He gave me a last glare then turned and walked off, heading toward a group of men tending their vair. I rubbed at my arm where his grip had probably left fingerprints, wondering exactly why I’d gotten into an argument with the man, and Fallan turned from watching Ralnor’s receding back to look down at me with less than friendliness.
“Such a thing will not occur again, Missy,” he growled, with a look in his eyes that made Ralnor’s glare a smile by comparison. “That my men and I are pledged to your safety does not mean you may address us as you please. Had Ralnor less control of his own temper, that overbearing temper you display would surely have been properly trimmed. Let me see your arm.”
I’d thought I’d been doing my rubbing surreptitiously, but eagle-eye Fallan had spotted it anyway. He pushed my other hand away and took my arm with such unexpected gentleness that for once I was more surprised than Bellna. Just below the short sleeve of my new blouse angry red fingermarks could be seen, a couple of which were bound to turn into bruises. Fallan inspected the arm and marks with no expression on his face, then raised his gaze to mine again.
“I regret that skin so fair and soft must know the results of a man’s anger,” he said, looking much too deeply into my eyes. “The fault is mine, for I should not have let you move from my side. Where did you think to go other than to the coach?”
“I w-wished to avail my-myself of the bushes hereabout,” I stuttered, sounding and feeling like a little girl whose arm was still being held by the man she was beginning to be terribly in love with.
Bellna’s throbbing was racing all through me, showing she didn’t have to be in control to make me act like an idiot. I could feel Fallan’s warmth through my arm where his big hand touched me, could see how he looked at my body through the thin cloth covering it, could taste how badly my arousal wanted satisfaction from him. With all that against me I found it impossible not to tremble, and a faint grin lightened the near-ugliness of his face.
“You should have spoken to me of the need,” he said, taking my hand instead of my arm. “It would have been my pleasure to escort you to the privacy which is yours by right. As I shall do now. Follow me, wench.”
Bellna fluttered again, thrilled with the way he called me “wench,”
and I discovered that the story I’d come up with on the spur of the moment wasn’t just a story any longer. I really did need some bushes, and maybe then I’d be able to reclaim the rest of my bodily functions. I let Fallan guide me to a ring of greenery to one side of the clearing, discovered there was no way of sneaking out again without someone noticing, did what I had to, then let him take me back to the coach again. The bushes offer was made to the four girls and accepted by them, giving me the faint hope that I’d be left alone by the coach, but no such luck. Fallan stayed with me while the girls guided themselves, and when they came back he helped the “princess”
in first.
“And now the rest of you may enter,” he said, giving the others a hand before he turned to me. “When the next inn is reached, Missy, you and the other wenches will take yourselves to the kitchens, as was previously done. The princess will be served by the inn girls, allowing her servants a time of rest. I trust there will be no confusion as to which place is yours.”
“I am well aware of which place is mine,” I answered with a pout, trying hard to shove Bellna’s reactions away from me. “Equally am I aware that that place has been taken from me. Which of the others will serve me in the kitchens?”
“None will serve you in the kitchens,” Fallan answered with something of a sigh as he leaned one hand against the coach above my head. “You will be required to serve yourself, and my men and I as well. You are to be a peasant wench, and convincingly, else shall I be forced to punish you soundly. Far better a strapping at my hands, than a sword in the throat from those who seek your life. Your safety will be assured-at whatever cost.”
His eye said he’d just given me his word, but that was all he was giving me; rather than letting me have the time to argue, he hustled me up the steps into the coach, and slammed the door on me. I was able to climb over all the legs and get to my seat on the far side before the coach moved off again, but the lurching start shifted me over toward the redhead. She looked at me distantly and gathered her skirts closer to her, making sure the peasant didn’t dirty them by being too near them, and the other three girls giggled in appreciation. The redhead had picked up the necessary attitudes of Tildorani nobility, and was practicing them on me in the same way I’d done with her. Bellna was huffing inside my head, ready to be insulted, but I had other things to think about. I moved all the way over to my side of the seat, ignored the giggling, whispering girls, and brooded at the forest flowing past.
Right at that moment, I couldn’t decide whether Bellna or Fallan was my biggest problem. Fallan was alternating between threats and sweet-talking, a tactic designed to put a young girl off balance and keep her that way. Bellna was reacting just the way Fallan wanted her to, and her unbridled reactions were throwing me off balance. As I sat and stared at the forest the road wound through, my unwelcome guest was sighing and thinking about the way Fallan had treated her.
Treated me. Hell, treated both of us. He hadn’t liked the way I’d argued with Ralnor, but the marks on my arm had seemed to really bother him. Bellna’s reactions to his small kindnesses were making me begin to like Fallan the mercenary, and I couldn’t afford to like him. I was on an assignment that would undoubtedly produce a whole lot of dead bodies all around me, and I couldn’t afford to find myself in the position of having liked one of them. The sort of emotions evoked at a time like that are not conducive to survival.
I sighed and shifted my bare feet on the floorboards of the coach, feeling the repugnance Bellna felt at the sensation. She had never been made to go barefoot before in her entire life, and her over-awareness of the state was enough to divert part of her attention from thoughts of Fallan. It annoyed her that that indignity had been forced on her by Fallan himself, but she was ready to forgive him grudgingly-if he continued to act as though she might be important to him in some way. I wondered about that, about why he was concerning himself so directly with the young girl in his charge, but could only guess when it came to drawing conclusions. It wasn’t likely that he was seriously interested in her, not when she was a princess already promised in marriage to the crown prince of Narella. Attachments like that were formed only in fiction; real-life, practical men knew better, and if nothing else, Fallan seemed practical. He was probably only trying to make life easier on himself by having Bellna too starry-eyed to give him a hard time. Or too wide-eyed by his threats, the latest of which had done exactly that to her. He had said he would beat me if I didn’t act like the peasant I was supposed to be, but somehow I still didn’t believe him. It wasn’t the sort of thing a mercenary could get away with, even in the name of protection. Fallan was probably hoping that if he said it calmly and seriously enough, Bellna the child would believe it. Unfortunately for him he wasn’t dealing with Bellna, and I didn’t like the arrangements he’d made with the redhead. I leaned back on the coach seat and closed my eyes on the decision that I’d have to push the good captain a little more, and sabotage his plans if at all possible. I was the one getting paid to take the risks; the idea of overprotecting a decoy was absurd.
The distance to the next inn wasn’t far enough to let me do more than grab a catnap. When the captain of Bellna’s mercenaries came to hand her out of the coach, all of us, including the new princess, were given a surprise. The man wearing the captain’s neck scaff was Ralnor, and he was the picture of courtesy to the redhead. Fallan, now a lieutenant, gathered the rest of us “girls” together, and herded us along after his captain and our princess. The rest of the mercenaries took up their places around and behind us, and we repeated our parade to the inn. After Ralnor and Fallan checked out the interior we went inside, were immediately noticed by the tall, slightly pot-bellied man who was the innkeeper, then went through the same revelation scene we had at the previous inn. I’d decided to wait for the ‘grand announcement before making my move, so’ when the innkeeper was gasping in shocked delight I began to step forward-and discovered that Fallan hadn’t counted on my being intimidated by his threats. Three of his men were inches away from me at left, right and back, and the disguised captain himself was right in front of me. I took no more than that one short step before finding myself in a box of hefty male bodies, and seconds later our party had separated, the redhead and Ralnor being led to a table, Fallan and six of his men, the three girls and I all moving toward a door in the far wall. With all eyes in the place on the “princess,” no one noticed that one of the peasant girls wasn’t moving entirely on her own. I noticed it, of course, but there wasn’t much I could do and still stay in character.
Shouting over wide shoulders or past thick arms wouldn’t be very effective, but that was the only option Fallan had left open to me.
The door in the far wall let us into a big, stuffy room filled with the odor of cooking food. Four women in peasant dress hurried from pot to pan to preparation table to fire, sweat on their faces and boredom in their eyes. Five girls hurried around filling wine jugs and collecting goblets, three male slaves in chains lugged heavy sacks or carried armioads of wood, and two men wearing yellow and white neck scarves and very obvious swords stood and watched the hurry all around them without sharing in it. The two armed men were house guards, and when they saw Fallan and his huskies they straightened and came away from the wall they’d been leaning on
“Calmly,” Fallan called, holding one hand up, palm outward, toward the two men. “Our Company rides in the service of the Princess Bellna, who now pauses for refreshment in your house. We, ourselves, are here to assist you in guarding the pots – as well as help to ourselves to a bit of the best of them. Are there any about it would be wise to look upon with suspicion?”
“None save yourselves,” answered one of the men, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, almost-match to Fallan. He was grinning faintly to show he might be joking, but he and the other man kept their backs to the wall and their hands not far from their hilts.
“Well spoken,” Fallan nodded, clearly in approval. “To accept my word would be foolishness on your part. It would undoubtedly be best if you were to…”
“Why do you all stand about gawping?” a sudden voice demanded, and we turned to see the innkeeper in the doorway. “The Princess Bellna honors my house with her presence, and those in my service take their ease while my wine sours and my food burns! To your work, all of you, and that as quickly as you value your freedom – or skins!”
The women and girls, who had obviously been watching the exchange between Fallan and the house guards, paled at the snap in the innkeeper’s voice and immediately turned back to what they’d been doing. The three slaves, dressed in filthy rags tied around their middles, short, heavy chains, and a good selection of whip marks, also worked at looking busy, two of them shuffling out of the room on some errand or other. The only ones not upset by the innkeeper’s threat were the house guards, who finally relaxed from the stiffened, ready position they’d been in, and sauntered over closer to be heard over the unending flow of commands coming out of their employer.
“Were you about to suggest that we await the arrival of the innkeeper, the suggestion was sound,” the dark-haired guard told Fallan with a grin. “It is now clear that you are honored guests, and may be offered a cup or two when the hubbub has finally quieted.”
“A cup or two would be well received,” Fallan said with an amiable nod, turning his head to watch the frantically hurrying girls and women, who were being commanded to even greater speed by the innkeeper. “A pity this hubbub will be awhile in quieting.”
The guard raised his brows in doubt before also looking at the goings-on, but Fallan turned out to be right. The hurrying back and forth took forever to be over, and once it was, half the contents of the kitchen was gone. I remembered all the courses I’d been offered at the last inn, and hoped the redhead was hungry. If it had still been me in her place, I couldn’t have eaten a thing.
“You wenches may now serve us and take your own fare,” Fallan announced in the sudden peace and quiet, stretching where he stood near the house guards. “I will have a bowl of that root soup and a cut of light bread, but first of all a cup of wine.”
“Bring wine for all, including us,” the dark-haired house guard amended, looking over at the three girls near me and then, last of all, me. Bellna gasped and backed trembling into her corner at that look, and the guard showed a faint grin. “With your permission, Lieutenant, I would have that red-haired one serve me,” he said to Fallan without looking at him. “Is she yours or your captain’s?”
“Neither,” Fallan answered, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder while joining his stare. “Her service belongs to the Princess, a fact she is well aware of. By cause of that fact, her actions when out of sight of the Princess are much like those of the Princess herself.
Her service to us is clumsy, reluctant and far from pleasing, for she believes the Princess will protect her from our wrath. For the sake of your temper, you would be wise to choose another.”
“For the sake of my eyesight, however, there is no other choice,” the man laughed in answer, still watching me. “Have her fetch our wine.”
“As you please,” Fallan agreed with a shrug in his voice, but his eyes were a lot less unconcerned. “Fetch two cups of wine, wench, and see that you do so in an acceptable manner. Should you be beaten the Princess may well be furious, yet will you still have received the beating.”
I tossed my head and turned away from them, annoyed as all hell that Fallan had boxed me up so neatly. If I refused to serve them, Fallan would have to beat me, or the house guards would surely get suspicious. The role I was committed to would let me do not a single thing to stop him, which meant that if I didn’t want to be beaten, I’d have to avoid it rather than stop it. I stalked over to the three peasant girls already working on getting wine and food together for Fallan and his men, ignored their smirks, and appropriated two goblets of wine. Since the goblets had been poured for and by someone else that took care of the smirks, but I didn’t care if the girls were displeased with me. If they didn’t like what I was doing, they could complain to the princess.