Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (29 page)

She’d have to take drastic measures. She’d have to make certain he
couldn’t
follow her.

Rummaging through the supply bag, she found what she needed. She pulled forth the thick leather binding cord from the crofter’s bundle. Drawing it tediously across the edge of the beggar’s dagger, she cut it into four pieces. Quaking with fear and stealth, she wrapped cord gently around each of his wrists and both ankles. While he dozed on, she secured the remaining ends to the bedposts, finishing each with a weaver’s knot.

Now she had to make certain he couldn’t call for help. Eventually, a servant would discover him and free him from his bonds. But by then she’d be long gone.

She gazed at him, lying there as guilelessly as a child. Shite—she hated what she was about to do, but there was no other way. Using his dagger again, she sliced two strips out of her linen undergarment and wadded one of them into a ball. Before he could rouse and fully comprehend what was happening, she pulled down his jaw and swiftly shoved the thick ball of cloth into his mouth.

The beggar gagged on the dry material. He involuntarily raised his head, giving her room to tie the gag in place. His eyes widened in alarm. He yanked on the cords once, twice, bidding for freedom.

Her heart missed a beat. Had she made the bonds strong enough? He fixed her with a glare of incredulous hostility. It seemed he might tear the very bedposts from the bed to get to her. That look charged the air. It would be imprinted on her memory for a long time. It was a look of sheer rage and utter bewilderment.

She sobbed once, partly in fear, partly with raw guilt, partly from heartbreak. Then she turned away, unwilling to witness the shame she’d brought upon him, unwilling to face the accusation in his eyes. She threw open the bolt and scurried out of the chamber before remorse could drag her, kicking and screaming, back to his side.

Duncan thrashed in panic. The leather cord cut into his wrists as he struggled to be free of it. What the devil had the wench done to him, and why? The last thing he could remember was utter joy as Linet lay slumbering against him and the certainty that he’d at last found the woman with whom he belonged for all eternity.

Evidently he’d been wrong. Very wrong. And he had the punitive bonds of a vengeful woman to prove it.

What was it he’d seen in her eyes? Fear? Guilt? Sorrow? Regret? He’d taken enough willing virgins to know that their emotions were as unpredictable as the weather. Some wailed and carried on. Some lashed out in anger. Some were convinced they’d burn in hell. But with Duncan’s forbearance and understanding, all of them eventually came to have no regrets.

Until now.

Damn Linet, he’d been gentle with her. He’d been patient, delaying his own needs to fulfill hers, causing as little pain as possible. And she’d wanted him. He’d felt it in her. Why then had she done this? He curled his fists upward against his bonds, staring at them as if the answer lay there.

A draft blew in through the open door and across the hearth, rattling the cinders to life. And all at once he knew.

Linet de Montfort had used him. The thought left an acrid lump in his throat. The wench had used him, made him believe she desired him so he’d play into her hands. She intended to leave him behind. The little fool was going on alone. She figured she no longer needed him—a peasant who’d become so much excess weight. He’d seen her safely this far, and now that they were near to the de Montfort castle, he’d apparently outgrown his usefulness. She’d discarded him as callously as an old gown. She’d intended to get rid of him, he thought bitterly, all along.

Her passion had been fake, her cries of ecstasy a sham. The way she’d clung to him, called to him, joined him on that soul’s flight to heaven, all a pretense. His heart twisted with pain. He wrenched in vain the bonds that seemed to knot tighter with each movement. Sweat popped out from his forehead, and the veins in his neck bulged with the effort. Again and again he strained, becoming angrier and more desperate by the minute.

As he paused momentarily, panting, gathering his strength for the next onslaught, he remembered something that turned his blood to ice. He’d given her his ring, the de Ware crest ring. And the wench had taken it with her.

The wad of linen muffled his cry of frustration, and his thrashing scarcely made a whisper upon the feather-filled bed. Still, he froze as someone, alerted by the noise, slowly pushed the door to his chamber open, widening the crack with a faint creak.

A twinge of hope streaked up his spine. Maybe Linet had come back, repentant. Then he grimaced in self-disgust at how readily he would have forgiven her.

But it wasn’t Linet. And he suspected, despite the shadowy profiles that appeared to belong to men of the cloth, that he was about to find himself in a great deal of peril. He watched through slitted eyes, barely breathing, as a pair of men stumbled across the room. One of them lifted a timber from the hearth, blowing upon it till it blossomed into a firebrand that lit up the whole chamber.

Duncan had never felt so helpless. As he lay there, bound and gagged, Tomas and Clave threw back their cowls and swaggered up, leers on their lips and revenge in their eyes.

The moon gilt the crests of the waves lapping the Spanish shore, making golden gems on the water. Ships rocked against their moorings—stately ships, old rusted skiffs, vessels that floated barnacle-heavy and low in the waves. But nowhere did Robert see the imposing sails of the
Corona Negra
.

“The ship—she is not here?” Anabella clung to Robert’s side, placing one delicate hand on his chest.

Robert sighed. How natural Anabella felt in his arms. It hardly seemed possible that they’d known each other only a few short days. “I don’t see her.”

“What will you do?” She looked up at him with huge, dark eyes—eyes that trusted him, eyes that made him believe he could do anything.

“I’ll find him. Somehow I’ll find Duncan. If he isn’t in Spain, I’ll return to England and—”

“No, not there,” she pleaded. “I do not want to set foot in that country again, not after—”

“Shh, Anabella,” he soothed, stroking her silky black hair. “I’m not the one who broke your heart. I could never leave you. You know that.”

She smiled faintly.

“Besides,” he added, running the tip of his finger down her nose, “I know a priest in England who will marry a couple without the usual fortnight of banns.”

Anabella’s eyes shone. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. Her lips were like velvet, her breath as sweet as honey.

“How I adore you, Roberto,” she whispered, “and how lucky your friend is to have a companion so loyal. I only hope you find him.”

“I
have
to find him,” he said with a wry grin. “Otherwise, how can I gloat over my good fortune and show him my beautiful prize of a bride?”

He enfolded her in his arms once more and let his gaze ripple over the inky, endless sea. The smile faded slowly from his face. Somewhere out there, his friend, his lord, the heir to de Ware, floated in the hands of fate. Duncan might as well have been a needle dropped amid the rushes.

Linet shivered. The moon peeped through the leafy canopy, leaving stepping stones of light along the winding path of the forest. Crickets ceased their songs as she trespassed into their shadowy world, and mice scurried off to safer corners of the wood. Every twig snapping beneath her step quickened her heart.

This was by far the most reckless thing she’d ever done. If she didn’t freeze to death or lose her way in the dark, she might fall prey to wolves or their human counterparts—the thieves who frequented the high road. She was as vulnerable as a rabbit loosed among hounds.

But remorse numbed her to fear. The chill embrace of night was a welcome penitence as she slogged through wet leaves, struggling with her conscience. She dared not even think about what had passed between them—the intimacy, the murmured words of passion. The memory was as painful as a fresh wound.

With one simple act, she’d betrayed both her father and the beggar. She’d never be able to rectify that mistake. It was like a poor stitch taken in weaving. No matter how many more stitches one took to cover it up, the flaw still remained, and more often than not, each subsequent row of weaving only served to magnify the error. She’d just taken such a stitch. And she feared that flaw would haunt her for the rest of her life.

The first blow was always the worst.

This one was no exception. The fist slammed into Duncan’s stomach, folding him near in half with nausea. After that, the body’s level of tolerance was set, and nothing would get much worse. They split his lip, opened his cheek, and blacked both eyes, but he grew oblivious to the pain. He focused instead on the image of Linet burned into his mind, those culpable eyes looking down at him in anguish and betrayal before she left him.

He had to understand. He had to make sense of her cruelty. If it was the last thing he did, he’d strip her soul bare to discover the truth. It was this obsession that kept him alive as the reivers beat him without mercy.

Finally their enthusiasm and strength began to wane in the face of their sense-dulled victim. The brutes ceased their bludgeoning and chortled to themselves over their victory as they waited for him to revive. He jousted with the fog of unconsciousness for a while, whether for seconds or hours, he couldn’t tell. When he awoke, the two Spaniards were engaged in a stifled verbal battle.

“We must find out where she has gone,” said Clave.

“Let me beat it out of him.”

“You’ve already beaten him half to death, imbecile! Besides, I do not think it will work. The fool will go to the grave with his lips sealed.” There was a long pause. “No, we must use our heads.”

“Why not kill him now, eh?” said Tomas. “If he is not going to talk, what good is he?”

“You have the brains of an ass!” Clave hissed. “He may not tell us where she is. But if we let him go—if we make him think he has escaped—he will lead us to her.”

“Let him go? We cannot let him go,” Tomas whined like a petulant child.

“How else will we find the wench?”

Tomas spat in response.

“We will do it my way,” Clave announced. “Later we will kill him.”

Duncan was badly battered. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t bruised or bleeding. When he flicked his tongue out gingerly along his lower lip, it tasted metallic. Every breath was an agony. His eyelids were so swollen, he could barely see Clave coming toward him with the dagger. He was in no condition for what he was about to do. And yet he knew he must.

The instant Clave severed the cord at Duncan’s wrist, Duncan whipped his hand out of its prison, catching the reiver by the arm. With a violent wrench that took every ounce of his strength, he twisted the blade until it pointed at the reiver’s belly.

The man’s jaw fell open in frozen disbelief. Before he could scream, Duncan plunged the dagger to its hilt beneath Clave’s ribs. The reiver let out one final rattling breath as a trickle of blood dripped from his still gaping mouth.

“Clave!” the other reiver gasped.

Duncan flinched in pain as he wrested the steel from the dead man’s falling body. Half on faith, half on instinct, he flipped the dagger around and sent it racing through the air. Luck was with him. With a deep thump, the blade pierced the remaining foe’s black heart. Duncan slumped back on the bed even before the reiver’s lifeless body hit the floor.

After that, he drifted off. It seemed an eternity passed in that limbo of unconsciousness. It was still dark when he revived. The silence of death hung like a cloud over the room. His eyelids were gummed shut, and his lip stung where it was cut. The linen had fallen from his mouth, but his tongue was as thick and stifling as the cloth had been. He poked it around experimentally. Thankfully, there were no loose teeth. The smell of blood permeated his nose, but it wasn’t broken. His ribs ached, and his stomach felt as if a cart had rolled over him. Shite, he was as helpless as a kitten.

He had to get away before more of them came. He couldn’t endanger his host by remaining here. First, however, he had to free himself.

Every muscle in his torso complained as he rolled over to tug at the leather cord around his left wrist. He lifted his heavy head and tried to discern the secret of the convoluted knot. After a moment, he let his head fall back. If only the wool merchant could see what she’d wrought, he thought bitterly.

When the dizziness abated, Duncan inched himself across the pallet until he could reach the cord with his teeth. With frustrating awkwardness, he gnawed at the leather until it was bitten through.

He rested again. It seemed as if the sky outside were lightening, at least the narrow patch of it he could glimpse through the arrow loop. He’d have to hurry.

Fortunately, Tomas had fallen toward the bed. When Duncan pushed himself up on his elbows, he saw he might be able to retrieve the dagger from the dead man’s chest. His bones screaming in protest, he stretched out backward across the bed, dangling over the edge so he could reach the blade. All the blood rushed to his head, the pressure causing an enormous throbbing behind his eyes. Finally, flailing at the dagger, he closed his hand on the haft and drew it sharply from the victim. Blood oozed like honey from the wound.

Leaning forward, he cut his ankles loose and cautiously swung his legs over the side of the bed. They seemed to be unbroken. He located his undergarments and performed the slow, painful task of dressing.

Kneeling by the reivers’ bodies, he searched for anything he could scavenge. Pocketing a few coins and an extra dagger and buckling on a sword, he glanced one final time at the disheveled pallet. There were dark spots on the bed linens—blood. It wasn’t all his own. Some of it was Linet’s—maiden blood she’d surrendered in the heat of passion. Their blood would mingle eternally on the white linen. As their lives should have. He tensed his jaw. He couldn’t bear to think about it.