Defiant (18 page)

Who is able to do the most harm to their enemies and good to their friends in time of sickness, Eva?

A physician.

And who is able to do best good and most harm at sea in a storm?

A pilot.

But in time of wellness, then, there is no need of the physician?

But of course there is need.

And on a calm sea, the pilot?

Needful.

Eva, needful.

She wanted to kneel down in front of Jamie and unlace his leggings, those complicated things. Press her lips to his hard, flat belly, run her fingers up his chest. And mayhap he would rest his hands on her shoulders, lean down to kiss her? Cup her waist with his hands and pull her up to sit on his lap, part her lips with his and kiss her, as he had in the tavern? A rippling undulation moved through her.

She felt quite wild now, thoroughly Socratic. His neck. She wanted his neck. She wanted to open her mouth and suck in
his warm, salty skin. The days’ growth of hair beard would prickle her tongue, and she wanted that with a simple, sudden desperate longing.

She would coax him to slide his hand down her hip as he’d done before, in that oh-so-gentle, oh-so-skillful way, and put his hot tongue inside her mouth with all his confidence. She could hear her own breath, passing through parted lips, loud in the quiet night air. She would open for him, kiss him back...

She looked up farther and met his wide-open eyes.

He was watching her. He
knew.

She drew back as if blown by a strong, steady wind. She turned away and rounded her mouth to release a hot, unsteady, silent breath.

“Come to me.” His rumble shivered her from the inside out.

It was a command in word, in tone, in everything but the unspoken energy that rode across the clearing like a tiger might prowl:
Please.

She reached for the ground blindly. Pressing her palm to the ground, she bent her knees stiffly and lowered herself down, facing away.

“Come here, Eva.” His rough whisper rode up and over her body like the blowing wind.

She lay on her side, facing the trees, stiff as a spike, hardly daring to breathe. Would he ask again?

Oh,
why
did he not ask again? And again, and again, and again.

She lay with her back to the fire and felt his blue gaze burning into her all night long, making her hotter than the flames.

E
va had awakened in many states throughout her life: wet, cold, hungry, afraid. But never, in ten years of running, had she awoken as she did this morn: angry and aroused.

She had dreamed of Jamie. Again. All night long.

The world was dim and utterly quiet, although a faint lightening hinted at a nearby dawn. She unrolled herself from the woolen warmth of Jamie’s cloak and sat up. The campsite was empty.

Gog was gone.

A cold pang snapped through her belly. She scrambled to her feet. A tall, dark shadow separated itself from a tree on the far side of the clearing. Ry, on watch. His arms were folded over his chest, his cape pulled and tucked within the bend, warding off the chill of the misty dawn. He looked like a dark tunnel of smoke, frozen in place amid the fog.

She walked over and whispered, “Where is Roger?”

He looked down at her. “Jamie took him.”

More cold pangs, this time through her heart. “And where is Jamie?” she asked, carefully calm.

Ry said quietly, “Scouting the road ahead. They will return.”

She inhaled deeply, the cold pang unballing and warming, although why should these words, which could so easily be a lie,
comfort her? She reached for her satchel. One small silver penny rolled out from its depths. She picked it up and considered it. It seemed like a hundred years ago that she’d sent Roger to bargain his way onto another boat for France at need. Had it only been yesterday?

Ry was watching. “Thinking of running?” he asked quietly.

She lifted the penny in the air. “It depends. How far will this English penny get me?”

She could see the faint smile on his face as he stepped closer. “That coin is clipped, mistress. It would hardly buy you a cart ride to the fields.”

She considered the penny, then him. “How do you know such things? And from so far away?”

He looked over her shoulder into the wood, back on watch. “My father was a moneylender.”

“Is it odd, for a Jew to be a knight like yourself?”

“I am neither of these things, mistress. I am not a knight nor a Jew. My family was. I have declaimed everything but Jamie. And he is next.”

She smiled as faintly as he had done. They were amusing each other in opaque ways, she and Ry. “So. You are the most common of things, like a wardrobe or a bedstead: a simple soldier.”

He smiled with another of those small smiles that made him seem so much less dangerous than Jamie. “As dense and dull as all that.”

Less dangerous until he unsheathed his sword and used it with that ruthless, unemotional skill Jamie also displayed. Really, these men were the sort who could make a great deal of money hiring themselves out as judicial champions.

His gaze flicked over her shoulder, back on guard. She turned and peered into the steely green woods with him.

“Do we need water?”

“Pardon?”

She pointed down the hill behind them, to the glistening stream. “For the horses? I can fetch it.”

“The horses are able to walk down, mistress.”

“Ah, but so am
I
able to walk down. While there, I can also wash a bit.”

He scanned the stream and far hillside, then nodded. “Aye, go, Mistress Eva. But if you run, we will find you,” he cautioned in a whisper. “And Jamie will not be pleased.”

“I have no intention of running. Jamie and I have made an alliance.”

He smiled faintly. “Is that so?”

“Indeed. I fetch water for the horses, and he does not tie me to a tree.”

He gave a soft laugh, making a puff of hot air swirl before his mouth.

“While I have no desire to displease your Jamie, you must know, sir, I fear it lies ahead. It is the
curé,
you understand. For myself, I would let your Jamie do all his masterful, angry things and would never be in his way whatsoever, for I would be living in a little cottage by a river in France, bothering not a soul. Most certainly I would not be in England.”

Despite its yellow flowers and hauntingly lovely misty dawns.

She picked up her little satchel. “Have you a woman, Sir Ry, or do you stay only with Jamie, here to catch the men he destroys as they topple over?”

His smile faded. “I had a woman. And I do not catch them. I let them fall.”

“Then I shall fear you both.”

She slipped down the hill, through the dripping wet ferns, disrobed down to her linen shift, and waded into the stream up to her shins. She swiftly washed her face, her armpits, and
everything traitorous Jamie had alit beneath her skirts. Nails, hair, skin and the clothes that covered it, all might be drab and homespun, but Eva ensured they were aggressively clean and well tended. It was one small thing left to her control, so she took it.

She was crouched low, the wet yellow tunic under the water, when she became aware of a dark shadow at the edge of her vision. She looked up.

Jamie.

She got to her feet in a slow, stunned, half-naked way. Every move she began, she halted, because everything she thought to do was insufficient to solve her problem. She started for the stream’s edge, stopped, then stretched out her arm, a pointless grab for the dry tunic that was about five yards away on the riverbank, next to Jamie’s boot. She settled on covering the front of her body with the wet tunic and pushed the hair back from her face.

He stood only in boots and hose and a loosely tied linsey-woolsey tunic and leather gauntlets he’d started to lace around one wrist, an idle if constructive act as he searched for her, she supposed. He’d stopped short, and his gaze burned down her wet skirts, as if it were a making a line of hot soldered iron.

“I inquired of Ry,” she said swiftly. “He said I might.”

He did not appear to be listening. It felt like ravishment, this burning path of desire, searing across her body like a brand.

“Why did you take Roger?” she asked sharply, to stop the branding.

His gaze ripped up. “To teach him how to track so he does not get killed. We ride. Now. Come.”

He turned and strode up the hill, kicking through the buttery-feathered wet ferns. Again he was with the commands. Eva hurried to the grassy bank and dressed, then grabbed her
satchel and hurried up the hill. Even from down here, she could see the top of the hill and the tops of their heads, hear the low murmur of male voices as they saddled the horses.

Something caught her eye off to her right. Three shadowy figures, hunched low, moving through the mists. On the other side were three more, all stealthy, all silent.

All with their swords out.

S
he started running.

The crumbly pine needles and rich brown soil fell apart beneath her boots, sending her sliding back down, her knees crashing into the earth and rocks. She reached out and grabbed for tree roots with her hands, pulling herself up the hill, scrambling, sweating, silent but for her panting breath.

Call out? Don’t call?

She must not warn the intruders. But if Roger had not yet seen them—

“Jamie!” she shouted, hurtling up the hill, not realizing she was calling for Jamie instead of Roger. “’Ware, ’ware! They come!”

She flung herself over the crest of the hill just as Jamie and Ry scraped their swords from scabbards, Jamie’s gaze fixed on the woods as she ran up.

“Roger,” he was saying quietly, calmly. “If you think you can resist stabbing me, we could put your sword arm to good use.”

“Sword, sir,” he whispered. “Put me to use. I’ve no love of robbers or bandits.”

“Nor do I,” Eva piped in.

“I have less faith you can resist urges to stab me,” Jamie retorted, but was already tugging free a dagger from the belt
that held his arsenal of weapons. He spun it in his hand so the hilt protruded and slapped it into her palm.

“Do not stick me,” he ordered, and turned away, whispering, “Spread out.” Roger scrambled to fetch the blade Ry tossed him, and they fanned out amid the dense, dark forest.

She backed up, moving to her right, whispering, “This way, Gog.” There would be no spreading of her and Gog. They were blade and sheath.

She pressed her spine against a large tree trunk and peered into the small, sunny clearing. Her mouth had gone completely dry.

It was like this before every encounter. And not just the sort that had blasted down the oak doors of the monastery Father Peter had arranged for them and sent armed riders galloping through the place, searching for Eva and Gog. No, it was the simple, hail-fellow exchanges. But, of course, if you were being hunted by kings and counts, perhaps this was an understandable thing.

Six of them, she realized as the waving tree branches gave hint to the marauders moving through the wood. Six men. Bandits? Freebooters?

Heir-hunters?

She extended a hand, feeling for Gog, who was never more than a pace or two off. Blade and sheath.

Her hand swiped through empty air. She reached a little farther. More air. Gog was gone.

Shards of fear slid through her belly and arms. She turned slowly, willing her eyes to pierce dimness.

Slowly, the tall figure of Ruggart Ry emerged a few yards away, like a standing stone amid the trees. She swung her gaze farther and caught sight of Jamie, sword at the ready, his body pinned against a tree, his dusky cheek pressed to bark. His gleaming eyes caught hers. She lifted her shoulders in a
little shrug, turning her hand palm up in silent question. She mouthed,
Gog?
He squinted, then briefly shook his head.

She spotted a crouched shape creeping up through the brush a dozen paces off . . . Gog.

A stream of breathy relief funneled through her lips. Fear strangled it dead in her throat the next second. A shadowy form, hunched and looming, was following behind.

She took off, a silent shadow, on the balls of her feet, knees bent, arms extended slightly. Sweat built along her arms. The shadowy figure drew nearer Gog. She started trotting.

Something closed around her neck and yanked her backward off her feet. Her blade fell to the ground. She hit the earth at full impact, then a mailed hand hauled her up and backward into an armored body, a blade at her throat.

“Scream and you die,” hissed the owner of the body, the armor, and the blade.

Another bandit appeared, reaching for her legs, to lift her off the ground. She went still for half a second, then abruptly turned her head to the side at the same moment she lifted her feet off the ground. She dropped like a stone out of his grip.

Before either of her assailants could so much as curse, she flung her hand with Jamie’s dagger up and back, right into Knife’s thigh. He howled in pain and stumbled backward, but the other one had already grabbed her braid and yanked her to her feet. The pain was fire through her scalp. He rattled her brain with a savage shake and lifted a knife to her throat.

“Firedrake,” he snarled. “I will snap your neck—”

Suddenly there was a tremendous jerk, then a sudden release. Her captor went flying backward like a stalk of wheat in the wind. Eva spun to find Jamie looking down at the man he’d just peeled off her, now writhing on the ground. The other marauder was back on his feet, knife still sticking in his thigh, moving like a runaway wagon right at her. She crouched on her knees,
waiting for impact, then rammed herself upward, punching her shoulder into his armored chest. It was like shoving off a boulder. Her teeth clattered as he knocked her down, then wrapped his hands around her chest and began dragging her kicking, flailing body away into the woods.