Conqueror (23 page)

“They are all alike,” she snapped aloud, and almost screamed when Duncan, her young page, lifted his face up over the side of her bed.

“Duncan!” she whispered furiously. “What are you doing here?”

“Milady,” he whispered back, creeping out with the stealth required if they were stalking deer. “I needed to see you.”

She hurried to his side and knelt, running her fingers over the back of his head, down his back, up his thin arms, feeling for injuries. “Monsters. Why would they do harm to a little boy, after I’ve opened the gates? I shall expect nothing but brutality forevermore from men—”

“Milady!” he said plaintively, wiggling free. “I’m not injured. I’ve come to
help
.”

She sat back on her heels. “Help? Help, Duncan?” She felt like crying. “How on earth could you help?”

His pinched little face was less pinched than it had been three months ago, when he’d arrived at the gates of Everoot, a refugee from the wars, he and his little sister, running for their lives. And here he was now, earnestly looking at her, thinking he—he, a ten-year-old boy—could help, while the world fell apart around her.

“I can watch out for whoever you’ve got in the cellars, milady.”

Gwyn’s mouth slowly fell open. “What did you say?”

He looked embarrassed. “I seen you go down there, milady, three times a day or more. Once, I saw ye with a tray o’ food, and after that, I followed ye.”

“Why?”

“I thought ye might need some help one day, seein’ as how no one else seemed to know what was going on. And ye always look so sad when ye come back up again. I thought ye oughtn’t be so very alone in it.”

That brought tears right to the edge of her eyes. She leaned forward and hugged him tight, then sat back and said in a soft, but bright voice, “Well, now, Duncan, you may have a very good idea there. Can you be quiet?”

“As a mouse.”

“And follow direction?”

He dragged his wrist under his nose, wiping it. “Better’n a monk.”

She gently propelled his arm back down. “You may be right.” She handed him a strip of linen. He stared at it. She pointed to his nose. He rolled his eyes and wiped. “And being alone, Duncan? You could not come up and down from there. You’d have to stay there until—” She broke off. “Until I say so. It may be weeks. Months.”

“Lady Gwyn, I’ll miss every fair that ever was, if ye need me to.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and nodded gravely. “So be it, Duncan. To the cellars. Here is the key.” She yanked the pouch off her skirts and handed over the little golden key. “You’ll know which chamber he is in, for ’tis it has a terrifying padlock on it. I’ll be down as soon as I can, to check that all is well and retrieve the key.

“Now,” she said, rising and looking at the door. “Let us give the guard a few minutes to get fully away, and you can go straight to the cellars.”

“Aye, milady.” He paused. “Did you see him, milady?”

“Did I see whom?” She began pacing the room. She pulled her long braid over her shoulder and began trying to reweave it, something to occupy her time. Her fingers got tangled in the knots. It was hopeless. If not enclosed in its tight silken case, her hair inevitably came unbound like a spring uncoiling. And this morning there’d been no time for silk wraps.

“Him.”

Gwyn let the tangled curls, grimed and weighted with dirt and smoke, drop to her shoulders. She looked at Duncan bleakly. “Who?”

“Sau-
vage
!” Duncan said, elongating the ’vage’ into one long, lazy syllable.

“Pagan?” She plopped down on the bed. Oh St. Jude, even the sound of his name brought back a bluster of heated churning. She stared at Duncan wretchedly. “Aye. I’ve seen him.”

“So did I,” Duncan whispered back. “He’s
enormous
.”

“Aye,” she agreed, looking away.

“As big as a mountain.” Duncan paused. “Are we to be safe?”

Gwyn exhaled slowly. Safe? That all depended on what you meant by safe. Safe from death, aye. She recalled too clearly how she’d found a gentle pagan saviour on a deserted highway, a warrior who pulled back the hair from her eyes as she vomited, a man who made her laugh when she’d rather have cried and who laid a healing poultice on her skin when she was unconscious in his bed.

Aye, Duncan and all the children would be safe. But Guinevere? Ah well, that was another matter entirely.

No, she would never be safe from the man who had set her body on fire and stilled the maddening Ache by drumming another one even deeper in her heart, a man who now stood between her and raising the battered body of the king’s son to the crown of England.

She smiled into Duncan’s earnest, worried face. “Everything will be fine, Duncan. Trust me.”

“I do!” he burst out happily.

A few moments later, she opened the door, looked both ways, then gestured to him. Down the stairs he hurried, and was gone.

Gwyn walked to the window and peered down to the bailey. She could see no violence. No loyal servants were being dragged to the gates or the cellars. No de l’Ami knights were being lined up in the field or marched across the draw. In fact, she realised, craning her neck, there was no line of soldiers marching out of the castle at all, a trail that would mark those who were unwilling to swear allegiance to the new lord.

How odd.

“Guinevere.”

She spun. There he stood, his tall figure outlined in the doorway. Gwyn was alone with him and the sound of her wildly thundering heart.

Despite anger, fear, fury and hate, she couldn’t deny the ripple that danced through her body when she saw his leather-clad body on the landing. Sunlight filtering through the slitted windows glinted off his dark hair and the stubble of his chin. The shadows angled his face into long, lean lines of raw sensuality.

Please God
, she prayed,
not again.

He pushed the door closed behind him. “You’ve run my castle well,” he said in his deep, masculine rumble. Taunting her.

She composed her face into the most noxious glare she knew. “
Your
castle?”

“’Tis most certainly not yours anymore.”

She dug her nails into her palms, fisted by her thighs. “You ensured that.”

“Aye. Much as you ensured forty lashes on my back and weeks of a rat-infested prison I wouldn’t wish on my father.”

His father?

Gwyn’s skirts whispered over the rushes as she walked to the edge of the room. She ran her hand across the window ledge.

“Prison?” she asked with airy nonchalance, her back to him. She even managed an unconcerned sniff. “You were captured, then, were you? They never said directly, but I am glad to hear the king’s men were successful.”

“They weren’t.” Pagan’s grim voice blew across the room. “I have his castle. And his vassal.”

She turned to face him. “Why didn’t you tell me your name last year?”

“Why didn’t you tell me yours?”

She paused coldly. “Well, it seems that our names did not matter at all.”

He smiled. “If you can show me what else does matter, I’ll have Henri apply to the Pope to canonise you.” He took a step forward, she a step back. “’Twas a
name
that ensured I lost these lands some eighteen years ago, and my
name
that assured me of a hearty welcome in the Tower a year back.” Each phrase was followed by another step in her direction. “’Tis my name which has kept me sane, and my name that has given me my lands back.”

“It looked to me to be your sword.”

“You, Guinevere, show a keen mind. Happens I will keep it close, and use it.”

“Your sword or my mind?” she snapped.

He stopped the length of a long stride away and smiled into her furious glare. “Both.”

Tyber, her aging dog, slowly rose to his creaky paws and walked out the door. Traitor.

“Your lord knows little of what he must do to win this country back,” she said coldly.

Another slow smile slid across his features. “He knows enough to send men into all the rebel castles, to wed the women and silence the rebellion.”

“Really?”
She drew the word out, as if unwilling to fully release it.

“Aye. And ’twould behoove you to recall this, too.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You have been betrayed by your Stephen, not Henri.”

She covered her heart reflexively. “King Stephen ruled by right!”

“He ruled by might, and rather poorly too. You keep house up here in the north, and perhaps know little of the state of the realm, but I will tell you: ’tis
terra guerra
, a land of war.”

“Are you
mad
?” she snapped, biting the words like ice chips. “You think I do not know my country is ravaged—by men like you.”

He shook his head. “Every baron and knight knows the way to end the civil warring is to have Henri take the throne. ’Tis no secret, simply a matter of time. The Pope would not even crown Prince Eustace, not that it matters now that he’s dead.”

Gwyn felt the blood drain from her face, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Stephen is kind and chivalrous,” she managed to say through gritted teeth.

“He is a fool, gallant though he may be. And he stole the crown, my lady, do not forget that. He vowed to honour Mathilda’s queenship, then took it whilst she was not looking. How fits that with your notions of chivalry?”

“Better than my notion of you right now.”

He smiled, a dangerous curve of flesh.

Something hot and longing moved through her chest, right over her heart. She wanted him. Wanted that smile, directed at her, for her.

And how could that ever be? Lord Griffyn abovestairs, Prince Eustace below? The family her father had hated, the enemy her king had made her oath-bound to oppose. She could see the awful future shimmering right before her eyes, like a reflection in a pond.

Breaking her gaze, she retreated to the window. “I weary of these games. What do you want to know?”

“The defence. How many?”

“Some twelve in the garrison, mayhap two hundred from the surrounding villages and town.” Her voice caught in her throat. “Ignoring those who died.”

His voice was a low stroke through her pain. “They will not be forgotten.”

“By you?” She laughed bitterly.

“By
you
.” She lifted her head, surprised to find him so close again. So close she could hear him breathing. “Perhaps you would be surprised by how much respect I show towards loyalty.”

His square chin jutted out a bit, prompting a sensual consideration she squashed flat. His handsome arrogance was
not
to be one of the surprises.

“What else do you want to know?” she asked in a cold, clipped tone.

“The seneschal.”

“That is my William. Of the Five Strands.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I recall you speaking of him. You were right.”

She looked halfway over her shoulder. “About what?”

“Five is about all I noted.”

She bit her lip to quiet the unconscionable twitch of her lips and looked down at the ground.
Feign surrender
, she counseled herself angrily.
Do not actually do it.

“And his leaning?” Griffyn asked.

“Towards me, no doubt.” She paused. “Have you a thought for him, though, he is well endowed with a capacity for numbers, and bides his calling well.”

“I’ve no need of him. What of your knights—how many?”

“One score at the moment.”

“And what can I expect?”

She smiled thinly. “Resistance, to a man.”

His smile was rather broad. “To a man, you say?”

“What?”

“They are loyal to a man, you say?”

Her smile faltered. “Do you know otherwise?”

“I know they pledged their fealty to me.” He paused. “To a man.”

Her mouth fell wide. A fly could have buzzed in and out with nary a tense moment. “Jeravius?
Fulk
?”

“A tall, muscular fellow with a glint in his eye? Likes architecture, stone?”

“Jeravius,” she breathed.

“And your marshal?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Fulk.”

He considered her from head to toe. “They said ’twas for your safety I received their pledge.”

“My safety? For
my
safety?”

“They seemed to think ’twas in danger,” he mused, his eyes now travelling over the room’s threadbare furnishings.

“And I’m sure you were not troubled to put their minds at ease.”

His gaze swung back. “What makes you think you are
not
in danger?”

An involuntary shudder of fear shot through her but an angry glare, meant to burn away his arrogance, fell well short of the mark.

“Am I?” she managed to say.

“What did I tell you before?”

“When, before?”

“London. The inn.”

She looked at him sharply. “That was no inn.”

His eyes grazed down to travel over her bodice, down her skirts, then back up. “What did I tell you, Guinevere?”

She took a full minute to swallow. Good Lord, he had told her a hundred wicked, carnal things.

“You…you said many things.” She gestured distractedly to his belt. “But then you were not standing with a sword at your side.”

His hands moved. He unbuckled the belt around his waist. It clattered to the ground, taking with it the sword, dagger, and falchion notched in the banded leather. And there, standing still as still as could be and without a weapon on him, danger shimmered off him in waves.

“Now, again, Guinevere: what did I tell you?”

She felt a shower of heat rain down her belly. Her gaze was pinned on the arsenal of blades flung across the floor. “You said I had naught to fear from you.”

“And so it is.”

“And my men?” she asked, stepping backwards and tripping over the hem of her skirt. She righted herself and backed up until her spine was against the wall. “They must believe there is much to fear. What did you say to Jerv and Fulk?”

“I did but tell them what it meant to have my home back. And what I would do to those who opposed me.”

“Good Lord, Pagan. You might just as well have popped their eyes out and been done with it.”

“They were a bit wide-eyed.”

Her eyebrows flattened. “They are good men, loyal, and do think the world of me. If you made a threat to them—”