Boadicea's Legacy (9 page)

Osbert had a terrible feeling. He didn't like invading Lord Montehue's lands, and he'd warned his men to cause no physical violence, unless he said otherwise.

Robert Montehue had a stubborn streak as wide as his own, and the older man refused to back down, despite Os's assurances that his daughter would be treated like fine porcelain. All logic pointed to the two men eventually coming to a reasonable agreement without death.

Nay, the foreboding dealt with something else. A warning from God, mayhap? If so, Os required a clearer message.

“Why don't you come too?” Osbert finally asked, sweat pouring from his brow in the heat. “Bring your lady wife and daughter and make a trip of it. I can show you around, bring you to Thetford where Boadicea is supposed to have lived. The women would feel the history that is theirs alone. Surely that is a compromise worth considering?”

Lord Robert Montehue, his face as red as a cooked ham, jerked his stubborn chin in the air. His blue eyes narrowed, but he didn't say no. Osbert wanted to pump his fist victoriously in the air.
I've got him
.

And then Thomas de Havel and his men came riding over the fields, ruining the new crops just beginning to thrive, destroying the compromise that he'd been working so hard toward.

Robert looked at Os and spat to the ground. “Ye sided against me with that toad? Pox on you.”

Os tightened the grip on his sword handle. “Never,” he promised. “I'd rather be dead than have my good name besmirched by joining forces with him.”

Lord Robert raised a suspicious brow as they watched de Havel march closer. It seemed as if de Havel's men took pleasure in ruining the new sprouts in the once neat rows. It infuriated Os, and he clenched his knees around Bartholomew's middle—prepared to surge forward and kill the bastard, if need be. A joustmaster had to learn patience and calm, else he would be injured.

There was no money in injuries.

Thomas came close enough to be a threat. But to whom, Os couldn't tell. He braced for bloodshed and saw Robert do the same.

Then he heard Ela scream. He knew it was her, the red-haired temptress who'd toyed with his dreams for a fortnight. It resounded in his soul, a cry that pierced him in the heart.
Never again
, he thought wildly.
Nobody will ever
touch his woman so brutally again
.

He shook his head, not understanding his thoughts. He and Lord Robert exchanged a glance as Lady Deirdre shouted and pointed toward the back of the manor with her green and white scarf.

“The forest.” Os grabbed Bartholomew's reins in one hand and drew his sword with the other. Thomas de Havel chose that minute to spring his men forward, ready for battle. Without thought, Osbert signaled for his men to join with Lord Robert's against the common enemy. Somehow, de Havel seemed to have an army of fifty or more.

“I must save my daughter,” Lord Robert said, fighting his way free of the melee. A soldier in black and red let loose a mace, and it knocked Robert to the ground with a horrifying thud of spiked metal hitting flesh.

Os reached down his hand to lift the bleeding man up, but Robert gritted his teeth against the pain and shook his head. “Don't waste time—just go get my daughter. And I hold you to your damned oath to bring her back as she was when she left this place.”

In other words, Os thought as he searched for Albric, Warin, and St. Germaine, find Ela before she was a victim of rape. Just the word left a foul taste in his mouth. Or—and God help him, because this was even a worse thought—before Thomas de Havel took her maidenhead and forced her hand in marriage. The king would approve in haste, once the damage was already done, and consider it to be fair.

His friends gathered around him, their horses stamping
to return to the thick of the fight. “Our alliance is with the Montehues, against de Havel. I'll be back. If I'm not, go to Norwich.” They were all three strong Earl of Norfolk knights, and he knew they would treat this mission like it was their own.

Os urged Bartholomew in the opposite direction. They raced around the side of the manor and toward the forest. This time, he had no fear of what was in the deep heart of the wood. He'd been there and survived it.

He vowed that Ela would too.

Ela breathed in the foul horse taste of the burlap bag, then bit the fabric, tearing at it until she had a hole she could poke her face out of. Her teeth cracked together with each uneven hoof step, and she vainly hoped she didn't break one in the front.

She never doubted that she'd find a way out of the trap she was in—if not by her father's or Os's hand, then by her own.

Ela was resourceful, aye, and the dagger in her boot was sharp. Her eating knife was in her waistband, and her short sword tied to her garter beneath her tunic. The fact that the leather sheath sliced into her thigh with each jostle just assured her that it was there. She would eventually find a way to free her bindings and use her weapons on her captors.

She couldn't think about the sound poor Henry's body had made when he'd hit the floor. Or Bertha's stunned cry
as she was hit. She stuck her head farther from the bag and looked around. Thomas de Havel's army had torn the fields on this side of the manor, and the smell of horse manure streaked the air. How had he gotten so many knights willing to fight against her father? Did the king know? Were they mercenaries? Her father said that knights for hire were dangerous because they had souls that could be bought for coin.

Ela ignored hearing her internal voice ask
what if
and concentrated instead on wiggling farther from the bag.

Her captor's horse slipped, and Ela accidentally bit her tongue. She tasted blood and her fury grew. She'd not been raised to be powerless at the hands of men.

What type of cur was Thomas de Havel, to have her kidnapped from her own home? To go to battle against her father because she'd refused to marry him?

She didn't understand—unless he thought to kidnap her and marry her against her will. What had changed his mind? Ela couldn't imagine being bound forever to him, especially now that she knew where his preferences lay.

She had a feeling that he was a man who wanted rough sport, and a woman was too easy a victim—another thing she'd been taught to never be. Shuddering with revulsion, she squirmed until her shoulders were free from the bag. Unfortunately, her hands were still tied behind her.

Eyeing the ground as it flew beneath the horse's hooves, she swallowed hard and banished fear to somewhere it couldn't touch her.
This is going to hurt
.

Os leaned over Bartholomew, gaining great speed over the trail leading to the forest. He could see two horses up ahead and two men in de Havel's black and red, almost at the tree line.

His gut ached and his insides writhed with frustration, but he kept his head clear as a trained knight ought.

Ela
. She had the power to make him lose his concentration.

It had been her, God's bones, that eve in the clearing. Naked and calling down the heavens' magical thunder-filled power until he'd accidentally stopped her from completing her spell. What had she wanted? Thomas's declaration of love and marriage?

Os gritted his teeth, smacking the reins.
Faster
.

Humiliated at being booted so forcibly from the manor, Os had raced Bartholomew to Norwich, fighting the desire for revenge. By the third day of his journey, he'd calmed down enough to admit where he'd gone wrong.

If he had a daughter and someone foolishly said they were going to take her forcibly from home, he would not have been as kind as Robert Montehue.

The problem wasn't just being ousted—he could understand and appreciate Lord Robert's reasoning. It was Ela who had him tied in knots. He would swear on the Holy Bible that something had passed between them—it had felt like love …
nay
. He wouldn't even think the word. It was
impossible. But intriguing.

It defied logic. With his own eyes, he'd watched Ela, darling, sweet-faced Ela, call down thunder, lightning, and rain.

“Faster, Bartholomew. Go!”

Just then he saw what looked like a rolled rug fall from the back of the rear horseman. He felt a thud in his bones and knew that Ela had somehow gotten loose from her captors.

De Havel's men reached the forest trees before realizing they'd lost their treasure. He sensed the men deciding to either come back the distance they'd gone to pick her up where she lay—so still—and chance being killed by his drawn sword as he raced forward, or escape certain death by taking the woods.

They chose freedom.
Mercenaries
, Os spat with disgust. By the time he reached Ela, she was beginning to stir.

“Ela.” He dismounted and knelt by her side. Her head poked out from a hole in a burlap bag that trapped her shoulders, with her arms behind her back. Her legs were tied too, and she squirmed to get free. Anger at how close she'd come to being hurt caught his tongue, and he closed his eyes for a moment to gain control.

“Osbert Edyvean. Nice army you brought today. Help me up,” she said with a wink. “What took you so long to rescue me?”

He could yell or laugh at her stupid joke. “I came as soon as I received your message, my lady.” He attempted to lift his lips.

“Don't do that, it's terrifying. Heroes are not supposed
to grimace. Do you mind cutting through the ties? I can't reach my knife—either of them.”

He'd never met a woman who would willingly drop to the ground from a moving horse. He remembered her father saying that she was skilled at sword fighting too, that fateful afternoon in the hall. “You have your own knives?” He scratched his chin. “You chewed your way through a burlap sack.” She was an enigma. She intrigued him, calling him to her without words, yet she was everything he couldn't have. He was a lowly knight—and she was a lady, mayhap a witch, who was quite capable of saving herself.

“Aye, I
did
need you. Well, mayhap not the first time. ‘Tis nice to be saved, anyway. It was the first time anybody offered.” She bounced up and down. “Knife. Slice. Give it to me, and I'll do it myself, for pity's sake.”

He reached out and slid the blade down the center of the burlap bag. She obligingly hopped around to show him her back, and he slit the ropes binding her wrists, and lastly the ones on her ankles. He glared at the edge of the forest where the men had disappeared. Perhaps it was just as well that they'd gone, for he would like to kill them and let God sort it out.

“Free,” she sighed and slumped to the ground. Rubbing her wrists and hands, she bit her lip. “This stings.”

“‘Tis the rush of blood returning.” He kneeled on the ground in front of her and took her hands in his. Hers were small and lightly chapped. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that made her less of a lady. He rubbed the slight
callous over her knuckle, his body humming with recognition of
her
. The feeling took him by surprise, for he'd never been swept by desire so fast, nor so keenly.

“Knife throwing. I'm rather good,” she said shyly before pulling her hand free.

“I don't doubt it,” Os mumbled, wondering if she could hear the thunder of his heart.

She stared at him, her green eyes as pure as the spring grass and as clear of evil as anything he'd ever seen.
How could she be a witch?

Yet he'd watched her from the top of the hill.

The desire to protect her, to keep her safe despite any harm that would come to him, felt inbred, as if it were a part of his body. His mind. His heart.

It was more than the pledge he'd given her father. More, he thought, than what he could explain with mere words. He had to touch her. Honorably, of course.

He leaned forward, just, he told himself, to brush a harmless kiss across her forehead. She'd lost the customary wimple women wore, but her hair was still covered in a golden veil. Her lips parted slightly, and her breath echoed his.