The Warrior's Game (19 page)

“Nay, there is no game,” he insisted, his voice strained as he reached up to again comb his fingers in her hair. His touch was gentle, the sensation making a lie of his fearsome repute. “There is only you and me here in this place. Tell me your answer. Will you give me your vow, cleaving to me as woman to man, wife to husband?” His voice was strained and quiet.

As Ami understood what he asked the success she’d expected when she set out to leash him as Millicent suggested dropped into her hands. Whatever had drawn Michel to request her hand in marriage, it was no longer enough for him. It was her heart and her loyalty that he wanted now.

If Ami’s victory came too late to use to control him, it was also too late to save her from what she’d done. “Are you certain I am the woman you want to ask?”

She eased down to rest her head upon his chest, her cheek upon the curve of his shoulder, her gaze aimed at the center of his chest. She could see the steady lift of his ribs as he breathed and feel the thud of his heartbeat beneath her cheek.

“I fear I’m not worthy of your affection,” she whispered.

He stroked her hair. “Why is that?”

Ami’s eyes closed. “For years I was careful not to involve myself in any of the schemes that forever fly about our king's court. But after John made you administrator of my properties, I was angry. I was certain you’d be another Gerard d’Athlee, looting my properties unless I found a way to control you. Roheise de Say approached me. She offered me your death.”

“Did she?” There was a new hint of amusement in his voice.

That startled Ami enough that she shifted, now bracing her forearms on his chest to look down into his face. All she could see of him was the gleam of his eyes.

“And how was I to be killed?” he asked, sounding completely unconcerned by what she told him.

“Drawn and quartered for raping me.” Ami whispered this, still thoroughly appalled at herself for ever participating, even in her small way, in such a plot. “Roheise meant to announce your outrage against me to all of England in the hopes of raising rebellion against John, not just within her own noble rank but among the gentlefolk as well.”

“And you agreed to let me rape you for her cause?” That amusement was definitely there. He twined a tress of her hair around his fingers. His play made her shiver.

“I only agreed because I was certain you would never rape me and that her plot was doomed to failure,” she replied, glad she could say that and know in her heart it was true.

“Now, how could you be so certain of me?” He was definitely laughing at her. Michel reached up to catch her face in his hands, then pull her mouth down to his. His kiss was gentle, his lips soft on hers.

“Because you didn’t kiss me in the alcove,” she whispered against his lips.

His amusement was a quiet rumble in the darkness of the hut. “Lord, but I wanted to,” he said, touching yet another kiss to her lips, then releasing her to relax back into their makeshift mattress.

“Not as much as I wanted you to,” Ami replied, just as quietly.

His teeth showed white against the night as he again smiled at her. “As for rape, that we almost had in the courtyard a few days ago. If not for my armor, you’d have forced me onto the ground and taken me right there, even if I’d cried you nay.”

Ami stiffened in shock. She shoved back from him, her arms straight, her hands braced upon his shoulders. “That wasn’t all my doing,” she cried out in protest.

Michel’s chuckle filled the tiny room, as warm as the coals on the hearthstone. “I cede the point. It was a joint effort, both there and on the landing.”

Ami stared down at him, beyond understanding. “Don’t you care that I schemed against you? Not that I meant to destroy you. All I wanted was to repay all of you for trying to use me, John for his game, Roheise for thinking she could use my pride to twist me into destroying myself, and you for leering at me, then using my own body against me. All of you treated me as if I were nothing but a pawn to be moved here and there as it suited your plans.”

Michel wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back down to lay atop him. Their faces were but inches apart. The gleam of his teeth said that his mouth was again lifted into that rare smile of his.

“You were never a pawn to me. You were the woman I meant to marry.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Ami protested.

“Now you do,” Michel replied. “And, here you are confessing your wrongs because you think yourself unworthy of me and my heart,” he said, “when I am the commoner who will disparage you and your rank when we are joined in wedlock.”

Ami frowned at him. “I might have thought that once, but that was before I knew you. Now, all that matters is that I’m a knight’s daughter and you are a knight. No one will care for more than that when it comes time to find mates for our children.”

For a moment Michel lay so still beneath her that she worried about him. Then his arms tightened around her until his embrace was almost painful. “Ami, tell me I am the only man you desire, the man you will marry, the man who will be your husband, not the winner of John’s game. Tell me it is me you want.”

In that instant Ami understood why none of what she’d schemed with Roheise mattered to Michel. She leaned forward to touch her mouth to his. “You are the man I desire, the man I will marry, and I want you because you are Sir Michel de Martigny, the man who has captured my heart.”

Michel laughed, the sound of his amusement filling this tiny hut. Ami smiled in response. So it would be in their marriage. She would be one of the few in whose presence he allowed himself to relax. When he knew her better perhaps he would share with her his deepest secrets, raising her to beyond precious in his eyes and heart.

Michel took her mouth, his lips slashing over hers as he demanded the reaction he knew she would give him. Longing once again for the joy he could make in her, Ami gave way to his plea. A moment later, she panted and eased to lay full atop him, her legs straddling his as she settled her hips on his. She didn’t notice and didn’t care that his cloak slid to the side as she moved, leaving them both exposed to the chill air.

Michel tore his mouth from hers. “What is this? Do you intend to ride me this time?”

Ami’s cheeks took fire as she realized she was again playing the aggressor in their game of love. Lust’s heat ebbed. “What a shameless hussy you must think me,” she murmured.

She leaned forward and would have buried her head against his shoulder but he stopped her, once again catching her face in his hands. His thumbs smoothed the heated flesh along her cheekbones.

“If a shameless hussy is what you are, then don’t you ever change,” he commanded, his voice husky. His hands on her face urged her to lean lower as he guided her mouth to his. “Now, ride me,” he demanded against her lips.

The next day dawned as dark and miserable as the previous one. Ami didn’t care. Nothing mattered after last night save that she reach Thame Abbey today with Michel and marry him.

They had finally eaten their dinner an hour or so before the sun’s rising. That meager meal had turned into a battle, Michel pressing her to eat more, Ami striving to see that he had the larger portion. This became a laughing argument over who could do with the least amount of food. Somehow that resulted in them feeding each other, bite by bite, which had led to yet another round of lovemaking, much to both of their enjoyment.

When Ami had again awakened an hour or so later, she found Michel already up and dressed. He sat across the hearth from their makeshift bed watching her, his eyes alive with pleasure, his expression so open and unguarded that it had taken away Ami’s breath.

She’d washed as best she could--the water from the stream was frigid--then once again donned her clothing, cursing to herself as she struggled to wrap her wimple around her head without Maud’s assistance. If not for the fact that she needed its warmth, she’d have gone without it. Michel offered her the use of his cloak, claiming that with his many layers of clothing his blanket would serve him well enough for an outer garment.

Before yesterday, Ami would have had no choice but an abrupt and swift refusal. The conventions of moral behavior were very clear. Borrowing a garment from a man to whom a woman wasn’t related suggested they’d shared more than clothing. But then, all Ami once held true no longer applied. Michel was right. Such polite notions were nothing but pretensions, the vain constructs of one set of humankind as it used mindless ritual to lift itself above the rest of the world.

Ami snatched that wonderful, fur-lined garment from him and snuggled into its warm depths. That his bride-to-be would so easily turn her back upon the dictates of rank teased another laugh from Michel. The sound of his amusement had sent a new shiver of longing climbing Ami’s spine. Oh, she’d done well indeed, accepting this man as her mate.

With Ami once more seated atop her spavined mare, the horse resisting with every step, they left the shepherd’s hut to make their way northward toward Reading. It was there Michel hoped to meet his own men, then they could make their way to Thame. To save time they trespassed into the earl’s chase, using pathways carved out by decades of hunting.

Maintained for a nobleman’s private pleasure, the chase had long been spared the hand of man so the boar and deer might prosper. All around Ami, trees swayed in the wind, their naked branches rattling. Fallen leaves, their autumn brightness giving way to the mottling of cold and damp, danced around her, skittering across frostbitten grass.

Bowing her head to escape today’s far less frequent spattering of icy rain, Ami almost smiled. She was warmer today and it wasn’t just Michel’s cloak that made her feel this way. She looked up at him. A day’s worth of beard growth left a dark shadow against his cheeks, giving him a rakish air. Her smile widened at the thought of careful and considered Michel ever giving way to the destructive impetuosity of a rake.

He caught her look. “What, do I amuse you?” A lover’s warmth and confidence filled his voice.

“Deeply,” Ami said, only to watch guarded surprise flicker through his gaze.

She bit back a laugh. Just as she thought. He’d expected a lover’s denial, perhaps even that she would protest that he was perfect in all ways.

From that first day in the alcove Michel had been able to read her, just as Ami had been able to decipher his careful expressions. Now that they knew each other even better it took him less than an instant to realize she teased. One corner of his mouth lifted in the expression Ami was coming to cherish.

“As deeply as I please you?” he asked, his passion for her coloring his question.

“Never.” Ami replied so swiftly that her word nearly overran his.

Michel’s laugh rang out. Again the hearty sound of his amusement stunned Ami, mostly because it was so unexpected in this taciturn man.

“You, Amicia de la Beres, are an insatiable woman,” he told her.

“I am,” Ami agreed, very content with herself and her appetites, “but only when it comes to you.”

He shot her a smug sidelong look, his gray eyes warm. “I know. I am the one, the only man, who could breach your chastity.”

Ami made a face at him. “Ach, but don’t you dare let that go to your head, do you hear me, Michel de Martigny? I cannot help that you stir my senses beyond all control.”

“A fact for which I am amazingly appreciative.” Michel made a show of leering at her, only to break off, his head lifting. He tugged his horse into a turn so he could look back the way they’d come.

Ami watched in confusion until the next gust of wind brought her the distant sound of a neighing horse. Like him, she turned her mount to stare in that direction. She didn’t know what caught Michel's attention. All she could see was the trees and grassy meadows they’d left behind them.

“Who is it?” she asked, not certain why she thought he should know this.

“It could be the earl’s huntsmen, tracking us, thinking we’re a pair of poachers.” Michel didn’t say what they both thought, that the riders might be Sir Enguerran and his men, on the trail of a runaway bride.

“The only certainty is that they aren’t my own men,” Michel continued. All the warmth was gone from his voice and his face. It was the warrior, that knight with a fearsome repute, who took the place of her gentle lover.

Before they’d left the shepherd’s hut, Michel had told Ami how he came to be chasing her without his troop at his back. How he'd dressed his man in his black mail and sent him and Maud riding the main road to Thame as a distraction. Michel was right. The mummery he’d staged yesterday would have dissolved at sunset when no wedding occurred. Maud would never lie to a churchman and, however thick-witted Enguerran d’Oilly might be, even he would have asked Thame’s abbot if Lady de la Beres had arrived.

If only she had known John’s men were marking her route for Michel, that he would have found her no matter which way she'd gone. If only she'd chosen to ride due north, toward the safety she’d hoped to find with Kate Godsel at Glevering instead of her manor. Had she, then she and Michel would now be riding toward Thame on roads that Sir Enguerran would never think to scour.

Ami made a face at her thoughts. If only she'd been less determined to be the mistress of her own fate. If only God had given her wings, she might fly.

Leaning over, Michel caught her mare by her reins. She gave a quiet cry as she lost control of her mount. “What are you doing?”

“What you cannot, forcing some speed from this ancient beast. From here on we must needs ride as fast as we can. If they are the earl’s huntsmen, I don’t want them catching us within the boundaries of the chase. Explaining what we’re doing here will cost us precious time,” he said. “If those who follow us exit past the edge of this place we’ll know they aren’t the earl’s men, but someone pursuing us.”

“Perhaps it’s only someone traveling in the same direction as we do,” Ami offered in forlorn hope. If only.

Michel shook his head at that, then kicked his horse into motion. Even at his faster pace it still took a goodly while to put the chase’s northern boundary behind them. From the mare’s coughs of complaint she didn’t think much of being asked to expend such effort. Michel didn’t slow after they’d reached the road to Reading.

The mare’s sides began to heave, this time in no pretense. They were but a half mile from the city, its church tower visible over the top of the shallow rise in front of them, gray stones against a gray sky, when the mare at last gave out. Once again, the horse simply stopped, refusing to take another step.

Ami dismounted next to her spent mount while Michel rode to the top of that rise. From there, he scanned the landscape behind them. Ami knew the moment he recognized who followed them from the way his shoulders tensed.

“What do you see?” Ami asked as Michel returned and dismounted beside her, needing to know but really not wanting to hear what he had to say.

“There’s a good-sized troop on the road led by a man riding a piebald horse,” Michel replied, his voice harsh.

“Sir Enguerran,” Ami breathed as he confirmed what she feared.

Her neighbor was the only knight she knew who rode a spotted horse; he was also the only man in this shire or any other likely to be following her. If there were more than twenty with him, then he’d borrowed men from someone else to help hunt her.

“How far behind us is he?”

“Mayhap a half an hour,” Michel replied, his jaw tight and his mouth but a slash across his face. “They’re moving faster than I would have expected for Sir Enguerran, given his injury. His arm is broken,” he added.

“Ah,” Ami replied, not caring if Sir Enguerran were stabbed through the heart, only that the man chased her.

And Michel.

No matter how skilled a knight Michel was he couldn’t face Sir Enguerran and his troop, not alone and without the protection of his mail. He didn’t even have a shield at his side. The mere thought of him injured or dead made Ami’s heart twist in the worst way.

“Can we share your horse?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer to that question.

Michel shook his head. “Not for long, and exhausting Roger’s gelding will buy us only failure.”

“We could rent a horse in town,” Ami suggested hopelessly, pointing toward Reading's walls.

Again, Michel shook his head. “I think d'Oilly will be upon us before we could even find a horse. Even if we succeeded in finding you a mount, I'm not enamored of us riding all the way to Thame playing the mouse to that knight’s cat.”

Ami tried another tack, trying to avoid the obvious. “Perhaps your troop has already reached Reading?”

Michel’s expression softened just a little. “Even if my men waited for us we’ll be no more protected than if we were alone. The king has tied my hands, forbidding me to harm Sir Enguerran, making my sword, and those of my men, useless to me. If yon knight”--the sweep of his arm indicated the approaching Sir Enguerran--“dies in a confrontation with me, whether by design or by accident, His Majesty may choose to renege on all he promised me. That I will not tolerate, for it means losing you. Sir Enguerran has been given no such stricture. Thus, he can harass us all the way to Thame, doing who knows what harm to me and mine as he seeks to take you from me.”

Stripping off his gloves, Michel tucked them into his belt, then touched a hand to Ami’s cheek. His fingers were warm against her chilled skin. The corner of his mouth lifted as he freed a quiet breath.

“In all my days I never thought to hear myself say this to any woman, but especially to a gentlewoman. I cannot bear the thought of losing you, or of leaving you widowed and once again available to some man other than me.” His voice was gentle as his fingers moved against her cheek in a sweet caress.

His words of love startled Ami for they were more than she ever thought to hear from a man as hard as Michel. She sighed and leaned her head into his caress. “Nor do I wish to lose you,” she told him at a whisper, daring to admit that much to him. “So, what are we to do?”

Michel leaned forward to touch his lips to hers in a brief kiss, then retreated a bare few inches. “The only thing we can,” he said quietly. “I must let Sir Enguerran have you.”

“What!” Ami thrust back from him in disbelief. “Are you mad? Have you forgotten Sir Enguerran has the same right to marry me if he arrives at Thame Abbey with me in his custody?”

“What sort of confidence is this?” Michel demanded. “Just because I intend to allow Sir Enguerran to carry you safely to the abbey doesn’t mean I intend to let him keep you. Trust me. The only man you’ll wed when you reach those abbey walls is me.”

“How can you be so sure?” she demanded, leaning back to look up into his face. What she read in his expression were secrets.

A sound more growl than murmur left her throat. “What are you not telling me? What makes you so certain all you want will fall into your hand despite what yon knight does? I have the right to know.”

He said nothing, only watched her. It was in his gaze. No matter how she pleaded he would not tell her.

For the past four years, until John's game, Ami's life and her choices, limited though they were, had been hers to control. Two weeks of John's game had left her deadly sick of everyone around her claiming the right to that control. Now, more than ever, she had a right to know what he planned.

“Michel de Martigny, I have given you all I cherish without reservation. Do me the same honor. Give me all, knowing that if I have a chance I will do what I can to aid us and our cause,” she pleaded, wanting more than that from him.

She needed him to tell her that he trusted her, that he would never doubt her loyalty to him, to their bed or to their future. Mistress Hughette's words echoed in her. Michel had no patience with her kind.

“Enough arguing, Ami,” he said, his voice flat in refusal. “Accept that I can not only do what I say, but take my word that I will do it.” As he spoke his expression shuttered, his features flattening into those stony lines Ami knew all too well. “Have you not heard me say you are precious to me beyond all else and that I will allow no other man to have you?” he repeated. “How I accomplish what I promise can be none of your concern. Nor will I explain myself to you. Now, say no more, only return my cloak and free me to reach Thame ahead of you.”

As much as she wanted to trust him, it was too hard and she had known him too little. A lump formed in her throat. Tears stung at her eyes. She clutched his cloak's collar close to her, craving its soft warmth as much as she cherished the recall of their shared laughter as she’d taken it from him. Michel’s scent clung to both the fabric and the fur.

The thought of him abandoning her grew until she felt almost more alone and bereft than she had after Richard's death. “I won’t,” she said, despising herself for needing his scent and his garment.

Not so much as a flicker of life appeared in his flat gaze. Instead, he reached out to open the garment’s pin. Ami shifted back from him. Michel let his hand drop to his side. They stared at one another in silence.