Scoundrel's Kiss (19 page)

Gritting hard against the strain,
Gavriel fought the paired guards and a surprising flood of panic. He was losing
ground. He had blithely broken his vows, a man convinced he would not meet his
maker, not that night. But victory was never a certainty. Kill or be killed.

And he would not be the one to die.

Galloping horses and the hair-raising
cries of two females briefly distracted the guards. One man ran into the night,
disappearing. But Gavriel did not turn to see what he hoped was bearing down.
He imagined Ada and Blanca riding with frantic speed, their garments fluttering
behind them.

His body never stopped moving,
thrusting, fighting. He connected the toe of his sandal with the soft muscle of
a guard's inner thigh, setting the man off balance. A set of keys jangled at
his waist

"Inglesa!"
With
his sword, he absorbed yet another crunching blow. He did not look for her as
the horses sped past, only trusted she would be there. Sidestepping, deflecting
his opponent, he kicked the felled man. "This one has the keys!"

Shouts threatened his concentration,
but the fever of one-on-one conflict narrowed his vision. Watching and waiting,
he defended himself in a bid for time, only a little more time to find the
guard's weakness. Parry. Retreat And then what he sought the other man dipped
his left shoulder, turning slightly, tilting. Gavriel leapt forward and thrust
with his sword, piercing leather armor and sliding between ribs.

He yanked his sword free and turned.
Ada wrestled the keys from the fallen man, the point of her dagger poised over
his left eye and her knee pressing against his windpipe. Even in the moonlight,
Gavriel could see his face turning unnatural shades, first red, then blue.
Ada's expression never changed, grim and fierce.

A shaky hand—his own—rubbed
his eyes, his lips and jaw. Had he held a looking glass, his expression would
match hers, battle hardened and indifferent.

What are we?

"Behind you!"

He swiveled on his heel, her warning
saving him from a sword plunging downward. Iron clanged over stone as the guard
lost his grip, his balance. Gavriel kicked him once before sprinting to the
gate.

Ada was fast on his heels, keys in
hand. She unlocked the winch casing that kept the crisscrossed bars of the
portcullis lowered, then turned to guard him. Gavriel hauled on the winch
handle, cranking the chains around its spool until the portcullis began to
rise. His arms ached.

As he secured the chain to keep the gate
lifted, he heard Ada shout. "Blanca, this way!"

Blanca looped back toward the gate,
skirting past two men, and dismounted. "I hate horses."

Ada handed her the keys. "You
didn't say!"

"No time." She slithered
under the bars and ran ahead to open the lock securing the massive wooden door.

The remaining guards began to close
ranks, cornering them against the second barrier. Gavriel hoisted his sword,
gripping with damp palms, but he did not know how much longer he could hold off
another four men.

"None of you move!" Ada
shouted.

Ice formed in his veins. He turned to
find Ada pressing her dagger to the young squire's throat

"I'll kill him," Ada said,
her voice dangerous like cut glass.

Blanca returned from the wooden door.
She squeaked Ada's name. "Don't hurt him, please!"

Ada adjusted her grip on the dagger.
"If the guards back away, there will be no need."

"Blanca, get through the gate with
your horse," Gavriel said. "We'll meet you outside."

He watched Ada, seeing what any trained
warrior would see. Her stance was wide and solid, but she had a weakness.
Anyone who moved on her from the left would have the advantage. Gavriel would
have to go around, over, or through her to defend on that side.

"Whose boy is this?" he asked
the men. "Someone's son? Someone's ward?"

None of the guards responded, their
eyes dark and hostile, their expressions unmoved. His suspicions about their
coming from Toledo seemed correct. The steel weapons, the martial training—and
none of them showed a flicker of sympathy for a local boy held prisoner. If he
rifled through one of the dead men's possessions, would he find another de
Silva signet ring?

"I suppose if no one values the
boy, he's of no value to us. Ada, let him go."

"No, through the portcullis
first."

He saw her meaning at once and grabbed
the horse's reins. They shuffled backward, the whole world holding its breath.
One of the guards moved to follow them, but Ada tightened her grip on the
squire's forearm where she twisted it behind his back. The boy cried out.

Gavriel kicked the winch handle to drop
the portcullis and ducked beneath it, safely behind its bars when it fell to
the ground. He was atop the horse in an instant and circled it to the east,
toward the open wooden doors. Ada threw her captive to the ground, sheathed the
dagger, and raced on foot to meet him. His horse gained speed. He leaned over
and extended his arm. She latched on. His muscles and joints screamed in
protest as she held fast, momentum and the sheer strength of two desperate
bodies propelling her onto the saddle.

Only when she pressed against his back,
hands clasped around him, did Gavriel dig his heels into the horse's flanks and
ride.

The horse flew over great lengths of
grass, its pounding hooves hurtling them eastward. Ada intertwined her fingers
just below Gavriel's sternum. He guided their mount with practiced ease, making
her skills atop a horse seem childish.

She could only wrap herself around his
tense, muscled body and bury her face between his shoulder blades, trusting him
once again with her physical safety.

Trust was something she dearly needed,
knowing with greater and more disturbing clarity that she could no longer trust
herself—if she ever could. The opium had been bad enough. The kiss she
slid past Gavriel’s defenses had seemed daring yet harmless, although a deeper
corner of her soul knew better. And now she had threatened the life of an
innocent boy. She squeezed her hands together, ever tighter, to end the
trembling.

He shouted Blanca's name. Ada brought
her head upright. The midnight blue sky had lightened along the eastern
horizon. Spring grass shone black in all directions, streaked with slivers of
white as that faint, distant sunrise graced every blade. The desolate mesa
absorbed their three bodies, insignificant on that flat expanse. No trees, no
houses. So removed from the village, the landscape was no more inviting than a
forest ravaged by fire.

Far in the distance, Blanca's
silhouette clung to that of her mount. She rode little better than Meg, without
blindness as her excuse. Gavriel caught up to her and took her horse's reins.
The girl sagged in the saddle with a tired sigh, apparently happy to give over
control.

"Has anyone followed us?" she
asked.

"Not that I can see," Gavriel
said, his voice scratching like a man felled by an ague. He breathed almost as
heavily as did the horse. "We'll circle north until we find the Tagus.
Trees along the banks might provide cover."

They reached Castile's most prominent
river, its bubbling current made full by the spring run-off from the Albarracn
Mountains in Aragon. Nourished by plentiful water, scrubby trees lined its
banks, two and three deep. Leafy buds added splashes of pale green to the
branches. Just seeing those trees—a place of refuge amidst the hard
plateau—allowed Ada to breathe easier. Wash, rest, recover. She might
begin to regain a year's worth of lost footing.

Gavriel pulled both animals to a stop.
He angled his right arm back and extended it. The corded muscles of his
forearms brushed the top of her thigh. She tensed. But at least she did not
shiver.

"You first," he said.

Her bones like pottage, she clamped
hold of his forearm and dismounted. She looked down, seeing boots planted
firmly in the loam and grass, but she could not feel her feet. She was still
too numb. Too startled by the night's events.

Gavriel dismounted and gave her an
assessing look. But he shook his head and said nothing before helping Blanca
down. "You did well," he said to the girl.

If Gavriel's look was fierce, Blanca's
was murderous. "I need you to be honest, Ada," she said, bridging the
distance between them. "Would you have killed him? Paco?"

Ada sought Gavriel's face, but he
remained stubbornly detached and somber. Unable to do anything but meet
Blanca's fiery eyes—so striking when set within the placid frame of her
soft oval face—Ada exhaled slowly. But she found no answer. No genuine
one.

"I've killed men," she said
carefully. "Men who intended me harm. I like to think I'm not the sort of
person who could take the life of an innocent, no matter the threat to
me."

"But you cannot be certain,"
Blanca said. "Even now you hesitate."

Sickness welled in her mouth. Her
conscience dared her to deny what she had become, someone cruel and ruthless,
but, she could not.

"Blanca, I... I don't know what to
say."

"His name was Juan Paco de Yepes.
He was a friend to me, a young man as eager to be done with our small village
as I was." She ran both hands along her cheeks and into her hair, beneath
the banded headdress she wore. Tossing the dirty cloth aside, she pinned Ada
with another hard look. "I want to know what manner of people you are.
Running and hiding, maybe even killing to defend yourself—I can accept
that But Paco did not deserve what you might have done."

Blanca left her horse and walked up
river. Ada watched her go, gagging on unspoken words of apology—in part
because the girl's changed manner so surprised her and, in part, because she
did not wish to add lies to her uncertainty.

She wanted to slump into the ground and
sleep for a month. If she had to wake up to being such an unpredictable person,
maybe sleep was best for everyone. Safer. Easier. But her legs kept her
stubbornly aloft, and Gavriel's bloodied tunic, becoming more gruesome as the
daylight crept over the land, caught her attention. "You should wash
before someone sees you."

A grimace pinched his face when he
looked down, then away.

"You would have killed him,
inglesa."
The rumble of his quiet accusation, one without emotion or judgment, raised
the hair on her arms. "I saw your face."

"And it wouldn't have made a
difference, would it? None of the guards even blinked at my threat, and neither
did they respond to your questions."

"You distracted them long enough
to make our escape." Both reins in hand, he motioned her to follow him
along the path of Blanca's retreat "But killing him would have given us no
advantage."

"I didn't think. I—how could
I?"

He rubbed the back of his neck,
appearing wearier than she had yet seen of him. "I ask myself the same,
even against men such as those," he said.

Ada stopped short. "What do you
mean, 'men such as those'? Who were they?"

"Never mind." Gavriel looped
the reins around a low, gnarled evergreen bough. He removed one saddle, then
the other, and rubbed the exhausted animals' coats with firm sweeps of his
broad hands. "Your protection is not your concern; it's mine."

"Protection?" Her laugh was
sharp. "This from a man who swore off violence."

"We'll be safe in Ucles," he
said, eyes distant.
"Los caballeros
will not allow anything to
happen to us."

"Have you no intention of telling
me?" She closed the distance between them and stopped the restless
stroking. He pulled away as would a stranger, quickly, firmly—their kiss
like a dream. "If you know something about who they were, I deserve to
know."

"And what do you deserve? I've
done everything to ruin my future with the Order, breaking my vows. And for
what?"

Sword in hand, he left the horses and
stalked eastward. She caught up with him a few long strides later, falling in
step beside him along the craggy riverbank. He kept talking as if he expected
her to follow. "I've fought every man who stood against us, keeping both
of you safe, all the while damning myself. How is that just?"

"It's not"

"And you," he said, whirling.
"Can you be thankful for the sacrifices I've made? Is it even in you? No.
You try at every turn to make my task an impossible one."

"You forget, I never asked to be
your mission."

"No, you simply wallowed in a pit
without the sense to grab a rope."

Bursts of his breath warmed the tip of
her nose. The pulse in his neck beat a haggard rhythm, one to match the
pushing, pulling energy between them. Her heart echoed that fluttering as she
leaned nearer, anticipating his kiss, needing it.

She licked her lips. Tasting the salt
of her sweat and the pungent sting of smoke, she watched his mourn and wondered
if he would taste the same. "Are you my rope, then? Shall I grab onto
you?"