Outrageous

by Christina Dodd

  Wenthaven hesitated. It went against his cautious nature to reveal his plans to anyone at any time. But what could it hurt? He could always have this virile, smelly mongrel sacrificed and served on a platter to Henry, and none would be the wiser. “If you challenge and defeat Lady Marian, she’ll have to let you in her bed. And when you’ve thoroughly ruffled the sheets, then she’ll have no choice but to wed you. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “She might refuse.”

  In a tone as steely as his sword blade, Wenthaven said, “She’s a woman. She lives on my charity. She’ll do as she’s told.”

  “When you speak like that, I almost feel sorry for her.”

  Harbottle didn’t sound as if he meant it, Wenthaven noted. “Tell no one of our discussion, or you’ll ruin the surprise we have planned for Lady Marian.”

  With a hop of enthusiasm, Harbottle slid out into the bushes. Wenthaven extinguished the candles, conscious of a job well done, then felt a nudge.

  His latest lover snuggled her head under his arm and rested it against his chest. “I don’t hang about you because you’re wealthy,” she whispered, all fake innocence and sensual appeal. “And you don’t keep me to use me. That awful man didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  “No.” Wenthaven stroked her blond head and matched her insincerity. “We’re eternal lovers, and when the time is right, we’ll marry and you’ll be my countess, for I could never use a woman who offers her love so sweetly.”

  And he smiled a secret smile.

  3

  Someone was in the room. Someone besides Art, who slept at the foot of Griffith’s bed and whose hand shook him awake. With a warrior’s instincts, Griffith worked to maintain an even breathing while his eyes adjusted to the contrast of dark and white light the night and the moon created. Slowly he turned his head and saw someone crouched beside the saddlebags. Too far away from the window’s square of moonlight to be recognizable, the intruder used his hands to search the far reaches of the leather sacks, and Griffith watched carefully.

  Did the scurrilous fellow seek gold? Or did one of Wenthaven’s minions seek information?

  Rising empty-handed, the thief revealed himself to be a plump youth, clad in hose and jerkin. He opened the cupboard and soundlessly groped through the contents, and Griffith eyed the distance to the door. If the youth made a move to leave when his spying was complete, Griffith would urge him to remain. Physically urge him to remain. And although this young man’s legs were long, Griffith’s were longer.

  He would get to the door first.

  But that proved unnecessary. Apparently dissatisfied, the thief shut the doors and moved across the floor to Griffith’s bedside.

  The bag of gold rested there on the nightstand. Marian’s bag of gold.

  With a quiet murmur of satisfaction, the youth picked it up, and Griffith rose with a roar. The robber shrieked and whirled on him. Griffith grabbed him by the waist and flung him on the bed. Pouncing, Griffith evaded the fists that aimed so unerringly at his nose. He caught the flailing hands. With a wrestler’s grip, he leaned his arm into the intruder’s slender throat.

  The scent and softness and his own sure instinct brought reality with a jolt.

  “Got him?” Art asked, fierce as only an old warrior can be.

  “Got her,” Griffith corrected sourly, and felt the mutinous body beneath him collapse.

  “What the hell?” Art lit one feeble candle with his flint and held it aloft, and the flame reflected in the wisps of red hair around a defiant face. At once, Art subdued his savagery and broke into a smile. “Lady Marian, I trow!”

  “Aye, ’tis Lady Marian.” Still straddling her hips, Griffith sat back on his heels and surveyed what he could see of her. “Lady Marian, in a most outrageous outfit.”

  The long-sleeved jerkin, he could now see, was quilted and stuffed—quite fashionable and quite convenient for a woman wishing to disguise an unmanly chest. The short skirt that flared beneath the belt served, as well, to cover the curve of her hips. But the skirt ended at the tops of her thighs, and lying beneath him, as she was now, it rode up and revealed the codpiece. Or, rather—the empty codpiece.

  “God rot it.” Embarrassed, horrified, and…God help him, was he aroused? Griffith jerked his gaze back up to her face. “What are you doing in here? And in this harlequin’s outfit most absurd?”

  Her full lips pouted and trembled like those of a child thwarted, but she maintained a pretense of dignity when she protested, “I could scarcely come to rob your room in my skirts and petticoats.”

  “Rob my—”

  “And I wish you’d keep your voice down and blow out that candle,” she scolded, her voice low yet strengthening as she recovered from her alarm. “The earl has spies everywhere, and by my troth, I’d be ill pleased to have this adventure bandied about.”

  Griffith glanced at Art, and Art nodded. Extinguishing the light, he said, “Ye’d best get off the lass before I’m forced to scold like an old maid chaperone and call for the priest.” Griffith jumped off the bed like a scalded cat, and Art continued, “Ye’d best ask her about Wenthaven before she gets away.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Marian avoided looking at either of them by lifting the purse from the nightstand. “At least, I’m not leaving without this. ’Tis mine, is it not?”

  An undiagnosed disappointment sharpened Griffith’s voice. “Mercenary and thieving.”

  “Griffith,” Art groaned.

  “Quite,” Marian agreed in even tones.

  Too even. Griffith’s ear caught the firmness of a soul unjustly accused and resigned to misjudgment. He found himself excusing her. “But you can’t be thieving. As you said, the money is yours.”

  She tied the heavy purse to her belt. “I’m only mercenary, then.”

  Like a benevolent gnome, Art threw his arm around her shoulders. “Not at all. Ye have to feed yer babe, don’t ye?” Marian shied away from Art, but he pulled her close to the window. “Nay, lass, look at me and tell me ye don’t trust this face.”

  Of course, she did trust him. Once the moonlight had touched his vivid blue eye and his wrinkled, half-plucked chin and his kind smile, she trusted him as surely as did every other woman in the world.

  “Griffith, here”—Art extended a crooked finger—“Griffith doesn’t understand why ye need Her Majesty’s money, but Griffith’s never been a father. He’s never had to keep a growing child in shoes and clothes, or try to fill a babe’s endlessly hollow belly, or pay a witch to come with her herbs to cure a wee fever.”

  “Or pay a priest to bury the tiny bodies?”

  Marian’s gentle inquiry startled Griffith. He knew Art’s story, knew the pain behind the tale of the “wee fever.”

  But Marian must have heard the quaver in the old voice, for she asked, “Have you children, Art?”

  Art cleared his throat. “Not any more, lass. I saved them from a battle and lost them—all six of them, and their mother, too—in the famine and sickness that followed.”

  She nudged him with her shoulder, the kind of a nudge a tabby gives when she wants to be petted. He raised a hand and smoothed her hair back. Then, with artificial briskness, he said, “Now tell us, like a good lass, is it a fact that Wenthaven knows more than most folks about his guests and their business?”

  Her saucy smile denied she’d ever been touched by Art’s story, and Griffith might almost have believed that moment of compassion never happened—except that Art wiped a tear off his cheek.

  Waving at the walls around them, she whispered, “Wenthaven could sell information to the devil, but he’s too greedy and keeps it for himself. This room is the richest, rife with places to listen and to peek, and Wenthaven puts only his most important guests here.” She smirked at Griffith. “What have you done to so interest Wenthaven?”

  “A just inquiry,” he answered. “I’d like to know myself.”

  Her hand crept to the purse at her belt, and she rolled the coins around, looking at th
e wistfully appealing Art. “I’ll move you to a different room. A safe room.”

  Griffith observed her betraying movements. “Why do you imagine you may move Wenthaven’s guests and he’ll not protest?”

  Her hand dropped to her hip, and she smiled with cocky assurance. “I can handle Wenthaven.”

  “And how do you know the room is safe?” Griffith probed.

  “You’ll see.” She moved out of the betraying moonlight. “Get your master’s things, Art, and I’ll take you there.”

  “Got nothing to bring.” Art pulled a wry face. “Jane o’ the laundry took it all. Guess I’ll have to go looking for her tomorrow and have the clothes sent to our new room. Wherever that might be.”

  Marian stepped into the candlelit hallway and bent to pull on a pair of fine leather boots, appropriate for a young man.

  Hand on her arm, Griffith swung her around. “Why didn’t you just ask me for your gold?”

  He wanted to know the truth. He wanted to know what she thought, and she infuriated him with a prevaricating, “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You might have left tomorrow,” she answered.

  “If I had left tomorrow without giving you your gold, I would be a thief.”

  “No, not a thief, but possibly”—she looked at him, at his swollen nose—“but possibly an angry man.”

  “Is that what you think of me? That I would rob you as revenge for this puny injury?”

  “I do beg your pardon,” she said.

  Offended by this affront to his honor, he retorted, “I would hope so.”

  “I shouldn’t have hit you, no matter how insulting you were. But when you insulted the lady Elizabeth’s integrity—”

  “Wait. Wait.” He held up one hand. “Do you mean you apologize, not for the slur on my own integrity, but for hitting me?”

  Looking him full in the eyes, she answered sharply, “Only a fool would depend on a man’s integrity.”

  “What kind of men have you known?” But she tilted her head, honestly puzzled by his outrage. Disgusted—not with her, but with the men who’d taught her such values—he gestured to her. “Lead on.”

  As she led them to the end of the hall, Griffith heard Art chortle behind him, and the old man’s whisper floated to his ears. “She’ll be a tough nut to crack. Mayhap ye should give up before ye’ve started.”

  Brow puckered, Marian glanced back to verify their presence…or was it because she’d heard Art? Griffith hunched his shoulders, stepped between them, and glowered at her.

  “Don’t you ever smile?” she asked, as if goaded by his ill humor. She didn’t wait for a reply but plucked a candle from its stand. Showing no respect for the earl’s possession, she placed it on a gold-and-colored-glass wall plate and opened a tiny door hidden in the paneling. Griffith had to duck to enter, almost tumbled down four narrow steps, and found himself at the bottom of a winding stair.

  “The tower,” he said, paying Marian a grudging respect. “Aye, I can see even Wenthaven would have difficulty placing a spy here.”

  She smiled, but her mouth was lopsided and she seemed to be uncomfortable. “Wenthaven doesn’t ever come here.” Moonlight shone through thin arrow slits, providing feeble help for the candle. She lifted it high, but Griffith could see only a black tunnel above. Beneath the stairs, the floor tumbled in a rough pattern of paving stone and boards.

  “This is the old part of the castle.” She looked up and around. “Even the rock feels ancient to me.”

  “Aye.” Art took a deep breath. “Smells like the old times.”

  She flashed him a smile, and her boots clapped against the stone as she leaped up the stairs two at a time.

  “Impulsive,” Griffith muttered, but he followed just as swiftly. To guard her steps, he told himself, for no rail protected her from a fall, but he took the chance to study the undulating bottom and legs before him. It was a new perspective, and while a woman in hose should disgust him, he found it only piqued an already reluctantly whetted appetite. The strength of her calves, the smooth movement of muscles working to get her up the stairs, entranced him, made him dizzy, and when she stopped abruptly on the top landing, he skidded back a step and banged his knee.

  She caught at his arm as if he were an old man. “Are you ill?”

  “No!” Rubbing his new bruise, glaring at the cackling Art, he demanded, “Where is this room?”

  “Here.” She flung open a door he’d not previously noticed and waved the candle. “Go on.”

  He stepped inside and smelled dust. She followed him, raised the light, and he saw elegance—and melancholy. At the very center of the round room rose a dais. Perched thereon stood a carved wood bed shrouded in brocade curtains. Tapestries alive with scenes of long-ago hunts, battles, and domesticity hung on the stone walls. An immense fireplace gaped, hungering for fuel, for light, for warmth. Chests and cupboards, placed by an artistic hand, waited to be filled. Chairs ached to embrace a human form.

  “This is no room for a guest,” he objected. “This is—”

  Marian chuckled, and the sound drifted on a current of air. At once the room seemed brighter, happier. “Wenthaven’s countess used this room.”

  “If that’s meant to reassure me,” he said sternly, “it does not.”

  “They tell me she liked to be above the hubbub of the castle guests.” Placing the candle beside the bed, she whacked the curtains. Dust flew, and she coughed. “The servants haven’t been caring for this place, and with you here, they’ll be forced to.” She wiped a finger across the glass of the window and glared at the streak it left. “Lazy sluts.”

  Griffith said, “Wenthaven wouldn’t want me to destroy the sanctity of a shrine he has kept so carefully.”

  “As you wish,” she answered. “But wherever you go in this keep, beware of drapes that seem to cut the breeze, and tiny alcoves and passages that lead nowhere. They often hide the unseen listener.”

  He winced.

  “I thought you wanted to be able to freely speak to Art. To know no peering eyes watch you dress, or snigger at the holes in your hose. To piss without embarrassment—”

  “M’lady,” Art chimed in, “the watchers would but envy him.”

  “Shut up, Art,” Griffith snapped. “That is scarcely the point.”

  Marian insisted, “That’s all the point. There’s no place in this castle where Wenthaven’s spies cannot go—except here.”

  Griffith was a man used to solitude. To the open length of a Welsh seashore and the hushed call of a woodland owl. Living here at Wenthaven Castle for an indefinite time would be strain enough. But never knowing when someone eavesdropped on him…

  From the doorway, Art asked, “So are we staying?”

  “Wenthaven will toss us out when he discovers our impertinence,” Griffith insisted.

  But he was wavering, and Marian knew it. She smiled that lopsided smile again. “He won’t mind.”

  Art stepped in and dropped the bags. The thick carpet swallowed the thud, and he wiped his palms on his jerkin. “What happened to her?”

  “The countess?” Marian’s gaze shifted away toward the window. “Eighteen years ago she fell down the stairs and broke her neck. That’s why this room is safe for you. Wenthaven never comes here. I’m told she was the only thing he ever cared about.”

  “So we trade the nosiness of Wenthaven for the constant presence of his wife.”

  Art’s whisper chilled Griffith.

  Marian moved close to the old man, seeming unsurprised by his claim of a haunting. She laid a hand on his arm. “Is she really here? Some of the servants claim she is. They say the room’s too cold and the air’s unfriendly, but I’ve never felt that.”

  Art patted her hand. “Of course not. She didn’t die unshriven, did she?”

  “Nay. She still lived when they found her, and the priest gave her last rites. Then they tried to move her.…” Marian dropped her hands in a final gesture.

  “So she’s not a
cruel ghost,” Art said, “but a gentle shade whose work on this earth was left unfinished. She’ll have no patience with idle maids or lusty knaves. But she likes ye, Lady Marian. Aye, she likes ye.”

  Delighted, Marian smiled at Art, and Griffith found himself even more annoyed by the friendship springing up between his manservant and his…and Lady Marian. “Arthur,” he snapped, “you’ve never claimed to be a sensitive before.”

  “Do ye think ye know everything about me?” Art snapped back. “Ye young runt, ye.”

  Marian tossed back her head and laughed aloud. This time the change was tangible. The room brightened, and Griffith looked for an explanation. There, outside the east window, the sun flung its earliest glow. Dawn wouldn’t be for another two hours, but Marian saw it, too, and said, “I have to go. I’ve been gone too long as it is.” In a hurry now, she strode to the door. “I’ll get the servants up here as soon as the cock crows. And I’ll clear it with—”

  “I’m going with you,” Griffith said.

  “What?” She paused. “Where?”

  “To see you to your room. ’Tis not safe for a young woman, dressed as you are, to wander about.” He tried hard to keep the censorious tone from his voice, but apparently he had ill succeeded.

  “It’s safe for me,” she retorted.

  “Nevertheless, I will go with you.” And when she opened her mouth again, he added, “Or you’ll stay here until sunup.”

  Her smile expressed a savage impatience. “Come if you wish, then, and be damned to you.”

  “Ladies do not curse so bitterly,” he answered.

  She pretended not to hear, but the set of her shoulders as she ran down the stairs told him she had. She led him past his former room, past the corridor to the main door, and into a smaller passage that wound down to the kitchens. Taking a tiny stairway, she led him up again to a door. She pushed it up a crack, said, “It’s me,” and it was opened by a hulking man-at-arms.

  He stared fearfully when Griffith emerged into the apple orchard at the west side of the keep. “M’lady, this passage is supposed t’ be secret.”