Defiant (3 page)

Over the top of her head, Jamie spotted two men dragging an insentient priest—now wearing a cap atop his tonsured
head—between their arms. Three additional men in leather armor thudded behind. The five of them turned sharply down a street that led only one place: the docks.

He tugged on his new companion’s arm, stopping her forward progress, drawing her eye.

In fact, he had no intention of allowing her to remain conscious for much longer. But if he knocked her out now, people would notice. And if he let her go now, he suspected she would run after those men and trip them or bite them or something equally attention-getting, anything to stop them from escaping with “her priest.” And attention was the last thing he wanted.

Three different parties were now interested in Father Peter. A street full of drunk revelers seemed an unnecessary addition.

So he would bide his time. Those men might be headed to the docks, but the way they spread out and began approaching different vessels told him they had no boat of their own. They would not gain berth on so much as a fishing wherry at this hour, not without going into the tavern nearest to the quay, the Red Cock, where the captains, oarsmen, and other waterborne flotsam congregated.

The men with Father Peter had just bypassed it. Whereas Jamie was standing right in front of it.

Eventually they would figure it out. So he would wait and, betting that all
five
of them would not come into the tavern together, priest slumped between their arms, he would use their splitting up to bring down whichever unfortunates were sent in, once they came back out again.

It was a plan. That it was also improvised and risky mattered naught: he’d spent his entire life being just that.

And he decided, looking down, he would use his bided time to learn what he could from the dark-cloaked waif before he rendered her at best not a nuisance, at worst, bound and gagged.

He tugged her back into the shadows. “It means I want an answer. Why do you want the priest? Who sent you for him?”

“Me?” She turned, her pale face angry. “Why do
those men
want him, that is the question of better asking.”

“I do not care ‘of better asking.’ I want an answer.”

She plowed forward as if he were dirt beneath her anger. “These squinty-eyes are carting him away right now. You ought to care. Why do
you
want him? Mayhap we can start there, on our want of answers. Indeed, this is the sort of question I like better.”

“He has something I want.”

His swift, honest reply brought her up short. She blinked, long lashes sweeping down over her eyes. He followed her glance down. The tips of battered shoes poked out from beneath the hem of her skirts. She looked up.

“Does he now?” Her pale cheeks were flushed. “That is no answer. Of course he has something you desire; why else seek him? It is why I am after him as well. He has many things I want. I am desperate for these things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Baubles. A length of scarlet. Contracts he was witness to. Trunks of coin and relics from the Holy Land.”

She’d mentioned many things, none of which were the things Father Peter was being hunted for. Which was interesting, seeing as she’d named just about everything else under the sun.

“Tell yourself whatever brings you comfort,” she finished, turning back to the High, “and let us be about it. Please. Or they shall escape.”

A rumble of thunder rolled through the sky. He folded his fingers around the underside of her arm, just above her elbow.

“Mistress, I do not tell myself things to bring comfort.” He pulled her so close she had to crane her neck to peer into his eyes. “I care naught for comfort, or for you. You may not realize
this, but I’ve shown great restraint thus far. You lie to me, yet tell me nothing at all. That is difficult to do. I am impressed. And aggravated.” Her breath came out a little shorter and faster. “So why not try a good lie, and we can ‘be about it.’”

“He is my uncle,” she said swiftly.

“Peter of London is your uncle,” he echoed, incredulous.

“As much as.”

“Which means not at all. Do you know what your ‘uncle’ has done?”

“Angered your king.”

“Mightily.”

He saw her swallow. “Everyone angers your silly, stupid king. Silly, dangerous, killing king. Perhaps those men are from the king himself,” she added ominously.

“Perhaps,” he said almost regretfully. “But ’ware, woman, for I am made of worse.”

Color receded from her face like a tide going out. She jerked on her arm and he opened his fingers. She stumbled backward, breathing hard. The thoughts tumbling through her mind might as well have been carved on the swinging tavern sign above her head:
Danger. Run.

Yet she’d known he was about danger when she enlisted his help. She might not have realized he was from King John—“silly, dangerous, killing king” was a grave understatement—but she knew he wasn’t there to save her “uncle.” She’d taken a chance and trusted him.

A regrettable error in judgment.

He placed a gloved hand on the door, just above her head, and pushed it open.

“Inside. Now.”

I
nside?” Eva planted her feet and glared up at the impossible man. “No. Why?”

“Because I need to speak with you,” he said, turning her by the shoulders. His hands were strong. “Because I do not wish to get drenched when the skies open. Because if you do not, I shall resort to more extreme measures than simply asking.”

She stilled.

“That’s better. Now listen. Those men must be allowed to get through the town gates,” he explained in that low, confiding tone, the sort that coated tongues of courtiers and men of power, not ruffians in black cloaks. He was changeable, then. Untrustworthy. “I cannot manage a mêlée at the city gates. Can you?”

She hesitated, then shook her head.

“Good. We are agreed. We shall allow your squinty-eyed men passage through, then run them to ground.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “And who shall have Father Peter?”

He placed a gloved hand on the door above her head. “I suggest we take one assault at a time. Go. Inside. And sit.”

Eva did, because her choices were fairly limited: follow the danger, or lose Father Peter.

Really, choices like this made things ever so much simpler. Danger did not frighten her. Or rather, she’d grown numb to it. Confusion frightened her. Not having a course of action frightened her. And darkness. The dark terrified.

At least this rogue had a plan, as well as a wickedly sharp sword and an arsenal of blades. Therefore, she would stick to him like pitch until they rescued Father Peter. Then she’d sidle away like so much smoke and he’d never see her again.

But this speaking commands to her as if she were a dog, that was simply unnecessary.

He pushed the tavern door open. It creaked. What in England did not creak? Damp, cold, full of rusting iron and drunkards, it was not what she desired. But here she was, with a mission darker than rescuing priests whose illuminated texts had lighted her world ten years ago and made her finally agree that there was indeed salvation in the world, even if it was never to be hers.

Her dark-eyed proteus pointed to a table by the far wall. “Over there. Sit.”

Again with the commands. She wanted to growl. Instead, she looked around at the rickety wooden benches and the fat, loud Englishmen draped like linens over a counter, behind which a phalanx of whores resided. Yet, she admitted, it was not so different from France. Perhaps in the lack of wall hangings. A few would not go amiss, to cover the stains and pitted gaps and the terrible draft to which they gave encouragement.

But in truth, men hung like linens over whores in every corner of the world she’d ever seen, and the English could hardly be faulted for choosing ale to pin them up rather than, say, a fine Burgundy.

Her
routier
in his heavy boots tromped over the bulging plank floors toward the back counter that ran the length of the room. He was naught but danger, she’d known that—sooth, he’d told
her so—but now the evidence was revealed more fully in the flickering shadows of torchlight.

His hair-roughened square jaw could denote either a dull blade or a rough nature, but his hair, barely tethered by a leather strip, long, dark, and uncombed, bespoke only outlawry. His cape was nondescript, calf-length. Beneath he wore a black, quilted surcoat, sleeveless, covering what she supposed was a mail shirt, although he wore a longer-sleeved tunic as well, as if to conceal what lay beneath. Both surcoat and tunic hung to midthigh, slit up the sides. Mucky knee-high boots completed the ensemble, but it was the dark hose, molded tight over his thighs, that kept Eva’s attention riveted far longer than was necessary. She dragged her gaze up.

He wore no insignia on his dark surcoat, bore no identifying colors. Yet everyone either
had
a lord or
was
a lord. Even a feared, ruthless mercenary, a Brabançon, identified himself with someone. Usually the English king. By the look in this one’s eye, ’twas a simple enough matter to place him there.

But somehow, she couldn’t believe something so . . . beautiful could be so awful. And he was beautiful indeed, to a hard line, a masculine magnificence, all long, lean contours of hard heat and piercing eyes. A beast in his prime.

He looked over his shoulder and scowled when he saw she had not “come,” was not “over there.”

“Sit,” he growled. “And stay.”

She narrowed her eyes and, very softly, barked.

He froze.

The others in the alehouse were far too drunk or otherwise occupied to note or care that a woman was barking at a man. But her escort was neither drunk nor distracted. If the look on his face was any indication, he was startled. And perhaps a bit angry. Or more than a bit.

Eva sat, her back to the wall.

Most of the other tables were filled with men and some women, but most stood in small groups, drinking and laughing. Several torches burned in iron rings bolted to the walls, casting russet-yellow puddles of light a few paces out. On each table sat a few fat candles, stuck in swamps of tallow. A group of men in low boots and cloaks clustered at the far end of the narrow room, half-bent, shouting encouragement to a pair of bone dice that went clicking over the ground toward the wall. A roar went up; someone had won.

No one attempted to temper the revelry. A tavern open after
courve-feu
mattered naught in these days, with the country tottering on the edge of rebellion against its king.

Her escort returned to the table. A woman hurried after, carrying two tankards. Ale, Eva decided as she peered down at the grainy, brownish muck.

“Whatever this cost, you paid too much,” she informed him, looking up.

The rogue stared down at her for a long moment, as if debating some course. Perhaps whether to stick a knife between her ribs. But the die was cast now, for good or for ill. One could only hope this rogue did not have sticking urges just now.

He finally sat. Unfortunately, he did so by dropping onto the short bench right beside her, his back to the wall, his hip hard against hers. Then he reached for his tankard.

She was shocked by the feel of his thigh beside hers. Unaccustomed to feeling shocked by thighs, she shifted about, angling around to consider him.

“You may not realize this, Sir Rogue, but in other parts of the world, people do not speak to other people as if they have fangs and paws.”

His eyes shifted to her—how blue they were, even in this dim candlelight—then he set down his mug and wiped the back of his gloved hand over his mouth.

“Nay? Fascinating. Whereas I have found, in almost every region of the world, women do not bark.” He let those blue eyes travel over her, starting at her neckline, moving boldly down. Her face grew warm. “Northumbria,” he said finally, looking back at her face.

“Pardon?”

“Your tongue. Northumbria, mayhap Wales.” His gaze traveled over her again. Even in the dim torchlight and candlelight, his male appraisal of her as a woman was clear. “English.”

“Celt. Brittany,” she countered swiftly.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, clearly disbelieving her.

Her cheeks flushed hot. So inconvenient, these intelligent, cunning men with swords. She was dismayed to find her accent detectable. She’d worked hard for it not to be, to leave
everything
behind when she had fled England ten years ago. Home, family, accents: everything had been tossed overboard on the Channel crossing.

With this one, though, perhaps little would remain concealed. Or safe.

The broad hands gloved to the knuckle resting on the table looked very capable of mayhem. But then there was that vague hint of a dimple to the left of his mouth, if only he were to smile deeply. Surely it was a thing designed to make women tremble.

Which only made him more dangerous. No, the things that mattered, the things Eva must attend, were the scars, one carved across the edge of his upper lip, up over one high cheekbone, till it disappeared beneath his hair. Another, more jagged, sliced at his hair-roughened chin.

But most important, his eyes. Glittering, witching-hour blue, and, above all, perceptive.

Perhaps she had made a mistake in enlisting his assistance.

“So close, sir, your guesses about me,” she rejoined, keeping her voice light and nonchalant. Her one abiding talent: feign as if nothing mattered. “Are you as skilled with chess as you are with riddling games? I shall never play with you. The heart trembles.”

One side of his mouth tipped up, that faint dimple did indeed dimple, and her heart did tremble, a little bit. But it was such a great deal much more than she’d ever known before, that it felt like a miniature quake in her belly, revealing vast, heated chasms below.