Defiant (14 page)

“Cannot, or will not?”

“You think I am lying?”

“I know you are lying. Just not about what.”

“I do not tell lies about that hut. ’Tis as safe a place to spend the night as I have ever known.”

He considered her. His boots were spread shoulder-width apart so his thighs formed a
V.
Powerful arms were crossed over his chest, and despite the faint, regarding smile playing on the edges of his mouth—he knew she lied, about almost everything—nothing about him denoted ease.

A scar cut through his right eyebrow, and she was certain the growth of beard concealed more such. His face was all hard planes, his nose ever so slightly crooked, as if broken a long time ago. His hands were absolute weapons on their own. Her throat still felt tight where he’d wrapped his mailed hand
around it. God alone knew what had stayed him from squeezing the life out of her earlier, because his eyes would not reveal the reason—they were beautiful and absolutely unreadable. Sea deep, indigo blue in the fading light, filled with danger and concealed thoughts. He felt like the sort who’d lived a hard life and was dishing it back out.

“That is a good skill,” he finally said, in that quiet, rumbling way he had. Jamie had many ‘ways’ about him. They were all dangerous. “You are not lying about this hut.”

It left open an entire range of things she
might be
lying about, but neither of them ventured there.

He directed her to sit, while Roger was enlisted to help gather downed wood. Jamie swiftly dug a small, deep pit beside her, then said, “You can begin the fire, even with your hands bound.” He tossed her a small flint from his pack and walked off.

Eva stared at the little gray stone glumly. This was not true. She could
not
light a fire, not to save her life, and on some winter nights it would have been exactly that. Oh, the shame of it, a five-year-old making fire for a thirteen-year-old.

She stared fiercely down into the dark pit, her jaw clamped tight, dismally doing the only thing she was capable of at present: feeding small bits of kindling—little twigs, skeletal leaves—into the cold fire pit.

They returned. Jamie looked down at the dark fire pit, at the small mountain of kindling, then at her. She sniffed and looked away. He swept up the flint, and soon a small flame caught on one of the cobwebbed leaves. He leaned forward to blow on it, the angular planes of his face lit by the sharp amber light. The flames licked higher, crackling up to catch the twigs.

Eva stifled a sigh of relief. How she hated the dark. Roger pressed close to her side.

From across the fire, Jamie glanced at them, then slid a knife from its sheath at his side, a careless, graceful move, and began
slicing a wrinkled onion into thick chunks and skewering them on a stick. She swallowed.

“Eva?” Roger ventured in a whisper.

“Aye?”

“I oughtn’t have got caught. I’m sorry.”

She patted his knee absently. “’Tis no fault of yours, Gog.”

“Aye, it was.” Jamie’s low voice drifted like hot silk through the flames.

This snapped her full attention to him. “Pardon?” she asked coldly.

He laid the onions beside the flames and gave a careless shrug. “I heard him banging through the brush like a bear for all of our ride.”

She arched an eyebrow. “And yet you seemed most surprised, there at the end.”

Roger stared at her. Jamie looked up but said nothing, just looked at her a moment, then turned to Roger. “You must be more circumspect when you are tracking.”

“Aye, sir!” Roger agreed with alacrity. He appeared . . . delighted by the feedback.

“Gog,” she said wearily. “Please remove your knee from my . . .” She glanced at Jamie, who seemed to be awaiting the next word out of her mouth with apparent interest. “Hip.”

It was a silent meal. The fire crackled and spit little fiery twigs into the dark air. Cool drafts lifted them higher, until they burned out and became gray ashes that blew into nothing.

Within ten minutes, Ry was out on watch, and Gog was asleep, on his side, mouth open, a hand tucked beneath his cheek, looking like a child and snoring like a man. Or bear. Yet he was neither man nor boy.

But he was certainly doomed. Unless she could save him.

The tumble-down hut loomed at the edge of her vision. It looked like a swaybacked horse. Birds had made nests in what
remained of the roof. Surely rodents found its sod walls quite warm. She once had. Now, it was uninhabitable. All that work, all that worrying, and running, and hiding, and now scurrying things held sway nevertheless.

And so falls the past,
she thought, trying to be rueful, blowing on her hands. Rue did not ordinarily lodge in one’s ribs though, just before the heart. Perhaps it was something else.

In any event, she did not pine for the past, so this was just as well. The past was a millstone of memories. She was weary of it.

But then, being weary of a thing had never signaled its end.

Across the fire, Jamie’s silhouette was dark and large. He sat motionless, his head bent, staring into the flames. He was the most lethal, most capable man she’d ever known, and he’d never spoken above a rumble.

And he
was
capable. In all things. Capable, clever mind; capable, scarred hands; capable, smashed-up heart—even to one who did not care about his heart, such as her, this was clear. He’d been terribly hurt. Like knows like.

The world was full of chances. Choices and chances.

“Have we settled the matter of our alliance?” she asked, a bit too loudly for the night air.

J
amie gave a small laugh.

She
ought
to be seeking any sort of assistance she could just now, for somehow, this bright slip of a woman had treaded into royal swampland, a quagmire that involved King John, his chief lieutenant (that being Jamie), the rebel barons, an outlawed henchman who once dealt in ransomed heirs, and an unfolding civil war.

Could it be, as Eva suggested, a matter of signed contracts, unwanted witnesses to some unwanted thing? Or was it something other? Something more?

For now, he would keep her bound. Keep her talking. Keep her lying, and follow her straight to the truth.

“I do not know,” he finally said.

She gave a faint sigh of exasperation. “That is all you have to say, after such a long wait? I thought you were deciding my fate, or perhaps what to eat, or something equally momentous.”

“I shall endeavor towards more complicated replies,” he said drily.

She waved her hand. “That will not suit either.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “Eva, you are like yuletide: I never know what I shall find.” He reached forward and picked up a
stick, poked its tip into the flames. “Why should you want an alliance with me?”

“We have the same intent, we must needs travel the same path. Of a certainty, we will fight at the end like cats and dogs, but that is for later. What say you?”

He glanced up. “Who gets to be the dog?”

“But of course, you. Big and growly.”

He grinned. “Am I not evil and quite impossible?”

“This is, sadly, true. But such men are good to be aligned with.”

“That is also, sadly, true.”

She sat up a little straighter, pushing her slim shoulders above the transparent waves of heat undulating up from the coals in the fire pit. “I think you can help me.”

He laughed. “I surely can. In what manner were you thinking?”

“In not tying me to a tree and leaving me for dead in the morning.”

He tilted his face and looked up at the tree limbs blowing in the darkness above them. “The notion does have a certain allure, does it not?” he mused.

“Normally, I would agree with this evil in your heart. It would make much sense to leave me and Gog behind.”

Thus far, she was on the mark. But then, it would have made more sense to leave her behind at the inn. He’d brought her because, well, he had no notion why. Because she was lying, he supposed. Lying people were hiding things, and until you knew what they were lying about, everything was a potential trapdoor.

“But I would find it very helpful to not be tied to a tree and left for dead,” she finished. “In this way, you would be of great assistance.”

“Aye, that would be helpful. For you. What makes you think I tie women to trees?”

She pretended to ponder this, her finger at her chin. “Your general readiness to do bad things? That you serve a vile lord? I would think tying people to trees to be a discomfort, a pebble in your bed, not a true obstacle.”

“I do not tie women to trees.”

“Not even ones who lie to you?”

“No. I prefer to leave them behind with”—he paused as if musing—“big, angry Scotsmen.”

She looked at him warily. “But this is no hardship. I am quite fond of Scotsmen.”

He arched a brow. “One-eyed ones?”

She arched both hers back, and he was certain she looked better than he. “Indeed. I prefer them to some Englishmen with both their eyes.”

Silence fell.

“Well, then, it seems we have ascertained how I can help you, Eva. But I am still unclear on how you can help
me.
”

“Any number of ways. I can tell stories at night or fetch water for your hardworking horses.”

“I find neither of those needs pressing at the moment, Eva.”

“I can tell you things.”

“Yes, but you lie.”

“I will not.”

He slid his gaze down her body, over her blue skirts, to the tips of her hard boots and back up. “I will know.”

A flush rushed out on her cheekbones, a faint pink tide. Something to note: the woman prickled with blades was an innocent with an innuendo. “And so, you see? You are your own formidable protection against my terrible, pathetic lies.”

He spun the tip of his stick in the fire. “And what would you have to tell me, Eva? There is a great deal I already know.”

“You know a great deal in the service of a lying, deceitful king.” Her words were sharp, falling out faster. “Beware of
what lies
you
might have been told, Jamie, by others much more skilled than I.”

Only when they spoke of John did she lose her equanimity. Another thing of note. There was so very much to note about her, one could spend a lifetime with Eva as the object of study, like trigonometry or rhetoric.

“What makes you suppose I get all my information from my lying, deceitful king?” he asked, and she looked away. “And for that matter, in what manner are you different?” he added coolly. “The lies or the deceit?”

Her gray gaze came back around. “In that I have never promised anything other than what I deliver. I have vowed neither faithfulness nor honesty, and so I do not dispense it.”

“I see. You hand it out in the manner of . . . fruit.”

“But of course. Oranges, I think. They are very uncommon, like the truth.”

“You mean you do not get much practice eating it.”

She tipped her head to the side, regarding him in silence. Strands of her hair picked up reddish glints from the fire. She must have some red amid all that ebony. “Yes. Perhaps this is why I am not so good with it.”

He nodded agreeably. “Oddly, you are also quite bad at lying, yet you do that with regularity.”

She waved her hand, dismissing the insight. “This is so, I am torn between worlds. I shall learn from you, Jamie, no? How to lie?”

“That would be a long apprenticeship.” He turned the tip of his stick in the fire some more, watching it start to darken, then erupt into small flames.

“From the beginning of this tale, we have been adversaries, Jamie. I have had no reason to be truthful.”

“And now you shall?”

She leaned forward, tipping her torso toward the fire. He
imagined the waves of heat pushing against her chest. “If you provide me a reason, Jamie Knight, indeed, I shall.”

He tossed the stick into the fire and sat back. “Prove yourself.”

She sat back, indecision and suspicion sweeping across her face. “In what manner?”

“Tell me something true, Eva. To a wellspring truth, through and through true.”

She looked uncomprehending, as might be expected. Then she smiled in a way he’d call mischievous, or impish, if he called smiles such things, and—well, this was becoming commonplace—his heart slowed down. Everything collapsed into his male awareness of her small, crooked, seductive smile.

“Beware the hedge,” she whispered conspiratorially. “’Tis filled with brambles. They bite.”

He felt another grin surface. “Is that your truth, Eva? The one by which you prove yourself?”

She nodded smugly and tried to cross her arms, but as her wrists were bound, this was impossible. “Bone truth,” she said proudly.

“I shall heed your warning,” he replied drily.

“As do I.”

He gave a snort of disbelief. “You? Heed warnings?”

“Bite. I bite.”

“Ah. That is good to know.”

“I also snore, complain on an oceanic scale, and find myself covered in terrible rashes when I touch certain plants.”

He smiled faintly. “You are a veritable sea of problems.”

“Sadly, this is so.”

“Have you any talents?” he inquired. Why, he had no notion. To keep her talking? He rarely pursued that particular goal with women.

She spread her hands apart, as if presenting a feast table. “Indeed. I can sing a merry tune.”

“Is that so?” he drawled, particularly and unaccountably pleased, whether by the news or her revelation of it, he did not know.

She nodded. “When I am so inspired.”

“And what manner of things inspire you?”

“Being free of ropes and knots, this of a certainty has an inspiring effect.”

“You will sing for me if I release you from your bindings?” he asked, halfway to incredulous. He had no intention of releasing her, so it was mere curiosity. About her reply. Not her singing.