shadow and lace (24 page)

Rowena was fighting in earnest now, but Percival's smooth limbs were like steel. She glanced frantically around the hall. "I beg you. I am innocent. Is there no decency here? You are knights. Is there no chivalry amongst you?"

Hard, young faces stared back at her. One man unbuckled his scabbard with a deliberate motion and let it fall to the floor. Percival jerked her back to thrust her on the table. A dark-haired man stepped in front of them. When Rowena stared up at him he grinned at her, winking one green eye. Hope stirred in her breast.

His voice rang in the sudden silence. "If she speaks the truth, then the stakes are much higher."

A thoughtful murmur rose. Percival's fingers dug convulsively into her wrist as a rumble of thunder rolled through the hall. Rowena thought she was going mad, then she realized it was not thunder but the pounding of a dozen fists on wood as the knights chanted in one demanding chord, "Wager! Wager! Wager!"

Percival flung her from him in disgust. Rowena caught the edge of the table to keep from falling.

The voices throbbed to silence. Percival sneered. "If you care to put your faith in the word of a barefoot light-skirt, bring on the dice. The winner can take her upstairs and find out what a fool he has been."

Bone dice clattered on the stones in front of the hearth. Irwin, Big Freddie, and Little Freddie were bound and tossed in a heap in the corner. The knights clamored with excitement as they knelt around the game. Those in the back craned their flushed faces to watch. They seemed to have forgotten Rowena altogether in the thrill of the wager.

She backed away, not daring to breathe, but flight was stopped by an unyielding chest. She had not been left unguarded after all. Green eyes flashed a greeting as she looked back over her shoulder.

The knight's silky smooth voice poured into her ear like honey. "I could not bear to see you pinned on that table like a lamb for the slaughter."

Rowena stared straight ahead. "You would help me, sir?" she said with no change of expression.

"I would." His arms slipped around her waist. "Come away with me while they play. I swear to be gentle with you. When I am done, I shall help you escape before they can take their turns on you."

Rowena closed her eyes. Why did the kindest words she had heard that night also have to be the crudest? "The others? The rest of my troupe? Will you see they escape with their lives?"

"For you, little one—anything." One of his hands glided beneath the worn linen of her kirtle to cup her thigh. His lips nuzzled her throat.

Rowena's mind raced. What would Marlys do with this lecherous man-child offering to politely ravish her?

She would take him upstairs and kill him.

The answer came with such haste that Rowena gave a pained yelp of laughter. Green Eyes groaned softly, taking her start as one of pleasure. His hand drifted between her thighs.

In the center of the circle, Percival's long fingers danced on the dice. Perhaps he was even winning.

Rowena made an awkward hop to avoid the probing fingers and turned in the knight's embrace to keep both of his hands in view. Green Eyes took it as a gesture of assent.

Before she could protest, he had laid his lips across hers. Oddly enough, his was the kiss of a whore, not hers. Teasing and practiced, with an undertone of passion held leisurely at bay by the exploration of his tongue. With another man, Rowena might have wondered what came after such a kiss. But Green Eyes was a stranger. How would Marlys kill him? Would she bash him on the head? Run him through with his own sword? Marlys would surely appreciate the irony of that. His roaming hand dipped into the neck of her kirtle, and Rowena squeezed her eyes shut in resignation. Unbeknownst to him, he was a dead man, anyway.

Lost in the throes of plotting the knight's imminent demise, Rowena heard the crash of the door as if it were a mere echo of her heartbeat. Icy wind poured over her. A beat of silence lasted too long, and the knight pulled away. Rowena raised her head. The faces at the hearth were all fixed on the door, frozen in expressions of boyish guilt Rowena should have found amusing.

Too late, she turned.

A snowy giant stood in the doorway. Snow whipped around his broad shoulders and into the hall, lingering for an elusive instant before being sucked into the void of warm air. The wind whistled an eerie refrain. Rowena clung to the knight's forearms to keep from swaying as black eyes darker than night and colder than ice froze the blood in her veins.

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Gareth stood in the doorway like a snow-covered Thor fresh from besting the frost giants. So riveting was his dark gaze that Rowena could not have ducked if a lightning bolt had come hurtling from his fingers to fry her where she stood. Snow frosted his dark hair. Tiny icicles clung to a beard that had lost its neatly trimmed edges. He was shrouded in a mantle of fur so black and lush it could have been hours old instead of years. For one terrible moment, Rowena fancied the dark drops falling to the stone were not melting snow, but beads of blood from a fresh kill. Her hands uncurled their claw-like grip on the knight's arm. An awkward cough broke the silence.

Gareth swaggered forward, shedding snow with each step.

Percival rose from his kneeling position to meet him. "Sir Gareth! What a surprise! What brings you to Midgard?"

"Snow." Gareth reached down and tweaked the younger man's nose. "Does your father know you're here, Percival?"

Percival grimaced. "Nay, but I fear he will."

How could Rowena have thought Percival handsome? His classical features faded to pallid prettiness in Gareth's rugged shadow. His walk was little more than a strutting imitation of a man's.

Gareth's gaze swept the hall, taking in the kneeling figures at the hearth, the heap of bound and gagged bodies against the wall. His eyes passed over Rowena with the merest flick of an eyebrow. She stepped away from Green Eyes, putting her hands behind her back like a naughty child.

Gareth jerked his head toward the squirming heap. "They alive?"

"Hardly fit to be," Percival sneered. "But they are."

Gareth dropped an arm over Percival's shoulder and steered him toward the fire. "Then they're no concern of mine. Have you no warm ale to offer on such a treacherous eve?"

The knights leaped up, falling over one another in their haste to polish a goblet and pass a flagon down their ranks until it reached Gareth's hand. He bared his teeth in a growl of thanks. The knights ducked their heads, throwing covert glances at the massive broadsword hanging at his waist. The tip of his scabbard scraped the floor as he moved into their circle.

A foot moved to kick the dice under the table, but Gareth's boot came down in its path. He scooped the dice up, weighing them in his gauntleted palm like chips of gold.

"Wagering your father's castle again, Percival?"

"Nay, sir. I learned my lesson last time."

"Well you should have. You almost lost an ear to Marlys that night if my memory serves me well."

"Aye, sir. 'Twas fortunate you came home when you did."

Gareth leaned against the table and tossed first one die and then the other into the air. "What might you be wagering tonight?"

Percival shuffled his feet and fumbled for words. "Nothing of any import, sir. Just a whore." Gareth's gaze passed over Rowena with polite interest. Percival pointed. "Those fellows over there—the ones wiggling about—tried to sell her to us, promising us she was well versed in an 'array of tricks.' " Gareth cupped a hand over Percival's ear and whispered. In response, Percival shouted with laughter. "That, too, I'll wager. She has got the mouth for it." Fresh heat flooded Rowena's cheeks. Percival shrugged as if explaining away a boyish prank. "She claims to be an innocent. So we thought a toss of the dice might decide who would be the first to take her abovestairs and prove her a liar."

Gareth rubbed his beard and sidled off the table. Green Eyes melted back into the crowd of knights, leaving Rowena alone. She placed her feet in a wider stance but still swayed when Gareth's shadow fell over her. Her jaw clenched, she stared at the silver links of the hauberk beneath his mantle. When he did not budge, she was forced to lift her eyes to his face. His scathing gaze assessed her from head to toe, taking in her bare, dirty feet, her shredded kirtle, her tangled hair.

"Is she worth your gold?" he called over his shoulder.

Rowena's eyes narrowed in a look of genuine dislike. Murmurs of assent came from the hearth.

With a smile as sweet as any of Marlys's, Gareth shrugged. "So be it. On with it then. Don't let my presence hinder your game."

He turned away. Trembling with disbelief, Rowena tangled her fingers in the chain links of the hauberk and jerked him back. Her action was shielded from the others by the folds of his mantle.

"Gareth, please," she hissed, a more coherent plea deserting her.

His fingers gently untangled hers, and he pushed her hand away as if it had dirtied him. He stared down at her, his eyes narrowed and his smile compressed to a hard line. If Rowena had been versed in the art of begging, she would have let her round, blue eyes fill prettily with tears. Since she did not know the effectiveness of this trick, she blinked hard to smother the tears and sniffed twice with her reddening nose.

With a sweep of his mantle, Gareth turned away. "Mayhaps the chit would prefer to take a man above-stairs instead of a boy. The night is cold. I, too, might wish for a soft, young body to warm my bed. Throw my wager in with the rest."

A distinct bleating sound floated out from Rowena's pile of kinfolk. The knights exchanged nervous glances.

Percival cocked an eyebrow. "I had not heard such sports were to your taste, Sir Gareth."

Gareth loomed over Percival. "But you've heard other things about me, haven't you, Percival?"

Percival studied his immaculate fingernails. "Your wager is as good as the next man's, of course." He exchanged an uncomfortable glance with the others. "But do not misunderstand our intent. The man who takes her upstairs will only be the
first
man to do so."

Gareth's hand brushed the hilt of his sword in a loving caress. "If I win, I will be the first. And the last." His sweeping gaze dared any man in the hall to contradict him. None did.

" 'Tis because he is going to strangle me when he is done," Rowena murmured. No one glanced at her but Gareth. If looks could kill, he would have been spared the inconvenience of strangling her. She sank into a chair.

With chin propped in hands, she watched Gareth kneel in the circle of men. He received their thumps on the back and good-natured jests as if they were long-lost brothers. Not once did he glance at her.

Her eyes devoured him with all the fatal curiosity of a doomed man pondering his gallows. He shrugged away the mantle with his first toss of the dice. His hair had grown long and shaggy. Ebony tendrils curled over his broad shoulders. Rowena watched, barely breathing, as he scattered the dice into the folds of his mantle. He retrieved them with a smirk of apology for his clumsiness. The dice flew once, twice, and a third time in a graceful arc that wrung groans of disappointment and leering well-wishes from the other men.

She was still sitting with chin in hands when he thrust his gauntleted hand in her face. She ignored it.

"Come abovestairs with me, sweet Mignon. I am eager to sample your array of tricks," he said heartily.

She gave him a withering glance. The knights laughed.

Percival doused his goblet with a consoling dose of ale. "Shall we help you get her up? We've rope if she's quarrelsome. We'd be delighted to hold her down for you if that suits your tastes."

"I do hope that won't be necessary." Gareth knelt in front of her. His words were forced out between teeth clenched in a frozen smile. "Shall you accompany me, or shall I leave you here to be ripped apart by these arrogant whelps?"

"Are those my choices?"

"They are."

He held out his hand again. Her world narrowed to the soft beaten leather crowning his knuckles. "Bully," she said, taking his hand.

"Your opinion matters not to me." Gareth pulled her to her feet.

"Has it ever?"

She gave him no resistance until they passed the bundle of tangled arms and legs. Little Freddie's eyes stared bleakly up at her over an egg-stained gag. She stopped, and Gareth's hand tightened in a crushing grip around her fingers. She refused to look at him.

He stared at her bent head, then jerked a commanding thumb at the pile of bodies. "Feed them. But keep them out of my way."

The warning in his voice was palpable. The knights galloped around in a flurry of haste to do his bidding. This time when he squeezed her fingers, Rowena followed him meekly up the stairs.

Gareth dragged her into the first chamber with glowing embers on the grate. Without freeing her hand, he splintered a stool against the hearth and fed its spindly legs to the gasping fire. Rowena hung back, half-expecting him to heave her into the fire with his next motion. He puffed into the embers like a dragon. Sparks flew. The fire sputtered, igniting the dry wood into a snapping flame that filled the chamber with the heady scent of woodsmoke.