Hidden Obsession

by Joanne Rock

  She’d been a fool to sit docilely around Welborne Keep for three years and wait patiently for a hated marriage. Graham Lawson may have taught her about betrayal and heartbreak, but at least being with him had opened her eyes to strengths she’d never known she possessed. Hadn’t she walked many miles in the dark to escape Welborne Keep? She’d scaled a narrow plank to reach a second-floor balcony. Escaped a maniac intent on doing her harm by proving as slippery as a fish in a crisis. And she’d chosen a beautiful moment of her own for initiation into womanhood instead of waiting passively for a well-known rutting beast to wrest away her virginity in a moment of tears and pain.

  Plucking up the smallest sword from the chest of armor at the end of the tower stairs, Linnet emerged from her hiding place to see Graham’s sinews straining as he pulled the bowstring of his weapon into firing position.

  Cursing the predictable feminine response to seeing a fine warrior utilize his considerable strength, she tugged her gaze away from Graham to see Hugo lick the feathers of an old arrow to improve its flight.

  “What the hell are you doing down here, girl?”

  “My God-given name is Linnet,” she corrected her brother, knowing she’d picked a ridiculous time to become prickly about manners, but sometimes enough was enough.

  This happened to be one of those times.

  Out the narrow slit, she could see Graham’s arrow had found its mark in the thigh of Kendrick’s second in command, a whey-faced weasel of a man who’d accompanied Kendrick for the sennight he’d spent at Welborne Keep.

  “You need to get in the tower. Now.” Graham did not even bother to turn and look at her, his gaze trained out the second arrow slit as he spoke.

  “You need to keep your own counsel now,” she retorted, although she lost some of her steam as she watched Burke Kendrick take a flaming torch from one of his men and approach the door to the fortified house.

  “Shit.” Graham grabbed a fistful of arrows and hefted the longbow on his shoulder before he seized her elbow and shoved her none-too-gently back into the tower room.

  Back up the staircase she’d just descended.

  “You cannot call me ten kinds of liar and then decide you rule me at the same time.” She spun on him in the middle of the staircase and then nearly fell backward when he practically marched right over her.

  “Holy hell, will you come on?” He wrenched her to her feet again, his touch feeling far too delicious for a man she should resent.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you explain why it is so bad to be made in Taiwan.”

  He massaged his temples with one hand and picked her up under his other arm.

  “I’ve got arrows to rain on a certain man’s head before he breaks in and kills your brother. God only knows what he’ll do to you.” Stomping up the stairs with a longbow over his shoulder and carrying her, too, Graham shoved his way into the second-floor tower room and set her down.

  As she smelled smoke from the flaming arrows or—God forbid—the front entrance burning down, she heeded Graham’s advice. She couldn’t risk Hugo’s life after he’d attempted to warn her of this very disaster.

  Dusting herself off, Linnet shouted down the stairs to her brother.

  “There is a washtub by the hearth, Hugo!” Guilt pinched her as she realized she should have been preparing the holding for battle instead of indulging her own hurts. “Douse the door.”

  “’Twill be a simple task once yer lover’s blasted arrows start coming so I can—Nice shot.”

  She realized Graham was at work with the longbow out one of the arrow slits, his movements quick and efficient as he strung a new shaft in his weapon.

  “They’re backing off the walls now,” Graham shouted back to her brother. “I’ll make sure they don’t get close again.”

  Linnet heard the sizzle of water dousing flames and hoped Hugo had saved the door before it weakened too much. She moved to peer out the arrow slit across the round chamber from where Graham stood, but her slipper caught on the strap of a traveling satchel not unlike her own.

  Curious, she picked up the sack to find it crammed full of her own belongings—gowns, tapestries, jewels, plates.

  “What is this?” she asked herself more than Graham since she didn’t expect him to know.

  “Didn’t you notice your brother drag in a bag with him when he arrived at your door?” Graham’s eyes flicked over her briefly before returning to his quarry on the ground below. “He stashed it up here before he saw Kendrick coming.”

  “He brought me my things?” Her throat closed with the realization that her younger brother had taken such a risk.

  “Anything else made in the Orient?” Graham’s words, while disgruntled, lacked the venom they’d held earlier.

  “That is where your Taiwan is located? The Far East?”

  He lounged against the stone wall near the arrow slit overlooking half the lands.

  “Yes, ma’am. Taken any trips abroad lately? Postindustrial Age?”

  He spoke in nonsense again, clearly still angry even if he hadn’t taken the opportunity to walk away when she’d offered it. Although, now that she thought about it, thank the saints he had not left then or he could have been killed when Kendrick and his men rode in unexpectedly. No matter how deep her hurt or sense of betrayal, the tenderness she felt for Graham remained. Indeed, she feared her feelings only grew the longer she stayed with him.

  Still her champion, even through his fury with her. Albeit, a champion who spoke in riddles.

  Even now he fought for her. And although one of her three brothers seemed to have shaken off his drunkenness enough to try and make amends to her for his past abuses, Hugo’s remorse for his actions would certainly have come too late if she’d not broken free of Welborne Keep in the first place and given Kendrick a reason to beat the Welborne men. If not for Graham, she would have been lost to the monster in the courtyard.

  “I have not taken any journeys recently, as I believe I mentioned to you that I have been a prisoner in my own home for three years.” She smiled sweetly at Graham, refusing to be daunted by the dark cloud perched over his head.

  He had fought for her, even when he had not known her or if her cause was just. So she would fight for him now, even when his faith in her had been shaken for reasons she didn’t understand.

  When he said nothing, she dug deeper into the satchel stuffed full of her possessions.

  “But if you are so skilled at recognizing work from the Orient, perhaps you would glance at a tapestry I purchased from a wizened little peddler a few years ago. He had the most extraordinary hair sticking out of his cap at all angles.” She found her tapestries rolled up together—only three of the many that hung around Welborne Keep, but these were her favorites that had adorned her bedchamber. “He swore this one piece was crafted by skilled hands from the Far East, but I fear he only meant to drive up the price.”

  Whatever Graham had been about to say was lost in a sudden flurry of movement from beside the arrow slit as he yanked his bow arm back for another shot and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Incoming!”

  Scrambling to her feet, Linnet ran to the other narrow opening only to see Kendrick and his three remaining men gallop hard and fast toward the holding with a log poised for a battering ram.

  14

  GRAHAM DROPPED HIS BOW and grabbed a sword after his last shot took out one more of Kendrick’s crew. As the oak door splintered with a loud crack under the weight of the barrier, Graham should have felt comforted that the odds were only three to two now.

  But something about Kendrick’s kamikaze fighting style, pushing his objective no matter how many men he lost in the process, gave Graham a bad feeling about this confrontation.

  “By all that’s holy, Linnet, stay here. Bar the door behind me and do not open it until I come for you.”

  Her green eyes were huge and he hated to leave, but the door below cracked further and he could not allow Hugo to fight alone in his weake
ned condition. Come to think of it, with Hugo all battered from a recent ass kicking, perhaps the odds were more like three to one and a half.

  Plowing through the downstairs door of the tower and into the great hall, Graham found Hugo waving his sword wildly over the fractured entrance to the holding, his arm obviously weak. If Graham had made it to his side a few seconds sooner, he might have stopped the enemy surge, but a sword from without got hold of Hugo’s sword and flung it backward, clearing the path to enter.

  Graham engaged the first man through the door, a man whose face he remembered from the woodland T & A show the night before. With pleasure, Graham swiped his blade with dizzying speed.

  “I see you’re less of a threat when your opponents aren’t naked women,” Graham taunted, not above using a little old-school playground warfare to tick off his enemy and help his cause.

  He had the guy on the run, the other man blocking blows as he walked backward. Graham kept coming, focused. Pissed.

  Until a loud voice shouted over the clatter of swords.

  “Halt or your comrade gets his throat slit.”

  Comrade?

  Graham’s thoughts raced as he halted. Wasn’t that a newer term than medieval language allowed, or was he imagining things? His knowledge of word origins sucked and he was admittedly paranoid since the incident with Linnet’s belt. A gift from Kendrick, now that he thought about it.

  Turning, he relinquished his upper hand in the battle, knowing he could have had the guy unarmed with one more minute. His timing had been off all day.

  Kendrick’s other knight held Hugo by the head. Hugo was on his knees, his cut reopened in the struggle, his battered body now covered with soot from the fire he’d doused.

  Damn. Graham raised one hand in surrender while he lay his sword on the nose of the battering ram that still rested the threshold to the holding. No sooner had he relinquished the piece than the snot-nosed knight he’d fought into a corner wrenched the blade out of Graham’s reach.

  Ignoring Kendrick’s men, Graham focused solely on the ringleader whom so many feared.

  “No need to hurt the young Welborne. He wants his sister back as badly as you do.” The lie probably wouldn’t work, but it was worth a shot to give Hugo a break. “He came here ready to tear the place apart but he, too, had to admit she is no longer under his rule.”

  Kendrick’s muscles twitched beneath the dull gleam of a chain-mail shirt.

  “Yet the youngest Welborne hardly welcomed me inside your little rat’s nest this afternoon, so I can’t consider him my ally, either.”

  Kendrick’s dark zealot’s eyes shone, his grip on his blade noticeably tightening as he joined his fellow knight in threatening Hugo.

  “But I’m the only one who knows for certain where Linnet went.”

  “This you will tell me, or you will find both your throats slit.”

  “Dead men tell no tales though, right?” Graham had never gone in for the psych applications of police work, but his gut instinct told him to needle Kendrick if he wanted to buy time.

  Stay alive.

  “They might if they want their death to be quick and painless as opposed to agonizing and slow.” He arced his sword back and forth a heart-stopping moment. Graham thought the zealot was going to make good on his threat to kill Hugo, but at the last minute he pulled the blade and simply cold-cocked him in the temple enough to knock him into next year.

  Freeing Kendrick to stalk closer, his sword at his side but still in his hand, ready. The other man who’d first grabbed Hugo watched over the fallen man now, keeping a dagger pointed at his neck, no doubt to keep Graham in line more than any fear Hugo would come out of it any time soon.

  “You know, I think I’d actually prefer the agonizing route since I’d have the comfort of knowing you couldn’t even keep track of one woman when you had three warriors to watch over her and a steel cage to lock her in.”

  “You find that amusing?” Kendrick’s breath smelled of onions and stale beer as he closed in on Graham.

  Close enough to attempt intimidation but not close enough for a dropkick. A damn shame considering how badly the guy needed to be beaten senseless.

  “Yeah, I do. But I think you misjudged the fighting spirit of medieval women when you went off and left her for years on end.” Graham felt a sword in his back, no doubt at the behest of his host who seemed to dole out little mind-control orders to his last remaining men without even engaging in normal conversation.

  “They are usually easier to predict than modern women, I’ve found. But apparently I made a mistake with Linnet, who possesses an unusual amount of fire.”

  Graham might have informed him exactly how much fire she possessed that Kendrick would never know, but Graham was still struggling to believe his ears. Had Kendrick really just conversed about the differences between medieval and modern women? Something he’d only know if he was part of a modern cult intent on reenacting the Dark Ages, or…

  If Kendrick himself was a time traveler.

  “Why target women with the Sight?” Graham’s neck prickled in warning as he acknowledged that, somehow, Burke Kendrick might play a very direct role in the Guardians’ abductions and flesh peddling taking place in L.A. along with the crimes Graham and Linnet had witnessed on Midsummer.

  “I owe you no explanations if you have not put the pieces together by now on your own.” Kendrick raised his sword, but at the same time he pulled a smaller knife out from the belt at his waist. “But I seem to remember I do owe you some agony, do I not?”

  Graham gauged the room and the moment, knowing without Hugo, his three-to-one odds sucked all the more with no weapon in sight at his disposal. But then, swords were his specialty.

  Before he could match footwork with the cape-wearing dudes in chain mail, however, the door to the tower burst open and Graham’s heart seized up tight in his chest.

  Linnet stood there with an arrow in her hand that she let rip free as if she were throwing a javelin.

  “I’m sorry, Graham.” She shot him a pleading look as one of Kendrick’s guys rushed her—grabbed her—and the other dropped to his knees after taking the pointed tip of her arrow in his temple. “But I cannot honor your request not to interfere when it means you might be harmed on my behalf.”

  He wanted to save her, to reclaim her, but Kendrick’s sword prevented him from making a move just yet. Graham’s heart stopped seizing at that moment and broke wide open for the woman he never should have doubted. She was willing to confront her worst nightmare for Graham. A fact that only proved she wouldn’t have lied to him about the chastity belt or about her belief that she lived in 1190.

  Now that he finally understood the nature of the dangers they faced, he only hoped it wasn’t too late to save her from an enemy unlike any he’d ever encountered. His heart filled with love for her just as Kendrick’s sword swiped through the air to land on the back of Graham’s head.

  Knees buckling beneath him, Linnet’s terrified screams were the last thing he heard.

  “YOU SCUM-SUCKING BASTARD!” Linnet rushed toward the place where Graham had fallen.

  “Best to leave him be, my sweet.” Kendrick caught her in his arms, his knives sheathed for the moment while his one remaining knight kept blades trained on both her brother and her lover, one in each hand. “I hear head wounds are a bitch if you move the victim at all. I’d hate to see your champion suffer more permanent damage.”

  She knew the pain knifing through her heart must rival the physical agony Graham had felt when Kendrick’s sword had struck his head. But she hadn’t entered the fray to fight with her might. She had defied Graham’s edict that she stay put because she had no choice other than to battle Kendrick with wits.

  “You had better pray that he is not permanently damaged or I will never share my visions with you and provide the knowledge you seek.” She prayed Graham had interpreted Kendrick’s motives correctly as she used the tactics Graham had shown her on their ride to the Midsummer deba
cle. He’d intimidated his enemy through believable threats.

  A tactic that had to work since she had not thought beyond this small show of force.

  Kendrick’s arm loosened just enough to spin her toward him so they stood facing in an angry, strenuous embrace.

  “I will hurt you in ways you cannot yet imagine if you do not deliver the information I seek.” He had changed in the last three years, the planes of his face hardening, the way he commanded a room growing more dramatic and absolute.

  Linnet had the sense that he could have her killed—or have Graham killed—with no more than a nod of his head.

  A shiver of fear froze on its way up her spine but she did not give it any outlet lest he know she was feeling outmaneuvered at this strategic game. She would not let Graham down again.

  “That only shows how little you know about human caring. Why would I care that you hurt me when my lover is more important to me than myself?” She waited for him to strike her at the blatant admission of her relationship with Graham, but although her enemy’s grip tensed and his face went first white and then red, Kendrick did not use physical force just yet.

  “You care so little about your ability with the Sight that you would risk diminishing it by spreading your legs for a man?”

  His voice was a frigid whisper, his accusation full of disgust. She braved a glance toward Graham to strengthen her resolve.

  And dear God, had he just moved or had she only seen what she wanted to see? She did notice that the warrior knight who guarded Graham observed Kendrick and Linnet with more interest than the unconscious man.

  Finally, a bit of good fortune.

  “I diminish nothing,” she scoffed, pretending a knowledge she did not possess. “Whoever told you that physical intimacy ruined such powers?”

  Kendrick relinquished his hold on her, perhaps in part because of his obvious fury toward her.