nodded again, her blush deepening. Innocence and interest warred with disgust, a combination Hugo found immensely arousing. And with her fair complexion, those pink cheeks would exactly match the color of her ripe nipples.

He took another long draw of ale. “I was beaten. Inside the castle, the sheriff keeps a witch as his prisoner.”

“A witch?”

“Just so.” He approached, catching her scent like a hound after a fox. “She is well-known in Charnwood for her spells. God cursed her, taking her sight because she would not repent.”

The girl’s eyes rounded, growing wide. “Is she hideous?”

“No,” he said. “She is quite lovely despite her wickedness. Nothing to your beauty, my dear, but she uses her sweet appearance to deceive those who would be swayed to mercy.”

“Why is she here?”

“Who can know? Whatever the sheriff’s intent, surely he cannot justify keeping such a woman near good people.”

“Of course not!”

“When I objected to her presence in our respectable city, the sheriff’s men beat me. I scarcely made my way free. They pursue me still.”

A mouth like a tight rosebud opened to an O of surprise. Hugo imagined pushing that mouth onto his cock. He swallowed heavily.

“Will you help me have justice, my dear?” He wove his fingers into the hair at the base of her skull. She flinched only a little and parted her moist lips. A tentative nod was his reward. “Then go. Find your friends and family. Tell everyone you know that a witch waits within the castle to cast her evil upon us.”

She spun and fled, her skirts twisting about that nubile body. Hugo watched her bottom and downed the rest of his ale. She would be the first spark, spreading his tale until every reveler believed the sheriff held the Devil’s own bride as his prisoner.

He exchanged the empty cup for another draft, grinning again despite a face full of bruises and the hard throb of unsatisfied lust between his legs. That girl would have quenched him, but worked into a lustful frenzy, any woman would do. He set off to spend his gold.

Experience taught him to doubt the durability of such peace, but he hoped against the odds. A stinging possessiveness burgeoned within him, leaving little room for doubt or fear or thought.

She stirred. “How long have we been in here? Hours?”

“It may be twilight by now,” he said.

“What purpose could Finch have in detaining us without questioning us?”

“Perhaps he wanted us to share time alone.”

She sat up, leaving him cold. “And this fits into his grand scheme how?”

“He hopes we’ll gouge each other’s eyes while we wait.”

“That might have been true this morning.”

Something akin to shyness colored her voice. He wanted a torch, any flicker of light to see her face and better read her expression. Realizing that she encountered such a challenge with every passing moment chilled him.

Rather than indulging in compassion Meg would find offensive, he opted for another insistent truth. “Now our only conflict shall be who relents first to use the privy.”

“Do what you must,” she said tightly. “I’ll wait until it kills me.”

He grinned and joined her in a seated position, rolling his aching shoulder.

“Will, can you see anything? Dance your fingers before your eyes—anything?”

As if doing so might change the result, he tried. Fingers fluttered, moving air against his face, but blackness swallowed all. “I can see shadows, motion. Nothing more. Why?”

“I’ve given our situation thought.”

“Saints save us.”

“Hush,” she said. “Guards will arrive armed, as you said, and with torches.”

“Yes.”

“But when that door opens, you will squint and blink as your eyes adjust. I will not.”

Her logic had resurfaced, but he could not decide if it was a boon or a curse. “What do you suggest?”

“Give me the explosives.”

He clamped down on the impulse to refuse her. “And what would you do with them?”

“What we planned.” She took his hands, resting them on her crossed ankles. “Especially after the blast, like staring into the sun, you’ll be temporarily blinded.”

“As opposed to you.”

“If I can do anything without sight, I can find fire.” Idly, she stroked the lump of scarred flesh at the center of his palm. “How did you get this? It feels like you were shot with an arrow.”

Desire cooled. Defeat and old ghosts reigned as tyrants. “I was.”

“What happened?”

“Robin,” he said. “Robin happened.”

“Your uncle did this? Why?”

“Because I deserved it.”

She petted the humiliating scar as if trying to erase it. “You deserved being shot?”

He circled her hands to still her restless touch. “He accused me of cowardice, and rather than argue my point, I drew a knife and attacked him when he turned his back. He taught me that cowardice can make a man do terrible things. I would have done well to remember that lesson.”

“Is he always right? Robin?”

“Certainly feels that way.” The petulant child in his voice laid waste to years of life on his own.

“Does that mean you are always wrong?”

“I was wrong when he gave me this.”

“Perhaps,” she said quietly. “But does that resign you to behaving as his inferior at every instance? You could always try to see yourself as I do.”

“You do not see me.”

With lacey touches, she moved her hands up to his face. She straddled his hips. Will filled his arms with her body.

“I see you, and that scares us both,” she whispered. “You are brave. You are good.”

He gripped the soft flesh of her thighs. Blood spun from his brain in a dizzying rush and throbbed in his groin. “Are you seducing me, Meg, or only making your point?”

“Both.” She smiled against his cheek. “I don’t crave additional danger, but I’m right about this. When the guards arrive, keep your eyes shut until after the flash. Resist the impulse to play hero.”

“
Play
hero? I was attempting the honest article.”

“Release my sister and I from this place and I’ll give you a hero’s reward.” Her breath kissed him before her lips touched his. More brazenly, she rocked her hips against his erection. He groaned. “Until then, let me do what I am able.”

Once, Will had wanted to control her, to outsmart her, to merely understand her. But as laughter and longing burned his throat, as admiration and desire played games in his blood, he wanted only to survive her.

“You win.”

She stiffened. “Good. They’re coming.”