Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (17 page)

“You bastard!” she hissed beneath her hair. “Leave me alone.”

Duncan stiffened. What was wrong with her? Hadn’t he apologized? She didn’t sound properly grateful for his help at all.

Perhaps she didn’t understand. “I had to convince El Gallo you were mine,” he patiently explained. “I had to lay claim to you before one of
them
did.”

Her silence irritated him.

“I’d think you’d be grateful,” he muttered.

“Grateful?
Grateful?
What makes
you
any better than one of them?” Linet spat, lifting her head to glare at him, an action she instantly regretted. She couldn’t very well pretend it hadn’t happened now, that he didn’t exist. He seemed to fill the room. His gaze was sultry, his hair tousled, and she could remember all too well the feel of those skilled fingers upon her so intimately only moments ago.

Her cheeks turned to flame. She scrambled up to her knees on the bed, clutching her shift to her chin. “Get out,” she mumbled, trembling.

What sympathy Duncan possessed escaped him quicker than a bird from an opened cage. He controlled his temper only by sheer dint of will. With forced patience, he bent to retrieve the diabolical-looking harness and hung it back on the wall. He coiled the whip and hung it up as well.

“You know, it’s partly your fault,” he grumbled. “If you’d only gone along with—”

“
My
fault! You have the audacity to drag me into this devil’s lair and threaten me with a whip and…and have your way with—”

“Have my way!” Duncan’s irritation blossomed into full-blown anger now. “I did not, my lady, have my way with you. I had
your
way with you.”

“How dare you insinuate…you Satan’s spawn! This was all
your
idea. You used me, lied to me, forced me to enjoy your pawing, and now you—”

“Ah ha!”

“What!” she snapped.

He cocked a brow at her. “Enjoy?”

“What?”

“You said I forced you to enjoy my pawing.”

Linet reddened. “I did not. I said ‘endure.’ You forced me to endure your pawing.” Surely she hadn’t said “enjoy.” Shite, she wished she hadn’t drunk that last cup of ale. She couldn’t stand much more humiliation at the hands of this commoner tonight.

“Indeed,” he explained, “you left me no choice. I did what I had to do for your safety.”

She ran a shaky hand through her tangled hair. “Get out.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

Her gaze flashed at him. “I wouldn’t leave with you if you were the last man alive.”

Duncan gnashed his teeth. The combination of Linet’s unthankfulness and his own unrequited lust vexed him sorely. He had half a mind to take the whip back down. “You prefer to wait here for El Gallo?” he asked, quirking a brow. He looked pointedly at the wall of devices. “Very well. He no doubt knows the proper use for those things.” With that, he wheeled and headed for the door.

“Wait!” she cried, her voice raised in panic.

She scrambled to her feet with as much haste and dignity as she could muster. God, she hated being dependent upon anyone, most especially a toplofty peasant. “You will escort me to the hold then,” she informed him.

Duncan blinked, incredulous. Now she thought to order him about. Was there no end to the woman’s audacity?

He waited for her to clamber off the bed, his lips clamped together. Her ruined shift fell away from the top of one creamy breast as she neared, causing a twinge of desire to torment his loins. He averted his gaze and rubbed a weary hand across his forehead. “This way,” he muttered. Maybe the brisk evening breeze would cool his ardor.

“My garments,” she gasped, fumbling with the laces.

He shook his head. “As you are.”

She flushed in horror. “God’s wounds—you’re serious.” If she had any qualms about sacrificing her dignity to save her life, they proved futile. He caught her wrist and tugged her forward.

“El Gallo believes we’ve just trysted in Sombra’s cabin. You must look the part. As far as the reivers are concerned, you belong to me. After tonight, no one will dare question that fact.”

Her heart raced, as if she half believed his claim to her. She drew back her arm, and he let her go. But she knew resistance was pointless. Reluctantly she followed him, creeping onto the deck close at his back. The evening wind lifted the edges of her gown away from her damp bosom. She sucked in her breath, praying for invisibility.

Duncan sucked in his breath as well. The most difficult part, he grumbled to himself, would be convincing the crew he was sated from his tryst below.

The beggar didn’t exactly throw her into the hold, but he might as well have, for all the dignity he left her. On their trek across the deck, he’d pinched her backside, remarked lewdly and loudly on her performance in Sombra’s bed, and cupped her breast in full view of the crew. The last earned him a sharp elbow in the stomach that she hoped he’d feel for days.

But instead of reacting with anger, he paid her back with more humiliation. Standing before the hatch of the hold, he spun her toward him, took her face in his hands and planted a long, slow, wet kiss on her lips.

If she had trouble thinking after that, it was small wonder. The churlish peasant was making a spectacle of her, mocking her good breeding by treating her like a wanton, as if she were his for the asking. He was making her feel things… God, nay, she wouldn’t think of that.

“How dare you lay hands on me!” she cried breathlessly. “I am a de Montfort! And you…you are—”

He’d swept her off her feet and below deck before she could finish. “I am your rescuer,” he whispered fiercely, plopping her down upon a wooden chest. “Me! By whatever name I choose, whether I’m a nobleman or a slave, nothing changes that fact. I’ve risked much in coming here, and I’d die to protect you. The least you can do is treat me as an equal.”

Then he left her to ponder his words. An equal? He would never be her equal. She was a de Montfort, damn it, and he…

Moonlight pierced through the planking overhead, striping her shift with stark white. She lifted tremulous fingers to her mouth. Her lips were still soft from his kiss. And warm. She flicked her tongue lightly over them. God, she could still taste…him. What other havoc had he wrought upon her body?

A tear welled in her eye, and she brusquely wiped it away. There was nothing to cry about, she scolded herself. It wasn’t as if she’d invited his attack or encouraged him in any way. She’d simply forgotten herself for a moment in the excitement of it all. She was, after all, in dire circumstances. Any noblewoman would have reacted that way in the clutches of ruthless sea reivers. She was in danger and drunk and naturally thankful for an ally, even if it was a pretentious beggar. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about the warmth that suffused her when his lips closed over hers, the thrumming in her breast when his thumb brushed her skin, the breathlessness she suffered when his sapphire gaze held her.

Instead she clung to more consoling memories—memories of her well-appointed cottage in Avedon, of the thriving wool trade she and her father had built from nothing, of the stirring lectures Lord Aucassin had given her, assuring her of her birthright, high on the ladder of society. She raised her chin, certain she could survive anything, comforted by the fact that she was a grown woman, far removed from the cruel-tongued playmates who’d taunted her as a child. She knew her place now. Lord Aucassin had made sure she would never forget.

She reached up to touch the de Montfort medallion upon her bosom, tangible proof of her breeding. To her horror, it was gone.

It wasn’t as if the piece was particularly valuable. It had been a Christmas gift from Linet’s father when she was five winters old. Since that time, the cheap bronze had been worn almost smooth, the finish dulled with handling. Still, it was a symbol—a symbol of her inheritance, her status. Removed from her father, far from her bolts of wool, adrift among a pack of savages, it proved to her that she was a de Montfort, that she could rise above whatever misfortune fate handed her.

Without it, she was only Linet. Without it, men like the beggar could look at her the way they would any tavern wench, the way he had when he’d kissed her.

She buried her face in her hands. In one cruel stroke, some lowborn reiver had reduced her to the insignificant child she’d once been. Without her medallion, she was a little girl again, suffering the ridicule of ruthless teasing: Linet the bastard child, Linet the whore’s daughter, Linet the black sheep of the de Montfort flock.

Ah God, if she got out of this alive, she vowed, she’d never again even speak to a commoner outside her own servants. Once Harold was found, she’d return to her warehouse and live inside the safe, protected, isolated walls of her mesnage, never to set eyes on that damned beggar or his thieving kind again.

With that small comfort, she curled up against a bale of linen rags, punched them into a more desirable shape and drifted off to slumber.

Duncan wondered, gazing up at the dawning cloud-scattered sky, if someone would saint him when he died. Two days of hell had passed on the back of a snail. Two days of suffering the torment of a martyr. Oh aye, he’d fondled and kissed Linet to his heart’s content on deck. The reivers expected it of him. But below deck, the woman had forced the celibacy of a monk upon him. The stubborn wench still adamantly resisted the natural longings of her own body. Thus, his desire remained unrequited.

Chivalry certainly came with its challenges.

Never had he been so frustrated. How his brother Garth had made it to the age of eighteen as yet untried in the ways of love, he’d never understand. For Duncan, his unmet lust was a gnawing ache in his belly.

But Linet de Montfort wasn’t the only source of his frustration. The
Corona Negra
was nearing the coast of Flanders now. The difficult task of helping Linet escape and assuring El Gallo’s capture lay ahead. Much was at stake. Much could go wrong.

He rubbed his cheek beneath the eye patch and let his gaze drop from the distant horizon to the dark water below, where a school of fish glittered by. If only, he thought, there was some way to get Linet safely off ship before they got to the harbor at Boulogne…

“Nay!” Linet whispered fiercely, shuddering in the loose jerkin and hose.

The afternoon sun sparkled on the gray-green water at the aft of the ship, making the waves wink up at Linet as if they were teasing her. But she was not amused. She was terrified.

True, this close to land, the ocean was calm and shallow. And she knew how to swim. But this was the sea. The men’s clothing she wore was cumbersome, and it was a long dive to the water below. Who knew what savage creatures lurked below the guileless surface? Certainly the savage creatures of the slave market could be no worse. At least those she was accustomed to. After all, she was a merchant. She was used to bargaining her way through life, not making reckless, foolish, daring escapes like this one.

“You must!” the beggar hissed.

Linet bit her lip and stalled for time, holding up the selvage of the jerkin. “Do you have any idea what seawater will do to this dye?”

The beggar clenched his teeth. She knew what he was thinking: After all his trouble of digging up a disguise for her, she’d better not disappoint him.

The rest of the crew bustled about the fore of the ship as they neared the harbor, some watching for hull-ripping reefs, others trying to make out the insignias of the anchored vessels. They were preoccupied now, but there was no telling for how long. She had to jump now…if she was going to do it.

The beggar placed a rude hand on her backside and shoved her a foot closer to the rail. She gasped. But why the intimate contact startled her, she didn’t know. After all, it wasn’t as if the man hadn’t touched every part of her anatomy at one time or another in the past two days. It seemed he was ever finding an excuse to swat, squeeze, pat, or maul any piece of her he could get his hands on, all in the name of lending believability to their ploy.

“Hurry!”

“Nay!”

Some of the reivers were beginning to wander back to mid-ship.

“Can’t you swim?” the beggar demanded pointedly.

“Of course I can swim,” she haughtily replied.

Before she could draw breath to expound upon her talents, the beggar lifted her bodily from the aft deck and dropped her without ceremony over the edge and into the sea.

It was fortunate that Linet gasped in a great gulp of air as she tumbled overboard. The water was freezing and much deeper than it had appeared from above. Still, she feared her lungs would burst before she finally emerged from the briny drink. She shot through the surface, coughing and sputtering and swallowing more than a little seawater in the process.

Salt stung her eyes. Icicles stabbed into her veins. The heavy clothes weighed her down. A wave rose and plastered her woolen coif in an unflattering fashion to her head, and she scowled through the wet mess of her hair. But anger moved her to stay afloat. She fought the current, swimming in the shadow of the great ship, and swore she’d see the wretched beggar hang for his devilry.

How dare he toss her overboard like a bucket of bilge water! After all she’d endured—all his pawing, all the painful pretense—she deserved so much better. She was glad to be rid of him, the scoundrel.

Once she escaped, she’d collect the tangled threads of her old life and weave a new one—one free of men like that devil whose presence she’d been forced to enjoy…
endure
, she corrected peevishly.

She shivered. The chill of the sea sobered her and made her focus on her own survival. She clamped her chattering teeth shut and with a firm shake of her head, swam a steady course for an empty stretch of shore. And by the time she hauled herself, dripping, exhausted, onto the beach, she’d almost forgotten about the one-eyed beggar. Almost.

Duncan dusted off his hands. Linet would make it to land. He was sure of it. She was a fighter. She’d survive, if only to spite him. For now, he had to trust in her talents and concentrate on his own end of the plan.