To cover his brief lapse he asked, almost as an afterthought: “The Lady Servanne … she endured the ordeal well?”
“As well as could be expected, my lord,” De Chesnai answered, his loyalty for his mistress fairly bristling across his skin. “She was frightened, to be sure, but very brave and courageous. I thought she was wont to scratch the outlaw’s face to ribbands when he dared use your name, but she was taken away unharmed, by God’s grace.”
Wardieu accepted this avowal of his betrothed’s courage with a pang of guilt. If his life was dependent upon an answer, he could not have described in detail any given feature belonging to Servanne de Briscourt. The best of his recollections, as he had admitted to Nicolaa, presented her only as a pale shadow he had once glimpsed standing alongside the frail old warhorse, Hubert de Briscourt. It was the land he wanted, not the thrall of a bride. Prince John had already demanded and received an outlandish price for arranging his brother’s seal on the marriage petition, and now, ten thousand marks was a great deal to pay for something he did not want. Unfortunately, there were too many equally rich and powerful men who knew of his hunger for the De Briscourt estates, and he could not afford to trust either Prince John’s greed or an outlaw’s promise to gain control of the lands.
“Unharmed,” he murmured. “Then this”—he held up the blood-stained canvas sack—“does not belong to the Lady Servanne?”
“No, my lord. The wolf’s head took it from one of the dead guards. All he added—and then only after a lengthy debate—was the ring.”
“The ring?” Wardieu loosened the thong and emptied the contents of the sack onto his hand. The finger tumbled out freely enough and was tossed aside into the grass with no further thought. But an object caught up on some of the unravelled threads of jute, needed to be forcibly pulled away from the cloth.
It was a gold ring, and, even before Wardieu had wiped away the clinging bits of dried flesh and blood, he could feel an iron fist close around his heart and begin to squeeze.
The face of the ring was carved in the image of a dragon rampant, the band moulded to resemble scaled claws. A single blood-red ruby marked the eye, and, as it trapped the fading rays of the sun, it seemed to catch fire and reflect shafts of burning flame.
Wardieu’s fingers curled slowly inward. His hand began to tremble and a fine white rim of fury etched itself deeply into the bitter set of his mouth.
“My lord—?”
The stark blue eyes seared through De Chesnai without seeing him. The grizzled knight took an involuntary step back, shocked by the depth of the rage and hatred that was transforming Lord Lucien’s face into a terrible and terrifying mask.
“My lord … your hand!”
Lucien looked down. Forcing his fingers to open, he saw that he had squeezed the carved fangs of the golden dragon into the hollow of his palm, cutting the flesh and causing blood to flow between the clenched fingers. Blood slicked the dragon’s body and shone wetly off the faceted surface of the ruby eye. The sight brought another image crushing into Wardieu’s brain, stretching and swelling the bounds of reason until it verged on madness itself.
The image was of death. Death on the hot desert sands of Palestine. The face of death had dark chestnut hair and piercing gray eyes; it spoke with a curse and a vow to return one day and avenge himself upon the world.
That day was finally here.
Death had come back to England.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Servanne slept twelve hours without so much as rolling from one hip to the other. She would have slept even longer if not for the loud blowing of a ram’s horn from somewhere beyond the refectory walls, calling the outlaws to their evening meal. She awoke with a groggy, thick sensation stalling her eyelids, and would have gladly lowered her head to the furs again had she not caught a fleeting glimpse of the nerve-shattering glare Biddy launched at her from across the room.
“Biddy? What is the time? How long have I been sleeping?”
“I am not familiar with the hours these wolverines keep,” Biddy replied archly, her back as stiff as a swaddling board. “There are no bells to toll Vespers; thus I have been praying quite fervently on my own for some time now.”
“Praying? For what?” Servanne yawned.
“For salvation,” Biddy declared. “For redemption in the eyes of God and man—assuming it is not too late to plead for forgiveness before either!”
“Oh Biddy—” Servanne frowned and stretched cozily within the warm cocoon of furs. “What are you talking about? What has happened now that requires forgiveness?”
“What has happened?” she demanded shrilly. “You can lie there and ask me what has happened? Better it is I who should be asking you—as if mine own eyes have not already given me the answers. Sweet Mary Mother in Heaven, I should have known it would come to this. I should have known it was his intent from the outset. And you! I blame only myself for what has become of you. Too innocent, you were. Too much talk, too great the temptation. Oh yes, I could see the temptation; who could not? Who could not?”
The older woman blew her nose savagely into a sodden scrap of linen and cursed as she was forced to wipe her fingers on the hem of her tunic. In the next wailing breath, she resumed her self-condemnation before an utterly confused and bewildered Servanne de Briscourt.
“In all of my eighteen years as your nurse and companion, I never dreamed I would bear witness to such wanton behaviour. From other women—plain women, common women, trulls and whores, oh yes, I should have expected it and known how to deal with their urges. For women such as those, taking a lusty man to their beds is as commonplace as lifting a leg to piss.”
“Biddy!” Servanne gasped, jolted wide awake.
“But you! I thank the Lord your sweet, saintly mother did not live to see such a thing. And with such a one as him! Sweet Jesu, had I but suspected such a need in you, I would rather have seen you serviced by one of the guardsmen along the way—”
“Biddy!”
“—than by that great, lustful brute! At least it could have been arranged with some discretion! Not like this! Not … not brazenly walking through the hall, with him naked as a bull and you”—Biddy waved a hand in unfathomable distress—“you hanging off his neck, looking as if you could scarce wait to have a bed beneath you!”
Servanne made a strangled sound in her throat and sat bolt upright. “Biddy! What are you saying? What are you accusing me of doing?”
“Do you deny you were hanging off his neck when he carried you in here?” Biddy demanded with narrowed eyes.
“I was not hanging off his neck!. I was in a faint!”
“So would any normal woman be to see the size of him,” came the scandalized retort. “Curse me if I did not think he had grown a third arm to support you!”
Servanne flushed. “Biddy! He was naked because he was bathing in the pond. I fainted because I was … I was exhausted—you, of all people should know why! And he must have carried me back here because I could not walk the distance on my own.”
Biddy stopped fussing with the bit of linen long enough to arch a brow sardonically. “And I suppose he helped you out of your clothing because he was concerned they might choke you in your sleep? I suppose he remained with you in here for nigh unto an hour because he was worried you might not be able to fall asleep on your own?”
Servanne clutched the layer of furs to her naked breasts. “He … unclothed me?”
“He did indeed. And he enjoyed the view for considerably longer than it should have taken to fold the garments and lay them neatly aside—had he troubled himself to do so, that is.”
Servanne followed an accusing finger and felt her mouth go dry at the sight of her gown and under-garments strewn across the earthen floor. She swallowed hard and pressed a trembling hand to her temple.
“I do not remember,” she whispered. “I do not remember anything after I fainted.”
Yet that was not exactly the truth either and she did not have to hear Biddy’s snort
of disdain to feel the heat creeping upward in her cheeks. She did remember something—a feeling, or a sensation of intense warmth and pleasure. But … it was not possible for him to have lain with her and not left something of his presence behind.
Servanne flung the pelts aside and examined herself critically, searching for bruises or faded blotches that would either condemn or vindicate her in Biddy’s eyes. There was nothing, however. No marks on the ivory smoothness of her body, no scent of human contact, no telltale tenderness between her thighs. Surely a man of his size, his weight, his temperament would have left a mark of some kind, either branded onto her body or seared into her mind.
Lacking proof one way or the other, she drew upon her anger. “Where were you all this time? How do you know he was alone with me for an hour? Why were you not here by my side to defend and protect me?”
A new flood of tears sprang from the matron’s hazel eyes. “I tried, my lady! Oh how I tried to run to your side! It was that wretched Woodcock who held me back. Firstly, he led me on a merry chase around the forest. Then, when he finally returned to the abbey—just in time to see the outlaw leader bringing you in here—the rogue drew his knife and bade me sit in company with several other ruffian misfits while his lord ‘attended his private affairs privately.’ To have moved or cried out would have earned a blade thrust into my breast, and I did not see how I, dead upon the ground of a pierced breast, could have been of any further use to you.”
“What use are you to me now,” Servanne snapped, trembling with anger, “when you refuse to believe me when I say I have no memory of what happened, and no cause to feel shame or guilt over my behaviour!”
A second anguished wail from Biddy’s throat sent Servanne’s eyes rolling skyward and her hands crushing against her temples. A further distraction—the swirl of her uncombed, unfettered hair around her shoulders—sent her anger boiling in another direction.
“Where is he? Where is the rogue: I shall have the truth from him myself!”
“Oh! Oh, my lady, no. No!”
“My clothes,” Servanne commanded. “My combs, my wimple—where are they?”
“Not within my grasp, my lady,” Biddy replied, sniffling wetly. “What trunks were fetched with us in the ambuscade have not appeared since. Where they are or what has become of the contents, I cannot say.”
“Never mind, then. Just help me dress.”
Biddy hastened to collect up the scattered garments. The gown was slightly more crumpled and stained from its stay on the floor, as were the knee garters and short silken hose. The samite surcoat was nowhere to be seen, but Biddy removed her own plain gray mantle and wrapped it securely about her charge’s shoulders for warmth. She was about to part and plait the tousled skeins of hair into more modest and manageable braids, but Servanne pushed the fussing hands away and swept out into the corridor.
After a moment’s pause to gain her bearings, she followed the dank stone hall to the right. It emerged at the top of a shallow flight of steps overlooking the pilgrims’ hall at a point midway between two of the roofless stone arches. The scene before her appeared much as it had the previous evening, with fires crackling in the roasting pit, and torches burning smokily from their wall sconces. Cauldrons bubbled steamy clouds of aromatic mist into the cooler air, adding to the dull sheen of moisture that clung to the charred walls and broken ribs of the abbey.
Trestle tables had once again been set in an open-sided square under the sheltered portion of the roof. He was sitting there on the dais, the vest of black wolf pelts reflecting glints of fire and torchlight. He was engrossed in a conversation with Gil Golden, but when the latter’s eyes flicked to the far wall, the Black Wolf stopped and followed his stare.
Servanne had no notion of the image she presented, nor would she have cared a potter’s damn if she had. The dark woolen cloak she wore completely encased her slender body from shoulders to toes, leaving only the wild, voluminous cascade of silver-blonde hair to outline an ethereal image against the shadows. The ghostlike apparition startled several of the outlaws, even those who were open in their scorn for the legends and superstitions surrounding Thornfeld Abbey. Many went so far as to reach instinctively for their weapons before recognizing the figure as being of this mortal earth.
The Wolf rose and walked slowly around the end of the table and down the hall. If not for the fickle light that kept his features veiled in shadow, she might have noticed the strange gleam that mellowed the gray of his eyes, softened them, even, to a shade verging on pale blue.
“I trust you are feeling better for your rest?” he asked.
Servanne said nothing until he had come to a full halt before her. When she did speak, it was in a voice so low he almost had to bend forward to hear.
“I trust you enjoyed the liberties you took while I was resting?”
“Liberties, my lady?”
“How dare you touch me,” she snapped, “let alone remove so much as a slipper from my foot!”
“Ahh,” he said, and straightened. “Those liberties. You would have preferred to sleep in cold, wet clothes?”
“My clothing was not wet,” she objected. “I was no nearer the edge of the water than I am to you now.”
His grin broadened. “You were very nearly headfirst into the mud and weeds had I not caught you in time. Furthermore …” His gaze raked appreciatively down the shapeless form of the cloak and left no doubt as to what he recalled seeing beneath. “I did what any chivalrous fellow would do to save his lady the possible discomfort of fever or flux.”
Servanne clenched her small hands into fists. “I am not your lady. And if you were so concerned over my health, why did you not call my waiting-woman to attend me?”
“I could have,” he agreed blithely, “but I thought it a convenient opportunity to assess the precise value of the goods I am holding to ransom. Had I done so earlier, I heartily believe I would have put a much higher price on returning them undamaged.”
“Then … you did not—” Servanne bit her lip, resenting the flow of ruddy colour that made his smile widen further.
“I am crushed, indeed, my lady, that you should have to ask.”
“Biddy believes you did more than see to my comfort. She does not believe I have no recollection of what happened after I fainted beside the pool.”
“My reputation as a lecher will be in shreds,” he murmured.
“Did you or did you not take ill advantage, sirrah?” she demanded, giving her foot a little stamp of annoyance.
“If I did?”
“If you did”—she searched his face in vain for a trace of humanity—“then you are a lower, viler creature than ever I could have imagined.”
The Wolf laughed. “I was under the impression your estimation of my character could sink no lower than it was already.”
“I have erred before in crediting a man with too much character,” she retorted. “For that matter, most men in general tend to show a glaring lack of consistency when their true faces come into the light.”
“Spoken like a woman who is tired of being sold into marriages with one stranger after another.”
“Nay, wolf’s head. I am simply tired of men who continually deign to know what is best for me and who then proceed to rearrange my life to suit their needs.”
“And what needs, might I inquire, would you prefer to have tended?”
Servanne flushed again. “Mon Dieu, but you are an exasperating cur! Will you or will you not answer my question truthfully?”
“Truthfully—” He said the word in such a way as to raise a spray of gooseflesh along her arms. “Had I seen to my own comforts as well as yours, you would not now have the shield of a blank memory to hide behind. Nor would there be a need to ask what manner of liberties I had taken, for your body would still be singing their effects loudly and clearly.”
Servanne’s jaw dropped inelegantly. She took a small, stumbling step back, and then another, but before she could turn and run from the mocking gra
y glint of his eyes, a sharp fff-bungg! split the air and left an ashwood arrow quivering in the wooden arch beside her. A shriek sent her jumping forward and the Wolf suddenly found himself standing with an armful of trembling, soft femininity.
“Runner coming in, my lord!” someone called.
“Who?” the Wolf asked, not troubling himself to turn around.
“Sigurd’s handiwork,” said Gil Golden, noting the arrow’s fletching with a wry grimace. “No one else wastes so much quill.”
None of the other outlaws contributed comments. None even appeared to have heard Gil’s, or so it seemed to Servanne. Everyone—the men at the tables, the men not yet in their seats, even the two women who bent over the cooking fires—all of them stood frozen in place, like statues turned to stone. Apart from the hiss and crackle of the fires, there was only silence. A silence so acute that when a second arrow streaked through the darkness to strike the same archway, one could almost swear to have heard the resonant twang of the bowstring.
Like magic, the tableau dissolved. The men and women resumed their conversations and their tasks at hand. Servanne, having once again buried her face in the protective thickness of the wolf pelts, felt a pair of gentle hands pry her loose.
“We use the double signal to ensure the men coming in are our own,” the Wolf explained. “Even those who possess limitless courage have been known to give away the deepest of secrets under expert torture, and, since it is not inconceivable to assume the sheriff has sent his pack of hounds out after us, we have arranged different signals for each day.”
“Bah! Old Noddypeak should have chased his tail into a fine tangle by now,” Sparrow chuckled, materializing out of nowhere. “Especially since he was sent chasing it in ten different directions.”
“I should think Sigurd will be bringing news of a new hound in the forest,” the Wolf mused thoughtfully. “One whose nose is tuned to a sweeter scent.”
Wardieu, Servanne realized, the excitement flaring within her like a sudden flame. Lord Lucien Wardieu was in the forest, come to rescue her from this … this …
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