Defiant (27 page)

All in all, it was safer to be inside walls come nightfall.

Jamie was ambivalent about town. Gratified at the prospect of drinking freshly brewed ale and sleeping in a bed. Eager to get a good wash.

On edge, at being within walls. Trapped.

And towns stank to the high heavens. Out riding, away from
large groups of people and their accumulated filth, it was easy to grow accustomed to only the faint musky odor of one’s own body and fresh air. But in town, the wastes of the world converged. Sewers running down the edges of the cobbled streets. Tanner cast-offs. Entrails. Unwashed bodies packed close together. Fires burning. Dog shit, cow shit, human shit. An unmitigated, malodorous mess.

They drew near the gates.

“Ready?” Jamie murmured, turning to Ry; then his eye fell on Eva. He went still for a few beats of his heart.

She was tossing her hair, running her fingers through it, fluffing it. Despite all the rigors of the last few days, it fell like a silky, dark curtain around her fine-cut face and proud shoulders. She pushed her cape over one shoulder and, with a twist of her fingers, slightly loosened the ties of the bodice of her gown.

His heart tightened. He’d had the privilege of unlacing her last night, but had he taken full advantage of the ability to run his fingers through her hair, to make it do . . . that? Hardly. Hair had been a low priority when his hands were on her.

Given another opportunity though, he vowed to attend it with devotion, to make it do . . . whatever she’d just made it do. Be like a flowing black river.

She hooked her arm through his and tipped her face up.

“I am full of readiness. And lest you think to ‘make me so sorry,’” she added, “do not regard this as temptation. You’ve no need to prove anything to me. I am well acquainted with what a bad man you are.”

They stepped to the gate, next in line.

The porter surveyed their faces while his counterpart began a search of horses, weapons, and packs. He took in Jamie’s weather-beaten cape, dirt-caked boots, and soiled tunic, and his face took on a suspicious slant. The hint of
gray mail showing at Jamie’s wrists, added to the gleaming swords hanging from his belt and Ry’s and Roger’s, kept his tongue in his mouth, but he looked disposed to refuse entry to the small group of well-armed men who looked the part of troublemakers.

“State yer business,” he snapped.

Then his gaze moved to Eva and her river hair and her loosened ties and the softness that lay beneath. For a second, he froze. Then he sniffed, like a rabbit. He jerked straight and his eyes lost their skeptical, suspicious regard. They became positively warm.

Jamie said, “Our business is the fair.”

Eva nodded and smiled. Jamie was fairly certain what occurred next was more due to that crooked smile than anything he did or did not say.

“It’s a right fine fair, sir, and you can’t do better here in the west. But you’ll not find lodgings easy like,” the porter went on, returning Eva’s smile. He was missing two teeth, top and bottom, right side. It formed a narrow doorway into his mouth. “The town is nigh on full up. You might try up north end, near Chandler’s Way. Under the arch, on the left. There’s a woman that takes in lodgers, but she’s up the hill, and somes don’t want the extra walk, or even know she’s there. Clean and honest she is, and right good board to boot.”

He nodded and his smile broadened, pleased with his own information and, no doubt, the way Eva’s smile grew in response.

The porter looked back at Jamie, then Ry and Gog, who were lashing up bags and packs that had been searched. They all looked dirty, dangerous. Even blond Roger, with his puppylike enthusiasm and gangly limbs, had a hardness to him, come from years of living on the run, which was now translated into a hard gaze aimed at the gate porter as each moment of inspection continued.

The porter’s gaze narrowed back to suspicion and mistrust, a much wiser state for a gate porter to be in than wide-eyed and informative with lust. “And where are you all from?”

“What is your name?” Jamie asked sharply.

The porter’s face turned more sullen yet, but the commanding tone fetched a dour “Richard.”

Jamie bent close, so no one behind them heard, but ensuring Richard the gate porter, who also bent slightly forward, heard every nuanced syllable. “I am from the king, Richard Porter, and I am on a mission. If you detain me a moment longer, I may recall your name. To the king.”

The porter stayed bent at the waist a moment after Jamie had straightened, a stunned look on his face. Then he jerked upright.

“Pass on, then. Halfpenny each,” he announced, but he did not look into Jamie’s face again.

Jamie tightened his elbow on Eva’s arm and practically swung her like a dancer under the archway, dumping out the coins for the toll as he passed. Ry and Gog followed a moment later, bags searched, nothing but a hoard of weapons found. In other words, no contraband goods to be sold at fair, snuck in and therefore untaxed.

There they stood, just inside the stone walls of Gracious Hill, their first target met. It was a breathing moment, and they all used it as such.

The town bustled as people moved from shops to homes to taverns in one last burst of energy before the evening slowdown. The westering afternoon light hit the three- and four-story-tall buildings high up, but little made it as far down as the cobbles and dirt. The tops of the buildings shone glory-bright, amber light pulsing on the dark brown of crisscrossed timber frames and thatched roofs. Down on the cobbles, it was all cool purple afternoon shadows and murmuring voices and the smell of hay
and iron from the blacksmith and hot suppers being cooked by the bakeshops.

Eva stood beside him, looking around, her arm still tucked in his. It seemed unconscious. But Jamie was highly conscious of the way her slim fingers curved over his mailed forearm, featherlight and firm.

“It has been years for me, Jamie,” Ry murmured, looking around. “I recall this main thoroughfare, but beyond that, I do not recollect Gracious Hill enough to say where to start.”

Jamie nodded absently, peering up the High. He too knew the town from a few visits on various tasks, but that was years gone. The king kept a house here, with a tavern belowstairs, cover for the lodgings it provided his mercenaries when on mission or the hunt. But all that ensured tonight was a place to stay. It gave no directional for locating an outlaw ransoming off a priest.

“Once, I knew this town,” Eva said blithely.

“Why do I find myself unsurprised?” Jamie murmured, looking down.

“Because you are by nature a wise and suspicious man. Now,
attendez,
for here is where you shall see our little alliance paying fruit.”

“Bearing fruit,” Roger muttered. He stood rigid but ready. Alert, gaze scanning between the faces and the shoes of the people passing. Orphan watch.

Roger would prove useful, if Jamie could ensure his alliance. Which he probably could. Roger was ready to come together. A few moments alone, some truths, an offer, and Gog was his. No ropes, no threats, no problems.

Eva, though . . . Eva was a different matter. Entirely. In every way. From her broken-down shoes to her fine eyes and the honed, beautiful edge of her mind. A different flavor, a different kingdom, a different matter entirely. She was a flower amid their weeds.

All around, people were hurrying, busy about their business of buying and selling and cooking and carrying well water in great buckets. Eva stood still amid the bustle, her eyes half-closed, face tipped slightly up to the golden blue sky. Then, without warning, she snapped her eyes open and started off down the street of shops.

Jamie grabbed for her arm.

She stopped and sighed. “You worry a great deal, Jamie.”

“You give me so much to worry
on,
Eva.”

She made a little sound of impatience “Come if you wish. But stay back,” she added, “if you have any desire to discover where our quarry has gone.”

He let her arm slide free.

Ry stepped to his side. “I suppose we should be prepared to be struck repeatedly on the backs of our heads at any moment?”

“Let’s,” Jamie agreed grimly. “It might prove useful to know if there is a back entryway to where she has gone.”

“I’ll reconnoiter.” In a trice, Ry had ducked into the back alley.

Jamie turned to Roger. “Have you a need for ribbons?”

Gog threw him a startled look. “Not a’tall, sir.”

“Let’s go see.”

T
hey crossed to the far side of the street just as Eva tipped her head through the open doorway of a shop, then slipped her slip of a body inside as well.

Many goods hung at the doorway of the shop across the way, where Jamie stopped to keep watch. Ribbons and needles and silk bits were piled high. Jamie positioned himself just to the side of the counter, affecting to examine the goods, while Roger stood beside him, an inch shorter and still years to grow, peering with undisguised interest at the ribbons and other bright things.

“Do girls truly desire such things?” Roger said, his voice incredulous.

Jamie smiled faintly. “Indeed. Do you not regard them?”

All around, women and girls trotted through the streets, sternly pointing or flirtatiously smiling or happily laughing, but they
all
had ribbons in their hair. On their dresses. No matter how poorly attired they were, there was always enough for a bright ribbon.

“I see them,” said Roger in a low voice, his gaze trained on the girls from beneath his errant lock of hair, and Jamie heard the longing in his voice.

“Does your mistress not wear ribbons?” But Jamie knew well Eva did not have a ribbon anywhere on her body.

“Nay, sir. She hasn’t . . . the time. We didn’t spend much time in towns.”

As Roger spoke, his head swiveled to follow the passing of a pair of young women in capes and hoods and long, glossy hair, who returned his look over their shoulders. They turned away and giggled, heads together, their curving backs to Gog, but their footsteps slowed by half. Jamie could almost feel the tension and desire rising out of Gog.

“You may go speak with them,” Jamie said quietly.

The boy whipped his head around, bright red spots on his cheeks.

“Nay, sir,” he croaked.

An older matron came hurrying up the street, scolding the girls in fond tones, and the small group passed on, down the cobbled street, into the deeper shadows of encroaching evening. One peeked back, green eyes bright, then she turned the corner and disappeared.

Roger turned back to the silks, and Jamie returned to watching Eva. “Do you know what she’s doing?”

The boy briefly glanced at the spill of golden light coming out of the jeweler’s. “Finding out where Father Peter is, sir.”

“How?”

Roger looked confused. “However it must be done.”

“Do you know the man?”

Roger peered hard this time, eyeing up the burly man inside, then shook his head. “Nay.” He looked at Jamie. “If Eva wished away from you, away she would be. Sir.”

Jamie took measure of Gog’s guileless but savvy eyes. He’d seen as much brutality and had as little security as Eva, and from a younger age. As Eva said, he was indeed of a good and generous spirit, but that was only because of her tutelage. Jamie was certain of this, for Roger carried an edge of hardness like a tempered blade. He could not be pushed, or he would turn and
slash. Eva, for all her light-handed officiousness, did not push him. She
owned
him.

“Aye,” Jamie replied lightly. “I suspect Eva could slip through a mousehole, should the need arise. But, then, you are with me. So she will not go anywhere, will she?”

They were speaking plainly now, the beginning of the alliance, and Roger considered him for a long moment.

“I am with you now, sir, for I think ’tis the right place to be.”

“So you could slip away too?”

The boy nodded. “Aye, sir. In a heartbeat.” No arrogance, not even pride. A simple statement of a truth. “But Eva and I cannot do this thing alone. Father Peter is worth some risk, for what he’s done for us. And, I believe”—Roger fumbled for a moment—“I think you are an honorable man.”

A side of Jamie’s mouth curved up in a faint, weary smile. “Your mistress would carve out my heart if she heard you say that.”

Gog grinned. “Assuredly.”

Jamie could see Eva now, stepping around the tall wooden workbench, her curving back to the road, her hands moving in that animated chatter of hers. The jeweler seemed entranced. “But my thanks for your trust, Roger.”

“’Tisn’t trust, sir.”

Jamie touched the end of a swaying green ribbon, his gaze on Eva.

“You’ve done nothing to make me trust you.”

That brought Jamie’s gaze around.

“Sooth, sir, you’re hunting Father Peter. You’ve bound Eva and me in ropes, and even now, I do not know what you are truly about. You know Eva and me to a much greater depth, yet I’ve no idea how you will make use of that knowledge. ’Tisn’t trust; how could it be? You’ve done nothing to make me trust you. ’Tis faith. I have faith you one day will. Sir.”

Jamie laughed, but it was short-lived and tempered by a kind of grimness. “Roger, I am indebted. Plain-speaking men are hard to find, and most are horses’ asses. But in this, I would counsel you suchly: Follow Eva’s lead. ’Tisn’t wise to put your faith in men like me. I have not earned it.”

Nor do I wish to,
Jamie thought grimly. Vulnerable creatures had faith. Fools believed in honor. Such people were masticated in the jaws of the world, for God was hardly better than a romance, King John but a scrape on the battered knee of the world going down.

Better to leave off hope and faith and other useless things. Stick to missions and vengeance and hard, simple things, elsewise, people grew to need you, and should you one day be taken away, murdered on the streets of London so the cobbles were rimmed in red, the ones left behind might feel as though their hearts had been ripped out by nails and shredded beneath a plough.