Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (63 page)

“And where do you propose we stay, milady? Out on
the high road, where the bounty hunters will surely find us? Where
we’ll catch our death from the torrential rains and winds?”

Sabina didn’t have an answer for that. “I just don’t
feel safe here, is all,” she said.

Robert reached out and tenderly stroked Sabina’s
cheek. “You don’t have a thing to worry about, beloved,” he said.
“I’ve known Cuthbert for more than ten years. He is a man of his
word. No one will bother us as long as we’re under his care. And if
by chance someone does, we would be well-protected. As you might
have guessed, Master Cuthbert is very good in a fight.”

“He’s also missing an eye. Surely he’s seen better
days.”

“He’s been missing that eye for as long as I’ve
known him, and it never got in the way of anything,” Robert said,
pulling her close. “I brought you here for a reason, Sabina. You
are under my protection. And as long as I’m alive, no harm will
ever come to you. I swear it. I will guard you with my life.” He
let go of her, held her out at arm’s length. “But as I’ve already
told you, there may be a time where I might lose my life, and then
you’d be on your own.”

“I know that, Robert. I just wish I didn’t have the
feeling that you might be losing your life—and mine with
it—altogether too soon. Like tonight.”

Robert sighed and shook his head. “Why don’t you lie
down for a while? You’re just overtired from the journey. Once
you’ve had a chance to rest and have a good meal, you’ll feel
better. I promise.”

There was a knock at the head of the stairs. A
poorly clad housemaid came downstairs carryinga kettle of hot
water, which she poured in the basin. The maid wore only a rough
burlap shift tied at the waist with rope, and her dirty feet were
bare. Even so, she was a pretty young woman. She had long
red-blonde hair pulled back from her into a loose braid that shone
in the candlelight, and a fine fair complexion. She seemed like the
last woman on earth who should be lugging bathwater into a cellar
at a dilapidated inn hidden somewhere in the middle of a
godforsaken wood.

The servant girl glanced at Sabina in passing as she
headed for the stairs, then paused. Their eyes met, and a faint
glimmer of recognition flickered in the servant girl’s striking
blue eyes. Without another word, the girl turned and bolted up the
stairs.

All the color drained out of Sabina’s face. She knew
who that servant girl was. And she also knew that servant girl had
no business lugging somebody else’s bathwater.

Robert immediately sensed something was amiss.
“Sabina? You’ve gone white as a ghost. What’s wrong?”

“Robert, we have to leave here immediately.”

“What? Why?”

“I know that servant girl. And I know that she
recognized me, too.”

Robert sat down beside her on the bed. “Sabina, calm
down. You’re imagining things.”

“No, Robert, I’m not. That servant girl is no
servant at all. She is Mfanwy ap Powys, eldest daughter of Baron
Powys, whose lands in Wales border my father’s estate.”

“Sabina, surely you have mistaken the woman for
someone else. What on earth would a Welsh noblewoman be doing in a
place like this? You just need to take a rest—”

“Let me finish. Mfanwy fled her father’s house three
years ago to run away with a Norman. A Norman who also happened to
be a spy for King William, Henry’s older brother. Now King William
is dead, and Mfanwy is here. I think this means grave danger for
us.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

“I knew Mfanwy well, Robert. We were childhood
playmates. My father and her father were very good friends. I was
devastated when she ran away with that Norman of hers. I never
really understood why she did it, until I had a long conversation
with Siobhan, Mfanwy’s governess, who visited Angwyld with the
Baron late last year. Siobhan told me that Mfanwy ran away with her
Norman not because she was in love with him, but because she was
bored and wanted adventure. She’d been corresponding with Mfanwy in
secret for a time after she ran away. Siobhan wasn’t entirely
certain, but she thought that in addition to being her casual
lover, the Norman was also training Mfanwy up to be a spy.”

“Seems a rather unlikely story,” Robert said. He
obviously didn’t believe a word Sabina said, which infuriated her.
“Who the devil was this Norman she ran off with, anyway?”

“I never knew his name,” Sabina replied. “No one
did. He was a spy after all, and quite mysterious.”

“Did you ever actually see him?”

“Only from a distance. He rode through our lands
once, when he was on his way back from Wales to London.” Sabina
closed her eyes, tried to visualize him in her mind’s eye. “All I
remember is he wore a green tunic with a red cross on it. A flaming
red cross—I remember that well. And he rode a white horse. And he
carried a silver halberd, a strange kind of halberd that I’d never
seen anywhere, before or since. It looked almost like a crucifix
that had been rendered into a weapon somehow.”

Sabina opened her eyes then. Robert rushed to her
side, his face flushed. “Was his helmet red? Did his horse have red
banners attached to his bridle, dagged in the shape of red
flames?”

“Yes, he did. How did you know?”

“The Norman you speak of wasn’t a Norman at all. He
was Tostig of York, son of Tostig Godwinson, the last Saxon
nobleman besides your father to openly defy William the Conqueror.
His father fled England for Denmark when King William put a price
on his head, but his son returned, aiming to overthrow the Normans
from the throne. But Tostig is a master of disguise. Most everyone
in England knows him as Etienne de Gaulle, a minor Norman nobleman.
Only a few people in all of England know his true identity, or just
dangerous he really is.”

“And apparently, one of those few people is you.”
Sabina sighed and rubbed her temples. “Why am I not surprised?”

“As I’ve said before milady, knowing as much as
possible about all things clandestine ‘tis part and parcel of my
profession. Plus, Lord Reginald entered into an agreement with
Tostig a few years ago.”

“An
agreement?
With someone who aims to
overthrow the Normans? Is he mad?”

Robert laughed uneasily. “No, not mad. Just
practical. Tostig and my employer struck a bargain that neither
would interfere with the other’s plans and campaigns, so long as
those plans and campaigns didn’t cross paths by chance or accident.
If they did, however, all bets were off.”

“And did they ever cross paths?”

“Not yet. But if what you say is true, Sabina, today
that agreement might be at an end. Then again, since I’ve already
betrayed Lord Reginald, I suppose he and Tostig might even ally
themselves against us.”

Sabina stood up and began to pace the tiny cellar
room. “Everything I’ve said is true, Robert. I’d stake my life on
it. We have to get out of here.”

Robert took both her hands in his and squeezed them.
“I believe you now, beloved. But I don’t think it’s wise for us to
flee ten minutes after we’ve arrived. That would look too
suspicious. Let’s just stay for one night and keep our eyes and
ears open. For all we know, this Mfanwy might have left the Normans
behind long ago and become a mercenary of sorts herself. That’s
frankly the only reason I could see Cuthbert having a Welshwoman as
a servant. He hates the Welsh.”

That didn’t comfort Sabina at all. “He might not
even know she’s Welsh in the first place. She’s fluent in at least
four languages besides her own, and speaks English like an
aristocrat. Or a peasant, if she so chooses. Mfanwy was always an
excellent mimic. We used to make a game of it as children.”

“All the more reason for us to remain here,” Robert
said. “I’ll observe her and see what I can find out. She may be of
some use to us.” Sabina broke away from him them and resumed
pacing. “Please don’t think I’m not heeding your warnings, Sabina,”
he pleaded. “But I have a lot of experience with this sort of
thing. More than you could ever possibly know. Sometimes the best
path is just to lay low.”

“All right,” she finally acquiesced. “But I still
have a very bad feeling about this whole place.”

****

Lady Mfanwy of Powys dumped another bucketful of hot
water into the overflowing privy. Cuthbert had ordered her to clean
it for their unexpected guests. Even though she was stuck with the
filthiest chore imaginable, she couldn’t believe her good luck.
Imagine her childhood playmate Lady Sabina of Angwyld appearing
here at the Cock and Robin, of all places! And under an assumed
name! Sabina was no more “Lady McDonough of Glasgow” than she was
the Holy Roman Empress. And she was traveling alone with the
notorious mercenary and bounty hunter Robert de Tyre to boot.She’d
never met Robert de Tyre face-to-face before, but she knew him by
reputation, both by news of his famous (or rather, infamous)
exploits around England and also from the stories her employer
Cuthbert had told round the inn’s main dining table ever since she
first took a job here. She’d eavesdropped on Robert and Cuthbert’s
conversation through the partition when the he and Sabina arrived,
then put two and two together. Now that she would be their
chambermaid for the duration of their stay, Mfanwy would have had a
golden opportunity to gather come coveted information for her
masters—that is, if Sabina hadn’t already recognized her.

Mfanwy had foolishly thought that her rough burlap
garb and dirty face would have been more than enough to hide her
true identity. Sabina had only known her as the favored daughter of
a wealthy Welsh nobleman, and Mfanwy had always been a frivolous
and fashionable dresser. But Sabina had always been a rather
observant sort. It was really too bad that Sabina was always so
focused on pleasing her father. She would have made an excellent
spy.

Mfanwy wondered what sort of trouble her old
playmate had gotten herself into. Running wild across the English
countryside disguised as a Scotswoman didn’t seem to gel with the
proper, demure Lady Sabina Mfanwy had grown up with. Had she gotten
herself with child? Was she fleeing the Normans? Maybe a bit of
both? She had seen a handbill proclaiming Robert and Sabina as
wanted outlaws posted in Rye just the day before when she went to
fetch some fresh produce for Master Cuthbert. If the Sheriff of Rye
was indeed looking for them, there must be a heavy price on both
their heads.

Hmph. All the better. With any
luck, she could both collect the sheriff’s bounty
and
her master’s reward.
Then she might just have enough ready cash to finally escape to
Paris, and live her dream of becoming a French courtesan—and spy—to
King Philip of France, with the ultimate goal of helping the French
King retake Normandy from that disobedient Duke, and then conquer
all of England.

Mfanwy rued the day she was born a woman, and a
Welshwoman at that. She had a mind and soul bound for higher
things, power chief among them. Surely if the stars had been
differently aligned at her birth, she’d have been born a king. But
even if that was not her destiny, she could still mimic a king’s
power in her own special way. Mfanwy was a gifted mimic, after all.
There was nothing and no one she could not imitate, and always to
her own advantage.

In any case, time was of the essence. Mfanwy would
have to devise a plan to get news of the two outlaws to both the
sheriff and her masters in a matter of hours. It was a difficult
task, but Mfanwy was up for it. She’d always loved a challenge,
after all.

Chapter
11

Lord Reginald’s base camp
garrison, just outside Rye, West Sussex, later that same
day.

Lord Reginald sat in his faded blue field pavilion,
brooding over a tankard of warm sheep’s milk. He’d abstained from
alcohol ever since his long stay with the Saracens so many years
ago, and now warm sheep’s milk, thick and fatty and straight from
the ewe, was the only vice he allowed himself. Lord Reginald de
Guillaume was a busy man with a highly tactical mind, and he
couldn’t afford to be distracted or lose his faculties for any
reason. Many an engagement on the field of battle had been lost due
either to wine or women. Lord Reginald had no use for either.

Except for his betrothed bride, of course. Which was
the whole reason for the impending battle in the first place.

It was clear that Lady Sabina of Angwyld was no
ordinary woman. First she’d run off to Glastonbury alone on a
stolen horse in the dead of night, cache of her mother’s jewels in
hand, hoping to buy her way into a nun’s habit rather than marry
him. Now it seemed she’d managed to seduce and corrupt his
toughest, least-corruptible mercenary. Lord Reginald knew Robert de
Tyre well enough to understand that was no easy feat.

He took his last sip of sheep’s milk and chuckled
softly to himself. A woman of Sabina’s temperament wasn’t for every
man. Plus it was patently obvious that her virgin virtue—her most
valuable asset on the marriage market—was ruined by now. Indeed,
most men of his position and reputation would have severed the
engagement long ago—if not ordering the willful girl executed, or
at the very least, sold to a brothel. But Lord Reginald was no
ordinary man. If anything, Lady Sabina’s willful disobedience and
easy virtue just made him desire her all the more.

Lord Reginald grunted and shifted in his seat. His
desire for Sabina had reached a fever pitch. The uncomfortable
bulge in his breeches needed swift attention, or he himself might
be at risk of losing his faculties over a woman—something that in
all his years of asceticism and self-control he never thought he’d
see happen.

All the more reason to get this nasty business over
and done with swiftly.