He could almost see the hackles rise on the old woman’s back. “You come now,” she said, grabbing Miriel’s forearm.
To her credit, Miriel pulled her arm away. “Sung Li, I’ll come when I’m ready.”
For a long moment, there was a standoff between the two, Sung Li with her squinting scowl and Miriel with her superior glower. Finally, Miriel decided, “All right. I’m ready.”
Sung Li crossed smug arms over her flat chest. “I am glad you could tear yourself away. Meanwhile, the keep is drowning in wine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your half-wit kitchen boy does not know how to count.”
Miriel frowned. “What’s he done?”
“He brought more bottles of wine.”
“That’s fine. I told him to.”
“Eighty more bottles?”
“Bloody hell.”
Miriel rushed past Rand in a blur of blue skirts. If owing him one piece of silver troubled her, he could only imagine her distress at having a surplus of wine for the wedding.
He trailed after them, done with searching the forest for the moment. Clearly no one had camped in recent days, at least in this part of the woods, which was where Lord Morbroch said they’d all been robbed. It was possible the outlaw lived in the outlying forest and only ventured close for his thieving, which meant that Rand would have to widen his search over the next few days.
But for now, it might serve him better to learn more about The Shadow from the folk who knew him best, the denizens of Rivenloch.
Chapter 6
As she hurried back to the keep, Miriel’s heart raced with…was it panic or excitement? She couldn’t tell. But she found herself alternately annoyed with and grateful for Sung Li’s interruption. Lord, she’d never felt so warm and giddy and wanton, enfolded in Rand’s arms, at least not without the benefit of a great deal of ale. But neither had she felt so vulnerable. His embrace left her curiously powerful and weak at the same time. Her body sang with strength, yet it seemed her knees would collapse beneath her.
It was a wonderful sensation. And yet terrifying.
In warfare, self-control was everything. So Sung Li had taught her. Discipline of one’s emotions was essential. Mastery of one’s body was key.
Miriel had worked for years, learning to shut out pain and fatigue and doubt, increasing her physical and mental strength, focusing her body to perfect obedience and her mind to a point as sharp and effective as a sword.
How could something as simple as a kiss so effortlessly destroy her concentration? How could a single smile from a stranger, a wink, a nod, shatter her serenity? How could the touch of his hand so radically disturb the balance of her chi?
Aye, she decided, it was good Sung Li had come when he did. Miriel needed time away from Rand, time to meditate, to realign her senses.
She knew what she had to do. Just as she’d done with pain and fatigue and doubt, she needed to inure herself to Rand’s influence. As Sung Li often said, One does not conquer fear by running from it but by embracing it.
She would embrace Rand then. Often. And thoroughly. Until she ultimately conquered him.
By the time they reached the keep, Miriel was already feeling more in control. After a quick midday repast, Rand set off for the tiltyard to try his sword against the Rivenloch knights again, and absent his unsettling presence, as Miriel began issuing gentle orders in the great hall, her sense of calm and quiet authority returned.
By nightfall, Miriel had collected herself and was actually looking forward to Rand’s company at supper. Then he appeared with Sir Rauve, chuckling companionably, his face freshly washed, his hair slightly damp and dark, his broad chest draped in a brown surcoat that perfectly matched his laughing eyes, and it was all she could do to keep her heart on a steady course.
It was ridiculous how naturally her body responded to his presence. After all, she’d only just met the man. Yet it took all her strength of will not to skip up from the bench at the high table and rush into his arms, as if to announce, he’s mine. It was disgusting, really, and yet she could no more curb her feelings than she could stop rain from falling.
When he spotted her, his face lit up with a wide smile. He came up to take her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “I’ve missed you, my sweet.”
His words affected her more than she cared to admit, more than she’d let him know, certainly. She quickly withdrew her hand. “Pah! No doubt Pagan and Colin kept you so busy in the tiltyard, you had no time to miss me.”
He grinned and slid in beside her. “They did keep me busy. But every time I drew my sword, it was to battle in your honor, my lady.”
“Indeed?” Pagan grunted from down the table. “Then you’d better keep a close watch on your honor, Miriel.”
“Pagan!” Deirdre scolded.
“He’s not very good,” Pagan replied with a shrug.
Colin came up in back of them and clapped Rand on the shoulder. “He’ll improve. Remember how the Rivenloch knights were when we arrived?”
Helena, close behind her bridegroom, swatted him hard enough on the buttocks to make him yelp. “The Rivenloch knights were quite capable when you arrived, Norman.”
“Come, you two,” Deirdre said with a chuckle. “A lover’s quarrel, so soon? You aren’t even wed yet.”
When Miriel’s father arrived, Pagan and Rand stood to help him to his place between them. Miriel hoped Lord Gellir wouldn’t object to Rand. Sometimes in his feeble state of mind, he was troubled by the sight of unfamiliar faces at his table.
“Who’s to wed?” Lord Gellir asked, looking in confusion at the diners around him.
Pagan answered in a loud, slow voice. “Colin and Helena are to be wed in two days, my lord.”
“And he can’t fight?”
“Colin can fight,” Pagan replied. “’Tis Miriel’s new suitor who can’t fight.”
Deirdre protested again. “Pagan!”
“Well, he can’t.”
Lord Gellir turned slowly to look at Rand. “Who’s this?”
Rand smiled and offered his hand. “I’m Sir Rand of Morbroch, my lord.”
“You can’t fight?”
Miriel had heard about enough. “What does it matter?” she said impatiently, unfolding her napkin onto her lap. “Why is everyone so interested in whether he can or cannot fight? Fighting isn’t everything. I’m sure—”
“What?” Lord Gellir roared.
Miriel flinched.
Deirdre intervened, reaching past Pagan to lay a calming hand upon Lord Gellir’s forearm. “Father, ’tis Miriel,” she explained. “You know Miriel doesn’t approve of fighting.”
“Miriel?” he mumbled.
“Aye,” she assured him. “And this is Sir Rand, Miriel’s…friend.”
Miriel didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath. But as Lord Gellir relaxed, she let out a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted to do was offend her father. Lord Gellir was of Viking stock, born and bred a warrior, and though his days of glory were long gone, he’d never lost his warrior spirit. To question the importance he attached to battle was to question his very existence.
Thankfully, in his present state of mind, Lord Gellir usually forgot within a moment or two whatever he’d been discussing. But he could be so unpredictable at times. She prayed he wouldn’t ask Sir Rand any embarrassing questions.
“What business do you have with my daughter?”
Like that.
Miriel smiled tightly. “I met him at the tournament, Father. Remember the tournament?”
He grunted. “I thought you said he couldn’t fight.”
“He… He…”
Rand saved her. “I was knocked from my horse in the melee, my lord. I never got the chance to fight in the tournament.”
Pagan muttered under his breath, “Thank God for that.”
Deirdre elbowed him.
Rand must have heard the insult, but he was too polite to respond to it. Instead, he took Miriel’s
hand gently in his and smiled at her father. “’Twas your daughter who saved me.”
“Deirdre or Helena?” Lord Gellir asked.
“Miriel, my lord.”
“Miriel? Miriel can’t fight.” Lord Gellir shook his head in disgust as the servants began serving up supper, ladling mutton pottage into the trenchers. “Nobody can fight anymore.”
Miriel felt her cheeks go pink. “I wasn’t fighting, Father. I was…” Bloody hell, was she about to lie to her father? Aye, but what choice did she have? They’d concocted this tale together, she and Rand, and they had to stick by it. “I was treating his wounds.”
“An angel of mercy she was, my lord,” Rand added, patting her hand. “She watched over me, mopped my brow, brought me food and drink…”
Colin smirked. “I thought you were knocked unconscious.”
“He was,” Miriel quickly interjected.
“She assured me she watched over me,” Rand amended.
“And changed his bandages,” she added.
“Indeed?” Helena asked slyly. “And where were you wounded, Sir Rand?”
“His arm,” Miriel replied.
“My leg,” Rand answered simultaneously.
“His arm and leg,” Miriel said. “’Twas a very…very grave injury.”
“Indeed,” Deirdre said, frowning in mock concern.
There was a long and painful silence.
Then Colin burst out laughing, and the others snickered into their trenchers. He raised his flagon toward Rand. “I might have been knocked witless for two days as well, had I such a pretty nurse.”
Helena gave Colin a chiding swat on the shoulder.
Rand lifted his flagon in return, grinning.
Miriel was mortified. “You think Rand… You think I…”
Rand set his drink down and enclosed her hand between his two. “Sweetheart, we may as well confess.”
“Confess?” This was not going well. Not well at all.
“’Tis true I may not have been as witless as all that,” he admitted. “After all, a man would have to be witless to choose getting pummeled in the lists when he might suffer instead under the healing hands of a beautiful maid. Am I not right?”
Miriel felt her face turn to flame. Nobody would believe his story now. Everyone knew Miriel was not the sort of damsel to linger in strange pavilions with strange men.
But to her surprise, most of the men at the table laughed and raised their flagons in salute. Not even her sisters stepped in to defend her.
Miriel lowered her head to drown her ire in a flagon of wine. There’d be no convincing them now she hadn’t dallied with Sir Rand at the tournament. Particularly when she’d so blatantly stolen a kiss from him this morn in front of witnesses.
Suddenly, she lost her appetite. It was one thing to live in a deception of her own making. It was quite another to get caught up in someone else’s deceit, particularly when that someone else cared not a whit for her reputation and proved damnably creative in his storytelling.
Fortunately, the interest in Miriel’s nursing skills and Rand’s fighting talents waned quickly. Soon the conversation turned to ordinary things—Helena’s upcoming wedding, the abundance of salmon in the loch this year, the need for repairs to the chapel, the raiding of two of Lachanburn’s cows.
Then, just as Miriel was becoming lulled into a sense of safety by the soothing drone of normal Rivenloch chatter, Lord Gellir decided to engage Rand in one of his favorite conversations.
“Anyone told you about our local outlaw?”
So unexpected was the propitious turn of conversation that Rand nearly choked on his bite of mutton. He managed to swallow without incident, nonchalantly washing the bite down with a swig of wine.
“Nay,” he replied, frowning with what he hoped looked like casual curiosity. “Outlaw, you say?”
But Miriel, the well-meaning but meddlesome wench, leaned forward to interrupt. “Father, I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested.” She explained to Rand, “’Tis mostly a lot of wild rumor and speculation, grown all out of proportion.”
Rand gave her a tight smile. He wondered how rude it would be to gently clamp his hand over her mouth so Lord Gellir would continue.
“Although,” Pagan said, jabbing the air with his eating knife to make his point, “I still say ’twas The Shadow who destroyed the English trebuchet.”
Suddenly the room was filled with overlapping threads of argument, too tangled to unravel. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on the matter.
“I saw him once,” Colin put in. “In the crofter’s cottage where Helena held me hostage.”
Rand blinked. Had he heard Colin correctly? Helena held him hostage? God’s blood, these Rivenloch women were intrepid indeed.
Feigning only the mildest interest, Rand nonetheless carefully tuned his ears to every word.
Helena added, “He left one of his knives.”
“His knives?” Rand asked.
She nodded. “Slim daggers, all black. He leaves them after he robs his victims.”
“Not always,” Miriel murmured.
“Not always,” Deirdre agreed. “But there’s no mistaking his work.”
Rand poked offhandedly at a piece of mutton. “Indeed? And why is that?”
The old man took up Rand’s invitation, as if he’d been patiently waiting for someone to ask him to relate a treasured, oft-told tale. “The Shadow,” he began, his bright blue eyes lighting up like sapphires in the sun, “is as swift as lightning. Nimble as flame. Nearly invisible.”
“Nearly invisible,” Miriel muttered, “and yet so many claim to have seen him.” She rolled her eyes.
Lord Gellir continued, waving his long, bony arms to add emphasis to the story. “He dresses all in black. From the top of his head to the tip of his toes. Black as night, but for one narrow slit where his gleaming eyes peer out like the devil’s.”
He made the sign of the Cross then, and everyone mimicked the gesture, everyone but Miriel, who seemed to be horribly embarrassed by her father’s dramatic rendition.
So far Lord Gellir was only describing what Rand had already ascertained. The outlaw, known only as The Shadow, was quick, agile, and apparently obsessed with black garb. But like Miriel, Rand didn’t believe the man possessed any attributes of a demonic or mystical sort.
“He can flip like an acrobat,” Lord Gellir said, “land on his feet, and, before his victim can so much as blink his eyes, cut his purse…or his throat.”
Miriel sighed in disgust. “He’s never cut anyone’s throat, Father.” She frowned at Rand, trying to convince him. “He hasn’t. He’s actually quite harmless.”
“No one knows where he dwells,” Lord Gellir intoned. “He appears out of nowhere, does his bold mischief, then vanishes into the woods…like a shadow.”
“Has no one been able to catch him?” Rand asked. “Has no one tried?”
Helena and Deirdre exchanged a swift glance then, one so subtle Rand almost missed it, a look of sisterly communication only they could decipher.
Then Deirdre shrugged. “Miriel’s right. For the most part, he does no harm.”
“Indeed,” Helena added, “he’s never bothered any Rivenloch folk, not really.”
Deirdre chuckled. “Besides, what would poor Father have left to go on and on about if we arrested his favorite outlaw?”
Rand wished the old man would go on and on, but it seemed his addled mind had already drifted elsewhere. He was currently absorbed in picking a crumb of bread out of his long, white beard.
“No one could catch him anyway,” Colin said. “He might be small, but he’s wily as a fox.”
“Slippery as an eel,” Pagan agreed.
Helena chimed in, “Faster than a—”
“But surely someone must have tried.” Rand attempted to keep his tone flippant, but he didn’t want to drop the subject. “No one can be that—” As he raised his hands for emphasis, his finger caught the base of his empty flagon, and he knocked the vess
el off the table.
It should have hit the floor. But Miriel’s hand whipped out and caught it an instant before it did. For a heartbeat, their eyes met, his amazed, hers guilty. Then she let the flagon drop.
It clattered with damning delay on the rush-covered flagstones.
Chapter 7
“Oh!” Miriel exclaimed. “Clumsy me.”
Bloody hell, she thought. How could she have been so careless—not in dropping the flagon, but in catching it? Rand had seen her. And he must know what she’d done was nearly impossible. Gently bred, meek, mild maidens didn’t snap up falling tableware in the wink of an eye.
Sung Li, who had been watching the high table from his place among the servants with increasing interest and annoyance, as he always did when the conversation turned to the overblown legend of The Shadow, stared hard at Miriel.
“Lucy!” Miriel called out. “Will you bring more wine and get Sir Rand another flagon?”
She bent to retrieve his dropped vessel, but as she handed the empty flagon to Lucy, her gaze met Rand’s again, and there was no question in her mind. He’d seen everything. A suspicious furrow creased his brow, and his eyes glittered with speculation.
Now she’d have to think up a good explanation.
Or…
She could get him drunk.
If she got him drunk enough, maybe he’d forget everything—the humiliating conversation about his lack of fighting skills, her father’s foolish tales of The Shadow, his brief encounter with Miriel’s fleet fingers.
Indeed, getting men drunk was an offensive strategy Helena oft employed. If it worked, if Miriel could make a blur of Rand’s memory, they could begin anew tomorrow. And this time, she’d remember to keep her talents to herself, to play the helpless, docile damsel who couldn’t catch a caged dove with a broken wing.
“Leave the bottle,” she bade Lucy when the maidservant returned with the wine and flagon.
Rand lifted a brow.
“We have plenty now,” she explained, pouring him a brimming cup. “Besides, you have yet to be treated to true Rivenloch hospitality.”
He gave her a wry glance, then picked up the bottle and poured a measure into her flagon as well. “’Tisn’t hospitable to make a man drink alone.”
Maids with Blades Page 60
