Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set

by Jill Elaine Hughes

  No, Mfanwy would be far more useful as a hostage. Cuthbert supposed he could force her to write some more of those messages in that fancy code of hers that would help throw both Reginald and Tostig off Robert’s trail for long enough for him to tell Robert what the hell was actually going on. That was assuming Robert didn’t get to him (and kill him) first.

  Then again, Cuthbert wasn’t entirely sure who the enemy was anymore.That was one of the problems with being a mercenary. At some point, all the masters you’ve served throughout your mercenary career end up meeting on the same battlefront. And then it’s every man for himself.

  Chapter 14

  Sabina and Robert were still stuck in the hollow tree. They’d been there for hours. Sabina begged him to let her out—his body plugged the only exit—but he’d steadfastly refused. “We still don’t know how close they might be,” Robert whispered harshly. “They could still be lying in wait for us. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “I’m not going to sit here tied into knots inside this tree for the rest of my life,” she retorted. “Besides, I need to—ahem—relieve myself.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Robert hissed. “And just hold it.”

  “I’ve been holding it for hours already,” she shot back. “And I can’t hold it any more. Get out of my way, Robert de Tyre, or you’re going to find yourself rather dirty in a rather unmentionable way.”

  “Now see here—“ he argued. He stood his ground, but apparently the call of nature has a stronger will than even the strongest of mercenaries.

  Sabina kneed him in the groin.

  She’d never done anything like that before. She wasn’t entirely sure of what would happen. But whatever she’d just done, it seemed to have worked. All at once, the mighty mercenary Robert de Tyre was reduced to a sniveling ball of pain.

  “I said get out of my way, and I meant it,” she growled. “Now move.”

  Robert slowly crawled out of the log, clutching his privates. “This is no way to treat the man who is risking his life for you,” he grunted as Sabina relieved herself behind a clump of bushes.

  “Keeping a lady crammed inside a hollow tree for half a day is no way to treat your sworn beloved,” she chirped. When she finished she sniffed her underarms and noticed with some revulsion that she stank. She stank not just of an unwashed body, but of horse manure, mud, forest loam, and God knew what else. What she wouldn’t give for a bath and a fresh set of clothes! If she really was going to die tonight, she’d much rather do it looking like a civilized human being than a rabid, filthy animal. Plus she was starving. She cursed herself for not forcing down at least a bite or two back at the inn. Robert refused to hunt anything with bow and arrow for fear it would give away their position. God only knew the next chance they’d have for something besides wild mushrooms or lichens to eat.

  She’d gotten way more than she’d bargained for on this wild goose chase. Sabina even wondered for a moment if maybe she wouldn’t have been better off if she’d just stayed back at Angwyld, obeyed her father’s wishes, and married Lord Reginald without a fight. Of course, she wouldn’t have met and fallen in love with Robert that way. But at least she wouldn’t be trapped alone in the middle of the woods, starving, in filthy clothes, and running away from marauding mercenary armies who had every intention of killing her lover, if not her as well. Sabina was beginning to wonder if true love was really worth such a fuss.

  In fact, she was beginning to wonder if what she had with Robert was true love at all.

  She stood up and looked over where her beloved lay on the forest floor, still crumpled in a ball from her kneeing him in the groin. Here was a man who on the surface had seemed strong, gallant, all-powerful—but yet had such a fragile, weak point that she, a mere woman, could render him helpless with little more than a shove. Were all men like this? Or was Robert something other than he seemed? Sabina didn’t have enough experience with the opposite sex to know for sure. But knowing that an infamous mercenary solider could be felled by nothing more than a woman’s knee didn’t do much to make her feel protected.

  Plus, Robert had mishandled the situation back at the Cock and Robin greatly. He’d made the mistake of trusting Master Cuthbert, for one. He’d refused to listen to Sabina’s warnings until it was too late, for another. Now they were cowering in the woods, fleeing pursuit without horses or provisions. Their money was running out—they barely had enough to secure safe passage across the Channel to Calais, and the port at Dover was still at least three days’ journey away by horse. And now, their horses were gone. God only knew how long it would take them on foot.

  And they were hardly equipped to travel on foot, anyway. Sabina’s thin kid slippers had never been designed for travel, and they were already worn through. She could hardly march the forty-odd miles to Dover in her stocking feet, and even the most immoral of Dover sea captains would refuse to take them on as passengers in their current filthy state. They probably would never make it there alive at this point, anyway. There had to be a better way.

  “Have we considered surrender?” she asked once Robert had recovered his faculties enough to stand.

  Robert looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “What? Surrender? Are you mad?”

  “I’m merely bringing the topic up for discussion.”

  Robert slumped down onto a tree stump. “Surrender is completely out of the question, and for a hundred different reasons.”

  “Really? Then name one.”

  “I’ll name you a dozen. Lord Reginald doesn’t accept terms of surrender from anyone, for one. He prefers to kill down to the last man. And the last man is usually drawn and quartered.”

  “What about his fiancée? Surely he’d accept my surrender.”

  Robert looked away. Not meeting her eyes, he said, “I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “What kind of answer is that? You’re the one who’s supposed to be a master soldier and battle planner.”

  “Master soldier I’ll give you,” he said, still not meeting her eyes. “I don’t know about master battle planner anymore, though. How could I have made such a mistake about the Cock and Robin? I put us—you, especially—at unnecessary risk. It’s a mistake I’m afraid we won’t recover from either, milady.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Though she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Surely you can tell that we have our backs against the proverbial wall, milady,” he said. He stood and looked up at her at last, and she saw his face had gone ashen. “We cannot risk leaving the woods. At this point, we have to assume that we’re surrounded. Lord Reginald has literally thousands of men at his disposal, and I’m certain he’s called almost all of them up for duty. It’s likely your father is supporting him with troops of his own. You are a coveted prize, milady, and mostly for political reasons. And Lord Reginald’s tactical skills are unmatched by any man anywhere in Europe, royal or otherwise. When we still had the horses and provisions we had a chance to escape, but now I’m afraid we no longer do.”

  “Then why not surrender?”

  “Because it’s the last thing on Earth that we both want,” Robert said, taking her hands in his, though his voice was grim. “At least, that’s what I thought. Or am I wrong?”

  Sabina didn’t answer. She just stared at the dead leaves scattered along the ground.

  He leaned his head against her shoulder. “If you wish to go, Sabina, I shall not keep you against your will,” he whispered. “Though you must understand that you would make the rest of the journey alone.”

  She kept looking at the dead leaves. “I understand,” she said.

  “Is this goodbye then?”

  Sabina remained silent. But Robert could read her answer well enough in her eyes.

  “I’ll guide you to the forest edge,” he said. “Then you’d be on your own. Though I expect that once you’re out in the open, Lord Reginald’s men will find you very quickly.”

  Sabina nodded. Tears collected in the corners of her eyes
, and she suddenly found herself unable to speak.

  Robert reached out, touched the side of her face. “Sabina, know this. No matter what happens now, I shall never regret a single moment we spent together. Even if I die upon a spear before the night is over. It was worth it.”

  Sabina didn’t respond. She knew if she did, she would collapse into sobs. It was all she could do to keep herself standing upright.

  “Come on, milady. Let’s get you home.”

  Robert wrapped both his arms around her side, supported her as she tried to walk. Sabina could barely move; in fact, she felt moments away from total physical collapse. She knew some of it was just from exhaustion and hunger—but not all of it.

  It seemed that for all the ecstasy and euphoria it could bring, true love had a dark side. It could raise you up to the pinnacle of heaven at its highest point, but then it was a long way back down. Sabina’s whole being ached with a new kind of pain, a kind that no medicine or even holy prayer could heal.

  Was this why so many of the love songs she’d heard the bards sing were so sad? Was this why most women of noble blood never married for love in the first place? Surely it had to be so. Why would anyone choose to feel such agony of their own free will? Why wouldn’t anyone avoid it altogether if she could? Maybe her father had done her favor by betrothing her to Lord Reginald. At least with him, she wouldn’t feel anything at all. Maybe that was better.

  Only one thing was certain. Sabina couldn’t endure being in Robert’s presence a moment longer. The more distance she put between the two of them, the faster she could heal. Or if not heal, at least build an impenetrable wall of indifference around herself, enough that she’d be guaranteed never to feel anything ever again—good, bad, or otherwise.

  How naïve she’d been to run away! Her life could have been so much simpler if she’d just obeyed her father and stayed locked in her tower. How stupid she’d been to mix herself up with a Norman mercenary in the first place! Any dunce could have seen the whole affair was doomed before it had even begun. Saxons just did not mix well with Normans, especially where love was concerned. Political marriages between Saxons and Normans could work, certainly—but only because love never entered the equation.

  How stupid she’d been to think she could take control of her own destiny, too. It seemed in the end that the lessons her mother, her father, her priest, even her governesses had all hammered into her head since she was a toddler were true. Women never had any say in their own lives—not in this time and place, at least. And any woman who tried to behave otherwise was just destined for a life of pain and misery. The only way for that pain and misery to end would be for her to return swiftly to her place in the predetermined background.

  She broke away from Robert then, and suddenly found the strength to run. She ran faster than she’d ever run before, even though she was tired, hungry, weak from pain, even though her shoes were in tatters and her vision blurred from tears. It was over, all over. Her life, her love, everything she knew. From now on she would simply exist. No more, no less.

  And Sabina supposed if simply existing got too hard, there was always her father’s sword.

  Chapter 15

  Robert stood and watched her go. He made no effort to stop her, because it knew it would be futile. She had made up her mind, and he would respect that. Because he loved her.

  He understood the way she felt. A rough-and-tumble life on the run was no life for a refined lady, even a fiercely independent one like Sabina. Lord Reginald wasn’t known for giving up the hunt on an ordinary day, and his fiancée was no ordinary prey. Days and weeks spent evading capture would eventually turn into years—assuming one or both of them wasn’t killed first. Such a hard life would have made Sabina prematurely old, and surely angry and bitter. Their love couldn’t have survived for long under such conditions. And Robert frankly was doubtful it could have survived long under any conditions. He wasn’t the marrying or settling-down kind, after all. Even if they had found a small, safe, out-of-the-way place to build their lives together, at some point he knew he would get the itch to go back to mercenary work. Working as a farmer or a blacksmith or some other stable, ordinary profession went against his very nature. And if it was inevitable that he would someday again find himself back to work as a mercenary, it was also inevitable that Lord Reginald and his minions would catch up to them. Lord Reginald de Guillaume’s reach went far and wide, and he had his fingers in so many sticky pies across the continent that it wasn’t even likely to end with his death. No, Lord Reginald had made the careers and fortunes of too many of Europe’s rapscallions, pirates, and all-around ruthless bastards to ever be without major influence, whether he was still alive or six feet underground. At some point, whether they were living on a small farm in Provence or running a tavern in the wilds of Scotland, the past would show up with a sharp sword and a vengeance, and their life of bliss would be over in a bloody, violent flash.

  No, it was far better to let Sabina go while their love was still new, the memories of their best night together still fresh. They’d already reached the pinnacle, and it was all downhill from there.

  Still, he wasn’t going to abandon her completely. The situation was far too dangerous for that. He would tail her until he knew she was safe, and then he would disappear.

  And safe was a relative word. When she rejoined her father and Lord Reginald, she might be safe from physical harm—Robert knew his old employer well enough to understand that his murderous and violent attitudes towards men did not extend to women—there was more than one way for a woman to get hurt.

  More than one way for a man to get hurt, too—even a man who had long thought he was above such things.

  Robert shook his head back and forth rapidly. He had to stop that line of thinking. He didn’t have the luxury of pining over Sabina. He’d bedded scores of women in his life before Sabina, and had never once given a single one of them a second thought the next morning. He should be able to forget her just like he’d forgotten all the rest. But try as he might, he just couldn’t. It was a completely different game where Sabina was concerned. A different game, with different rules.

  Why did things have to be so different with the one woman he knew he could never have?

  Damnation, he cursed to himself in French. Hell and damnation. On the bright side, now that Sabina was gone he could go back to speaking (and swearing in) his native tongue. But that was little comfort, especially when he knew that his beloved was still in danger.

  His beloved. Even now that she was gone from his life forever, he could still think of her only in those terms.

  That kind of thinking had to stop immediately. He’d already let his guard down once as a result of his feelings for Sabina, and look at the mess it had gotten the both of them into. He couldn’t risk it happening again. Even if he had to do so from a distance, he would keep her safe—or die.

  He stole silently from tree to tree, always keeping her in his sights. He really wished she would slow down, at least. She was running through the forest like a madwoman—he kept finding torn pieces of her cloak and gown stuck to brambles and branches. He feared that a passing scout or solider might mistake her for the enemy and fire an arrow straight through her heart.

  Sabina’s frantic pace finally slowed, whether from exhaustion or fear, he didn’t know. Whatever the reason, he was relieved. Now she at least had a fighting chance to make it out of the woods alive. And even if it took his last dying breath, he would see she got to the forest’s edge in one piece.

  Sabina came to a stop and leaned against a treestump to catch her breath. Robert hung back just out of sight, leaning against an enormous oak tree, watching. His mind sent her silent orders. Don’t move too fast. Don’t make too much noise. Keep your head down, and your eyes and ears open. Don’t show fear. Fear is your enemy. He wished she could hear him. He wished he could touch her, hold her, keep her close. But he couldn’t.

  Incredibly, though, Sabina seemed to have understood his
silent orders somehow, at least on an unconscious level. She was back on the move again, but much more slowly and carefully this time. She picked her way around tree trunks and boulders, taking care not to rustle leaves or break twigs with every step, like she had before. She was swift, alert, always checking behind her, in front, beside her for enemies and hazards. The cloud of fear that had enveloped her like a sea storm had completely evaporated. She was confident, resolute. All at once, she had taken on the skills of a seasoned woodswoman—the only question was how.

  Robert was amazed. Had he somehow managed to share all his many years’ worth of mercenary knowledge with her by a single thought? Or had her primal survival instincts simply taken over? Whatever the cause, it was a wonder to behold—and it only made Robert adore her all the more.

  Sabina was in her element now, moving through the forest with a skill and competence that was well beyond her pampered upbringing. The only thing she seemed to miss was the fact that Robert was tailing her every move. And that was fine by him. Far better for her to think she was all alone when she was captured. Far better for her to think that even if she called to him, begged for his rescue, that no one would come. Far better for her to think that where she and Robert were concerned, there was no longer any hope. Because, quite simply, there wasn’t.

  After almost two hours of picking her way to the dense forest, Sabina had its edge in her sights. She could hear noise in the clearing beyond, could even feel strange and heavy vibrations travelling along the ground. Something was happening on the other side of the forest, something very, very big, and likely dangerous. But what? Sabina wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.