Through A Dark Mist Part 14

"Arrangements?" she asked, the warmth of only moments ago fading under an uncomfortable chill. "I was not aware my ignorance was such an offence."

"No, little fool," he said, smothering any hint of rebellion under the power of his lips. "I meant arrangements to insure you delivered him an heir."

"A stud?" she gasped, shocked anew. "For breeding purposes!"

The Wolf s.h.i.+fted his weight forward to confine her outrage to a few halfhearted squirmings. "A man," man," he said firmly. "For the purpose of protecting you against being sold or traded away in another marriage of someone else's convenience. Surely Sir Hubert was aware of his shortcomings. He should have contrived to keep you from falling victim to a king's greed again-especially if he was as gentle, considerate, and loving as you say he was. Had it been me," he added intently, "I would have gone to whatever lengths necessary to protect you, even to finding a stud to breed you ... even to binding you hand and foot to the bed and overseeing the deed myself." he said firmly. "For the purpose of protecting you against being sold or traded away in another marriage of someone else's convenience. Surely Sir Hubert was aware of his shortcomings. He should have contrived to keep you from falling victim to a king's greed again-especially if he was as gentle, considerate, and loving as you say he was. Had it been me," he added intently, "I would have gone to whatever lengths necessary to protect you, even to finding a stud to breed you ... even to binding you hand and foot to the bed and overseeing the deed myself."

Servanne had no reb.u.t.tal, for indeed there was none. She would not have been in this predicament if she had given Sir Hubert an heir. Both she and the child would have become wards of the king until the heir came of age, but she would have been well within her rights to refuse any proposed unions which she did not favour.

What the rogue's theory failed to consider, however, was that up until a few short hours ago, she had been more than content with the future arrangements made for her. She had been looking forward to her marriage to Lucien Wardieu with a naive eagerness that bordered on childish glee. There again, content in her ignorance, she had not been aware of any other choice available to her.

But was there any other choice? She had only his word he was come to England on a secretive, honourable mission for Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had only his word the golden-haired knight known throughout England as the Baron de Gournay was a cheat and an impostor. This man had bedded her, had introduced her to the wonders of her woman's body, but was pa.s.sion and pleasure any way to measure the truth from the lie?

The chill within her deepened and spread. Despite claiming revenge had played no part in this, would he not, when clearer, calmer reasoning prevailed, consider it a minor triumph to have bedded his brother's intended bride beforehand? Men were all vainglorious creatures when it came to testing and proving their prowess; why should the Wolf's motives prove to be any purer?

Fear, conscience, uncertainty ... and a sudden awareness of where she was-sprawled naked and wildly disheveled in a cave hissing with the ghostly voices of pagan rituals -caused Servanne to tense noticeably. She lowered her hands from where they rested on his shoulders and placed them like a subtle barrier between his flesh and hers.

"Please, I ..."

"What is it? What is wrong? Surely you still do not fear me as a demon with horns and a forked tail?"

"Devilish," she admitted softly, her fingers curling involuntarily into the crisp pelt of hair on his chest. "But no devil, although it does confuse me profoundly to try to find a difference."

He smiled crookedly. "Confusion is a woman's normal state of mind, so I neither take nor lay blame for causing it in you."

Servanne watched as he bowed his head and caught one of her slim, delicate fingers between his lips.

"You have done what your brother will have expected you to do," she said matter-of-factly, and reclaimed her hand.

His gaze lifted slowly to hers. "That was not why I did it."

"Nevertheless"-she spoke slowly, searching his eyes for the truth before she continued-"the deed is done and he will know."

A long pause-long enough for a future of loneliness, regret, and despair to flash before Servanne's eyes-ended on a faintly snarled oath. "You will be safe enough. The Dragon will not take his anger out on you."

"But ... he will will be angry." be angry."

"He will be angry," the Wolf conceded.

"And ... knowing this ... you are still determined to sell me back to him as planned?"

"Your choice of terms leaves much to be desired," he answered with a frown. "I am not selling you back to him. I am sending you on ahead to Bloodmoor Keep because, for the time being anyway, it is the safest place for you to be until the matter is resolved."

"Safe?" she gasped. "How can you expect me to feel safe when you have said and done everything in your power to warn me away away from Bloodmoor Keep?" from Bloodmoor Keep?"

"I have only endeavoured to warn you away from the man who resides there as its master. Bloodmoor itself cannot be held to account for the taint he has brought to it. You will be safe," he repeated. "The castle is full of wedding guests- important guests-and the Dragon will do nothing to rouse anyone's suspicions until the halls and chambers are empty again. If anything, he will be only too eager to act as if nothing has happened beyond paying an enterprising outlaw for the release of his bride. He will not willingly admit to anyone his brother has come back from the dead, or that there might be some reason for the nuptials to be delayed or postponed. Moreover, there are other reasons for secrecy and silence; reasons which forbid both Etienne and myself from settling our conflict openly and speedily, and those I dare not tell you, for it would most definitely place you in certain danger."

"But ... would it not be better for me to know of this danger?"

The Wolf brushed his fingertips over the tight, damp coils of hair clinging to her temples. "I told you he and I were much alike. Just as I can see so clearly what you feel and think at times, one look, one glance into these wide blue eyes of yours and he would know you were hiding something behind them."

"Knowing this, you would still send me to face him alone?"

"I think you are more than a match for whatever tests the Dragon may put you through. Furthermore, you will not be completely alone," the Wolf promised, twining his hands into the wet tangle of her hair. "Nor will you be without recourse if something ... anything anything happens to frighten you. The queen's official representative at the wedding is Lord Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer. You can trust him. He or any of his men will provide help or sanctuary if you need it." happens to frighten you. The queen's official representative at the wedding is Lord Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer. You can trust him. He or any of his men will provide help or sanctuary if you need it."

His frown cleared and he smiled in an attempt to soften the bluntness of his words. "La Seyne is another blackhearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d you will undoubtedly take to task for his boorish manners, but he is loyal to the queen, and none too fond of anyone who shares the humour of Prince John. You can can trust him. I do ... with my life." trust him. I do ... with my life."

Servanne's eyes brimmed slowly with fat, s.h.i.+ny tears. Seeing them, seeing the uncertainty behind them, the Wolf tightened his hands and drew her forward. She tried to avoid his mouth as it came down over hers, but his hands were firm and his lips forceful. His tongue was quick and efficient at reminding her how futile any show of resistance might be, and Servanne moaned softly, helplessly. She went so far as to push against the lowering wall of muscle before her hands betrayed their true desire and crept up and around the bronzed width of his shoulders.

At almost the same moment as Servanne de Briscourt was experiencing the greatest joy in her young life, the Dragon de Gournay was flus.h.i.+ng with excitement.

"We believe we have found their lair, my lord," Sir Aubrey de Vere reported. "We did not dare take the risk of creeping too close lest we betray our presence, but all signs indicate the Black Wolf has made camp in the ruins of an abbey once known as Thornfeld."

"Thornfeld?" Wardieu's blue eyes narrowed sharply. "Why am I not familiar with the name?"

"It is ... was was a cloister inhabited by monks who shunned all contact with the outside world. It is but a halfday's ride from here, no more, and not five leagues from where we lost the scent of the two foresters the other night." a cloister inhabited by monks who shunned all contact with the outside world. It is but a halfday's ride from here, no more, and not five leagues from where we lost the scent of the two foresters the other night."

"By G.o.d, right under our noses," muttered Wardieu. "And no one thought to search this ruined abbey before now?"

De Vere frowned uncomfortably. "It was believed the brothers who lived there were followers of the Antichrist. At any rate, the abbey was put to the torch and the monks slaughtered, and for nigh on eighty years, no one has set eyes upon the ruins or dared to venture anywhere near that part of the forest."

"No one? Not even the hounds of our fearsome Lord High Sheriff who professes to have scoured every square inch of the forest in search of the outlaw and his band?"

"It is not an easy place to find," De Vere said. "The trees are thicker than flies on rotted meat, and the hills are pocked with caves and gorges to easily lead a man astray."

"Surely the local villagers know of its location, especially those who poach the king's deer with impunity."

"Indeed, my lord, and to them this Black Wolf would be a rogue hero; they would not betray his whereabouts even if they knew it. We could only find one toothless old crone who would even admit to knowing of the place, and then only because she was an imbecile and has kept to her own foul company in the woods these past twenty years."

"Perhaps we should make this imbecile sheriff then," Wardieu said angrily. "Who else would think to look first on cursed grounds for a man who would like the world to think of him as a spectre who can appear and disappear at will? By G.o.d, it is just as well Onfroi de la Haye lies so near death; I would strangle him myself for all the worth he is to me."

Nicolaa de la Haye emerged from Wardieu's pavilion and scowled up at the sun. Light filtering through the overhanging flap gave her milk-white complexion a faintly bluish caste. Her eyes were puffed and her stance unsteady, for she had needed strong decoctions of crushed willow bark to help her sleep without dreaming too vividly.

"What is all this about strangling Onfroi?" she grumbled. "I have been entreating you to let me do so for years, but you have always stayed my hand."

"Thornfeld Abbey," Wardieu asked brusquely. "Do you know of it?"

"Thornfeld? Thornfeld ... the name tastes familiar somehow ..."

Wardieu allowed a flicker of disgust to cross his face as he regarded her unkempt, dissolute condition. Was it just the sickly blue glow from the pavilion overhang giving Nicolaa's raven beauty a brittle edge, or was it the stirring of memories that vaguely repulsed him? She had clung to him like a leech the past two nights, and while her body had afforded its usual erotic release for his tensions, there had been no real pleasure derived from her frantic manipulations.

Wardieu turned back to De Vere. "Have the men in full armour and ready to ride in twenty minutes. Are you certain you can find the place again?"

De Vere smiled wanly. "We still have the hag and she still has possession of half her fingers and toes. Milord D'Aeth has been most persuasive in winning her cooperation thus far; I have no doubt he can continue to do so."

"Tell him he can have more than her fingers and toes to chew on so long as she lives long enough to guide us to Thornfeld Abbey."

It might have been an hour, a week, or a month later when Servanne wakened from her pa.s.sion-induced drowse. The air was markedly cooler where they lay twined together on the moss, although there was more than enough heat emanating from the Wolf's body to maintain hers at a rosy flush. The edge of the pool was a few inches from where her fingers rested limply on the moss, but the slight disturbance caused by uncurling them and dipping them into the water produced a distinct change in the tempo of the heart beating beneath her ear.

Servanne sighed and raised her head with an effort. He was awake, but not much longer before her, judging by the heaviness around his eyes.

"The hour must be dreadfully late," she said, warming self-consciously when she saw how intimately their bodies were positioned, one cradled atop the other in contrasting lengths of palest white and weathered bronze.

"You were sleeping like a kitten. I had not the heart to waken you."

The Black Wolf of Lincoln-admitting to a heart?

Servanne smiled at the thought and looked around her in the gloom. Their clothes would undoubtedly be damp and wrinkled beyond any possible logical explanation. Biddy would know-the whole camp would know where they had been and what they had been doing for most of the afternoon. Her hair would take hours to dry and tame into a semblance of order. Her knees, back, and b.u.t.tocks felt chafted raw from the sand, and she was certain, in any but the dimmest light, the whiteness of her skin would be marred by visually explicit bruises.

The gray eyes were observing her every change of expression and it was not too difficult to interpret her thoughts. An unexpected surge of protectiveness gripped him and he had to keep his hands flat by his sides to stop them from reaching out and gathering her back into his embrace.

He had not wanted this to happen, had not intended this to happen and for the very reasons that sickened and appalled him as he saw her trying very hard to s.h.i.+eld her thoughts and emotions. The Dragon would see her guilt as if it were a beacon on a stormy night. Arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d that he was, it might not occur to him that she had allowed herself to be despoiled willingly. Hopefully his rage would remain focused where it should: on the man who had kidnapped and ravished his bride. But if the Dragon suspected for a moment there had been no force, no rape involved in Servanne de Briscourt's submission, or if she betrayed by the slightest word or gesture that she preferred the touch of one man over the other ...

Cursing inwardly, he turned away and started rummaging beneath the mist for his discarded clothing. He was shrugging his heavy shoulders into the green linsey-woolsey s.h.i.+rt when the touch of her hand on his scarred flesh stopped him again. It was only the tips of her fingers that gently traced the hideously misshapen weals, but it could have been a red-hot iron searing his flesh for the same impact it left on his body.

"These must have caused you a great deal of pain for a very long time," she whispered.

"Wounds of betrayal hurt far more than any wounds of the flesh," he said flatly and pulled the s.h.i.+rt down to cover the scars.

Servanne sat motionless a moment longer, chastened by his sudden anger, yet ignorant of the cause. She began sorting through the tumbled ruin of her own clothes, each small movement emphasizing the empty ache inside her. Even her hair, brus.h.i.+ng over her bare skin, produced s.h.i.+vers that would never again foster innocent thoughts.

Had he been left unaffected by the pa.s.sions they had unleashed together? Could a man do all that he had done to her, share all they had shared, and not be changed, altered in some way? She did not expect declarations of undying love and devotion but neither did she expect to have her clothes tossed casually across the moss as if, for him, it had been but a pleasant afternoon's diversion.

"Might I ask another question without fear of having my head snapped off?"

"Ask it," he said sharply. "And we shall see."

"This black-hearted knight you would foist me upon to ease your conscience ... does he know who you are and why you are here?"

"La Seyne?" Something akin to a smile glimmered in the dark eyes. "He knows."

"Does he also know of this other ... danger danger, to which you referred?"

"He knows more than he would care to have as a burden."

"You said you could not provide proof of who you are until you are inside the castle. Is La Seyne here to back your claim when and if it becomes necessary?"

The Wolf looked at her with a grudging respect. A claim made against one of Prince John's allies was useless and suicidal without the support of equally formidable and influential witnesses. La Seyne Sur Mer was the dowager queen's champion; a knight regarded as being above reproach, who would be no easy man to fool or slough off with half-truths.

"You had best not show yourself to be too clever around the Dragon," he warned softly. "He does not take kindly to minxes with sharp noses and sly tongues."

"Another similarity with his brother. I confess I am becoming more intrigued by the moment to meet and compare qualities myself."

The Wolf was leaning over to retrieve his deerskin leggings when the unexpected sarcasm of her words halted him. With their faces only inches apart, and the light from the mouth of the cavern at its most generous angle, Servanne again thought she saw something flicker in the guarded depths of his eyes. If she did, it was quickly hidden and her humour as effectively quashed.

"As I told you before, there are some things we do quite differently. If you doubt me, ask any one of his scores of former mistresses ... or his current one: Nicolaa de la Haye."

Hurt and confused by his unwarranted bitterness, Servanne stared down at the crumpled folds of velvet she held in her lap and wondered why it seemed to be his prime task to perplex and confound her to the verge of tears. Resolutely, she gathered her courage to ask one more important question of him, but when she looked up, her emotions as exposed as an open wound, he was not even paying her any heed. Something had drawn all of his attention to the wall of ivy, and that something was causing him to turn as still as stone.

"What-?"

His hand lashed out to cover her mouth and stifle the question against her lips. Another moment pa.s.sed before she heard it too: the squeak of leather, the faint c.h.i.n.k of metal on metal, the snap and rustle of carefully bent saplings.

There was someone in the woods nearby. Someone moving with the deadly stealth of a hunter closing in on a wolf's lair.

14.

The Wolf's first thought was for the sentry up on the promontory; he should have seen the intruders in plenty of time to have pa.s.sed an alarm to the abbey. His second thought exploded inwardly on a curse, for he had waved the sentry away when he had carried Servanne past the Silent Pool. In an even more shocking breach of his own rules, he realized he had left his bow in the courtyard, along with his sword. He had his falchion and a dull eating knife-neither of which would do much good unless he could creep unseen to within a few feet of an enemy.

Pressing a finger to his lips, he cautioned Servanne needlessly to silence and crossed to the mouth of the cavern. He was just a shadow hunched against the mist, but she saw him sink into a low crouch and melt back against the stone as a particularly loud crunch of twigs occurred within a pace or two of where the entrance lay hidden behind the ivy.

Servanne held her breath. She suffered a fleeting glimpse of men-at-arms and knights locked in mortal combat with the Wolf's men, screaming, charging through the woods, their swords gleaming red and wet. And in the midst of it all, she would be running and screaming as well, but to which camp? To whose arms?

Servanne screamed the answer just as the Wolf sprang forward and crashed through the gap in the ivy. There were m.u.f.fled sounds of grunts and sc.r.a.ping feet, the paunchy thud thud of a well-met fist ... then silence. of a well-met fist ... then silence.

She rose up onto her knees, her gown clutched over her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her heart in her throat, her eyes stinging with fear. Another ripe scream was bubbling up from her toes just as she recognized the Wolf's broad shoulders dragging something or someone back into the gloom of the cavern.

"Sparrow! G.o.ddammit!" he shouted.

Servanne's gasp relieved the pressure building in her lungs the same instant the Wolf's hand lifted away from the elf's mouth, releasing a string of shrilled oaths and invectives. They were choked back sharply as the Wolf thrust him hard against the wall and held him by the scruff of the neck, leaving the stubby arms and legs to flail the empty air in panic.

"Sparrow, by Christ, I warned you-!"

"We have all been out searching this past half hour for you, my lord," Sparrow squeaked. "The Dragon's men ... they are in the woods. They are heading this way!"

The Wolf's hand flexed open and the little man dropped into an abrupt heap on the moss.

"'tis true, my lord," he gasped, rubbing his throat for circulation. "The Dragon's men ... two hours away, no more. With armour on their backs and blood in their eyes. They must know we are here-a loose tongue, or a careless footstep."

"Two sets of careless footsteps, I warrant," the Wolf snarled. "How many men are there?" sets of careless footsteps, I warrant," the Wolf snarled. "How many men are there?"

"H-he had two score with him in camp, plus the sheriff's men, p-plus those left from the cavalcade. Not all would have come, but enough to send Sigurd hurrying back with the alarm."

"It was to be expected. We could not have remained here much longer without someone stumbling over us. Are we ready for them?"

Sparrow nodded hard enough to set his curls bouncing. "The men are all dispatched and await your orders. You were the only one we could not find. You and ... and ..."

The round cherub eyes blinked wider as he caught sight of a nervous movement through the clouds of rising steam. He blinked again and swallowed whatever he might have been tempted to say, in favour of ignoring the plenitude of naked limbs and awkward tempers.

"Well, then," he said instead. "I have found you both."

"And nearly won a blade in your gullet for the effort," said the Wolf, stalking back to the far side of the pool to s.n.a.t.c.h up the rest of his clothes. A glare in Servanne's direction was sufficient to unlock her fingers from the folds of velvet and hurry them in pulling the rumpled gown over her head. The fabric was damp and chilled her skin, but she scarcely felt it for the more foreboding chill in the air.