Captive Heart (7 page)

My heart broke for Lyn, for the brave face she turned toward the road ahead. As much the epitome of knighthood that Marrok looked astride his steed, Lyn looked the daughter of kings. A stranger riding by would be struck by her and Marrok’s noble statures, noble miens. But I knew the turmoil of their hearts. And knowing made their brave faces all the more beautiful in my eyes.

With a silent salute to their courage, I mounted my horse. The trickster immediately skittered sideways, but I held my seat and kneed him to attention. Satisfied—or perhaps disappointed—he had a rider who would brook no impishness, he settled handsomely under the rein, his power gathered under me, his eagerness to be off twitching in his creamed mane and along his golden coat.

How had the stable boys known which horses to loan, to match them so perfectly to Marrok and me? Marrok in his just-borrowed armor and mine still packed away—none but Fate could have guided their hands. I took that for an omen and a blessing. Which meant, once again, I was being manipulated for another’s purpose.

And God, it seemed, was as much a trickster as the horse under me, ready to upset my seat, my world, the moment my attention wandered.

“Hold a spell,” I entreated my two companions once we were away from the castle’s prying eyes. Rummaging in my packs, I found the hauberk with its gold-dyed leather my father had gifted me before I left for Camelot. Every fifth scale of the heavy armored coat had been plated in the thinnest layer of molten gold. When struck by the sun, the whole of it dazzled. Gold of itself was too soft a metal to forge for armor, so the matching helm and buckler had been fire gilded with powdered gold and mercury.

“A bit fine for a kitchen boy.” Lyn’s sharp tongue grated, but I was willing to forgive it under the circumstances. “From whom did you steal?”

“You could say I stole my father’s love to get it.”

“Then he must have stolen it from another.”

The lady wasn’t making it easy to bite my tongue and bide my peace. “The only thing my father ever stole was my mother’s heart.”

“That’s finery fit for a king.” Dismounting, Marrok stepped up next to me and chose a gilded scale over my chest to brush his fingers across. Heat flashed through me as though he had touched my naked skin instead. Then he slowly lifted his chin so his gaze traveled remorselessly up from my chest to the curve of my neck to the stubble across my cheeks and finally to lock on my own eyes. The intensity of his look as he stared into my soul from barely a spread handspan away was both unnerving and smoldering.

“Or maybe—” the timbre of his voice changed and the words rolled deep and husky—“the son of a king.” A slow smile lifted his lips, and I knew my eyes had betrayed me.

“No.” At some point Lyn had slid from her horse and stood now just outside the space Marrok and I had made our own. “He’s a kitchen boy. Unworthy.”

“Of my attentions—” Marrok’s gaze snapped around so it was full on Lyn, thrusting her into the space with Marrok and me—“or yours?”

The guilt in Lyn’s eyes was as plain as it was perplexing. As was the struggle that strangled her answer. “Ours.”

“Are you…jealous?”

Something in Marrok’s voice waried me. And it took a beat too long to my ears for Lyn to answer, “No.”

She looked to me then, her soul full of guilt and sorrow, fear and attraction laid bare before me like a shattered mirror to be pieced together. Fear for her sister only or of the secrets she wouldn’t tell? Attraction to Marrok or to me? Depending on which way I pieced together the shattered mirror, the reflection would be different. But which reflection was truth?

Lyn took a deep, half-sobbing breath. “If you’re done admiring yourselves, Nessie’s waiting.”

And even as she turned away, I could feel the mirrored pieces shatter just a little more.

When all I knew of Beau was that he’d been working in the kitchen, it was easy to believe I could mock and scorn him as my champion without guilt. Facing him on the road, though, in just our little group, the words came harder. In a world so full of cruelty, how rare it was to find courtesy and honesty.

And were I to be honest with myself, the sight of Beau dressed in gold upon a golden horse was as maddening to my senses as Marrok was in black on black.

They rode now just ahead, speaking low between themselves, no doubt learning things about each other I, too, was desperate to know. The tilts of their heads, the long stares, how they rode knee-to-knee even when the way was wide—all this I was privy to from my place behind. I had heard of such pairings before, whispered behind sheltering hands, made a secret and shameful thing. Unnatural.

Watching them together, I felt a knot settle in my stomach like a stone. A knot that quickly grew, twisting my insides in pain. And then I
saw
—though whether fae vision or enflamed imagination, I couldn’t be sure. It was a flash only. Naked shoulders, naked hips. Reaching hands and reaching lips. Distinctly male. Distinctly aroused.

No!

The two of
them
together
was
unnatural. I understood it now. The knot twisting ever tighter made it clear. Marrok had guessed it plain. I
was
jealous. Jealous of their attentions to one another. Jealous because I should have been their guiding star. Jealous that I was not.

But of which of them was I most jealous? I was never as pretty as Nessie, but I was not so plain that I didn’t draw the eyes of young lords in court. I was confident I deserved the attentions of both Marrok and Beau, but the twisting knot made it clear this was no petty pout. I
needed
one of them to stop paying his attentions to the other and pay them to me instead.

Only which one?

That question still haunted me when the men ahead drew rein.

As one, their swords slithered from their scabbards while shield and buckler appeared in their hands.

Urging my horse, with the pack beast in tow, to catch up to theirs, I strained to see ahead.

“What goes?” Marrok demanded.

Three—no, four—men with long daggers stood in the road. A horse whinnied from the woods to the right.

One of the men craned his thin neck to better see between Marrok and Beau and locked his eyes on me. “I have a message if you be the one called Lynette.”

A cold chill leapt up my spine to hear my name from such base lips, and I knew at once whose messenger he had to be. “I am.”

“The Red Knight sends his regards.” He swept into a deep and mocking bow.

“M’lady!”

In the shadow of the spreading elm I saw the man to whom the unseen horse belonged. He stood against the trunk with his hands bound from behind. To either side, two more brigands stood guard.

“Are you not the Damosel Savage? I knew your father well. These…gentlemen…tell me he’s been slain. I think they intend I join him.”

“Do you know him?” Beau asked me, nodding toward the bound man but his eyes on the two brigands by him while Marrok, breathing hard, kept watch on the four in the road.

“By sight, I think. A nobleman who’s dined in our hall once or twice that I recall. The brigands belong to Ironside. Compelled to be here, no doubt.” Beau arched his brows at that. “And my champion’s first task.”

He nodded and an easy calm settled over him.

Marrok, on the other hand… Just as my fae blood simmered in the presence of Nimue’s compulsion spell that rooted the brigands with naught but knives and the morningstar one was doing an ill job of trying to conceal among them, that same fae blood fairly boiled when my attention settled on the Black Knight.

Even his horse seemed to feel it as it shied under him. In the saddle, Marrok trembled. Not out of fear or trepidation as I’d first been concerned, but in a struggle for control.

Control of what, though?

Beau dismounted. Unhelmed and unhorsed, he made the fight fairer. Marrok, in danger of being unseated anyway, followed Beau’s lead only a breathspace behind him.

My heart stuttered.

The battle closed.

A shout of alarm tore my attention from the brawl on the road to the nobleman’s tree. Instead of joining their comrades on the road, the pair of brigands there advanced on the bound noble, their intent clear.

Without thought, I kneed my mare. Startled by the sharp command, she lunged toward the tree dragging the equally startled pack horse with her. The sheer mass of the two animals pushed the brigands back.

With a swift motion, one of the men grabbed my skirts. I kicked back but those same skirts tangled the blows. Then suddenly the saddle was gone from under me and I was falling.

We hit the ground together, the brigand and I. Except I lived, the brigand did not. Not an arm’s length from me blood pooled from his slit throat.

Half-a-score paces ahead the second brigand fell, and Marrok shoved the lifeless corpse away.

Strong hands on my shoulders helped lift me to my feet while I struggled for the breath that had been knocked from me. “Did he mark you?” Beau asked, and the concern in his voice alone almost made me swoon. I tilted my head to see his face, and the panic in his eyes when I hesitated nearly undid me.

A second pair of hands claimed my waist and Marrok was there, nostrils flared, inhaling the scent of me, following the flick of his dark, impenetrable eyes.

Even as I shook my head, Marrok was already saying, “No blood.”

Beau’s hand swept the hair from my face. “Any other hurts?”

I shook my head again and gasped in a chestful of lovely, precious air. What
did
hurt was when they slipped their hands away, leaving me to stand alone.

Marrok backed the horses up, and Beau used one of the brigand’s knives to cut the noble free.

Other than a face drained of all blood that was only now pinking back up, he too seemed unharmed. As he worked feeling back into arms and hands, he looked over the six slain men. “My keep is only a league south of here. Join me there and I’ll send servants to bury these dead. As for you, what reward can I offer?”

“None necessary,” Beau said. “You wouldn’t have been taken had you not been used as a pawn against her and us. We were indebted to free you.”

“We’re all someone’s pawn at one time or another. Let’s call both debts paid. You’ll at least sup with me and stay the night? Longer, if you wish. Lord Corbin, at your service.”

“I’m…called Beaumains. That’s Sir Marrok. And the Lady Lynette who commands us you already know. It’s she who will say nay or yea to your entreaty.”

“One night,” I agreed. Nimue would know her minions were dead and would be busy with whatever the next trial might be. I didn’t want to think what might be happening to Nessie, perhaps even in punishment for our victory here. But we needed food and sleep. And since we couldn’t ride at night anyway, it was less than a handful of hours lost.

And while we needed that small time to recover, I prayed it was a decision I wouldn’t regret.

Lord Corbin’s estate was a modest one.

“My wife passed on three years ago,” he told us when we sat at his table supping on the cook’s hasty meal of salted pork, early peas and fresh greens from the garden. “Our only son is at Benwick, a squire now in the House of Ban. I myself left the politics of kings years ago. I live simply now, in peace. So to be set upon by thieves…” He shuddered at the memory. “In my younger days, they could not have touched me. Not that I was ever a knight such as you good Sirs, but I had been known to acquit myself well in a battle or two. Now, however…”