Defiant (12 page)

Which it would.

“Aye,” Jamie said. “North. Where there are no ships, no beaches, and no borders for two hundred miles.” He looked at his friend, forearm over the front of his saddle, considering this as if he were a king. “Tell me, Ry, how likely does it seem they made for a remote track that points nowhere but north for a hundred miles or more?”

Eva stifled a curt reply along the lines of
Utterly without possibility, unlike the likelihood of us being seen, sitting here like ducks.

“More likely than heading into the remote north,” Ry said, shaking his head. “I’ve no notion why they would head north in the first place.”

Because that is where Mouldin kept his lair in days past.
Eva shifted impatiently. Surely he still knew people, had contacts and connections that would allow him to conduct the negotiations he no doubt intended to host, with Father Peter as the prize.

How much would it be worth to Jamie, this news?

But there was nothing useful to her here, in this line of thought. She had nothing to bargain with. If she mentioned Mouldin, at best Jamie would release her, and she would never regain Father Peter. Worse, he would do something inconvenient, such as tie her to a tree.

Worse yet, it would get much, much worse.

Mouldin meant heirs. He could not be mentioned.

“So you counsel port?” Jamie said to Ry.

Eva tipped forward, into their conversation. “That would be most unwise.”

They turned in their creaking saddles and stared. Jamie’s expression was smooth and unreadable. Distant and considering.

“The port, this is a most unwise choice,” she repeated. “Our quarry did not go west. Or east to a little town.”

“And how do you know that?” Behind Jamie’s shoulders, the
sky reddened with sunset light. His face was filled with lines of suspicion, which made him only more beautiful, which was highly distressing.

“I do not know,” she retorted. “I use my reason. ’Twould be madness, would it not? To go to some busy port town with an unhappy priest and display him like new shoe leathers?”

Jamie’s gaze, at once clear and impenetrable, never left hers. “I find your assessment riveting, Eva. What I do not understand is your certainty. It makes me curious.”

“I do not like you curious,” she said sharply. But he was not
curious
whatsoever, not unless
curiosity
and
predator
went together like garlic and butter. He was like an animal crouched in high grasses, stalking its prey.

He reined his horse beside her, facing opposite, so their eyes met.

“I do not think they went to the town,” she explained with great dignity. “And you do not either. This, I know. I can see it in your face. When your Ruggart Ry suggests the thing, your eyes narrow this little bit.” She held up her fingers, squeezing her thumb and forefinger almost to touching. “And you think, ‘This idea is not so good.’ Do not tell me otherwise. Your oh-so-good skills of tracking have held us steady to this most rutted course for miles. The dirt we see kicked up along the side, the depth of the hoofprints, the way the clouds cover the sky—I am sure all these details reveal important things to you. And I am, with great sadness, forced to agree. You are unmistaken. They did not go to this town.”

He’d crossed his arms over his chest during her soliloquy, head tipped to the side. “I did not say that, Eva. But I admit, your dislike of the town makes me warm to it immeasurably.”

“Ah, see? We are of no good liking. You should let me go; we do not get along like good children should.”

“And what if my oh-so-good tracking skills counseled,
‘What ho, bear west’?” he asked, his voice softly mimicking her tone. “What then?”

She slowly arched an eyebrow. “Then they would not be oh-so-good.”

Ry nudged his horse forward. They formed a small darted triangle in the middle of the rutted road. He spoke into the chilly silence created by the dipping sun and Jamie’s hard stare.

“I confess, Jamie, unfathomable as a northern route is, your tracking has ne’er led us astray before. I counsel we continue north.”

Ah, see, the lines of friendships-that-could-have-been were clear. Ry was much more levelheaded and trustworthy than Jamie. He agreed with her.

But the small uprush of hope in her belly was dashed before it reached her heart as he went on, “But the horses can go no farther. We need to camp the night.”

Jamie nodded in agreement. “If we branch off here,” he said, pointing into the dark wood, “we can set up camp inside the treeline.”

Eva followed the sweep of his muscular arm, her heart crashing entirely.

Out of all the hilltops in England, why must Jamie point to hers?

T
he wood began perhaps ten paces off the main track, heavily treed and ferned and brambled. “Atop that rise,” Jamie said, “no doubt there is a view for miles down the track.”

Ry was already dismounting. “Let us go, before darkness falls.”

Eva made a sharp little move, wiping her hand nervously down the top of her leg. Jamie followed it with his gaze. She glanced into the trees, wiped again, then blurted out, “We cannot camp here.”

Ah. He almost smiled. More secrets of Eva. Talking to her was like locating the trace line of silver in a mine.

“You’re particular,” he drawled. “Neither east nor west, and for certes not the wood.”

Her gaze rushed over to him. “Yes, I am just that sort. Difficult to please, happy with no thing. I am the woman always wanting the new shoes, the pretty lace. I require much maintenance. I will tire you thoroughly.”

Ry snorted. Jamie’s gaze never left hers. She was frightened, but oddly distracted. All his senses went on high alert.

“The horses can go no farther, Eva,” Jamie said, watching close.

“But—”

“No horses, no Father Peter. And I cannot track in the dark.”

She stared at him, clearly caught between sense and some other, almost desperate need to move on. Ry sensed it too. He stepped forward and murmured, “Do you know something that would help us, mistress?”

Her forehead furrowed with earnestness. “I know we cannot camp in these woods.”

“Why not?”

“’Tis not safe.”

Jamie and Ry exchanged a glance.

“What I mean to say is, this is just the sort of wood we have in France, which is filled with surprising pockets of quicksand and thickets. That is bad. And are there not wolves?” she concluded on a faint note of triumph.

“No.”

Just then, a long, low howl went up.

She smiled and spread out a hand. “We see the wolves.”

Jamie gave the ghost of a smile.

“So you see, with clarity, we cannot camp here.”

“I see with clarity you know a great deal about these woods.”

He examined her in the pale glow, then slowly reached for the rope that connected their horses. He looped it around the pommel of his saddle over and over, drawing her closer, until her horse stood belly to belly with his and her knee bumped his, then tilted his head in Ry’s direction without looking away.

“Go and check the hill, Ry, will you? The one Eva does not want us on.”

S
HE
felt the kick of panic like little elfin boots, striking at her rib cage. She tried to breathe normally.

It was only a small hut, she thought. Ten years was a great
long time in a wet wood. Perhaps it had fallen to wreck and ruin. Perhaps it had rotted away. Perhaps all signs of its existence—and theirs—were decayed clear away.

Or perhaps not.

She’d made it their own, this abandoned little hut. Painted it, for goodness’ sake, so it would be a modicum less frightening for a five-year-old boy who’d so recently witnessed terrible horrors. Laid rushes, embellished the walls with drawings like the castle rooms he’d been accustomed to, with fine red lines so they mimicked masonry bricks, flowers painted within. Painted the outer door as well, to resemble curving vines.

Just like her fingernails. Would Jamie recall such a detail?

Jamie would recall how many outbreaths she’d taken, should it serve his purpose.

They sat side by side and listened to Ruggart Ry bash through the underbrush. Eva pretended to watch. He was breaking through the brush, directly toward the old abandoned hut she’d used as a hiding spot with Roger ten years ago.

After a moment, Ry called out, “There’s something here, Jamie. Just beyond the crest of the hill. A small hut.”

Her heart sank as if small iron weights were attached to it, dragging it into a pit.

Jamie turned to her, his gaze, at once clear and impenetrable, aimed like an archer’s arrow. “Fascinating.” He did not sound fascinated. He sounded suspicious.

She nodded, not at all suspiciously. She filled it with all the nonchalance and innocence one could put into a nod. She offered a smile made of equal ingredients. One could build a tower of sweets with this nod and smile.

And then he did a terrible thing. He smiled. “I am going to do you a boon favor, Eva.”

Her jaw dropped slowly, but her heart went tumbling much faster, deep into the pits of her suddenly flipping belly, which
was sending the most insensible chills
up,
like rising air. She’d been stormed by a cyclone inside.

“Wha—What do you mean?”

Her stuttered, shocked reply faded into silence as Jamie kicked his foot over his horse’s rump and started toward her, making everything that had been rising up inside start going entirely downward.

Off to the side, Ry stood looking . . . was that sad? Disappointed?

Worried?

Jamie clasped her by the hips and slid her unceremoniously off the horse. She hit the ground, staggering a moment as her legs adjusted to being back on solid earth. “What favor?”

Jamie gave another of his alarming smiles. “We’re going to bring in your boy.”

S
he hit the ground hard. Jamie closed his hands around her arms, pulling her toward him. He was not rough, but neither was he gentle. The kingdom was tottering on the brink of civil war, and she might know something that could open a door or slam it shut, to the ruination of a kingdom.

Her body ricocheted backward in swift response. He let her go. For now. She backed up and her boot trod into the feathery ferns bordering the road. Jamie tracked her slowly. No need to have her trip and bash her brains in. Yet.

“Eva,” he said calmly. “I am a patient man. I have waited many years for many things, and I shall wait through many more. I have served kings and counts and dowager queens, and ne’er counted a minute wasted. But I am growing impatient with you.”

An ambient reddish glow still lit the tops of the trees, but she was backing up into darkness, where thick, ancient tree limbs hung heavy with moss and cobwebs, and wild animals lived long lives, never laying eyes on a human.

“In this way, you and I are alike,” she said, and it was almost a gasp. She took another step back and bumped into a tree. She stopped, her spine to the trunk. Jamie came within a stride’s length and stopped.

All the bindings of her hair had pulled free, and it fell in dark, tangled streamers around her face. “I am impatient with how you keep backing me up against things,” she complained breathlessly.

This was so, he realized. Three times now: in an alley, against the wall of a bedchamber, and now against a tree.

Generally, there were more dire consequences to stretching Jamie’s patience, and one did not get the opportunity to do so thrice. That Eva had, required thought.

But not now. He would think tonight, while he sat sleepless around the fire. Thousands of nights it had been already, and thousands more lay ahead, filled with fires and restless half sleep. Time for many thoughts.

Now was not the time for thoughts.

Now was the time to rattle her.

He put his hand on the tree just above her head. “When you stop lying to me, Eva, I will stop backing you up against things.” He rested the edge of his other hand on her shoulder, his fingers against her neck, and in the spirit of rattling, when she swallowed, he traced down the length of her throat with the pad of his thumb.

“Father Peter has itinerated with the great and mighty, Eva. How does a waif like you play in?”

“Ah, see,” she said, her voice shaky, but sharp with anger, “you think these are such good questions, Jamie. You are so clever to have them. They are after me, of course. Father Peter is but a decoy.”

He ignored this. “Tell me why you know about little huts in the English woods. Where are you from, Eva? Where in England?”

The telltale hesitation, the swift bump of her heart against her ribs, against his, they were standing so close.

“These woods? Did you grow up near here?”

“No, but I passed through them,” she said breathlessly, “many years ago.”

“Then you are from here.”

She shook her head quickly. “No. But I passed through on my way to France, many years ago.”

“How many?”

“Too many.”

“You have a good memory of them.”

She swallowed. He felt it pass under his palm. “This good memory is a requirement. Surviving oft depends on such a thing as never forgetting. This, I think, you know too.”

What was that intended to mean? It was true, true as anything. He’d lived on thwarted vengeance, fed by a wellspring of hot, boiling, unforgettable memories for almost twenty years. But she couldn’t know that.

Yet she knew something. Behind that pale face and those dark eyes lurked a massive, dangerous intelligence. Insightful and discerning.

“Unfortunately, Eva, you’re not telling me what I want to know. Why do you not try telling me why someone is following us?”

She released a breath, a long exhalation, slow and hot against his neck. “You will never find him.”