Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  Struggling to control her voice, Martine said, “Sir Thorne has never had any trouble discerning where his interests lie. Have you, Thorne?”

  “Not generally, my lady.” He took her arm, but she pulled away as he tried to lead her toward the stairwell, accompanied by Boyce. Quietly but firmly he said, “Don’t make me hold a sword to you. I will if I have to.” He closed a hand—the hand of his bad arm—around her wrist, but she punched it with her free hand. Wincing, he released her with a raw oath. He moved behind her and she heard his sword being withdrawn, then felt the pressure of its sharp tip through the back of her tunic. Urged forward by that pressure, she headed for the stairwell.

  Chapter 20

  For the first hour of her imprisonment, Martine stood in the middle of the tiny, fetid cell with her eyes closed, holding her skirts off the floor lest the vermin beneath the rotted straw crawl up them. At first she tried to pray, but she’d never been much good at that, and soon gave it up in favor of envisioning her imaginary herb garden, the one she’d planned in her head on her wedding day, and on parchment during her long winter’s exile at St. Dunstan’s.

  Thinking of the herb garden calmed her, and presently she turned her mind toward her predicament. Once she thought about it, she realized that Thorne’s cooperation with Bernard had been a foregone conclusion. He’d had but two choices: death if he defended her, or a valuable holding if he gave her up. What would Martine have done in his place? No, she mustn’t make excuses for him. He’d sworn an oath to keep her from harm. He was supposed to be so resourceful, so brave. He might have thought of something. As it was, his betrayal was overwhelmingly painful, and coldly sobering. She was on her own now. If she was to be saved, she would have to save herself.

  Outside, Boyce sat on a stool against the cellar wall, humming drinking songs. He was an odd sort, a fellow who, under different circumstances, she might almost have liked. She heard a creaking, accompanied by a kind of musical jangle, and knew the big man was shifting his weight on the stool, jarring the ring of keys on his belt—one of which would fit the lock on the cell’s iron door.

  After a few moments’ thought, she approached the door and looked out through the peephole. “Sir Boyce?”

  He stood, and suddenly his big face filled the little square opening. “It’s just Boyce, my lady. I’m not a knight, just a huntsman. But I must say it’s rather nice to be called ‘Sir.’ I’m flattered.”

  As she’d thought he would be. “I’m terribly thirsty, Boyce. Do you suppose you could fetch me some wine?”

  He frowned. “Nay, my lady, I can’t leave my post.”

  She licked her lips and touched a hand to her throat, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.

  He pulled at his beard. “But I could call for it to be sent down.”

  “Would you?”

  “Aye, I’m a bit thirsty myself, if the truth be told.”

  She had, of course, counted on that, never having seen him without a cup in his hand. “I brought back a lovely claret from St. Dunstan’s. Felda knows where it is.”

  And so the red-haired giant lumbered to the stairwell and called up for Felda to fetch down some of Lady Martine’s claret.

  “And two goblets,” she prompted.

  “And two goblets!” he roared.

  Felda appeared with the claret, fussed and clucked over her mistress’s captivity, exchanged a knowing look with her, then poured a small goblet for her and a rather larger one for her guard. Boyce drank his down quickly while Martine pretended to sip hers.

  “Isn’t that good?” Martine asked.

  He looked a bit baffled. “It’s... different.”

  “That would be the spices,” she quickly offered. “It’s spiced claret, didn’t I mention that?”

  “Oh. Perhaps you did. But what kind of spices would make it taste so—”

  “Take a guess,” she said, indicating that Felda should give him a refill. “You tell me what you think they are.”

  Again he drained the goblet quickly. “Ain’t cinnamon,” he said, yawning. He took his seat on the stool again. “Ain’t cloves.” He inspected the empty vessel in his hand as he nodded sleepily, his expression of dazed puzzlement giving way to one of sudden illumination. He tired to focus on Martine’s face through the peephole. “Wait a minute.”

  He stood, pawing at the wall for support, the goblet slipping from his fingers and rolling on the floor. “You’re a crafty wench,” he slurred, then lurched toward the door, shoving his face in the peephole; Martine jumped back. Presently he grinned, and then a deep, rumbly chuckle rose from him. “Damn crafty!” He laughed uproariously, his eyes watering. “That’s a good joke on me,” he choked out, pushing himself away from the door and stumbling toward Felda, who backed up swiftly. His roared with laughter. Tears streamed from his reddened face.

  Suddenly he quieted, his eyes rolled up, and he toppled over like a felled tree, landing facedown with a whump.

  The two women looked at each other in wonderment. Felda glanced toward the stairwell, then nudged the unconscious man with the toe of her slipper.

  “The keys,” Martine whispered. Her maid slipped the key ring off Boyce’s belt. The third one she tried unlocked the door. Martine darted from the little cell and embraced her. “Oh, thank you, Felda. I knew I could count on you.”

  “What now, milady?”

  “Ailith once told me there’s a secret passageway down here.”

  Felda rolled her eyes, and Martine’s heart sank. “It’s hardly a secret, milady. Everyone knows about it—all the household staff, anyways.”

  Oh, thank God. “Where is it?”

  It took longer than Martine would have liked to move aside the pyramid of barrels that concealed a small wooden door in the stone wall. “‘Tis a tunnel leading to the church,” Felda explained, pulling open the door. “For use in the event of a siege. Lots of castles have them.” She plucked a torch from its bracket on the wall, lifted her skirts, and ducked. “Follow me.”

  It was but a narrow passage burrowed into the earth and shored up with wooden posts. They had to hunch over as they made their way through it, and after a while Martine began to wonder if the church was, indeed, this far away. But presently the tunnel sloped upward, ending in a series of rough-hewn stones that served as a kind of stairway. Above the stairs, in a ceiling of oak planks, was a wooden panel. Felda forced open the panel’s rusted latch and the two women pushed upward on it until it swung aside.

  They found themselves behind the altar of the barony church. Once outside, Felda extinguished the torch in the snow. “‘Tis a good thing we’re having a long, cold winter,” she said. “With all this snow, and that full moon, ‘tis as bright as day.”

  It was true, Martine realized as she looked toward Harford Castle looming above the little village, its windows dark. She could see it as clearly as if it were late afternoon, and not the dead of night. It was so cold, though. She shivered, and wrapped her arms around herself. “I won’t get far without a horse,” she said. “And I could use a mantle.”

  Felda nodded. “Fitch Ironmonger’s got a horse. And I’ll wager his wife’s got a mantle she could spare.”

  “His wife! Does she know about you?”

  “Of course not,” said Felda, leading the way. “And if Fitch don’t want her finding out, he’ll hand over the horse and the mantle.”

  Martine stood in the shadows while Felda hissed “Fitch!” through the back window of a little cottage. The ironmonger emerged, groggy with sleep, and they engaged in a brief and animated conversation, all in whispered English. Fitch growled and shook his head. He repeatedly called Felda a name that Martine knew meant a female dog. But finally, when Felda shrugged and made as if she were going to enter the cottage—undoubtedly to wake up the wife—he grudgingly saddled up his fat old palfrey and produced a threadbare woolen mantle lined with squirrel.

  “Where will you go?” Felda asked as Martine mounted up. “The first place they’ll look for you is St. Dunstan
’s.”

  “I know. I need to find someplace I can stay for a day or two, while I consider my options. There’s an abandoned cottage I know of that’s well hidden. Perhaps I’ll go there.”

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  “You’ve done quite enough. I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account. When they question you, say that you brought the claret as Boyce asked, but you didn’t know it was drugged. Say you came back upstairs before he drank it.”

  Felda sighed and took Martine’s hand. “Be careful, milady.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  The reflected moonlight made it easy to find the tree growing from the boulder in the middle of the road. Then it was only a matter of following the meandering creek north, and then continuing in that direction when the creek headed east, until Martine at last came to the overgrown clearing and the snow-covered cottage within.

  It was well past midnight, and it had been a long and fatiguing day. Martine kicked the pile of straw pallets in the corner, and two mice darted out. She kicked it again, but nothing else emerged. Wolf pelts were heaped on the pallets. She tossed aside the top one, which had been gathering dust for years, then curled up on the rest with her mantle wrapped around her.

  Even in her exhaustion, she found it difficult to get to sleep. Thorne’s treachery felt more bitter than the frigid night air, and she found she could ease neither her body nor her mind. When she finally drifted off into a light, restless sleep, it was to a vision of her mother’s apple-green wedding gown frozen in a lake turned to ice.

  When she awoke later during the night, she realized that she was not alone. She sensed someone standing over her, felt his hands upon her. With a cry, she lashed out, but when she tried to swing her fists at the dark form above, her efforts were hampered by the mantle in which she was tangled.

  “Easy.” She knew that voice. It was Thorne. She relaxed... and then tensed. Thorne! He’d found her! She sat up. “I won’t let you take me back.”

  He paused in the act of covering her with something lined with fur—his own mantle, for he wore none—and sat on the edge of her makeshift bed. In the silvery light, his eyes looked enormous. “Take you back! My God, you’re serious.”

  “You put in with Bernard! You betrayed me!” He reached for her, and she slapped his hand away. “Get away from me.” She tried to rise, but he grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her down into the wolf pelts. When she raised her fists to him, he captured one in each hand and pinned them next to her head.

  “Listen to me,” he growled.

  “Nay!”

  “You don’t want to hear the truth, because then you’d have less reason to hate me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t close her ears.

  He said, “The only way I could help you was by pretending to go along with Bernard so he wouldn’t kill me straight off and I could figure out some way to get you out of there.”

  “Pretending? More lies.”

  “Martine, look at me.” His hands tightened around hers, and he shook them. “Look at me, damn it!” She opened her eyes and looked into his as he hovered over her, pressing her down. “I can’t wield sword or hold a bow. I can’t even walk without that damn crutch. There was no way I could defend you physically. Bernard knew that. He was counting on it.”

  “You... you told him it galled you to have to protect me.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “You bargained with him over which piece of land he would give you!”

  “He would have been suspicious if I’d thrown in with him too easily. It seems my strategy worked better than I realized. You believed it, too.” She saw a flicker of something that might have been hurt in his eyes. “Did you really have so little faith in me?”

  She looked away. “You locked me downstairs in that awful... You wouldn’t even let me spend the night in my chamber.”

  He released her hands to cup her face and turn it so she had to look him in the eye. “The tunnel leads from the cellar, Martine. If you’d been held on the third level, you never would have gotten out of that keep.”

  She considered that for a moment. “You locked me in that cell because you knew ‘twould be easier for me to escape from down there?”

  “Well, actually, I thought it would be easier for me to help you escape. I never expected you to be gone when I got down there.” He chuckled. “I must admit, I was impressed. Boyce out cold on the floor with an empty goblet next to him, and the doors to the cell and the tunnel gaping open... It didn’t take me long to figure out what you’d done, or that you’d needed help to do it. Felda was the obvious candidate, so I woke her up and made her tell me where you went.”

  “But I didn’t even tell her!”

  “She said it was an abandoned cottage. This was the only likely choice.” He stroked her cheek, and she breathed in his subtle, comforting scent. His fingers strayed to her lips, which he softly caressed. “Martine...”

  Again she turned her head, deliberately breaking the contact. Presently he released her and stood, saying, “I’ll get some wood and make a fire. Then perhaps we can both get a few good hours of sleep before dawn.”

  Taking up his crutch, he grabbed a broken-handled ax off the floor and went outside. She lay on her side facing the wall, listening to the repetitive thwack of wood being chopped and wondering how he managed it with his injuries. When he returned, he built a fire in the clay-lined cooking pit, which took him a while to light, and then he came and straightened the two mantles that covered her. Just as she thought to ask where he was going to sleep, she felt him behind her, fitting his big body to hers and tucking the mantles around both of them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “We can keep each other warm,” he said, wrapping her in his arms and urging her against him.

  “Thorne, I don’t think—”

  “Good night, my lady,” he murmured.

  He did feel warm, wonderfully warm. She felt enclosed and protected in his embrace—his innocent embrace, after all, for he made no move to render it otherwise. His breath on the back of her neck became steadily more regular, his body heavier, until presently she knew that he was fast asleep. Closing her eyes, she soon joined him.

  When next she woke, it was still dark, and she felt chilled again. The fire had gone out, and Thorne was relighting it. When he returned to the stack of fur-covered pallets and settled in behind her, chafing her arm to warm her, she realized that the front of his tunic had become heated from the flames. She felt the delicious warmth even through her kirtle and tunic, and sighed in luxurious contentment, automatically snuggling back against him. She did it unthinkingly, unaware, even as his hand stilled on her arm and his breath caught in his throat, of the effect her actions might have on him. It wasn’t until she felt the movement against her bottom—felt his manhood rise and press against her—that she realized what she had unconsciously wrought.

  She lay perfectly still, thinking, I should pull away from him, but unable to will herself to do so. The rise and fall of his chest against her back accelerated in time to her thudding heart. For a few moments they lay together like two carved statues, and then slowly, very slowly, he drew his hand up her arm.

  This time his touch was gentle, even tentative, as if he were waiting for her to object. She should object, she knew, but a longing deeper than her reservations had stricken her with a strange paralysis, and she found herself powerless to move. He stroked her through her wool sleeve, his hand traveling up to her shoulder and then down to her own hand. His fingertips skimmed gingerly over hers; he massaged her palm with his thumb, and the effect was so unexpectedly erotic that she gasped.

  He caressed her rounded hip and the concave slope of her waist, then splayed his hand over her belly and let it rest there while he kissed, with aching softness, the back of her neck. Everything he did felt tentative, experimental, as if he were testing her acceptance of him. He trailed his hand
upward, stopping just beneath her breasts. They tingled with anticipation. She felt her nipples harden; with every breath they seemed to scrape against the linen of her kirtle. Gradually his hand moved upward, molding itself lightly to flesh that seemed to swell beneath his touch, as if begging for a firmer caress. When his palm grazed the erect nipple, desire pulsed deep in her womb, and she felt his organ throb against her.

  Again and again, with mesmerizing slowness, he traced paths of liquid fire over her body, although he made no move to disrobe her. His lingering exploration drove her to maddening heights of arousal. With a touch both cautious and intimate, he coaxed sensations in her that surpassed anything she ever thought herself capable of feeling. Her heart filled her throat; she was feverish with longing.

  At last she felt him gather her skirts and pull them up, exposing her stockinged legs and bare hip to the silken caress of the fur-lined mantle that blanketed them. She felt darkly excited to be rendered naked only from waist to thigh. She felt the soft tickle of the fur on her sensitized skin.

  His hand on her belly felt hot and rough. As he lowered it, she held her breath. When at last she felt his fingers softly brush the hair between her thighs, a whimper of desire rose from her throat. He explored her sex as patiently as he had the rest of her, investigating with a delicate and almost touching curiosity. She quivered and arched against him, thinking she would die if he didn’t put an end to this exquisite torment. When he did—when he found and stroked the little knot where the torment was gathered—a sudden, convulsive pleasure shook her in its grip. Her own cries filled her ears, and for a few blinding moments, her senses fled.

  When they returned, she lay still and sated in his arms. He rose on his elbow to rain warm kisses on her ear and cheek and lips, and then she felt him reach between them to untie his chausses. Thinking he’d want her on her back, she tried to turn, but he stopped her. “Nay, stay as you are,” he whispered hoarsely, urging her as she had been, on her side facing away from him. She realized it would pain him less to lie on his left side, where there would be no pressure on his injured right arm and leg.