Will’s smile was smug. “There is indeed, and a pleasant little valley it is, caught between two good-sized hills. More than once, I’ve ridden from that spot to take a few of Bagot’s sheep and kine.”
The possibility of success grew in Rafe, the sensation strong enough to make him want to laugh. “Aye then, send your message to your men while we and those men with us here retire to our tent. We’ll arm ourselves as best we can, there being no time for donning mail, and pack only those belongings we can carry on our saddles.”
“Nay,” Will cried softly, rearing back from his younger, taller brother. “I won’t go leaving my tent and chests behind me. What if Bagot confiscates what’s mine after our deed is revealed?”
Rafe held a warning finger to his lips to urge his brother to quiet. “We’ve no choice,” he whispered. “To take the tent and its furnishings, especially your armor chest, means an ox-drawn cart that moves at a snail’s pace when we need haste most of all. If you’re concerned, ask Lord Haydon if he’ll send our belongings back to Long Chilting in our own cart, with one of his teams. That way our belongings will be well away from Haydon before anyone realizes what we’re about. Tell our host we’ll pay the cartage.”
“You’ll pay,” Will retorted, his jaw suddenly tense and his eyes narrowed. “I’m not so wealthy a man that I can afford to waste coins on what my own folk owe me in service. You, on the other hand, have just won three marks.”
Rafe’s teeth clenched. They didn’t have time for this. “I’ll pay,” he snarled.
It was a satisfied smile Will sent his way. “Then, all I must do is warn Dickon at the priory of what we plan. I’ll not leave him unaware when he may take the brunt of our actions.”
With his brother’s words, an idea hit Rafe like a blow, the whole of it so perfect that he grinned. “You’re right. You must ride to the priory and see our brother, not only to warn him but to beg him for a monk’s habit.” The priory was so close that Will could ride there and back while Rafe waited for Young Watty at the field.
Will’s eyes flew wide. “A habit? Whatever for?”
“A disguise,” Rafe replied, still grinning at his own cleverness. “What better way to take a woman than to make her seem a man? If anyone sees us between here and Glevering, they’ll notice nothing save a knightly contingent escorting a monk on the road.”
With that exhilaration took hold of Rafe, consuming his depression in a great blaze of excitement. Before long, he’d hold his Kate in his arms, just as God intended. So huge was the emotion that woke in him with this thought that he grabbed his brother by the shoulders to keep from flying off the hall floor.
“She’s mine, Will,” he told his brother as he gave the smaller man a quick shake, then turned his brother toward the head of the room and Lord Haydon.
A new breeze filled with the promise of evening showers tossed Kate’s veil as she stepped off the keep’s stair into the courtyard. Although it was past midday, barely a shadow clung to the sheds and storage barns that lined the narrow yard. With summer days long, the sun was only now beginning its descent toward the western horizon where it would do battle with the great troop of clouds gathered there.
Given the many hours yet left until nightfall, Haydon’s servants should still have been rushing about, hard at their tasks. But no industrious sound echoed within Haydon’s inner walls beyond the ringing of the smith’s hammer. Instead, everyone who should have toiled danced just outside the garden’s wall. Laughing laundresses clasped hands with grinning stable lads while seamstresses, out of the housekeeper’s sight for the dinner hour, ran rings about off-duty soldiers. Why, even the guards on the walls turned their backs to their watches to observe the merriment of those below them.
Such frantic gaiety out here was but the promise of even more happy activity in the garden. Kate’s stomach twisted. The thought of plastering a smile on her face and joining the women when she had to marry Sir Gilbert DuBois was more mummery than she could manage.
Skirting the crowd, she started for the postern gate. Whereas this morn she’d hesitated to meet Warin, there wasn’t the tiniest speck of worry over doing so a second time. She had no intention of sinning now. All she wanted to do was absolve Warin of the wrong her father had laid upon his shoulders and send him on his way to the priory. Once he was gone she’d have what she most needed: time alone in which to terms with her fate and the privacy to scream against the unfairness of having been born a woman.
A few yards from the postern she stopped short, her skirts collecting the curls of wood that escaped the carpenter’s shed at her elbow. Although the gate’s little door stood wide, just as it had earlier, it was no longer unattended. Dressed in Haydon’s colors of green and yellow, the porter had reclaimed his post, although his attention was on the dancers.
Disappointment drove deep indeed; there’d be no solitary moment for her. Even if Kate demanded to pass, the gatekeeper would never allow his lord’s well-to-do female guest to exit alone when his continued health and livelihood rested on protecting her. So, Warin would leave without ever hearing that Kate knew him wronged.
Just as Kate was ready to retreat a young woman broke from the dancing servants. Her feet keeping the pattern of the steps as she came, the lass capered her way to the porter. As she reached the gatekeeper she began a new sort of dance, with much movement of her hips as she stroked her hands down the porter’s arms. Kate eyed her in surprise. There was something about the woman’s manner that reminded Kate of Emma caressing her husband this morn.
The porter, as young and handsome as his companion was pretty, grinned. The woman caught his hand. A moment later and the two joined the others in their merriment.
Not willing to lose her chance, Kate threw herself into motion faster than she had ever believed possible. As she raced through the gate her heart took flight, fluttering like a pennant in the wind. For all she knew the guards on the walls had seen her exit and would call the alarm.
Out she went, crouching as she started down the path toward the stream at its base. For defense’s sake this hill was but a grassy mound without a tree upon it. That made her the tallest thing in sight. With every step the music faded until it was nothing but a strident memory. No shout, not even a word was launched at her back. After what seemed hours but surely was no more than a moment, Kate stopped.
The chirps of birds were the only sound. Turning, she looked behind her. She’d descended so far that not even Haydon’s rooftops were in sight. She breathed for what felt like the first time since exiting. She’d done it; she was free, at least for the moment.
Grinning, she lifted her face to the sky. Above her, swallows and sparrows were specks against the darkening clouds billowing up from the horizon. Kate’s heart caught. Oh, to be like the birds. No one ordered their lives, telling them who to wed and where to go.
Such foolishness! Kate lowered her gaze until she stared at the ground at her toes. Better that she spend her brief freedom cherishing these precious moments than wasting them in futile longing for what could never be.
Continuing her descent more slowly now, she reached the hill’s base. A wide clearing had been carved from the trees that lined the stream. This was to make room for Haydon’s laundresses, so said scrub boards, a great iron pot and the piles of ashes set aside for soap making. She scanned the clearing. There was no sign of Warin, but then he’d said he’d conceal himself against the possibility of Haydon’s soldiers driving him from the estate.
“Sir Warin?” she called.
Willows rustled to her left. A horse snorted. A bridle jingled. Twigs crackled. But Warin made no reply.
Kate started toward the sounds. “Sir Warin?” she called as she strode into the shade of the nearest tree. “It’s me, Katherine. Know you that I come not for my ribbon but that you should hear me. I saw my father remove the lance’s cap,” she said, pushing through the willow’s leafy drapery and stepping out on the tree’s opposite side.
Silent and tall, Warin ap
peared so suddenly that Kate gasped. He yet wore his armor, even to his helmet. Framed in the brow curve of his helmet’s nosepiece, his blue eyes were cold and hard.
Kate took an instinctive backward step. “Warin,” she cried, “you startled me.”
“What else did you give that Godsol besides your ribbon?” he snarled, grabbing her by the arm. His grasp was so painful that Kate squeaked. She wrenched her arm, trying to free herself.
“Nay, you’ll not reject me again. I need you and your riches now more than ever,” he told her, jerking her toward him as he spoke. “Your sire intends to be rid of me to shield himself, and for that I’ll see he pays.”
Blinding pain shot up Kate’s arm, the hurt so intense it ate up her scream before the smallest sound left her mouth. Her shoes slid on the moist foliage carpeting the stream’s bank. As she fell, Warin once more yanked on her arm, forcing her back to her feet.
Kate swore her bones all separated one from another. Pain exploded into a great vortex of hurt. Black spots danced before her eyes. With every ounce of her energy, she fought to keep the darkness from overtaking her. That left no strength to resist Warin as he used her veil to gag her and the lacing torn from her overgown to bind her hands.
* * *
Kate’s hope of a quick rescue from Haydon came and went with the sunset, the only sign of which was the barest mauve and apricot stain to the thick cloud layer that now owned the sky. Shadows closed around her. In the newborn darkness this wild wood’s ferny bracken, oak and the occasional beech copsed into a thicket to provide some carpenter with wood, became hulking shapes. Panic rode hard upon her spine, and not because outlaws, brigands and debauched men inhabited such wild places as these.
If her father already followed them, any pursuit would halt with night’s onset. The trail would be impossible to follow in the dark. And what if her sire didn’t yet know she was missing? It was a possibility, especially if Haydon’s ladies had lingered until darkness in the garden and were only now rejoining their menfolk in the hall. In that case there’d be no searchers on her trail until the morrow and that would be hours too late.
Fool that she was, by meeting Warin alone and unchaperoned she’d offered him a temptation he couldn’t resist after her father’s insult. Warin meant to force marriage on her once they reached Glevering, her dowry property.
Just as she’d done so many times over these last hours, Kate conjured up an image of her future. Warin would bind and gag her and drag her into Glevering’s chapel. Given Kate’s present mood and the fact that she’d never once been to the manor that was her inheritance, she let her imagination turn that holy chamber into a barn rather than a sanctuary, with chickens pecking at a packed-earth floor and some flea-bitten, English-speaking priest at the altar. Warin would yet wear his filthy mail and reek of sweat as he held her helpless at his side. When the priest called out the vows that Kate should speak, her erstwhile lover would force her head to move and, will she, nill she, she’d become his wife.
Tears threatened to rise. Kate blinked them away. Why had she ever begrudged a union with Sir Gilbert? At least marriage to her father’s choice of husbands was an honorable estate, making of her a legitimate wife. After Warin’s disheveled appearance at Haydon’s picnic, no man or woman in the shire would ever believe Kate had been forced into wedlock with him. Nay, they’d all think she’d hoodwinked her sire and married her lover to escape a rightfully planned union.
Such a marriage would do worse than ruin her. She’d be shunned. Fathers and mothers would forbid their children contact with her, fearing their offspring might believe they, too could escape their arranged marriages by such devious means. All this, just when she was beginning to make friends among the shire’s women.
Kate choked back self-pity. If there was no one left to save her from a fate worse than death except herself, then she had no time to waste in winning her freedom. This was especially so now that her first two escape attempts had failed.
Both she and the palfrey she rode were now tied to a saddle. Her mount’s reins were knotted to Warin’s warhorse’s saddle, while Kate’s gown-lacing bound her wrists to the palfrey’s saddle tree through an ornamental bend of bone trim. As the lacing was made of the same thin fabric as her gown, it should have been a simple thing to tear it, or so Kate had told herself hours ago.
One more time, she forced her arms as far apart as they would go, which was about the span of two hands. Slowly, carefully, so as not to attract the attention of her captor, she scraped the narrow strip of fabric across the saddle’s pommel.
The material slipped back and forth more easily now, no doubt because her efforts had polished the wooden saddle to a new slickness. Moments passed. Three new flecks of blue lint danced up to join their brothers in the palfrey’s dark mane. Beyond that, nothing.
Hissing in frustration, Kate pulled on her bound wrists until her arms trembled and her hands throbbed. How could it be so hard to do this? At this rate she wouldn’t be free until long after they reached Glevering.
Startled by Kate’s noise and movements, the palfrey, too highly strung for his own good and none too pleased by his rider’s strange behavior, danced skittishly to one side. His nervous prancing prodded Warin’s warhorse into a worried neigh. It was all the big black had strength to do. Already exhausted by this day’s labors, the steed’s head hung as he plodded ever northward toward their destination.
“Whatever you’re doing back there, stop it,” Warin snapped.
Kate instantly leaned forward. Her hair, free of its knot after her first escape attempt, slid over her shoulders and down her arms to enshroud her bound wrists and the result of her efforts in a dark brown curtain. “I’m not doing anything,” she retorted. “It’s this stupid horse of yours, jumping at shadows. Since I have no control of him,” she added, “I can do nothing to stop him.”
Each word tore at her aching throat. Kate’s hand lifted instinctively toward her neck as she sought to ease the hurt. Her movement came to an abrupt halt, the lacing once more cutting into an already raw wrist.
Simmering anger rose back to a boil. May God take Warin! He, who had no right to even touch her, had assaulted her, not once but three times! Of course, he wouldn’t have had the chance to lay bruises on her if she hadn’t been such a fool in her first attempt at freedom. They’d still been within walking distance of Haydon then. Her hands had been bound and she gagged, but nothing held her to the saddle. If only she’d taken a single moment in which to form even the most rudimentary of plans. Instead, the instant her senses steadied, she’d thrown herself out of the palfrey’s saddle and dashed back toward Haydon. By the time she’d loosened the lacing and torn off the gag so she could scream, Warin was upon her. She’d shouted, but he’d closed his hands about her throat until no air reached her lungs and she saw stars again.
Ahead of her, Warin turned far enough in his saddle to shoot her a narrow-eyed look. For comfort’s sake he’d long since removed his helmet. In the twilight his golden hair gleamed white while his eyes glinted out of night-darkened sockets.
“By God, but you’re a bold bitch,” he complained. “It’s a wonder your sire hasn’t beaten you to a pulp for your impertinence.”
“Feel free to finish what you’ve started and do what he has not,” Kate goaded him, knowing full well it was an empty dare.
His smile was narrow and swift. “Tut, sweet Kate, provoke me at your will and you’ll still fail. Nay, I took care to see I laid no marks on you. Bruises suggest coercion. I’ll not risk the annulment of our marriage after all I’ve gone through to take you.”
Kate sneered at him, wishing she were as confident as her expression implied. “My father won’t care if there’s proof of force or not. If you marry me, he’ll demand an annulment, especially now that he and Gilbert DuBois have agreed to a marriage between their houses. My sire’s not likely to let you steal Glevering and me from him.”
Yet facing her in his saddle, Warin laughed. There was no hint
of amusement in the sound. “Not only do I think your father will allow me to hold Glevering, I am convinced that once he knows I’m within Glevering’s walls and between your thighs, your sire will see the value of having me as both his son and his steward. You see, I know for a fact that he removed the lance’s cap with the full intention of murdering the Godsol, for he admitted just that plan to me before the Godsol and I jousted. Were I to call out this truth for all to hear his name would be doubly blackened, for he’s now publicly lied about that same event.”
His words pierced Kate to the core. With the tide of opinion turning against her sire since the joust her father might indeed crumple before Warin’s threat. Ach, but if her father supported this wedding all was lost. No matter if it ruined her in the eyes of the shire, Warin would be her husband.
The very thought of being abandoned to Warin’s tender mercies fed Kate’s panic. Beneath the shield of her hair she again worked her lacing against the pommel. This time the fabric gave an odd little jerk, the tension on her wrist relaxing just a little bit. Kate sucked in a pleased breath. Could it be a rent had started?
Ahead of her Warin frowned, his gaze dropping to her bound hands. Kate started in concern then threw words at him, hoping to distract him.
“It won’t be only my father who comes seeking us, but every man now within Haydon’s walls including the bishop. The churchman will want to see that no sin happened between us. This I vow. I’ll speak to the prelate, telling him how you forced me.”
She took heart from her own pronouncement. It was possible the bishop would listen to her. What a churchman wanted he got, even if her father protested.
Warin grinned, his teeth gleaming white against the deepening gloom. “Do, my sweet. Do run to the bishop. Tell him whatever you please. After you’ve seen him, I’ll privately reveal that your complaints are only a ruse, a way to evade your sire’s anger over our hasty deed. Nay, there’s no one to stop me not when royal writ grants you the right to marry where you will.
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