How it happened, she knew not, but her training kicked in. She whipped loose an arrow, nocked it, and released it with precision as he raised his sword arm. It lodged in the underside of his wrist through his gauntlet.
He dropped the weapon. With a violent growl, he snapped the arrow off, tossed it aside, and returned his attention to Mariel as an arrow pierced the rear of Nottingham’s horse. The beast screeched, reared high, and Nottingham lost control of the animal, tumbling from its back as it bolted into the trees.
Mariel looked for Robert, who had vanished again, though he couldn’t have shot the horse, judging from the arrow’s angle. In fact, it looked to have come from the trees. She looked in that direction again, when a body swung down from another branch straight toward her, a series of ropes she now realized had been put in place in a coordinated plan. She hardly blinked before she was captured in the strong, hardened arms of her assailant.
She knew it was Robert before she even caught her breath. They landed on a middle branch of the very tree she had been ordered to remain hidden within, and as her feet found stability, he gripped the side of her face with both a punishing and possessive leather-clad hand, leveled a stern glare at her through the eye holes of his hood, and leapt off the branch once more, swinging down and landing with two feet planted in front of Crawford as the cottage, now completely engulfed in flame, crackled behind him.
“Your coin, good man,” he said with the same good-natured tone, though there was an unmistakable hardness to his words. “And you can be on your way. But attack us once more and I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
Mariel held her breath as her father and Robert faced each other down, while Nottingham glanced about to discover the other hooded men had vanished.
“Your horses have been sent fleeing, your soldiers disarmed, one shot in the neck, and I guarantee there’s no way you’ll find us,” Robert stated. “I’ve weapons trained on you as we speak. You cross a line in our friendship.”
As if there had ever been any friendship.
Mariel sat in shock. Robert’s men had been expert ambushers. None of them had shown themselves together but had kept swinging in and out of view, confusing Nottingham’s men with the illusion of a larger force.
And then the reality sank in. She had shot her father. She had pulled back her arm and released the projectile into one of his few vulnerable spots, almost without any concern or thought. She hadn’t cared that they were of the same flesh, that half his blood flowed in hers. She had felt no loyalty, and yet still…would God send her straight to hell for injuring the man who had seeded her?
More importantly, her father now knew she was here. He would never relent in his search of East Anglia until he had her in his clutches and beat her senseless for daring to shoot him. He would turn over every rock, every leaf, every blade of grass, every pine needle. He knew she was here, and he would come for her.
A slicing sound and hard jingles caught her attention. Jonathan now stood side by side with Robert, two coin purses having fallen to the ground. John caught the strings of one with the end of his staff, lifting it up and giving it a jangle as Robert did the same with his sword, collecting Ayr’s purse and giving him a friendly wink.
“Consider this a donation as well, to the well-being of your fellow man. Since you’re a close friend of Nottingham’s, you get to share in his benevolence, forced upon him or otherwise.”
Giving the bag a hearty clinking, he tossed it, caught it, and tipped an imaginary hat.
“On your way now. Run along, lads,” Robert persisted, and though he tried to suppress it, Mariel could see that he favored his injured arm.
Robert and John stood their ground until finally, with scowls and resignation, Crawford and Nottingham turned toward their men who had disentangled themselves from the rope twining and began to walk away.
“Don’t just stand there!” Nottingham yelled. “Go and find the horses! And you—” He whirled around to face Robert and John. “You stabbed my horse. When I get my hands on you, you’ll…” He looked around. No one was there anymore except the old man, still devastated before the fire.
“Where did they go?” he demanded.
The old man shook his head and shrugged.
“Like hell you don’t know,” grumbled the sheriff as he walked away.
Her father, Nottingham, and the soldiers made their way back down the forest trail away from the cottage. Mariel waited, when she felt a presence behind her on the branch. She turned over her shoulder. Robert was at her back, his hood drawn down and sagging around his neck, his hair tangled and sweaty, standing on the bough beneath hers with his hands gripping the branch she sat upon on either side of her rear. Blood stained his arm where he had taken the arrow, but he acted unconcerned.
He laid a finger across his lips then beckoned her to come down onto his wider, more stable branch. She did so, swiveling around on her rear so that she faced him, her knees brushing his chest and straddling him in the confined space. Though his face was still stern, no doubt from her disobeying orders, his eyes fluttered closed for only a moment, then he helped her find her footing on his branch. She turned to brace herself on the tree trunk for balance, only to feel his warmth come up behind her and his hands take her shoulders.
His stomach, chest, and thighs pressed against her to stabilize her, and his lips came down to her ear. “Remain quiet, love. What on earth were you thinking, coming down into the fray? Your father was bent on butchery.”
“I thought to help the old man—”
“Hush,” he interrupted. “’Tis a question not meant to be answered.”
He remained still, bracing her to the trunk so that she couldn’t fall, but also so she couldn’t move and jostle any branches. Minutes went by, and Robert held her in place with no reaction, intimate as it was, though she felt her own blood begin to warm. How in the hell could she think of intimacies right now, of all times, especially after all that had happened? Right after her father had tried to kill her and she had shot him? After she had told Robert she didn’t want him and had left his estate?
And yet, her breathing was shallow. She did her best to even it. Her cheeks were turning pink, but she could do nothing to hide them. And then she felt him. At first it was just a gentle nuzzle to the neck, but like the most primal of animals, he must have sensed her arousal. And then she felt him, lower, nestled against her rear and lower back. He was already stiff as a pike, which meant he had already been aroused and had been trying, just like her, to scold away the urge at such an inappropriate time.
But he was relenting, putting gentle pressure against her, then releasing ever so gently. His chest was hot against her back, blanketing her in warmth and yet holding her in place. Then his hands slid down her arms from her shoulders and encased the backs of her hands in his palms. He braced them outward so that her sides were unprotected, controlling her movement.
She never thought a man controlling anything about her could be exciting. A man’s control had been an abhorred mantle that she had thrown off eight months ago. And yet, Robert wasn’t trying to control her. She could feel that he respected her in every way. She could tell in the weight of his grip that if she pulled away, he would stop. He was silently seeking her trust. He wanted her to entrust herself to him.
She didn’t resist, which seemed to give him slack in his leash of self-control, for his lips and nose began to trail up and down her neck. His teeth nibbled the gentlest pinches to her collarbone, giving her breath a hitch.
“Shh,” he crooned, though she could feel his lips curve into a grin.
The bastard was enjoying the danger of the moment! And with an arrow-shot arm no less.
Then his hands released hers, leaving them braced to the tree with a silent command to keep them there, and slid under her arms and around her torso so that they held her stomach. They inched upward over her ribs, one
by one, until they came to the heavy undersides of her breasts. She couldn’t breathe and yet her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. A tingle overcame her skin, settling hard at the tips of her nipples. And yet she kept her arms braced wide, allowing him his explorations.
His hands cupped the weight of each breast, his thumbs curving around them to dust over the tips, and though she wore a corset, she still felt it. She sucked in hard, feeling his lips still playing upon her collarbone, and pressed herself back against him, his pelvis still nudging suggestively against her backside, tilting her head so that his access to her neck was improved. Her body felt like fire. Fire was licking her insides, lapping at her skin just as his hands were giving her breasts a tighter squeeze through the fabric of her tunic. And as she began to squirm with the restless need of a man’s full union, he tortured her further, sliding his hands down her sides to settle at the curve of her waist rounding to her hips.
His thumbs came to rest on the rise of her rear and his long fingers reached dangerously close to the intimate juncture of her thighs. And still, she willed her arms to remain out, braced to the tree, though now she trembled. And then he bent down and whispered in her ear once more.
“What if I made love to you, Mari? Would you give me permission?”
She wanted to laugh. The man was in complete control and could have his way with her willing body. His former mistress still remained at Huntington and women still flocked to be near him, specifically Anna, and yet he was still asking her permission. And she, spineless, couldn’t stop him. Wouldn’t stop him.
“You’re so fair…so fine…I want you,” he whispered, kissing her earlobe, running his lips along her cheek. “You misunderstood my intentions with Charlotte. God, woman, I’ll not make the mistake of letting your barbed words hurt me again. I know you want me, too.”
She instinctively turned around and their lips locked. His kiss became demanding as he pushed her against the trunk. He ran his hands over her rear, up her back again in frantic caresses. Her legs shook. He swallowed the moan that worked its way from her throat.
She thought he would grin at having conquered such a feat, but he didn’t. In fact, he became focused and bold as he gripped the back of her thigh while his other hand cupped her breast. Her knees threatened to buckle, and she lifted a leg to cinch around his thigh. He sensed her instability and tightened his hold, keeping her steady while he rubbed a rhythm up and down her leg. His kissing grew in earnest, the stroke of his tongue matching the pace of his other ministrations.
Her hands shot out to grip the bark, unable to let go for fear of unsteadying herself and plummeting them both to the forest floor. Her breathing became shallower, uneven, her cheeks flushed with excitement, the feel of his manhood wedged against her as his legs straddled her hip, his hand now coaxing heat from between her legs, his massage of the breast sending a shiver of tingles across her skin… He exacted his sweet torture with targeted precision, with a determination that spoke of fear for her safety and gladness in her safety now.
He broke the kiss and rested his forehead to hers. “I can feel your heat for me through your clothing,” he murmured. “I know you’re ready for me… God, woman, you’re killing me…” He resumed his kiss, unable to keep his lips to himself.
And she knew it. She was ready and would willingly strip naked, if he but asked.
“I want you,” he murmured against her lips. “God, I want you.”
Releasing his self-control, the weight of him crushed against her as he encircled her in his arms, chest to chest, and resumed his kissing. She nodded and her fingers clenched him, digging into his skin beneath his tunic.
…
Robert had no idea where this frenzy had come from, other than his heart had knocked his ribs when he saw Mariel sneak down to help the old man. Alarm had coursed through him and white-hot anger had rendered him furious, both at her and at Crawford bearing down to strike his daughter. No other man, especially Crawford, would ever touch her again, as long as Robert had the strength to stand on his own two feet.
But the daft woman had disobeyed him, no matter how good her intentions were, and not only had she risked injury, but also she’d risked discovery, right along with all of them. A quick glance at John had told him his giant of a man understood that a break in protocol was required. John had shot the Sheriff of Nottingham’s horse to divert their attention after Mariel had lodged an arrow perfectly in the underside of Harold Crawford’s wrist. And yet now, having rescued her from her own daftness, after giving Nottingham a chance to leave and his men the chance to pursue them from their various hiding places along the pathway, all he could do was touch her, ensure that she felt the brunt of his affection for her, so that she might never do something so dangerous again.
He had gone from fearing for her safety to conveying to her through his kiss that in this moment, all he could think about was her, without even remembering how he’d arrived at this point. His kissing grew less controlled, less precise, as he listened to the catches in her breath, proof that he was succeeding in pleasing her, proof that she wanted him, despite her declarations to the contrary.
But if Mariel was to throw all her trust into him, he knew he needed to prove his devotion to her. Yet it was commonplace for men to stray sometimes. Even in marriage a husband might keep a lover. The wife for her dowry, connections, alliances, and to seed with a legitimate line of descendants, and a lover to sate the needs a wife didn’t satisfy, provide the bed favors a wife might not know how to provide, someone to love and lavish in gifts, or provide him with heirs his wife couldn’t provide. But while he still didn’t really want marriage, he was going to marry Mariel and devote himself to her in the way that the church favored: one man, one woman.
He didn’t want the yoke of a lifelong commitment, didn’t want her angry father barreling through his castle walls with death in his sights, didn’t want his king to return from Jerusalem to find he had wasted his one shot at marriage on a wild Scottish woman. But he was going to marry Mariel Crawford and invite all matters of wrath to convince her that no one else, not Charlotte, neither Anna, nor whores at a fair, stood to gain a foothold in his heart. He didn’t want anyone else. He knew in his heart that her uncouth behavior and freedom of speech and archery skills and her pure, unfettered beauty could keep him intrigued and in love forever.
In love? Had he just thought that? Surely he wasn’t in love with the wildling as Charlotte had suggested…was he?
Yet pondering love urged him to strip her trousers away and bury himself in heaven. He was certain he might die right now in blissful suffocation from her tongue dancing with his. He couldn’t stop. He wanted her. And right now, he hoped to show it.
…
How long they remained like that, Mariel had no idea, but long enough that the sun had moved considerably toward dusk and the inferno ravaging the cottage had destroyed the majority of wood. It collapsed into a heap of scalding cinders. Robert’s kisses had long since gentled, his hands having slid inside the back of her trousers to brace her rear to his front. Her face felt pleasantly raw from the raking of his stubble, her lips swollen from the kissing sport, and her limbs like jelly.
A whistle caught their attention, a bawdy innuendo intended to tell Robert he had no privacy. Mariel snapped back, nearly toppling off the branch. Robert pulled free his hands from her rear to catch her, righting her, and this time rolled his eyes in unison with her, sharing her annoyance as his men below chuckled.
“Keeping her safe and occupied, I see!” Will hollered up. Her face raged with a blush and she ducked her head down, dragging her braid around her face to shield her cheeks as the men chuckled. “At least give the poor woman a soft bed to endure your rutting instead of forcing her to fend off your advances in a bloody pine tree.”
Robert laughed. “You interrupt my finest victory yet!” he called back down, not bothered in the least. “Would you be so kind
as to demonstrate the noble manners taught to you, for once, and give the lady a moment to collect herself?”
“Your wish is my command, my liege!” Will said with a mocking bow. He and the others walked off into the trees to gather their horses. “By the way, Nottingham and his mates are as good as gone. It’s safe to come out now,” he called over his shoulder.
John followed suit, though not before one more glance up at Mariel, as if deciding whether or not to concede defeat to Robert. Once they were gone, she buried her face in her hands. Robert chuckled again, brushing the loose wisps of hair behind her ears with tender fingers.
“Marry me,” he whispered, his fingers continuing the caress even though no more hair needed brushing back.
Her face snapped up and she scrutinized him, trying to determine if he was teasing. But his embarrassed smile at being caught by his men with his hands down her trousers had died away, replaced with a wistful gaze as he studied each tendril he touched with increasing interest.
“I thought you did not want marriage,” she finally replied. The safest answer, for if he was jesting, she called him out on it, and if he was serious, then she voiced a legitimate concern.
He looked into her eyes. “Marry me, and let my claim on you protect you from your father. He’ll be relentless in his pursuit of you now that he’s seen you…now that you’ve shot him.”
She scoffed. “Marriage will not protect me. He’ll only make me a widow at the first opportunity to solve the issue of my property rights.”
“Not if I or my men have a say in it. And Nottingham won’t let him kill me, either. I’m too important to the king. But your father’s a smart man. I believe, over time, he would come to see the merit in such a union betwixt us—”
“Not to mention, he and Nottingham will draw the easy inference that you’re the likely suspect in all these thieving raids,” she continued speaking, as if he had not said a word. “And when your Nottingham learns that you are, in fact, the mastermind of the forest thieves, he’ll strip every ounce of wealth, land, and title from your back and cast you out along with your band of elusive but merry men. That is, if you’re lucky enough to not be thrown in his oubliette for the rest of time.”
An Earl for an Archeress Page 21