The Knight's Fugitive Lady

by Meriel Fuller

  ‘Because I can give you nothing more, Katerina.’

  She heard the dullness in his tone, read the hollowness in his eyes. She stretched up her arm, cupping the chiselled plane of his jaw, her thumb stroking across his wet cheek. Against the roar of the rain, the wind, she caught his sharp intake of breath, before his hand snaked up, fingers snaring her narrow wrist, dragging her hand downwards, away.

  ‘What happened to you, Lussac, to make you lose your heart?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  He told her nothing. As the rain flattened the grass around them, thick stalks splaying out like broken bones in disarray, the branches churning wildly at their backs, she had searched his impassive face for answers, found none. He had turned away from her, ordering her to dress, to hurry up, and she had run, staggered, her body still weak and shaken from their lovemaking, back beneath the shelter of the trees to fetch her clothes.

  And now she followed him, broken-hearted, half-stumbling, as he forged across the fields in quick powerful strides, back towards the abbey. Tears ran openly down her face, mingled with the rain; she could taste the salt on her lips. She didn’t care. He didn’t want her; that much was obvious. He had told her she was beautiful, but that belief faded rapidly, faded with every step away from the river. She felt used, discarded, but she only had herself to blame.

  He stopped so violently at the abbey walls that she ran into the back of him, thumped heavily into the thick rope of his spine. She sprang away from the contact as if she had been burned.

  ‘I...I had...’ Unsure what to do, she twisted her head awkwardly in the direction of the castle, the tents, the canvas caving in precariously against the driving rain, wanting to be away from him, to slink away and lick her wounds in private.

  ‘There’s not much point in wasting any more time here,’ he muttered savagely, raindrops sluicing down over his tanned, carved features. ‘I have the writ and I have you, so we may as well start riding north. Go and fetch your things—a cloak if you have one.’ Expression impassive, unreadable, he glanced up at the leaden sky. ‘This weather is not going to let up.’

  His words burned, scoured into her. She glared at him, arms locking across her chest. Is that how he viewed their lovemaking? As a ‘waste of time’? It was as if he ground her into the mud with the heel of his boot, acting as if nothing had happened between them, as if, moments earlier, they had not been rolling together in the hot grass, breathing in the sweet, heady scent of each other’s bodies, naked, abandoned. Her body shuddered, involuntarily, recalling the hard, sinewy imprint of his limbs upon her own. The delicious ecstasy.

  ‘Go on,’ he barked at her, as she failed to move. The rain poured down her face, dripping off her chin, the soft, downy lobes of her ears. Ears that he had touched his lips to. His eyes, chips of turquoise, focused on an insignificant spot over her head, willing the flames of desire that coursed his big frame to die down, fizzle out.

  A squall of rain splattered heavily on to the cobbles beside them; water sloshed across the cobbles, darkening the toes of their boots. ‘Why are you being like this?’ Katerina flung at him, wanting to punch, to lash out at his solid, impenetrable chest, wanting to collapse to the ground and sob. ‘Why are you being so cruel?’

  He heard the sadness in her voice and hated her for it. Guilt crawled in his belly. He had taken her innocence, nay, robbed her of it, ruined her. ‘Stop it, Katerina. I’m not worth it; I’m not worth crying over.’ His gaze blazed down over her, over her sodden tunic that clasped lovingly to her slender curves, her rounded bosom.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she spat out like a wounded kitten, blinking away the slashing rain that threatened to obscure her vision. She would not allow him to destroy, to wreck the beautiful memory of their lovemaking. By parcelling it up tight, and tucking it up deep into her heart, she would hold on to that, at least.

  ‘This is who I am, Katerina.’ His harsh tone barrelled into her. Didn’t she realise that by pushing her away, he was doing her a favour? His blackened soul was no good for her. He would drag that bright, spirited light from her, douse it and pull her down to the cold, soulless level of his existence. He couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t do that to her. Better that she knew now what kind of man he was; better to remain aloof and cold to her, and suppress all feelings of desire towards her.

  Katerina was shaking her head, spinning rain drops around her glowing hair, eyes wide and luminous. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve seen a different kind of man.’ A man who had helped her when she was down, caught by those horrible men. And who helped her again now, with the writ from the Queen. The rising whine of the wind forced him to lean down to catch her words. Above her head, a solitary crow, its wingtips frayed black against the lumpy, grey sky, struggled to remain airborne in the strengthening gusts of wind.

  ‘It’s the truth, Katerina. What do you think I’m going to do when we reach Longthorpe? Have a civilised dinner and chat with your father about your marriage? I’m going for other reasons, other selfish reasons, Katerina, you know that.’

  ‘What reasons?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘You have never told me why you want to go to Longthorpe.’

  Lussac circled her wrist with strong fingers, pushed her sleeve up her pale forearm, exposing the leather cuff. The etched silver discs glimmered in the dim light. ‘Where do you think I found your family’s cuff, Katerina?’ His voice was raw.

  She reeled back at the flick of savage desperation in his eyes, every fragile hair on her skin lifting in acknowledgement of his near, dynamic presence, responding to the sheer energy pouring from him in waves. Fighting to keep her breath steady, she held her frame perfectly still, bracing her legs astride, as if preparing for a blow. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered, heart thumping dangerously.

  ‘My family home is...was on the borderlands between English-held Gascony and France.’ Lussac sighed, pushing the wet hair out of his eyes, searching for the right way to tell her. ‘There’s constant fighting between the two sides; the King of France wants Gascony back as he feels that the English hold it unlawfully. My father’s main job was to patrol the borderlands and keep the fighting under a modicum of control.’ Lussac spoke in a monotone, his voice dull, emotionless. ‘I was away, training as a knight in Paris, but due home on leave. A ceasefire was in operation, an agreement drawn up between my father and the English nobles, and to all intents and purposes it was working.’ His eyes shuttered momentarily, dark lashes fanning his high cheekbones. ‘But someone, some bastard English nobleman, broke that ceasefire and rode to my parent’s castle one night.’

  He paused, a muscle leaping in his jaw, eyes flaring like hot coals in his stern, rigid features. His hair stuck flat to his scalp, darkened by rain to ebony, emphasising the sculptural set of his head, the fine, chiselled bones of his face.

  ‘What happened?’ Katerina’s wet fingers curled over his, her breath caught in her chest.

  His fingers tightened on hers. ‘They torched the place. My family—father, mother, sister—none of them had a chance. They died of smoke inhalation, locked in their chambers at the top of the castle. The fire died out before reaching them; it was the smoke that killed them.’ He remembered his desperate rush up the stairs, round and round that dizzying stairwell, until he reached the bedchambers.

  ‘Locked in?’ she murmured, horrified.

  ‘Locked in,’ he repeated grimly, a muscle tensing in his jaw. ‘Whoever did this to them, this murderer, locked them into their rooms before starting the fire. He wanted them to die.’

  ‘And the cuff?’ she prompted in a small voice, a burning sadness gathering in the pit of her stomach. So that explained the haunted shadows in his eyes...the shuttering of his emotions...his coldness. He had lost so much.

  ‘Clutched in my sister’s hand. When she realised what was happening, when they were being locked in, she must have fou
ght back and grabbed at whatever she could to reveal the murderer’s identity.’ His sister’s fingers had been cold, rigid, as he peeled them back to reveal the leather cuff. Lussac’s eyes pinned on Katerina’s, waiting for her to make the connection. She would have to know, some time.

  ‘Oh, my God, Lussac. I am so sorry.’ Her fingers loosened from his and she wrapped both her arms around him without thinking, wanting to appease his hurt, to lessen his pain somehow. Her fingers laced at his spine, hugging him tight, hugging him against her. A gesture of comfort, of acknowledgement. Lussac reeled in shock at the close contact, the heat from her slim frame permeating the icy stiffness of his body. In trying to ward her away from him, he had only succeeded in pulling her closer.

  ‘I am so sorry you had to lose your family in that way,’ she mumbled deep against his chest. For a moment he allowed himself to soak up the warmth of her embrace, knowing he should shake her off, his arms moving with their own volition around her back. But what his mind suggested, his traitorous body dismissed, revelling in her delicate hold, the solid circle of her slim arms. Her touch flowed through him, easing his fractured heart, knitting the charred dregs of his soul.

  He waited.

  Her head knocked back suddenly from his chest, eyes wide, horrified. ‘You think it was my father!’

  He stared down at her, searching her face, the reddened curve of her bottom lip. His upper arms cradled her shoulders. ‘Someone from your family was there, Katerina. And that someone murdered my family.’

  ‘No....no...!’ She staggered back at his blunt revelation, out, out of the hold of his arms, her face stricken, horrified. ‘You think that my father...?’ She clutched at her throat, her face pearly-white in the rain.

  ‘Or your uncle,’ he supplied. ‘One of them, I suspect.’

  ‘Lussac, it can’t be true? Can it?’ The words tumbled from her lips, erratic, anxious. She shivered, the soaking dampness beginning to crawl down her neck.

  Lussac grimaced. This is what he wanted, wasn’t it? To drive her away, before she became too involved, too entangled with his damaged soul? ‘Believe it, Katerina. Someone in your family is responsible for their deaths. By travelling to Longthorpe, I’ll discover who it is.’

  Her body recoiled with the cruel punch of his speech, as if he had taken a weapon to her, and he hated it. Hated what he was doing to her with his words, wished he could have spared her the truth. But she had to know everything now.

  ‘And whoever is responsible deserves to die, Katerina.’ Screwing up his eyes against the driving rain, he glared at her slumped, wilting figure. ‘Now do you understand? This is the kind of man I am.’

  * * *

  Blotches of colour high on her cheeks, Katerina turned and ran from him. Ran away from Lussac, his broad-shouldered silhouette like a statue in the cascading rain, staring after her as she slid and stumbled across the slippery cobbles, as she sought refuge beneath the makeshift security of canvas. All the tents were empty, deserted, the troupe having sought all the warmth and food that the monks could offer them in the great hall. She collapsed on to her knees on the coarse rug, pressing her hands over her eyes, horrified, distraught by Lussac’s revelations. How could her family be involved? She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t work out how her family cuff had ended up in France. Every bone in her body screamed out to her that Lussac could not be capable of such a heinous crime, to kill someone in cold blood like that, but did she really know him at all? Her cheeks flamed with the vivid memory of their lovemaking, the hot sultry afternoon and the tenderness she had witnessed in his eyes—it seemed like a dream: a beautiful, magical vision, a chimera.

  Breath clutched at her chest; she had read the pain in his eyes, seen the utter desolation, the tortured loss. What Lussac had suffered was truly horrific—what man wouldn’t want revenge after such a hideous act? But surely he realised that killing another would not help him, wouldn’t replace the family that he’d lost? He was a broken man, she could see that now, but a broken man who was capable of healing.

  Hands dropping from her eyes, Katerina took a deep, shuddery breath. This afternoon had been a mistake, on his part, at least. He had made that clear in no uncertain terms; his treatment of her in the aftermath of their lovemaking had been brutal. But she would hold on to the memory, keep it close and secure. Whatever happened from now onwards, she would always have that, have a part of him to hold dear...and to love? The word whispered through her mind, suggestive, tantalising. She frowned.

  Hurriedly, Katerina whipped off her soaking tunic and braies, dragging a creased gown from her satchel, shaking out the voluminous folds. She needed to make some effort to look presentable if she was to return home. Slipping the dress over her head, she winced as the movement stretched the taut skin over her injured shoulder. The round curving neckline of her faded blue underdress settled gracefully along the jutting line of her collar-bone. The overdress was much looser, a darker blue with the sides hanging open to the hip to display the close fit of the gown beneath. Apart from two rows of tiny pearl buttons securing the tight-fitting sleeves, the gown was simple, with no decorative embroidery, sections of the hem sagged, threadbare.

  Away from Lussac’s devastating presence, she felt steadier in her mind, more able to concentrate. She would ride with him back to her home and prove to him how wrong he was about her family, especially her father. She wasn’t certain she could vouch for her uncle, couldn’t think about him without a niggle of doubt, a lurch of fear at the possibility of what might have been, of how close she had come to being married off to him. Even now, she couldn’t be certain that he would take any notice of the royal writ: he was as likely to rip it up as he was to obey it.

  And Lussac? How would she be with him after what had happened between them? How could she cope in the grim light of his rejection? Her hands trembled as she closed up the drawstrings on her leather bag. It would be unbearable.

  * * *

  The stables of the abbey were an open-fronted affair: a length of wooden stalls butting up to a high wall behind. Chunky, hewn posts had been erected along the front to support the roof of sloping thatch which extended over the horses’ stalls to cover an area of flat stone, providing more shelter for the animals. The numerous horses of the Queen’s entourage packed the stables; the smell of jostling horseflesh, of dung and fresh hay, filled the air.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ Waleran regarded Katerina with a worried frown. His skin stretched taut over sharp, jutting cheekbones. He pushed her fumbling fingers away from the rump of the grey palfrey and set to work attaching the small leather bag to the back of the saddle. The earlier rain had eased and a freshening breeze sifted into the stables, stirring the drifting mane of the mare, sneaking beneath the hem of Katerina’s gown. Threads of loose hay danced across the tilting flagstones. ‘Who’s going with you?’

  ‘Lussac, of course.’ She hesitated, wondering whether she should tell him about Lussac’s convictions regarding her family. What he planned to do. No, perhaps such things were better left unsaid. ‘And Philippe, the Comte de Garsan. He’s a good friend of Lussac’s.’ Her fingers played with the long trailing cords that swung from the hooded neckline of her cloak, twirling the plaited threads.

  ‘Why, “Lussac, of course”?’ Waleran’s hands paused on the leather straps. ‘Why couldn’t the Queen send a posse of soldiers to accompany you?’ She looked wretched, he thought, her face white and tired, purpling splotches of exhaustion dabbed beneath her eyes.

  ‘Because it might take more than a posse of soldiers to convince my father and my uncle of the importance of the writ.’ She raised her hand to the horse’s nose, stroking the velvet softness. ‘Lussac is more than capable of fulfilling that role.’ As Waleran scowled, she frowned at the unspoken admiration in her own tone. Was that how she saw him, as her protector?

  Waleran took a deep breath. ‘What happened between you and
him, Katerina? There’s something going on, isn’t there?’ Jealousy surging through him, he gritted his teeth. He could be her friend, at least.

  Her smoky eyes sheened with tears; she dashed them away, hurriedly, with the flat palm of her hand. ‘Nothing happened, Waleran. Nothing of consequence, anyway.’ She held herself rigid, tight, hardly breathing, trying to gain control of her unravelling emotions, searching for the anger, the resentment she wanted to feel, but instead finding only a crawling humiliation, crushed by his dismissal. He’d turned her into a mealy-mouthed, snivelling wreck and she hated him for it. Stop it, stop this whining self-pity now, she told herself severely. She was better than this.

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Waleran. What had that bastard done, to turn this happy, confident soul, his brave and fearless Katerina, into this bundle of dejected misery? He jerked savagely on the loosened strap, too hard, and the mare tossed her head up, eyes rolling wildly at the harsh treatment.

  ‘I made a mistake, Waleran. A mistake that’s best forgotten.’ Although brittle, her voice had regained some composure. ‘Let’s not speak of it.’ She grasped the reins hanging beneath the palfrey’s chin, intending to lead the horse out into the bailey. ‘It’s time for me to go home.’

  One glance at her stony expression told him not to pursue the subject. He could guess anyway: he knew. With a sinking heart, Waleran followed Katerina out into the breezy air, the horse’s hooves clopping noisily across the greasy cobbles. She sprung from a standing position into the saddle, scissoring her legs across the horse’s back.