It was the first Brenna had heard of it. “They are staying?”
“Will has mentioned it too. He would not be able to travel for a few weeks anyway with his injury, and thought he might as well make the best of it by training some new archers.”
“Geoffrey?” she asked sardonically. “Littlejohn?”
“Geoffrey misses Isobel too much, and Littlejohn knows Father will need him more than ever now with … Sparrow gone. That only leaves you and … ?” He lifted a hand to indicate the postern gate.
Brenna found him by following the flattened path his long, angry strides had cut through the dew-wet grass. He had walked all the way down the slope into the belly of the valley and stopped by the banks of a small brook that coursed a lazy path through the apple orchard.
He was just standing there, his one hand braced on the trunk of a tree, the other planted on his hip. His head was bowed and his hair was fallen forward over his cheeks, rippling slightly each time he kicked the toe of his boot into an overgrown root.
“I brought you your sword,” she said, holding the heavy blade awkwardly in front of her. “Robin is just having his arm bathed and bound, and then we can leave.”
He straightened and turned. His jaw was rigid, fierce with pride … and something else … as he took the weapon from her and resheathed it.
“I suppose you expect me to play the hero as well?”
“No. No, I do not expect it all.”
“Because it is not in my character?”
His voice was brittle with sarcasm and she almost smiled at the effort he was making to try to shrug off the dreadful weight of that mantle.
“On the contrary,” she said softly. “I think it is very much in your character.”
“Because of this?” He held up the scarred hand. “It was not nearly as brave or heroic as the telling of it would lead you to believe. The monk in charge of boiling the oil was my father’s retainer and made the cauldron look to be hotter than it was.”
“Did you discover that before or after you volunteered to take your father’s place?”
He glared, giving no answer, then cursed under his breath and turned away again. “You were quick to believe I betrayed you today.”
She opened her mouth to deny the charge, but bit the pad of her lower lip instead.
“The look on your face,” he murmured. “In that one split second. It accused me of everything from cowardice to deceit to betrayal to a willingness to commit cold-blooded murder.”
It was not an excuse, but she said it anyway: “You snuck out of camp while it was still dark—”
“I did not want to disturb you. It was my fault you had little enough sleep the night before.”
“You told no one where you were going. Your horse was gone, your squire was gone. The money was gone,” she finished lamely.
“I knew Fulgrin had left but not that he had taken the money,” he admitted. “I thought perhaps he had just decided I had gone a little too mad this time, spurning all those years we had worked so hard to make me into a bastard. I assumed he’d had enough adventure for one lifetime—either that or he knew we did not stand a chance today and thought to cut his losses. He was always clever that way, knowing when to leave a place when it became too warm.”
He plucked a leaf—rather, he tore it savagely off the branch and began shredding it between his fingers. “I have no one to blame but myself, of course. I have been living a life of deceit, betrayal, and cold-bloodedness for so long … it has formed bad habits that are hard to break. I suppose … I have not given you any good reason to trust me thus far.”
Trust me, he had said. Let yourself go.
“You gave me reasons,” she said haltingly. “I just chose not to see them.”
“Yes, well.” He cast aside the scrap of leaf. “You see me for what I am now. A noble without nobility. A knight with tarnished spurs. A man who has made a fine reputation for himself by killing without conscience or qualm.”
“A truly villainous sort,” she agreed, moving closer to where he stood. “Not at all the kind of husband my family envisioned me spending the rest of my life with.”
He drew a breath and held it for a long, dragging moment. “I was not aware I had asked. Or that you had answered. In fact… were you not most adamant when you said you could not imagine what a life with me would entail?”
“I cannot imagine it now,” she murmured with genuine consternation. She was close enough to touch him, to raise her hand and gently trace the strong line of his jaw. She could feel the immediate tensing of his muscles, hear the coarse exhaling of breath as his lips parted beneath the whisper-light pressure of her fingertips. “But why is it you always remember the things I say in haste … or in anger?”
“Because you always seem to be speaking hastily. Or angrily.”
She considered that for as long as it took her to sigh and ease her arms around his waist and rest her cheek on the plush green chamois of his surcoat. “If that is the case, then I shall say this very slowly and very calmly so that when the time comes, it may be quoted with even greater authority. I love you, my lord. I love you as Griffyn Renaud. I love you as Rowen Hode. I even love you as the glorious Prince of Darkness. And if you do not ask me to marry you, I shall have to settle for some large-nosed lout who would want to teach me manners and modesty, who would insist upon a well-ordered household and a wife who demurred always to the lord of the castle.”
His arms trembled as he slid his hands up into the tawny crush of her hair and forced her to tilt her head upward. “What makes you think I would not demand the same things?”
“Because you know I would not obey you. And besides—” She stretched up on tip toes and brushed her mouth over his. “How orderly a household could you expect me to make of a mountain cave?”
He looked at her blankly for a moment, then began to laugh. It started as a deep rumble in his chest and grew to a lusty and exuberant sound that echoed around the valley and caused Brenna to frown up at him as if he had indeed gone a little mad. In short order, however, he was kissing all such foolish thoughts out of her head. He kissed her fiercely, tenderly, passionately, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around so that the ringing sounds of their laughter reached out and touched the magical trees of Sherwood.
When he settled her again, he did so with the sigh of a reluctant hero. “I suppose I shall have to go back and fetch the key?”
“Actually, my lord.” She smiled and reached for his lips again. “I brought it with me.”
EPILOGUE
Brenna groaned as an exquisitely warm curl of pleasure rippled slowly down the length of her body and back again. She opened her eyes with a soft sigh and looked up at the bronzed, naked flesh of the man kneeling over her and wondered if the smile he wore was a threat or a challenge.
After nearly ten full years of wondering much the same thing, it still amazed her that such a simple thing as a smile could set her pulse racing and her heart pounding in her ears. It amazed her that the challenge to see if he could make her faint had not yet worn off, though he was clearly cheating this time. He knew she was weakest on mornings like this when she threw open the shutters on their tower window only to find the clouds had engulfed the keep overnight.
One day we will make love in the clouds, he had promised, and she had thought at the time he was only being poetic. Little did she know then or suspect later in the valley at Kirklees that his “cave” was a magnificent castle perched high on the crest of a mountain like an eagle’s eyrie and boasted a keep that rose another breathtaking eighty feet into the sky. Its sheer gray towers and battlements and steeply pointed turrets encompassed the entire top of the mountain, and on a clear day, the view from windows and walls left her dizzy with awe.
She groaned again and pressed her head back on the pillows, shuddering deliciously each time his oiled hands glided over her flesh. It was his favorite method of torment, massaging every inch of her body until she was a quivering mass of
sensitized nerve endings. He used oil scented with ambergris and just the faintest whiff of it, caught when he was taking the stoppered bottle out of the spice chest, could weaken her knees and make her incapable of motion until he prowled up behind her like a big cat and fetched her back to bed.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she whispered. “We have guests.”
“Robin and Marienne are not guests. They are family.”
He slid his hands up from her hips to her waist to her breasts, stroking his slicked fingers around the plumped flesh and circling the nipples until they were hard enough to abrade his palms like small pebbles.
“They have their children with them.”
“Our children will keep them amused.”
“They have—” Her mouth flew open and her breath stopped somewhere in her throat as his fingers slithered down to her belly and delved into the golden thatch of tight curls.
“Yes? They have… ?”
She could not answer for almost a full minute and, even then, could not remember the question or complaint.
Ten years, she thought. And it was always the same feeling of helplessness. She could feel it warming her thighs if he looked at her—just looked at her, for pity’s sake, across a crowded room. He still wore his hair long and carelessly loose over his shoulders. He still practiced every day in the tilting yards so that his body was hard with muscle, his belly flat as a board. He had earned a few more scars over the years, to be expected in a man who still wore the infamous gold falcon on and off the field of battle. His stark beauty still drew the hungry eyes of every warm-blooded female east of the Loire, although they were soon discouraged by the obvious and open love he held for the tall, slender lady archer who walked proudly by his side.
It had been that way since the day they had ridden to Edwinstow with Robin and Marienne and exchanged their vows before the village priest. Oh, now and then he tried to order her to stay at home while he tended to border disputes or quarrels with the other dark lords who inhabited the mountains around them. But only once, when she was a month away from birthing their first child, did she obey. And then only because he conducted a most thorough search of the wagons and rouncies that rode in his escort.
They had four children; two boys and two girls. Robin and Marienne were keeping apace, though Eduard was the only young lord among a bevy of sweet-faced ladies. He had grown into the very image of his lionhearted uncle, with hair like summer wheat and eyes so piercingly blue they put the sky to shame. The Wolf had stared long and hard at the boy when he had first been introduced, for he had fought alongside the great golden king and knew Richard’s face better than any other man alive, with the possible exception of William Marshal and King John. But the question was never asked and the boy was welcomed with such ease, he had trouble later remembering a time when he was not part of a thriving, boisterous family. He was in his twentieth year now and already wore the gold spurs of a knight, a fact that made his father, the former champion from Amboise, proud enough to burst the seams of his surcoat.
Robin had come to Burgundy specifically to speak to Brenna and Griffyn about a matter of some delicacy, for they were now the only two living souls who knew for certain the secret of Eduard’s bloodlines.
Lord Henry de Clare, though not as strong as Robin had predicted, had recovered from his wounds and remained a faithful sentinel, watching over the walls of Kirklees for another six years. It was then, while tending some villagers who suffered from a debilitating fever, that both he and the abbess fell ill. They died within a few hours of each other, and at his request, wary to the end of safeguarding his beloved’s whereabouts, a single arrow was fired into the forest of Sherwood to mark the place where both should be buried. There were no telltale signs or crosses left behind, and even before the first summer had passed, it was said the greenwood had grown up around the sylvan glade, distorting the memory of anyone who might have tried to find their resting place again.
“What will you advise him?” Brenna asked, purring beneath her husband’s hands again.
“What are his choices? King John has been dead for eight years. The boy, Henry III, will soon be reaching the age of majority, and the articles of the great charter his father was forced to sign at Runnymede not only safeguarded his throne but insured that, once he is king, he will never be able to abuse his powers again. The barons have a puppet they can control. What good would it do to raise the spectre of war again?”
“But Eduard has matured into such a fine young man,” she said languidly. “So handsome. So bold. So courageous.”
“Reducing the rest of us to old, ugly miscreants?”
“He is a prince of England, my love. You are only the prince of my dark desires.”
His hands stopped stroking for a moment. She gazed into his face, smiled, and opened her arms.
Griffyn accepted her invitation with a hapless smile, suspecting the only one who would come near to fainting this day was himself. He slid deeply inside the warm sheath of her flesh, savouring the volley of tiny shudders that welcomed him and held him fast. That, combined with the ambergris and the slick evidence of her passion, threatened to be his undoing. Ten years and four children. If Brenna found the notion of wedded bliss difficult to comprehend, he found it nigh on impossible. He had expected—hoped—for a kind of contentment after so many years of brooding isolation, but this … this feeling that clutched around his heart every time she whispered his name or touched his hand … he had not expected that at all.
Her arms, her legs twined around him and she started moving slowly to his rhythm. Her eyes were wide and dark and filled his vision, telling him how much she loved him, how much she believed, utterly and completely, in this life they had made together.
“The clouds are coming in,” she murmured against his lips.
He glanced over at the window embrasure and saw the opaque wisps drifting through the opened shutters.
“Trust me,” he whispered. “I will not let you fall through.”
THE END
I hope you enjoyed my version of the Robin Hood legend. For more swashbuckling adventure, why not try sailing with the Black Swan on the high seas? The daughter of a pirate rogue, Isabeau Spence meets her match in the dashing sea hawk, Simon Dante in
ACROSS A MOONLIT SEA.
I hope you enjoy this brief, sneak peek...
She emerged from the receding bank of mist like a ghost ship. The air was dead calm, the water smooth as glass. The lines of her rigging were frosted with dew and glistened with a million pinpricks of light as the first rays of the morning sun found her. She had originally carried four masts, but the mizzen and fore were badly damaged, the latter cracked off halfway up the stem and folded over on itself, suspended in a harness formed of its own ratlines. What few scraps of canvas she carried were reefed, as if she knew she was going nowhere fast. The huge mainsail hung limp, half of it in tatters, the rest valiantly patched wherever it was possible and bolstered by a new array of lines and cleats to give it some hope of catching any breeze that might whuff by. There was more damage scarring her rails and hull, and she was listing heavily to starboard, weary with the weight of all that hope.
Captain Jonas Spence frowned through the thick wire fuzz of his eyebrows. “I see no lanterns. No signs of life on any of her decks.”
His second-in-command, Spit McCutcheon, duplicated the frown but he was not looking so much at the silent galleon as he was the dense gray wall of fog behind her.
“There could be a dozen ships out there, lyin’ in wait, an’ we’d not know it,” he muttered through the wide gaps of his front teeth. “’Tis just the kind o’ trap a bloody-minded Spaniard would set. Use one of our own as bait to lure us in, then”—he leaned over the rail and spat a wad of phlegm into the water twenty feet below—“pepper us like a slab o’ hot mutton.”
Spence’s frown deepened, the lines becoming crevices in a face already as weathered and hardened as granite. He was a tall bull of a man, as br
oad across the beam as his ship, as bald as the pickled gull’s eggs he ate by the crockful. “Mutton?” He glared at McCutcheon. “Did ye have to say mutton, ye flat-nosed bastard? Now I’ll be havin’ the taste of it in my throat the whole blessed day long.”
As if to verify the prediction, his stomach gave an angry rumble, one heard by most of the group of crewmen gathered behind them on the forecastle. Several smiled, despite the tension. Their captain’s appetite and capacity were infamous, and when his belly protested a lack, it was like the ominous grumbling from a volcano.
“Mutton.” Spence snorted again and raised his hand to his eyes, shielding them against the molten silver glare of what little dull light did manage to break through the dissipating clouds. He took a slow, careful sweep along the half of the horizon that was clear, halting when he came upon the ghostly galleon and the gray miasma of mist behind it.
“We’ll send the jolly across,” he decided. “If there are a dozen papist bastards out there, they’ll be goin’ nowhere, either, in this cursed calm. An’ if she’s genuine, there might be souls aboard who need our aid. Helmsman! Ye’d best haul us in. Keep a square or two aloft for steerage in case a wind does come along.”
The order was relayed and almost immediately there were men clambering nimbly up the shrouds and steadying themselves on the yards while others released the tension in the rigging lines and allowed the sails to be reefed and lashed to the spars. It was slower work than normal, for the sails had been well soaked with seawater to swell the canvas and take advantage of any breath of air. They had been becalmed three days now, and aside from the occasional cat’s paw that scudded over the surface of the water, they had drifted no more than a league or two in that time.
That was why, when the dawn began to melt away the morning mist, the sight of another ship standing so close at hand had tightened more than a few sphincter muscles. Nearly every one of the Egret’s crewmen lined the rails; none had moved away over the past hour, few had raised their voices above a whisper. They were still in dangerous waters and without wind to move them, they would be easy pickings for enemy gunners.
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 132
