“Is she? Well, then, either he’s made up with her or she’s chased him off entirely and is pleased with herself.”
Torvald edged back down from his perch. “She may have decided to go back.”
Brand shook his head. “No.”
“You can’t be certain.” Torvald hopped off the last ledge and brushed the rock grit off his hands.
“She’s
not
going back,” repeated Brand. “Even if I must tie her down. Or tie him down. Or tie them to each other, and the both of them to the rocks. Naked. Face to face.”
Torvald chuckled. “I know where Jafri keeps their best rope.”
“Good. We may need it,” said Brand sourly. “Ah, there comes Gunnar. Let us see what passes.”
They watched their friend pick his way down the trail, and they both grinned when Eleanor ran to meet him at the brook’s edge.
“That’s better,” said Brand as Gunnar picked her up and spun her around, then bent over her for a long, possessive kiss. “Come on. Ari planned to go fishing today, and I’m hungry as a bear.”
“Imagine that,” said Torvald, and they started upstream.
ELEANOR WATCHED IN
awe as Brand split, roasted, and ate enough shad to supply a small monastery with Friday dinner, well over twice what Torvald, Gunnar, and she ate put together.
As he stripped the needle bones out of yet another fish, she suddenly realized he was watching back, an amused grin on his face. Blushing, she snapped her mouth shut. “Your pardon, sir. I have forgotten my manners.”
All three men laughed.
“You’re not the first to stare,” said Gunnar. “I used to wager on how many herrings or eels he could eat at one sitting. I won every time.”
“Untrue, my lady,” said Brand. “He laid his coin against me the first time. I took half a mark from him.”
“No doubt you did. Sir Ari said you liked fish. I just didn’t think . . .”
“No one thinks it until they see it. That’s what makes it a good wager.” Gunnar turned to Torvald. “You could pick up a few extra shillings that way, if you were of a mind.”
Torvald nodded. “I just might.”
“Well, I’m done for tonight, so no wagers won or lost.” Brand popped the last morsel into his mouth and sucked the oil off his fingers. “Lady Eleanor, Ari said you woke up in time to help Jafri sort out your men’s horses from the others.”
“I did, but . . .” She stopped, confused. “Sir Ari said? How? I thought you and he never saw each other.”
“We leave each other messages, my lady. Well, mostly Ari leaves me messages. He can start taking the outlaw horses to market tomorrow, one or two at a time.”
“Jafri said he would take them all to different markets so no one will notice where they came from.”
“Aye.”
“Except for Tunstall’s gelding, there is little chance anyone might recognize them,” said Eleanor. “The others are Scots horses—and scurfy things they are, too.”
“They are that,” agreed Brand with a chuckle. “But they’ll still be worth a mark or two each. That little black mare is a fine animal. She is yours, correct?”
She nodded. “Her name is Rosabelle.”
“She favors her right foreleg,” said Gunnar.
“She got caught in the gorse when I tried to escape Tunstall. Jafri put a poultice on it, and it already begins to heal. Richard died of fever last autumn.” The last came blurting out unexpectedly, her mind somehow going from poultices and healing to Richard on its own. The three faces around her looked as surprised as she felt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
“I have been wondering how you came to be here,” said Brand.
“I do owe you explanation after all you did.”
“But I thought . . .” Gunnar began, but he shook his head. “Never mind. You may as well tell us all together.”
She began with that May Day night at Raby, her father’s unholy fury, and the way she’d been dragged off to Clementhorpe the next morning before the sun had even cleared the horizon. Brand and Torvald listened patiently, if with frowns, but Gunnar got more agitated with every word, until finally, he shot up off his seat.
“Bikkjusonr!”
“He is her father, Gunnar. Speak with more respect,” said Brand.
Torvald caught her eye and answered her unspoken question. “It means son of a . . . female dog.”
Gunnar paced back and forth within the circle of firelight, pausing just long enough to kick a cobble that shot off in the dark and cracked against the far wall of the dene. He turned to Eleanor. “He told me you had decided to honor your betrothal of your own accord. He said you were too ashamed to face me, that you went
willingly
to Richard.”
“You had just warned me to silence about your curse by telling me the Church would torture you, and that the torture would go on and on without end. My father used exactly that threat, almost as if he knew it would most terrify me.” She met Gunnar’s stark eyes across the fire circle. “I did what I must to keep him from hunting you down. I went to Richard obediently, but I never went willingly.”
Pain rippled across his face, and she knew he understood—that they all understood—and she hurried on before the shame of them knowing could stop her.
“My father left men with Richard, with orders to take you alive if you came near before I produced an heir. They were still with us at Alnwick. When I realized you were at Lesbury, I feared you would try to approach, so I contrived an excuse to make Richard carry me home, and I fled.”
An excuse—what a thing to call a babe, even one who never existed.
Still abashed by that lie more than any other she’d told, she wanted nothing more than to curl up and hide behind her hands like a child. Instead she sat up straighter and knotted her fingers together so her hands wouldn’t shake, and told of Richard’s illness. “It was my fault he died.”
“No. The fault lies with that knave who sired you, and with the man he married you to.”
“Lord Burghersh made his own decisions,” said Brand. “You could not have pressed him to travel if he didn’t wish to.”
“No, sir, there you are mistaken. Richard made few of his own decisions. My father, York, Bedford, the king: they all tugged him this way and that at their whim. But none twisted his will so much as I. The only time he refused me was when he insisted upon riding on to Burwash, and he did that only because I had bedeviled him so about going home to begin with. No, his death is on my head.”
Gunnar stopped his pacing. “Did you say he died in autumn?”
“October.” She understood where his thoughts were taking him and hurried to explain. “I wanted nothing more than to fling myself onto Rosabelle and race to find you. But winter was coming, and Richard was my cousin, as well as my husband. I owed him some measure of mourning for that, if nothing else. And I was uncertain of where you were. I decided to have his tomb built while I waited till the weather softened so I could search the denes. But I waited too long.” She told them about her father’s unexpected arrival at Upton on Severn and what had unfolded since.
“But you’re a widow!” blazed Gunnar. “You get to choose for yourself.”
“Even I know that is the custom amongst you English,” said Brand, his anger finally showing in the set of his jaw.
“Aye. But it is my lord father’s custom to get what he wants even if it means whoring out his children to get it. I am not the only daughter traded for power and riches with no regard for her happiness, just the only one who dared look elsewhere. Had I refused him, I have no doubt he would have beaten me again and then carried me to Percy bound and at sword point. So I feigned agreement to gain his trust, even as I searched for a way to slip his trap. When the king, God save him, summoned him to court, I felt the saints were at last on my side. But no sooner had Westmorland ridden out of my life than Tunstall rode in. And more men died because of me.”
“You take far too much on yourself, my lady,” said Torvald.
“Aye. You could just as well lay the blame on my shoulders,” offered Gunnar. “I was the one who set all this in motion when I rode into Raby for tourney and cheated to win your token.”
“The tourney.” She met his eyes with a pained apology. “You remind me. One of those in my company was John Penson, from the Castle of Love.”
“The squire I helped?”
“Aye. Grown into knighthood, and now lying unburied and unshriven a half-day’s ride south of here.”
Because of me.
It hung there unsaid at the end of her words.
Sadness and anger tinged the silence that settled over the four of them.
The weight was broken by Brand rising. He whistled, and the raven sailed over from his perch and landed on his shoulder. “You have courage, my lady, more than many men. But I think you two have more to talk through. We will go now.”
Torvald lit a rush, grabbed the ale skin, and gave Eleanor a little bow. “My lady.”
“God’s rest,
messires
.”
They returned her blessing and made their way off to their other camp, leaving Gunnar and Eleanor staring at each other, questions and expectations swirling up around them like the sparks from the fire.
“I should never have left you that night in the forest,” he said at last. “I put you right into your father’s hands.”
“You thought to keep me safe.”
“I made things worse for you. And then I believed his lies and made them worse yet. I could have ridden after you. I could have stolen you back before you wed. Even afterward, I could have saved you the years of Richard . . .” He closed his eyes against the image that must surely be there. “Why did you not let me carry you away from Burwash?”
“The archers . . .”
“Arrows do not frighten me. We could have done it, Torvald and Ari and I. We would have, somehow, if you hadn’t told me to go. I should have taken you anyway. I was supposed to be your champion.”
“You were. You are.”
“No, I have failed you in so many ways. All these terrible things you say lay at your feet should properly be at mine. It should all come back to me.”
“Instead,
I
have come back to you,” she said softly. “Dragging along all my sorrows and all my sins. The question is, now that you know what I have done, do you still want me?”
CHAPTER 20
THE QUESTION DRAGGED
Gunnar to his knees before Eleanor. He cupped her face in both hands and met those silvery, fire-lit eyes. They reflected back his own pain and shame, but also his hope.
Richard and his ghost be damned. She was his now.
“Foolish woman.” He feathered kisses over her brow and cheeks, then covered her mouth. There was a moment of hesitancy and then she melted into him, her soft moan warming his mouth. A deep need welled up, and he rose and held out his hand. “Come lie with me, and I will show you how much I want you.”
She let him lead her away from the dying fire to the bed, where they took their time undressing each other, each revealed bit of skin earning long, exploring kisses. Finally they stood clad only in shift and braies, but when Gunnar reached to remove her last garment, she stopped him with a hand to the center of his chest. “Do you have a candle? Or perhaps a lamp?”
He nodded.
“Would you light it? The fire already grows dim.”
He raised an eyebrow, but nodded again and turned to find the lamp and the flask of oil. It took him a moment to fill it and trim the wick properly. “When did you become afraid of the dark?”
“I’m not. I just want to be able to see you.”
He fished a brand from the fire and touched it to the wick. The flame flared and smoked, then settled into a good, steady light that flickered slightly in the evening air. “Your lamp, m’lady. Where—”
He stopped mid-turn, brought to silence by the sight of her pulling the riband from her hair. She dropped it on the pile of clothes and began unraveling her plait. Gunnar held the lamp high to let the light spill down over her and just watched, wondering if she knew what she was doing to him, letting down her hair before him.
Not that it made the least difference whether she taunted him innocently or a-purpose. He hardened, his tarse raising the front of his braies like a tent. His tongue went clumsy, and he had to work it over his teeth before he could re-form his question. “Where would you like this?”
“There, if you please.” She indicated a rock ledge not far from the head of the bed. He stepped past her to wedge the lamp in place and turned back just as she pulled out the last of the plait and raked her fingers up through her hair from underneath, shaking the strands free to spill down past her waist. It was all Gunnar could do not to groan aloud.
Or maybe he did groan aloud, because she gave him a slanted look that made him think that maybe she did know what she was doing, then quietly turned her back to him, presenting that fall of dark silk like a gift. Gunnar stepped up behind her and filled his hands with it, scooping it up to bury his face in the lustrous mass. Faint traces of her musk and spice perfume still clung deep in the tresses, and he inhaled the sweetness as the heavy locks streamed through his fingers.