What A Scoundrel Wants (23 page)

The earth tilted, so disoriented had she become. But then, an obstacle. Scraping her fingertips on the rough sandstone, she outlined a circular opening in the courtyard wall. A stench more disgusting than the smoky sulfur assaulted her.

A sewer entrance.

She tugged on slack metal rods barring the entrance. The grate jerked free and she wiggled inside. She pulled the smoky cloth over her back and head, the short sword waiting patiently in her hands. Nearby screams rammed into her ears. Soldiers ran through the courtyard, their mail announcing every action. All she could do was wait, hoping they would ignore the knotted mass of her body, hoping Will would come for her. Again.

He had braved the fire. Meg chose her sister, but he had come for her.

Another wave of dizziness swam on currents of emotion, flooding her brain and laying siege. Tears borne of fatigue and fear and gratitude wet her face. They mingled with the ash on her cheeks to form a sticky paste. She wiped and wiped, but the tears ran fast and hypnotic.

“Meg?” His frantic shout snapped her from that fog.

She poked out of the tunnel. “Will! I’m here!”

He gathered her into his arms. They knelt together, embracing, clutching. Chaos claimed the courtyard as its domain, but Will held her.

“A much better hiding place this time,” he said.

“I strive for improvement.”

He kissed her temple. “Hugo is dead.”

“You save my life and offer me a gift.” She wound greedy fingers down to his scalp, pulling, trying to drag him into her brain. See him. Keep him. “I do not deserve you.”

“You will,” he said. “Come now. We still have to escape the city.”

“I never would have thought you one to long for the forest.”

“I am wherever you are, Meg. This way.”

“No. Here.”

He hesitated. “The sewer?”

“Why not? It will lead us to the river. The weather has been fair. The water level should be low.”

He cupped her cheek. His skin smelled of ashes and chemicals and blood. “You? And the river?”

She shook her head, a violent swipe. “Do not remind me. Not now.”

He returned a moment later with a torch. Meg flinched at the sound of the flames, fearful of fire for the first time in her memory. “Here,” he said. “Take my arm.”

Hunched low, they edged into the entrance. They exchanged the disorder of the courtyard for a tight, reeking tunnel that led to the most powerful river in the Midlands. She exhaled shakily. “Do we have any other weapons?”

“I have only Hugo’s dagger, but I stashed my bow and sword by the river.”

“Then you should hold this sword, yes? Will?”

“Just take my arm and hold the sword for safe keeping.” Misery and a flicker of dread lined his words.

When Meg gingerly took his left hand, he hissed. She explored the damage with unsteady fingers. His thumb drooped at a repulsive angle. Swollen and sticky with blood, the raw, mangled skin of his wrist pulsed, unnaturally hot.

“What happened?”

“I escaped my manacles.” He rattled the chain still clinging to his other hand. “Halfway, at least.”

Her stomach curled, revolted by hideous imaginings and the very real stink of the sewer. “Which is why you cannot hold both a sword and a torch?”

“With that hand, I cannot hold a thing,” he said. “When these daring rescues are behind me, I’ll need a long and lovely rest.”

“And I shall join you.”

The words sighed from her mouth before thought, before apprehension or pride stalled their birth. Boldness and vulnerability iced her body beneath a layer of fear.

He turned, his question tickling her ear. “Truly? You’ll refrain from fighting me or poisoning me—”

“—or tying you to a tree,” she said, unable to keep from smiling. “Yes. I will refrain.”

“Then, yes. You should join me.” He clutched her hand, a promise. “You can tend my injuries after our long rest.”

“And a bath.”

“Dear God, yes.”

No one followed them, at least. A hundred soldiers and ten times as many angry peasants might wait for them where the tunnel emptied into the Trent, but for the moment, they were safe.

Will heard the rushing river long before he could see it. “Not far now,” he said. “Can you manage?”

“If you can abide the woods, I can abide the river.”

“That is no strong assurance.”

Meg passed a shiver from her hand to his. “Why do you mislike the woods?”

“Will this shape into another fight? Because I haven’t the strength.”

“No, truly. I am…you make me curious.”

Perhaps fatigue prompted his honesty. Perhaps their growing closeness did. But the words came easily and without the urge to stop them. “My grandfather evicted my mother from Loxley Manor when she got with child. My father was some useless bit of human rubbish who refused to marry her. She hated living in our woodsy little village and raised me on bitter stories of the privilege she’d once known.”

The tunnel sloped down, tipping the sewage to the river and making their sloppy walk precarious. The current of refuse at his ankles accelerated. “When I was twelve, I killed her paramour. He’d beaten her to death. Instead of facing the law, I fled to Sherwood and lived in hiding for months.”

“Alone?”

Between his cloying memories and the stench, Will fought for air. “Yes, until I found Robin and his men. We knew naught our relation until some weeks later, after which time he made my upbringing his special endeavor. I was quick to anger and wanted nothing of it.”

He slipped, just enough to make his pulse jump. Meg held firm, lending her lesser weight and strength to keep him upright.

“If you go, I go,” she said, gasping. “So do try to keep to your feet.”

“But if we slide to the river, we’ll get that bath.”

“I’ll give you a push, if you like.”

He grinned. It was either smile or collapse, and he refused to expose any more of his body to the muck than was necessary. “Generous to a fault, Meg.”

“Are Jacob and Monthemer yet at my cabin?”

Exhaling, he was happy to leave behind their conversation about his youth. “I should hope they’re not. Jacob was the one who freed me from your ropes.”

She offered something close to a laugh. “I thought you used an extra ploy I hadn’t discovered.”

“No, no such tricks,” he said. “I asked him to take Monthemer back to Winhearst.”

“And he agreed? I would’ve believed him too eager for exploits.”

“He agreed, but that offers no guarantee. I suggested that if we three failed in Nottingham, Monthemer would be the only one left to explain what occurred. Keeping him safe must have seemed a charge worth fulfilling.”

“Stephen, Baron of Monthemer, escorted by a Jewish alchemist’s son. This enterprise has created a few unusual alliances.”

“Ours not excepted.”

Meg faltered, her foot slipping forward. She clutched his arm. Will dropped the torch to catch her at the waist. Glimmers of light fell to black.

“Was that the torch?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“If you go, I go.” He rested his forehead against hers, briefly, eyes closed. Fatigue and the irritation of the smoke stung the backs of his eyelids. The terrible stench wedged an unreleased sneeze in his nose.

“Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Can you forgive me?”

He frowned. “For the torch?”

“For the choice I made,” she whispered.

He lifted his forehead and resumed their onerous trudge. Pushing his right shoulder into the tunnel wall, he stretched that arm to feel a way forward. Meg crept behind him, holding onto his debilitated left arm. Check, step, slide—their process slowed like a river icing over.

“The choice Finch gave you was no choice at all,” he said at last. “Would you have sent Ada to the gallows? Or have her make an unholy trade with Finch for her freedom? I’m flattered you gave the matter as much thought as you did.”

“Ada was not.”

“You are a wayward girl, Meg. I hear you smiling.”

“Now you know how I manage, always listening.”

“A dreadful nuisance.”

The insistent sound of falling water interrupted. Stretched far, Will’s fingers found stone, more stone, and then air. He stopped. Meg staggered into his shoulder, nearly toppling him forward. But he smiled when fresh air greeted his violated senses.

“Hold fast, now,” he said. “We’re at the brink.”

She turned her back to the tunnel wall and molded her spine to its curve, her feet braced against the current. Will mimicked her stance and gripped the lip of the tunnel with his good hand, edging his head outside.

The moon tilted low in the sky, offering little light. He looked up and down the river. Barren oaks and beeches stood as silent sentries. No one waited on the opposite bank. The water raged some six feet below, a wall of liquid refuse spilling straight into the Trent.

“By the best.”

“What? Will?”

He pulled his head back into the tunnel, hungry, exhausted, and in pain. “Someday, I hope to say the worst is behind us.”

“Not today?”

“No.”

“What do we need to do?”

“Jump.”

She threaded a hand through her hair, combing wet tangles from her forehead. Deeply shadowed in the moon’s slanting glow, she swallowed heavily. She shook her head—side to side, again and again—in a wordless objection.

“You can do this, Meg.”

“I cannot see! I cannot swim!” She clanged the sword against the tunnel wall. “Stab me and be done with it!”

He caught her upper arm with his good hand, squeezing until she winced and cried out. “You
must
, do you hear me? This place is not fit for a rat.”

Her eyes pinched tight. “Will—”

“I won’t let you drown,” he said, calming. “And we shall have that bath, at last. Do you hear me?”

Nodding once, she tossed the sword into the river current with a fierce shout. It sailed over the lip of the tunnel and out of sight. The dagger Will held soon followed.

She clutched his good hand, weaving her fingers into his. “If you let go of me, I’ll find that sword and cut off your head.”

He glanced his knuckles against her cheek. He could feel her skin, even if his fingers refused to move. “Ready?”

Terror replaced instinct, or perhaps amplified it. She kicked and thrashed, finding no purchase. Only more and more water. The current mauled her sense of direction. She could not find the surface. A second tide invaded her mouth. Her foot struck a rock. Another rock bit her thigh. Cold dissolved her skin, seeping into her muscles. Her strength melted away.

But the colors.

Colors danced in her brain. Dazzling colors. A passive observer, she watched pieces of rainbow and starlight, floating, twirling. Her limbs slackened. Warmth returned.

And then peace.

As air returned to her starved brain, Meg thought the pleasant blur of his voice a fair trade for the vanishing colors. She would have admitted as much, but coughs overwhelmed language.

“Meg? Your gown is drenched. I cannot carry you.”

Her feet connected with soggy earth. Land. She collapsed into a grateful mass of sodden cloth and trembling limbs.

“A little farther,” he said, arm still banding her waist. “We need to find a place to rest.”

“How about here?”

“I never took you for a sluggard. Come now. Stand up.”

Righting her face, she tried to allay the spinning blackness. Fear still tingled at the base of her skull. “You endure a great deal to keep me alive.”

“I do.”

“I can walk on my own, at the very least.”

“Yes, you can.”

She toughened her knees and stood. The heavy hem of her dress and kirtle dragged behind like an inert body. A chill set into her muscles. She trembled and staggered, but she would not relent, not when Will had already done his part. Nothing could have kept their hands joined, not against the force of that impact, but he had not forsaken her to the river’s cold mercy.

“Here,” he said. “An outcropping.”

She crumpled to the ground, Will sprawling next to her. “Always the cozy little caves.”

“Naught but the best.”

“We should tend your wrists,” she said, finding his left hand. “Whatever we walked through will hinder your healing.”

“No lye.”

“No lye. I promise.”

“Sleep first, Meg. Come sleep.”

She had never coveted anything more than curling into his hard planes and firm muscles. She did, weary and safe. The only warmth in England existed where her body nestled along his.