Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (24 page)

“Do as I say,” he pressed.

“Nay,” she repeated through gritted teeth.

A muscle in his cheek twitched. He looked as if he’d like to throttle her into compliance. “Then at least stay back,” he growled.

The ferret sneered, “Make your move, coward.”

The beggar obliged him, skulking forth from the shadows like a stalking wolf, brandishing the pitchfork with cool menace. Linet gasped as the two Spaniards came at him together, swinging their blades in wide, slashing arcs that the beggar deflected with the tines of the pitchfork. They scuffled across the stable floor, sending dust and bits of straw flying.

Linet chewed at her lip in worry. The cow lowed once and kicked over a half-full pail of milk in her bid to saunter out of harm’s way. Chickens squawked at the sound of metal hitting metal.

The beggar half crouched, holding the pitchfork like a quarterstaff, ready for an attack from either side as the reivers circled. When their jeweled swords came flashing around simultaneously, he dropped to the ground. The two villains engaged each other in a tangle of steel as he rolled free of their arena.

Linet cursed softly. She couldn’t stand idly by while her champion got himself killed. Snatching up a spade from against the wall, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and advanced on the combatants.

The men moved about so quickly that she wasn’t sure where to begin. She jabbed experimentally forward, poking at empty air. Then, just as she reared back to swing the spade at the one called Tomas, the beggar stepped into its path, and it took all her strength to stop the blow’s completion. She skidded on the straw, waving the spade wildly for a moment.

By the time she’d gained her balance, she was in the middle of the fighting. Swords whistled about her head. She sucked in a terrified breath.

Nothing won Duncan’s attention faster than the gasp of a woman in distress. He wheeled about to see what was wrong. What for the love of God was Linet doing? She stood holding a spade before her as if it were some magic shield that would render her invincible to wounds. Hadn’t he commanded her to stay back? He scowled at her, and that split second of inattention to the fight cost him a shallow gash across his ribs. He winced, and then grabbed the spade from her, roughly shoving her away with it as he did.

Linet fell, bruising her backside and her pride, but she had little time to lick her wounds. She scrambled backward in the dirt just as a blade flew past her head. She’d have to find another weapon. Quickly, she scanned the stable.

Duncan could feel the linen of his shirt growing wet with blood, but he doubted the wound was severe. Hopefully, with two weapons in hand, he’d be able to end the skirmish soon.

The planting stick Linet found was too brittle to make a good weapon. She was just creeping forward, considering the merits of the half-empty milk pail, when a reiver’s sword sang through the air toward her.

She experienced no fear. There wasn’t time for it.

“Nay!” the beggar cried. Then he dove with impossible speed in front of her, turning the reiver’s blade deftly aside with his pitchfork.

His heroics took her breath away, and she staggered back to watch. To her amazement, even without her help, the beggar, armed with little more than farmer’s tools and his wits, singlehandedly held the Spaniards at bay. She stared in awe as he lunged and leaped, feigned and struck with spade and pitchfork as brilliantly as any knight with sword. Where, she wondered, had a peasant learned such combat skills?

The ferret swung his blade high, and the beggar dropped beneath its path, then came up abruptly, slamming the broad pan of the spade against the back of the reiver’s head. The resulting dull ring made Linet groan in empathy.

The beggar didn’t wait to see the damage, but turned immediately toward Tomas, who gaped at his fallen companion. Hefting the spade upward, the beggar sent Tomas’s sword sailing across the stable, where it landed mere inches from the cow chewing her cud with bovine nonchalance.

Now he had them, Duncan thought. He narrowed his eyes, closing in for the final coup. He casually dropped the spade. His prey retreated step by shaky step. Then a movement glimpsed from the corner of his eye reminded Duncan that Linet was watching him.

By all rights, he should slaughter this scoundrel. Common sense told him so. The man was a sea reiver, one of El Gallo’s brood. He probably deserved far worse even than a quick, clean death. Yet Duncan couldn’t bring himself to kill so cold-bloodedly, not in front of the angel.

A revelation took sudden hold of him. Here was the perfect opportunity to teach Linet de Montfort something about the lower class and honor. After all, hadn’t he discovered chivalry among the poorest of peasants and pride in the humblest of hovels? Here was a chance to prove to her that wealth and title did not a gentleman make.

He raised the tines of the pitchfork against the reiver’s bobbing Adam’s apple.

“I should slay you, knave,” he proclaimed, “but I won’t. I don’t wish to cause my lady further distress at seeing your blood spilled.”

Tomas’s eyes remained nervously focused on the long tines before him.

“You two,” he continued, waking Clave with a kick to his skinny butt, “will return to El Gallo. You will tell him that you’ve looked into the face of death and that I let you live. And you will warn him that should anyone so much as touch a hair on the head of Lady Linet de Montfort, they will have to deal with…” He straightened, suddenly inspired. “With the only man to ever have defeated Sir Holden de Ware.”

“De Ware?” Clave gaped. “But no one has ever—”

“The next time,” Duncan promised, “I won’t be so merciful.” With that, he lowered the pitchfork.

Tomas cowered back and turned to go, not even bothering to collect his sword. Clave scrambled after him. Duncan prodded their backsides with the tines just hard enough to make the reivers yelp as they hurtled toward the safety beyond the stable door.

Linet watched in open-mouthed wonder as the beggar—the most unlikely hero with his rumpled linen clothing and straw-bedecked, disheveled hair—chased them out. Had she heard him right? She’d have sworn he’d called her
Lady
Linet. He’d shown the reivers a nobleman’s mercy, releasing them with a warning, little worse for wear. Could it be the beggar had some scruples after all?

Nay, she decided with a shake of her head, not after that outrageous lie he’d concocted about defeating Holden de Ware.

Still, she thought, dusting the straw from her jerkin, she owed him her life, and she was grateful he’d escaped unharmed. “Thank God you were here,” she said, when they were gone and the dust had settled. “But you know, if you’re going to make a practice of deception, you’d do well to be more subtle about it. Holden de Ware indee-“

He turned toward her, and horror froze the words on her tongue. As she watched, a tiny wet thread of scarlet worked its way down the front of the beggar’s shirt, staining the white linen.

“You’re wounded,” she breathed.

Duncan frowned and glanced down. That? It was only a scrape. A bit of cloth for binding and the cut would heal in a few days. “It’s noth-“

Linet was as white as a snowdrift. She looked as if she might collapse. His heart leaped to his throat. Was she hurt? Forgetting his own scrape, he strode forward to clasp her shoulders, his eyes wide in concern. “Are you all right?” His voice was ragged.

She recoiled from him, her eyes rolling like a frightened palfrey’s as she stared at his chest. “You’re hurt,” she murmured.

He narrowed his eyes, quickly inspecting her for injuries. She seemed unharmed, thank God. A warm rush of relief washed over him.

Still she looked pale. “So much blood,” she said weakly.

Her concern moved him. “I have enough to spare, my lady, never fear,” he assured her, wadding the bottom of his shirt against the cut to stanch the flow. “It’s just a scratch.”

Linet swallowed hard and forced herself to bridle her panic. If the beggar could endure such a wound, so could she. She turned away, reaching beneath her surcoat, and tore a large piece of linen from her undergarment. Biting down on her lip to stop its quivering, she marched over to him. But she wouldn’t look at the ghastly injury. Averting her eyes, she donated her cloth to the cause and the pressure of her hands to the task.

He caught her hand in his where it rested on his chest. Curiosity played in his eyes. “You’ve never thrown a dagger to kill a man,” he said, recalling her boast.

“Nay,” she replied, too queasy to lie.

“You’re really made of the sheerest silk, aren’t you, beneath all those layers of thick wool?”

Her silence condemned her.

“Then I’m glad I spared those two,” he said softly. He removed her bloodied hands from their reluctant task with gentle fingers and nudged her away. “Go, wipe your hands on the straw,” he murmured. “I can bind this myself.”

She glanced at her hands. She tried to imagine that the tips of her trembling fingers were stained with carmine dye, not his blood. “I’ve never been able to abide the sight of blood,” she muttered in self-disgust.

“For a woman with no taste for blood,” he said, wincing as he wrapped the linen tightly around his ribs, “you certainly seem to engage in more than your share of violence.” He glanced meaningfully at his palm, which still bore the faint marks of her teeth.

Linet was spared having to think of a defense, for barreling in through the stable door came the crofter’s wife.

“Paul!” the woman shrieked when she beheld her fallen husband. Her voice startled the poor man from his unnatural slumber. Wild-eyed, she turned on the beggar in accusation. “You! You ungrateful wretch! I give you bread, and this is how you repay me—by beating my husband? Get out of here! Get out! You devil’s spawn! You thieving bastard—”

“How dare you!” Linet cried, whirling her skirt regally before her. “Listen, you addlepated woman. If it weren’t for this man, your husband might be dead. And you—you might be tossed over a sea reiver’s shoulder, bound for the slave market!”

Duncan felt a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. His arrogant angel sounded absolutely indignant. This was a peculiar turn—Linet de Montfort leaping to his defense.

Mathilde was clearly taken aback. She curved a brow toward him. “Who is
she
?”

It was all Duncan could do to keep a solemn face. “This,” he announced, “is Lady Linet de Mont—“

“Mathilde?” the crofter called weakly.

Mathilde rushed to his side at once. All else was forgotten as she murmured endearments to her groggy husband, helping him to his feet and trying to explain to him the presence of boarders in his barn as she led him away.

Duncan whispered to Linet, “I have yet to pay for the bread and lodging.” Then he thoughtfully furrowed his brow. “Though I fear my wound may make the work difficult.”

“Work?” she whispered back. “What work?”

“On the other hand…”

“Should we not be making our esca—“

“Have you ever milked a cow?”

She blinked twice.

“Have you?” he repeated.

“Milked a cow?”

“Aye.”

“You jest.”

“Come,” he told her. “I’ll teach you. It’s not difficult.”

Surely he wasn’t serious. She wasn’t about to soil her de Montfort hands on the teats of a beast. She whispered as much to him.

He murmured back, “Would you rather have it bandied about that a de Montfort stole three loaves of good bread and a night’s lodging?”

She pursed her lips. He had a point. And by the glimmer in his eye, he seemed to be enjoying making it.

In the end, she supposed it wasn’t so terrible. Indeed, once she became accustomed to the rhythm, milking a cow proved almost pleasant. It wasn’t unlike weaving—a simple motion repeated over and over, slowly but surely achieving results. The pail was already three-quarters full. But she didn’t want to stop. And it wasn’t only because the beggar had convinced her that doing the service was the noble thing to do, that paying her debt honestly would demonstrate her de Montfort honor. Nay—as against her nature as it was, as foreign to her upbringing, she had to admit the experience was enjoyable. She leaned her cheek tentatively against the cow’s flank. The beast had a sweet odor, like summer, and her hide was warm and as soft as brushed wool.

The beggar crouched behind her and murmured against her hair, “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”

“Certainly not. My father would rather have seen me dance with the devil than set foot in a barn.”

The beggar’s chuckle sent shivers up her back. “Then perhaps I should have asked you to dance instead.”

She stiffened and stopped the milking.

Duncan mentally chided himself. Arm’s length indeed, he thought. He could scarcely keep his hands off of Linet. Only last night he’d sworn to keep his distance, yet here he was in close contact with her again. Patiently, he eased her back into the rhythm of milking, squeezing her supple fingers in a downward motion.

By the time the cow ran dry, it was all Duncan could do to keep from tumbling Linet off the stool and into the hay. He’d never ached with such an agony of longing.

When he loosed Linet’s hands from the cow’s teats, a drop of milk trickled across the inside of her wrist. Acting solely on instinct, he lifted her arm and lapped the sweet liquid up with his tongue.

It was the wrong thing to do.

She snatched back her hand as if he’d scalded it and shot to her feet, knocking over the milking stool. Fortunately, Duncan thought to give the cow a reassuring pat before Linet could entirely spook the animal. But the peaceful moment they’d shared had passed. Tension once again rippled through the air.

Duncan righted the stool and rescued the brimming milk pail from beneath the cow.

“We should leave before El Gallo’s men find us again,” Linet murmured, still awkwardly holding her wrist.

Duncan only nodded, too frustrated to speak.

The sun had begun to slide toward the afternoon. Linet could remain silent no longer. They’d walked for hours. For hours she’d listened to the creak of the beggar’s leather belt and the soft slap of his sheathed dagger against his thigh, endured the occasional brush of his cloak against her leg, caught the manly scent of him as a breeze wafted past. And each moment spent near him made it more difficult to imagine life without him.