by Sue Wilson
He sighed loudly, insincerely. Aelwynn stiffened as if slapped, defending herself with cold, proud silence.
"But then he's bought you so completely-"
"The Sheriff does not own me, Sir. No man does!"
"Does he not, my dear?" The baron lifted a hoary brow, and unaccustomed shame heated Aelwynn's cheeks. "You are a shrewd woman," Monteforte conceded. "If you have remained loyal to Nottingham for all that he's cast you aside, I am certain it is not without reason. Perhaps you believe your loyalty will buy you something in return. His bed, perhaps. But, nay, you want more than that. His protection then. His favor. His strength-nay! His power!"
Aelwynn's eyes narrowed, and she felt the baron's insinuations strip her more thoroughly than he had in their clumsy, half-dressed grappling of moments ago.
"You've shared it, tasted it, found it a heady brew, and in your own way, dear, you thirst for more. Aye, Aelwynn. As we all do."
She saw quickly how useless any protest would be. For all his flaccid bulk and charmless manners, Monteforte knew the convoluted workings of her mind and the twisted hunger of her heart as if they were his own. Aelwynn covered her surprise that this man, with his beady, porcine eyes, saw her with clarity few others possessed. "Then we are not so very dissimilar, Baron," she said, smiling with pretended indifference.
Monteforte's bulbous lips split into an oily grin. "What would you say if I told you there is far more to be gained without him?"
Aelwynn said nothing.
"If it's power you want, or riches..." He took her hand in his, the glint of gold and rubies and lapis gleaming on his fat fingers. "There is another, Aelwynn. Someone who would pay you handsomely, who would reward you for your loyalty, when the Sheriff has not." The ermine-trimmed sleeve slid against his knuckles; soft fur brushed her hand as she let him pull her closer.
"And what would be required of me, my lord?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper.
"To succeed where others have failed."
"To succeed at what, dear Baron? What would you have me do?"
Monteforte lifted her hand to his lips. "A small thing, really. A small, inconsequential thing..."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Nay, my lord, nay! You'll not go in there! You charged me yourself to stay with her and keep her safe and-nay! You'll not be going in!"
"Quit your shrieking, old woman. I've not come to harm her. If you knew the night I've just spent wooing Monteforte's tax money away from his purse-"
"I will not let you pass, my lord. She's bathing and-"
"She's awake then? Perfect!"
"She's bathing, I said, ridding herself of the dust and grime she earned seeing to your wretched animal. For the sake of decency, you'll be giving her some respect and privacy."
"What in God's name is amiss in this castle? I left for a tourn of the shire. I returned. Am I not still Sheriff here, or have you suddenly become pretender to my title?" Nottingham's voice rang through the rafters. "Stop flapping your jaws and puffing yourself up with that stubborn Saxon pride, and let...me...see...her!"
"Saints be merciful!" The door to her workroom crashed open, and with a small gasp, Thea sank to chin level in the warm water of the cask tub. At the doorway, Mildthryth had ensconced herself with features firmly set and meaty arms crossed over her ample bosom. Her maidservant's heavy jaw quivered; her lower lip thrust out in a mixture of determination and resistance. Beyond the doorway-
"Ah, Thea!" The Sheriff pushed past Mildthryth's considerable barrier and bounded toward her, brimming with far too much vigor for a man who had spent more than a fortnight riding across the shire dispensing justice. Behind him, the servant he had appointed as Thea's guard and protectress swelled her chest with a breath of indignation. The round face took on the visage of an imminent storm and silvery brows thundered down over her eyes.
Thea met the intrusion upon her privacy with a small sigh of irritation. "What can the two of you possibly find to squawk about before daybreak?" She held out a dripping arm for her robe. "Is someone ill?"
"I would have a word with you," the Sheriff said.
"And I would have you leave," Mildthryth warned him as she snatched up Thea's shift and hurried to her side.
"In private," the Sheriff added, as if he'd dismissed both Mildthryth and her adamant refusal.
"Over my dead body will you remain here a moment longer, my lord, and that is the sum of it."
The Sheriff's mouth tipped into a beleaguered grin as he craned his neck for a better view of his surgeon before Mildthryth effectively blocked her from sight. "You don't think you could call her off, do you, Thea?"
Thea rather liked seeing him plead. Behind the screen of Mildthryth's wide back, she rose from the water and let the maidservant pull the shift over her still-wet body. "You heard the woman," she said, peering over Mildthryth's shoulder. "In your infinite wisdom, Sheriff, you bade her stay with me and keep you out. And as one does not gainsay the orders of the Lord High Sheriff of Notting-"
"Damn you. Damn you both! A fortnight away and the two of you have formed some kind of unholy alliance against me. You-" he jabbed an index finger toward Thea, "-have wheedled your way into this good woman's stout heart and asked all manner of exemptions from my orders, while you-" he turned on Mildthryth, "-you have accommodated her every misbegotten whim."
"Quit your bellowing. She did no harm."
"She was to stay here, Millie. Here. In this room. Until I said. Until I said."
"Aye, and who would know when that might be?"
"That would be now," he said with a smugness that indicated victory, even in concession. The Sheriff extended his hand toward Thea, turning it palm up in invitation. "If she would come with me."
Stunned, Thea glanced from his outstretched hand to his eyes. In that instant, his fury, if it had ever been fury at all, disappeared, leaving behind an earnestness that was far more difficult to face. She clutched the shift to her too-wet breasts and thought about the puddle of water dripping from her bare feet. Without knowing why, she placed her hand in his, and the sturdy warmth of his fingers closed around her.
A disarming grin flashed on his face as he lifted her hand to his lips.
"Oh, nay," Mildthryth cried out. "Nay! I know what you're about, you devil, and you'll not be in here seducing my lamb with all manner of your tricks."
Thea heard Mildthryth's outcry as if through a fog. Nottingham's lips grazed her knuckles, soft in contrast to the bristle of mustache that swept afterward. If it were victory he wanted, she was certain she had given it, along with her hand, and with as little thought.
"Cease your worries, Millie," the Sheriff said, staring fixedly at Thea's eyes. "I only want her to see...something." His voice faltered on the last word, and it seemed with effort that he dragged himself around to face the servant. "She'll be safe," he promised.
Mildthryth's frown deepened momentarily, and her lips clamped down over clear misgivings. She looked from Thea to Nottingham, sizing up the situation with age-old eyes. "Well, 'twould not bring the end of the world, I suppose."
Permission enough, the Sheriff drew Thea with him toward the door.
"Wait! You can't be taking her without her gown! Sheriff-Sheriff! Damn the man!"
The door closed over Mildthryth's ineffective lament.
"She's right to be concerned, of course," the Sheriff said, bending low to let his words shiver along Thea's damp shoulder. "I am not myself this eve."
"What are you then?" Thea lifted her gaze to him as a challenge.
"Tempted," he admitted.
She laughed lightly. "Then you are more yourself than you know. Mildthryth need not fear. I think I can offer suitable defense."
"Is that necessary?"
She did not answer him immediately. For the first time since he had come to her bed, they were alone, swamped by the darkness of the corridor and the feeble light of a single torch. A fortnight had given her too long to think, to wonder about their reunion. Now, for every time she
imagined how it would be, an answer existed. In the brief interval of silence between them, she knew they dwelt on common memories.
Nothing remained of their angry words, the accusations flung so heatedly at one another, or the Sheriff's abrupt departure from Nottingham Castle. In an instant, she relived the touches that had stirred her to life with a tonic more powerful than any simple she knew. Every feeling seemed etched on her face for him to see, clearly visible beneath the guttering torchlight and spew of smoke.
Thea looked away. Hard enough to battle the intense darkness of his eyes, eyes that remembered how she looked without the shift now clinging to her, that remembered how she'd let him bring her to a moment of dark ecstasy. Concession and forgiveness were much more than he deserved.
"You wished to show me something?"
Clearly not the answer he wanted. "Come." His expression shifted from hope to hardness, and he turned in a maelstrom of black cloak and headed down the dimly lit passageway.
He started out before her and did not stop or slow his pace to ensure she stayed with him. Somehow, crazily, it never occurred to Thea not to follow. She gathered her gauzy skirts in her arms and hurried after him through the labyrinth of turns and stairs that led endlessly upward.
When they paused, they were crouched low underneath a mortar and timber ceiling. The Sheriff reached overhead and pushed open a trap door.
"Leave us!" he ordered the sentry posted above.
Thea could barely glimpse the soldier's booted feet and their quick retreat before the Sheriff climbed through the square passage, knelt at its edge, and offered his arm to her below. She said nothing, although her mind was a stew of unanswered questions, but locked her hand over his forearm. In one fluid movement, the Sheriff clasped her arm in the same manner and pulled her through the small, hidden portal. Her bare feet dangled over thin air, then settled on the substantial underpinning of the castle wall-walk.
A few seconds passed before she could calm the onslaught of vertigo from being pulled to the top of the keep tower, the castle's highest point, easily the highest point in the shire. The coolness of the night air helped soothe her jangled nerves, and she risked looking heavenward to the star-spangled dome of night.
To the east, ebony gave way to gray, then to violet and a thin streak of rose along the horizon. The breeze stirred the soft tendrils at her forehead and cheeks, and she smoothed them back into the equally disarrayed braid that fell to her hips.
When she finally looked at the Sheriff, she froze in mid-motion. For a time, there was no sound but the wind and the flapping of her loose shift, which billowed in the fading darkness like a wind-filled sail.
He seemed oblivious to the sound, even to her presence. Positioned before an embrasure in the castle wall, he stood rigid and still, his knuckles planted against the stone ledge of the crenel, his head thrown back, eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths of air as if, for all the world, his soul depended on it.
Presently, his shoulders lost their tension. His head slumped to his chest, then slowly lifted as he turned to her.
"When last we met-no, not in the stable, but before-when I came to you-Thea-"
She watched him grasp at pieces of memories, not knowing where to start. An apology? She looked at him, disbelieving, and waited.
"I've asked myself over and over what I regret most. Coming to your room that eve? No, I do not regret that, nor the wanting and need that led me there. They were honest feelings; I am not ashamed of them. Pressing you, urging you when with your words you asked me to go and with your body you begged me to stay? Even then I did not know which truth spoke louder. Damn it all, I've had the most wanton woman between my sheets only to find a blade strapped to her thigh and her heart filled more with murder than desire. And I've fought a woman's nails and teeth only to have her become like soft pudding after a kiss or two. And you-you, Thea," he accused, "could be either on any night. Damn women for the inconstant creatures they are. How was I to know?"
"Because I told you." Her answer startled him, for clearly he had expected none. And then she answered his earlier questions for him as well. "You regret not taking me."
He did not reply at first, but turned back toward the embrasure and stared off into the distance. "I wanted you, true. I thought if I-"
He stopped and frowned. She had never seen him struggle so with words, unable to turn a phrase without wit or keen intelligence or seduction. He shook his head once, fiercely, as if driving back thoughts he could not afford to have.
"No. It ended as it should have ended. As it must have ended. For I am who I am, and you are who you are...and his."
"What?"
His eyes narrowed, and Thea followed the path of his gaze beyond the walls of Nottingham and the rolling hills of the shire to the misty verdant blur of Sherwood. "Locksley's."
She started to tell him he was mistaken, that he had woven this terrible suspicion into assumption and it ate away at his reason, his trust. Then the truth came to her, and she could say nothing. Not Robin's woman, but his spy-a fact more certain to hang her than any misplaced affection.
"That will not change, I gather, despite my overzealous attempts to prove otherwise."
Her gaze darted to his face. The arrogant tone had crept back into his voice, into his very posture, but the mask of indifference hung crookedly about his eyes. A small grimace of disappointment creased the noble forehead and played about his mustache-swathed lip. He had not stopped wanting her any more than he'd abandoned his rivalry with Robin, yet his desire had exposed in him a soft underbelly of vulnerability.
He had given her the power to hurt him.
She could pledge fervent devotion to Robin and the very forest floor he trod on, make much of sweet caresses that did not exist, and shove the Sheriff aside with as much revulsion as she could muster. After all, it was what he expected, was it not?
But it was hardly the truth. Not now.
With an uneasy breath, Thea tried to banish the feelings, and the memories, eroding her resolve. She had stayed behind to learn the man's secrets, not to succumb to his questionable charm.
"My lord," she said with care, "I cannot forget who you are, if that is what you want."
"Christ, Thea! You don't know who I am!" His fist struck the stone ledge, and frustration furrowed his brow. "That night...a thousand mistakes. And one, among the thousand, was this: I said you knew me, that everyone knew me, by my deeds, by my misdeeds, by whatever tales their tongues were wont to wag. A careless remark, as if it meant nothing to be known by others' lies. That I regret."
He exhaled heavily, a harsh sigh of resignation. "Come." He beckoned her to his side with an open arm and a slight tilt of his head. "I would have you know something of me you will not hear in Edwinstowe, or even in the halls of this castle."
Thea did not move at first, not trusting the man not to have foul tricks going hand-in-hand with his offer of self-revelation.
"Come," he asked again, his voice gentle, imploring.
She stepped into the circle of his arm as he positioned her beside the opening in the wall and nodded toward the panorama of dawn cresting over the countryside.
"There."
They watched in silence as the edges of the sky turned from mauve to a faint shell pink, as the sun began to bleach away the night and gild the countryside with a blinding, yellow-white light. Forest and fields and far-off hamlets appeared behind the rising curtain of morning mist. Dew-covered vistas sparkled like prisms with the sun's first light. Somewhere in the distance, a rooster's crow welcomed the morn, and the low of milk cows signaled the advent of the day's work.
The Sheriff did not utter another word in the moments that passed, the full scope of his attention riveted on the shire spread out below him. Fresh, moist air, fragrant with the morning's unspoiled breeze, buffeted the hair around his face and stirred the curls at his neck.
As Thea looked out over the hills, nostalgia flooded her with such profound longing that tears gathered in her e
yes. How many times had she stopped after a night's gathering to watch dawn emerge from the crest of a hill, drinking in the rare interval of peace? From the castle battlements, Sherwood seemed so far away, as unreachable as a vapor-draped fairy world. Why had he brought her here, if not to see what she had lost, what doubtless she could never have again?
She tried to pull away, but he laid his hand on her shoulder. The warm weight of it was solid and strangely reassuring. "Wait," he whispered, bringing the edges of his cloak around her to shelter her from the slight chill.
When the sun had risen free of the earth's edge, Nottingham drew a deep breath. "I come here from time to time. When I need reminding." He said nothing further, but continued to peer into the mist-shrouded distance.
"Reminding...of what?"
Her words jarred him from whatever secretive thoughts he harbored. The muscles along his jawline and those in the arm around her contracted as if he'd just been discovered doing or thinking something uncharacteristically benign: a brutal tyrant finding solace in the tranquil moments before dawn. He dropped the arm that circled her and the embrace melted into but a small memory, so fleeting, so tender, Thea wondered if it had truly happened.
"Of responsibility you do not understand." He pushed each word, tight with control, through gritted teeth, then turned, stalked a length of the wall-walk and swirled back again.
"I've been up most of the night, wondering what compels me to explain this to you, and still I have no answer. It was our leave-taking, I suppose, and my anger, because I have lain with you, made love to you, and even let you stitch my spilled guts back inside me, yet you know nothing of who I am. You see me only through their eyes." He jerked his dark head in the direction of the forest.
"What more is there to see?"
"This, Thea. This!" He flung his arm wide, encompassing the whole of the shire's topography in one mighty sweep. "The same land that brings tears of longing to your eyes and is but a burden to me."
