Conqueror (9 page)

He considered her for a long moment. “Very well, Lady Gwyn. I will send up food and a bath.” His eyes settled on the bag again. “As soon as we read through those letters.”

He left, and as he closed the door, she heard the key turn in the lock.

“Your rooms are ready. And again, congratulations, my lord.”

Griffyn nodded for what he hoped was the last time tonight. It was late, the hall was dark, lit only by firelight, and Robert Beaumont had already gone up to his own chambers, flush with success, negotiations complete. Henri fitzEmpress had his essential ally.

“But won’t you stay up for one more drink?” Hipping asked one more time.

Griffyn shook his head. “I’m weary, and have a long ride tomorrow.” Fatigue was no mere pretext. He’d secured the allegiance of one of the most vital allies Henri fitzEmpress would ever need, and all he felt was tired. Weary with spying, with war, with all the machinations of the world. He needed another lost waif to lift his spirits, he decided, stifling a yawn, but they were hard to find.

Something crashed on the floor above them. He and Hipping jerked their heads backwards and stared at the ceiling. It sounded like something heavy hit the floor hard, perhaps a washing pot. Hipping looked over with a convivial smile.

“My betrothed.”

“Ahh.”

“Just arrived.”

“Ahh. Congratulations.”

Hipping paused. “She’s still adjusting.”

“Mmm. Your wash pot may not.”

Hipping laughed out of proportion to the inane jest. “Aye. I shan’t bother her with my attentions again tonight. The priest has been sent for; tomorrow shall be soon enough.”

Griffyn felt a strange ripple of unease.
Not required
, he told himself.
None of my business. Leave it be.

He was shown to his room by a washed-out looking servant. The room was plain, small, and smelled of rot and mould. Which was not the problem. Small cracks in the wooden walls allowed wind to inch in, making it quite cold despite the brazier burning. But that was not the problem either. It was looking for a chamberpot that ruined everything.

Finding none in his room, and knowing the full tankard of the infamous Hippletun brew he’d imbibed would soon be needing release, he went in search of a chamberpot, a privy, or a servant to direct him towards either.

What he came across was a violent pounding coming from a chamber door at the far end of the corridor.

He stopped and stared. The wind?

Another spurt of wild hammering, then silence. No. That was not the wind.

’Tis neither any of your business
, he cautioned himself. Enough time and energy had already been expended tonight on things that were none of his business.

He backtracked to the stairwell and found a servant who directed him to the guest privy outside. The rising winds almost blew the door off the privy. He manhandled it closed a few times, then, admitting defeat, let it bang maddeningly open and shut, thudding against the wall on each crest of wind as he completed his business. He tromped back inside, rubbing his eyes. Sleep. All he needed was a few hours’ sleep.

He reached the upper landing. It was dark despite a torch slung in an iron ring hanging on the wall. Instead of turning left to his room, though, he paused and looked to his right.

Silence. Only the muted moaning of the winds. No cries for help, no frantic hammering. He stomped down the corridor anyway, uncertain why.

“Because I’m a fool,” he muttered out loud.

He stopped in front of the doorway. Oddly, there was a key resting in its lock. He put his hand on it, paused, then turned it, feeling the fool. More silence. Nothing to be seen or heard.

“Of course not,” he said to the emptiness. “Because there’s nothing here.”

The door crashed open and Guinevere fell into his arms.

They fell into a clump against the far wall, Griffyn propelled backwards by her headlong rush. He struggled to his knees and clamped his hand over her mouth, which she’d opened to scream.

“I cannot believe it,” he announced, removing his hand when he saw she was not going to loose the shriek.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” she cried in a whisper. “Pagan! How came you here? No, no, not now. I cannot believe you came, but we must get out of here—”

“We? What are you
doing
here?”

“—for I’ve only a little while until he comes for me.”

“Comes for you?”
he shouted back in a whisper. “What are you talking about? I left you with Clid, a safe refuge, and now you’re
here
?” He stared at her a moment. Realisation dawned. “His betrothed.”

“I am
not
!”

He rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead, muttering, “I can’t believe it. How incredibly unlikely. Abducted, twice in one night.”

She scowled. “Astonishing. I can barely bestill my wonder. I left the village—”

“
Why?
It was warm and dry—”

“Yes, yes.” She brushed off his kept promises with an urgent whisper. “But not safe.”

“Aye, well, I can see how being here suits you so much the better.”

She touched his arm lightly, but the subtle contact felt more forceful than that, a flash of feminine verve. “You were
mad
to leave me there,” she whispered vehemently. “But there is no time for that now. I came because I had to. I know of Hipping’s reputation, of course, and the trouble he’s caused my lord king. But I did not know he was a…a
brigand
.” Her lips twisted, and Griffyn wondered if Hipping’s lips had touched hers. The thought, against all reason, brought a flood of anger surging through his blood. “He is holding me against my will.”

“For what?” he asked suspiciously.

She paused for half a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter. Politics.”

The evasion seemed unnecessary, and would have caught his attention if he hadn’t had his attention captured by so many other things, such as the bewildering verity that he was kneeling on the floor of a minor nobleman’s corridor with a woman he’d already rescued once tonight and left miles from here not three hours ago. And she needed more rescuing yet.

Then again, abductions were commonplace enough. Kidnappings, forced betrothals. An unprotected woman on the road was fair game.

And all of a sudden, Griffyn’s largest concern was not expanding Henri fitzEmpress’s frontiers, it was the raven-haired, flushing-cheeked demoiselle in front of him. Her tousled hair and wild eyes made him worry, but it was her incredible, indomitable spirit that turned his tides.

“I hate to be a burden yet again…”

He grabbed her arm. “Let’s go.”

He leaned in and took a quick survey of her room—much nicer than his—then grabbed a lantern sitting on the table. Lowering its flame to almost nothing, he propelled her down the stairs.

Keeping close to the shadows, they made their way straight out the front door and through the rising winds to the stables without being seen or heard. No one could have heard an approaching army over the winds, and no one was about to witness this abduction.

Griffyn pulled open the stable door. A powerful gust wrenched it out of his hands and flung it wide, slamming it against the wall. Muttering under his breath, he shuttled them inside and hauled it shut behind them.

The roaring quieted. There were the dim sounds of animals crunching hay and shuffling. It was warm, with tighter seams between the planks of wood than of his guest bedchamber, he noticed grimly in passing. He began fumbling around in the darkness, feeling about on the ledge by the doorway for a flint.

Her shadowy figure moved down the row of stalls. “Where’s my horse?”

He set the lantern on a small ledge. Light spread further into the dark stable. “What horse?”

“I had a horse.”

“What?”

“A horse, a horse. I came here on a horse.”

His looked at her suspiciously. “Where did you get a horse?”

She shrugged. “From the village.”

“They gave you a horse?” he said in flat disbelief. The purchase of a single plough horse would require the village’s annual intake, which was nigh on nil, for a few decades.

“They didn’t exactly
give
me the horse.”

“You took the horse.”

She gave him an evil look. “Yes. I took the horse. I didn’t kill a man, so you need not look at me like that. I planned to ensure Old Barney was returned, but now, well.” She stopped.

“Well, that’s that,” he muttered, stalking to Noir, whose seventeen-hand measurement at the withers made him stand taller than any other horse in the stables. He nickered at the sound of Griffyn’s voice.

“What’s what?” She hurried after him, tugging hair away from her face.

He led Noir out of his stall and grabbed the saddle. She came to the horse’s head and reached out to pet him.

“I wouldn’t,” Griffyn said grimly. He threw the saddle blanket over Noir’s sloping back, then placed the saddle atop, just at the horse’s withers. He slid the saddle and blanket back an inch, smoothing the fur. “He doesn’t like…people.”

“He seems to like you.”

“Yes, well, I’m not a person. To him.” He flipped the cinch off the saddle and let it drop. Reaching under Noir’s belly, he grabbed the buckle and pulled.

“Oh.”

They didn’t say anything else. Griffyn dourly finished his saddling, then bid her to the huge oaken stable door.

“I’ll open it, you hold it. Keep it from slamming.”

She nodded. He nudged it slightly ajar. The winds flung it wide and smashed it gleefully against the wall. She almost fell down trying to hold it back.

He glared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered fiercely, wrestling with it. Griffyn reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut. “Think you I wish to be discovered any more than you?”

“I have no idea what you wish for.” He threw her up in front of the saddle and climbed up himself. “I would have thought a warm, dry place, but apparently not. You prefer storms and abduction. Sit close as you can, no, lean back against me, and here, I’ll wrap my cloak around us both. No one will come out to examine us too closely, and the winds should make a mockery of any clear shape or form. I came, now I’m leaving, and let us hope they will see it like that. But if they do come out,” he added more slowly, looking down into her wide, bright green eyes, “don’t scream when I kill them.”

She blinked. “Give me a blade. Truly,” she insisted when he just looked at her. “I am in earnest. You saw me with a rock. Imagine me with a blade.”

“I’m terrified,” he muttered, but unsheathed the blade wrapped at his thigh and slipped it to her, then pulled his hood up. “Now slide down as far as you can, sit as close as you can, and silence, if ever you can.”

“Pah,” she snorted from her dark, cloaked nest.

Griffyn lifted his head and, pressing his heels against Noir’s flanks, rode slowly through the bailey and under the inner gates, which were still raised, a good omen. This porter had not been alerted he was staying the night. Perhaps the outer guards were as ignorant.

No one even appeared to notice he was passing until he reached the guards at the outer bailey, and they waved him through with barely a glance.

He rode under the straining portcullis gate, the wicked wooden talons hanging half a foot above his head, and like that, they were outside in the king’s woods, he with a mission to accomplish and a heady woman huddled beneath his cape.

Noir barely made a sound on the soft dirt path. His hooves trod through the damp, flat leaves. Overhead, the moon slid back and forth behind ragged clouds and cast shadows between the branches. In the darkness of the forest, small rustlings disturbed the underbrush and in the distance a larger animal, to judge by the sound, exploded a few sticks under paw. Overhead an owl winged by, disturbed by their intrusion, his hooting a haunting sound in a darkened wood.

Walking at the horse’s head, Griffyn was trying to understand the astonishing turn his night had taken, from unexpected battle to the unexpected cargo now riding his horse.

He scowled at a low-lying tree limb and sidestepped the path into a puddle of mud that would have reached to his shins if he hadn’t leapt back in time.

Said cargo, he admitted grudgingly, was an amiable enough companion. More so. Much more so. She was nothing he could have expected. Fleeing one of the most bloodthirsty barons in Stephen’s England, she had not cowered. She’d not fainted. She had not screamed or pitched or whined. She had stood at his side, fearless as any warrior, and smiled.

Smiled
, for God’s sake.

Which is why he was doing it, he supposed.

He scowled.

The longer he walked, the colder he got, the more he ruminated on how this night had come to such an unforeseen conclusion, the more convinced he became of one fact. He tugged Noir to a halt and turned to confront his more-than-amiable, maddening cargo.

“You had no intention of staying,” he announced grimly.

Her heart-shaped face crumpled in confusion. “Staying where?”

“They could have been monks chanting Paternosters and you would have left at the first chance.”

Her face cleared. “Trust in this, Pagan, the men you left me with were
not
monks—”

“You couldn’t stop talking, could you?”

“What?”

“What did you say to them?”

She blushed. “I barely said a word about anything, but when they saw the coin—”

“I knew it. But I don’t think you left because it was unsafe. I think you left because you didn’t want to be there. And you never do things you don’t wish to do.”

Her jaw dropped. “That is simply not true!”

“Tell me the last thing you did that you wished otherwise.”

“I—I—I, why right now!” she sputtered, flinging her arm out. “Behold, here I sit on your beast of a horse and let you hold the reins, guiding me ever deeper into the king’s chase, with never a notion of whither I go, nor whence I might return. Might I prefer to be safely ensconced in a bed? Mayhap to sleep? Pah. Think you I chose this night, Pagan, I shall learn you a different tale.”

He started walking again, grimly satisfied. “Of course you chose it.”