Defiant (21 page)

One arm curled low around her abdomen, his hand locked on the far hip. He kept his other arm draped over her shoulder but dropped it low, so his forearm rested between her breasts. He cupped her ribs just below her breast, tipped his hooded head to the side, and put his lips by her ear.

“Do you see what I mean, about the error?”

His breath warmed her ear, but the dark rumble coming so close made her shiver. Sadly, it was not in fear. “Tell me, Eva, if you think the soldiers are eager for me, how much do you think they would pay for Roger?”

A chill sliced through her belly like a frozen dagger. “What?”

“How did you do it?” He pushed her forward again, until they were tucked far back in the doorway.

Her knees were made of water. “Do what?”

“How did you get Roger out of England, all those years ago?”

He might as well have punched her in the belly. She could not draw breath. Her knees did as they’d been threatening and washed clean away. Reflexively, she felt for something to support her, but of course there was nothing, only the arms of the man holding her hostage. She curled her fingers over the forearm he had clamped across her belly like a bar of steel.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“How could I not?” He shifted the hand below her breast for additional support, and his thumb brushed over her breast.

She exhaled slowly. It was wrong to notice that, to be aware of his lean, powerful body behind hers, his hips pressing up against her buttocks and the small of her back.

“I will do it,” she vowed, her voice shaking. “I will call out.”

“You will not.”

She shoved back against him, hoping to throw him off-balance. All that happened was that she felt the hard length of him more fully for a moment. “Release us, Jamie, and I shall keep my silence.”

He gave a low laugh and bent closer. He hung low over her like wings now. The hand below her breast slid up, a startling move, utterly without seductive intent, but it awakened something fiery and insistent, then he closed it around her throat.

“Open your mouth, Eva, and you will die.”

“By their hand or yours?” she asked tautly.

“Do you wish to attempt it and find out?” he whispered, his lips against her neck.

She shoved her hips into him again, twisting. He flexed his arm, stilling her. “Eva, have you a brain in your head, you will not do that again,” he warned in a low, steel-edged voice.

She did it again, bucked her hips while pushing down on the forearm wrapped around her belly, but he clamped down harder and lifted her off her feet, yanking her up against him and what she now realized was an erection.

She froze, his arm like a steel band around her belly, the other hand still encircling her throat. For long seconds they were motionless, Eva’s toes barely scraping the earth. Then slowly, he lowered her back down.

She loosed a long, hot breath.

She did not move—couldn’t—so their bodies kept touching, and she knew the moment he stopped using his hand as threat and began using it as seduction. He slid it down her neck, his thumb making small strokes as he went, down to the collar of her dress, slowly, as if testing her resolve. He kept moving down, past her collarbone to her breast without stopping, and slid up the swell and brushed the tip of his fingers gently over her nipple.

The breath shuddered out of her.

This was the stuff of her dreams, to have Jamie touching her. He’d hauled her out of the saddle and backed her up against things numerous times, but he’d never set his hands on her body in this slow, lingering,
devoted
way, and it was like being torched. Set aflame.

Then, because everything was in peril, and all the safe choices she’d made up to now had resulted in only more peril, and because Jamie’s danger was the safest thing she’d ever known, and because she was burning and her dreams were coming true, she tipped her head back the small inch required and rested it on his shoulder.

His heart beat strong against her back, then he pressed his mouth to her ear. “Eva.”

Was it a warning? A survey? A request?

“Aye,” she whispered in reply. It should serve for them all.

“I want you more than breath,” he rasped.

Hot shivers came like rain down her belly and legs. “I know,” she whispered. She pressed her thighs together involuntarily, pressing on the tempting shiver-ache, then shifted infinitesimally, moving her hips back, into his body and his erection.

His heart beat strong against her back; then he ordered in her ear, low and heated, “Do that again,” and followed his words with his hot tongue. “Again, Eva.”

She did; her head on his shoulder, she arched her back and pressed her hips into him, hard against his arousal.

So this is the feel of Jamie’s hands on a woman’s body,
she thought, and knew a sudden, inexplicable, steaming jealousy for all the other women who had known such touches.

“Do you know how much I want you?” He slid his hands down and closed them around her hips, more of his holding power. One booted foot came forward, so his knee pushed between hers, nudging them apart.

“Aye,” she said breathlessly. These rough-edged questions being spoken from behind, his hands on her body, not knowing what he would do next, it was the most arousing thing she’d ever known. Her body was throbbing, her head spinning.

There was an assessing pause, then he reached around, took one of her hands, and brought it slowly behind her, down between their bodies. He curled her fingers against the rock-hard length of his erection. “Do you feel?” he demanded in a low voice.

Another broken sob escaped her. This was what she wanted. This. Her fingers tightened around him, and his laid his hand over hers. Together, they stroked him, a long, hard pull. Eva’s head was spinning; she was panting, dizzy, wet.

He leaned low and ran his tongue down her neck, murmuring, “And you, Eva? How great is your desire?”

“Ever so much,” she whispered. “I burn.”

He set both his hands on her belly. “Show me.” One calloused palm slid up to her breasts, the other went down, and as he ranged like a mountain over her body, she arched into him with a single hot, gasping breath.

Ry’s head poked around the corner of the alley.

Eva flung herself away so fast her nose knocked the far wall. Jamie’s hands dropped like rocks.

Ry looked at him grimly. “There’s no getting across the river this day.” Roger stood just behind him, looking just as tall, just as worried. The line of soldiers had dwindled to naught, but the next ferry would bring more.

Jamie shook his head, his face tilted toward the building. “That is not what I want to hear. The entire rebel army is about to encamp here.”

“Aye, well, the soldier at the platform is on orders from fitzWalter himself. He’s commandeered the ferry.”

“Give him coin.”

“He does not want coin. He prefers his head. We need something more convincing than coin. And he doesn’t look a persuadable sort.”

“How far to the southland bridge?”

“Same as it was before, Jamie. Ten, twelve miles. And we’ll not make it through those soldiers a second time. We sleep the night here in town, out of sight in a stable somewhere, and come morn, when the army has passed, we move on.”

“And in the wait, lose days on Mouldin. No. I will not,” Jamie said in a low voice, then added, “Chance is here.”

Ry started. “What?”

“I saw her. She does not usually travel with the rabble. She must be coming for Mouldin.” Jamie moved to the doorway and peered out. “If we wait the night out, she will get to him before us.”

Ry put his hand on the wall, considering Jamie hard. “And to correct this, you will . . . ?”

“Stop her.”

“Of course. Why did I not think of that?”

“Ry, if she has been sent for Mouldin, then she surely knows where he is headed. Information that could take
days
off our travel. If I am right, we need not backtrack to the bridge to pick up the trail.”

Ry nodded. “And if you are wrong?”

“Have you another plan?”

“As usual, my plans go no further than keeping you alive a few hours more.”

“Whatever for?” Jamie peeked around the corner of the doorway again.

She saw the resignation, perhaps mingled with anger, enter Ry’s face as Jamie looked back. “Wait here. Watch out for them.” He tipped his head in Eva’s direction.

“Here?” Ry gestured to the recessed doorway. His voice was full of tension.

Jamie tipped his head up. The shapeless hood framed his face in darkness, so his eyes glinted within. Ry met them. Then without warning, Ry stepped back, lifted his boot, and kicked open the door to the shop.

Jamie gave a small smile and they all hurried inside.

The dim little lower chamber was empty, but they could hear the sound of footsteps above, hurrying down the stairs. Jamie unsheathed his sword just as a round, sweaty face poked out from the the stairs and stared in amazement.

Jamie extended the blade, forming a line from his muscular shoulder to the sword’s steely tip, and said in a low, lethal voice, “Upstairs. Lock the door behind you.”

The husky command did not need to be repeated. The shopkeeper flung himself backward, sat down hard on the steps
behind, rose again, and slammed the door shut. The sound of fumbling with an iron lock, then hurrying footsteps back up the stairs.

Ry was already reaching for the angled crossbar that held the front shutter of the shop window up. He yanked the bar out. The shutter fell like a hammer. Jamie picked up an iron poker and shoved it between the latch and the corner of the wall, wedging it shut. A murmured word to Roger had him hurrying to the back door to repeat the same.

When all the doors were locked, the window shuttered, they stood for half a moment in the close silence. Then Jamie strode through the brazier-lit darkness to the door, his boots echoing off the worn plank floors.

“I will be back, Ry. Keep them here. Keep them occupied.”

Ry gave a clipped nod. “Shall I put them to work mixing lard, or perhaps laying the rushes?”

Jamie inched the door open and peered out. “Ry, this is important—”

“This is you about to get killed.
Again.
While I play nursemaid.”

“Ry—”

“How do you know you’ll even find her?”

Jamie’s body stilled. Without looking over, he clapped Ry on the shoulder. “Because I just saw her walk inside the tavern down the road.”

Jamie stepped off the small stoop and disappeared.

E
va looked at Ry, who returned her glance briefly, then strode to the door.

“I have known many tavernkeepers in my time,” she said.

Ry put his hand on the latch, depressed it slowly, and pulled the door open a narrow crack. He peered through.

“And I have found they are quite unlike your reluctant ferryman.”

Ry barely glanced over.

“In that they very greatly desire money and will do almost anything for it.”

He looked over more fully.

“Such as allow people in their back doorways unseen, so they may be on hand in case of need.”

He shut the door and turned. “And you will wait here?” he said with something like hope in his voice. Hope being such a precious commodity, like pepper or saffron, she hated to dash it, but there was nothing for it.

“No, we will not wait. But neither will we run. I think, for the moment, we will stay as Jamie’s cargo.”

Roger’s hand was on his hilt, his face already taking on the edges of hardness she’d tried to keep at bay for so long. “I will not wait, sir. I can help.”

Eva ignored the painful pang in her heart. “He is not a sir, Roger,” she said quietly. “And I think none of us, least of all Master Bucklemaker, is pleased to have us waiting here in his shop, Ry. Let us all go.”

Ry looked between them, obviously in inner debate, then nodded and started for the back door. “We go around the back,” he murmured as he yanked the iron poker out. “Eva, you stay close, and we will find a place for you out of sight.”

She followed him without complaint, but Eva knew no one could find a better place for her to be out of sight than she, and she had often found the best place to become invisible was in plain sight.

J
amie stepped inside the tavern. Men in boots and cloaks clustered around the high tables or leaned against the walls, mugs in hand. Most appeared to be merchants and travelers, not soldiers.

He was surprised. It appeared the little river port would be spared—there was no evidence of an intent to loot—and apparently drunkenness was going to be confined to the army camp.

Even so, the inhabitants had reason to be uneasy. People drank when they were uneasy. The tavern was crowded.

Alert with every sense, Jamie moved through the crowd to the last empty stool at the end of the counter, ordered a drink, and waited.

It did not take long.

Chance appeared at the far end of the room and looked directly at him. Two other figures emerged and spread out on either side like dark wings, her ever-present henchmen.

She strolled closer, as if the tavern were a hall strewn with rushes and herbs. Her hair was long, so blond it was almost white, and a narrow, embroidered band around her head was shot through with silk threads. She wore a dark cape, thrown back. and looked quite impressive.

She certainly had been to Jamie when he had come under fitzWalter’s tutelage fifteen years ago, as a boy of fourteen to her seductive eighteen. As she was now, to the men in the tavern who turned to watch her pass. When they spied her bulky escorts, they quickly looked away.

Jamie glanced over, then took another sip of his ale. It was not good. He set it down.

“Jamie,” she murmured as she drew near.

He passed a glance over her without fully turning his head. “Chance.”

She rested her hand on the sticky trestle counter, her back against the wall, and smiled at him. “I am surprised.”