“Appetites vary, Rev. I have mine.” Robin gazed speculatively at Meghan. “And you have yours.”
Revelin leaned forward, his chin thrust out in challenge. “She’s no whore. Any man who tries to change that will answer to me.”
“Your piece, understood,” Robin replied with a wink.
“No—man’s—piece,” Revelin answered, punctuating each word with a finger poked at Robin’s chest. “Understood?”
Robin considered this bit of information and found his curiosity unsatisfied. “You dragged her off before day to show her a bit of the countryside?”
Revelin straightened. “As it happens, she ran away.”
“Faith!”
“I found her in a tree.”
“Even better. I’ve always fancied a dalliance with a wood nymph.”
“Keep your hands off her,” Revelin said, and reached for a cold pheasant leg and bit into it.
“John says we ride north this day,” Robin offered into the lull of the conversation.
Revelin shook his head. “The girl must be made safe. Four days is all it will take. John will see reason.”
Robin studiously ignored this request for backing.
“Watch her,” Revelin said curtly as he turned and walked away.
Curious despite his discomfort whenever he was in her presence, Robin reached for a strip of meat, laid it on the last slice of stale bread, and started toward the girl.
With trepidation, Meghan watched the ginger-bearded man approach, her hand covering her cheek. Ualter, who lay at her feet, sat up.
“You must be hungry,” Robin said in English and held out the food. “Come, be a good girl and eat,” he coaxed, waving his offering under her nose.
The aroma of food filled her nostrils and Meghan’s mouth watered with anticipation. She licked her lips, eyes wide and wary on the man before her, but she did not reach for the food.
Robin shrugged. “Then have it your way, darling.” Bending down, he placed the food before her.
A shudder passed through Meghan as she saw the dog lightly sniff what was meant for her. Hunger wrenched her stomach and a sigh passed her lips. In an instant she was on her knees, snatching the food from under Ualter’s open jaws and stuffing
it into her mouth. Ualter growled, baring his teeth, but Meghan merely cuffed him aside with her right hand, and he subsided docilely beside her.
“What madness!” Robin cried in amazement. Ualter raised his head, and Robin took a hasty step backward. “There’s a bit more, I’m certain. Let me see what I can find,” he continued, taking a backward step with each word.
“Unreasonable, am I? Damn you for a prig!”
Both Meghan and Robin jumped at the sound of John’s bellow.
John and Revelin faced each other, their bodies taut and inclined forward, each with a hand on the weapon at his waist.
“God above!” Robin murmured as he ran toward the pair. Whoever drew blood would wish it were his own when the queen learned of their conduct. It was not bravery but sheer fear for all their lives that made him throw himself between them. “John! Rev!” he cried, facing each in turn. “For the love of God, have a care!”
“Out of my way!” John bellowed. “No son of an Irish whore calls me a fool and lives to tell of it!”
“Base-born Englishman that you are, you should be accustomed to insult,” Revelin returned, anger glittering in his eyes.
John lifted his sword partway from his scabbard. “Let’s see you repeat that, minus your pretty head!”
Revelin reached for his dagger, seeming unconcerned that it was a poor match for John’s four-foot double-edged blade. His voice was calm, self-assured, and patient as he said, “You have my permission to try.”
Reassured by Revelin’s self-command, Robin flung himself on his friend and clasped him in a surprisingly powerful embrace. “Don’t be rash, Rev! You stand to lose all for a moment’s folly.”
“He stands to lose all, regardless!” John jeered and bared his blade.
Forgotten by the three men, Meghan rose from her knees.
She could not understand the shouted insults but she understood a drawn sword. A fierce protective instinct reared up within her as she realized that Revelin was in danger. She ran pell-mell across the grass and leaped upon the black-haired man’s shoulders.
The unexpected impact from behind toppled John headfirst into the grass. Badly startled, he cried out, expecting at any second to feel two rows of inch-long teeth ripping into his shoulder or neck. Instead, his neck and head were plummeted with hard little fists as his ears filled with a girl’s cries: “No! No! Ye must not harm him!”
Revelin’s amazement was no less than John’s. In the split second before her attack, he had glimpsed her racing toward them, but his heart had nearly stopped when she leaped upon the man twice her size. Amazement and rage vied for the upper hand as he broke free of Robin’s embrace and reached out to snatch Meghan from John’s prone body. “God’s body! You might have been killed, you little wretch!”
John rolled over and heaved himself to his feet with a gnarl of rage. His narrowed gaze moved from the girl beside him to Revelin and back, and his eyes widened. “You?” Before Revelin could move, John reached out and gripped Meghan’s chin. “Let’s have a look at the doxy Butler’s so willing to spill his blood for! You’re a—Bloody Christ! She bears the mark of Satan!”
Meghan recoiled as he pushed her away. A deep tremor began within her. She had seen wolves before. They roamed the twilight underworld of the forest, low-slung skulking figures snatching creatures too young or too weak to defend themselves. As she gazed, locked in the vision, the features of the black-haired man changed. A snout appeared where his broad, broken nose had been. His cheeks grayed, and his beard increased until his face was furred. Only his silver eyes did not change and in them she saw single-minded deadly purpose. He was a predator. Who was his prey?
It was over in an instant and then she heard voices conversing as though nothing had occurred.
“…John. She’s only a child,” Robin argued, hanging back even though his desire was to interject himself between John and the girl. “She didn’t know what she was doing. She—”
“Shut up, Robin,” Revelin inserted flatly into the speech. He reached down and picked up John’s sword, wiped it against his canions, and offered it, hilt first, to the soldier. “Another occasion, perhaps.”
John hesitated long enough to mutter, “Anytime will serve me,” and then took his weapon and sheathed it. He wiped the sweat from his brow and then bared his teeth. “I still command. You will ride to Ulster, Butler, or the queen shall hear of it. I know a little of the Tower’s amenities. The rack is worst for a man of good constitution. You’re young and strong. You might linger for days.”
His gaze darted to Meghan, and she shrank back until she met the wall of Revelin’s body and his hands closed over her shoulders. “The bitch is cursed. Keep her out of my path or I’ll not answer for the consequences. We ride in a quarter-hour’s time.”
After a moment Revelin looked down at Meghan. He did not doubt John’s threat or the verdict if he knowingly disobeyed the queen’s command. And then there was his uncle’s request. He could not take her to safety, or, as matters stood, could he leave her behind. “I must journey to Ulster. Will you come with me?”
He noticed that John swung around in startled interest at the sound of his Gaelic speech, but he did not look up.
Meghan gazed up into Revelin’s stern face. Clearly he had not shared her vision, and she dared not speak of it. But he was in danger. The fear she felt was not for herself. She had protected him once. Perhaps she could do so again.
“I will come.”
Chapter Six
Revelin stretched out for what he decided, with a lazy smile, would be the best sleep of his life. He had agreed with John’s assessment that they must stop using their tents once they crossed the boundary of Louth and entered Ulster; pitching them was time-consuming and they were likely to attract the curious eyes of the Irish. In the relentless war that had never been declared, every Englishman who dared to cross into Ulster was fair game for the clans of the north.
Sleeping on hard ground would have been their fate, had it not been for Meghan’s solution.
Fian
bed, she called it. Paradise, he and Robin named it. It was simply and quickly assembled by laying green branches together, covering them with rushes, then covering that with a blanket of moss cut from the roots of a tree, and a final covering of rushes. With a wool mantle as a blanket, it was dry and as comfortable as a feather tick.
Revelin rolled over and found Meghan’s serious gaze upon him. In fact, he acknowledged with a bit of discomfort, her eyes were always on him. She watched him silently, seriously,
unrelentingly. She was lying a few feet away with Ualter wedged between them. She did not answer his smile, and not for the first time in the past few days he wondered about her thoughts.
“Sleep well, lass,” he said warmly, hoping she would turn away and give him a little privacy.
Meghan nodded slowly and did look away. She closed her eyes, weary beyond belief. The role of protector was much more strenuous than she had expected, yet she had promised herself to keep him safe through the night. Each night it grew more difficult to lie awake while the others slept. The first night she had been too tense to sleep. The next, she had ached too much from a day on horseback to rest.
She arched her back and sighed. For nights she had listened so zealously and patiently that she now knew the pattern of the breaths that Revelin drew in deep sleep. She knew that the ginger-bearded man named Robin murmured in his dreams. She knew that the tall, beak-nosed man who wore a cross hanging from his neck and made the sign against witchcraft when he saw her tossed and turned in his sleep like a man in torment.
It was deep into the middle of the night when she heard the sound. The one called John had spread his bed well away from the others, eschewing their new-styled bedding for a blanket on the ground. The woman among them had followed suit, placing her bedding near John’s.
At first, Meghan thought she must be dreaming. Then she heard it again, the smothered sound of a woman’s laughter. Her gaze went first to Revelin; she saw that he slept. Then she turned to find John’s place empty. She sat up, lifted back her covers, and silently rose to her feet.
Ualter raised his head. “Stay,” she commanded softly, speaking the English word Revelin used when he wanted the dog to remain where he was. The dog did not rise but he did not lower his head.
She heard voices again as she crossed the open ground lit
only by a sliver of a moon. And then she saw them, John and the servant woman, two dark shadows moving against the night. Relieved that they were not clansmen or mercenaries, Meghan nearly turned away, but curiosity kept her gazing at them for a moment longer.
John stopped and leaned his back against a tree, and the woman knelt before him as if to pray. Instead, she tore at his trunk hose with greedy hands, her laughter higher and more excited. Meghan heard the rumble of John’s bass voice, and then the woman leaned forward and Meghan heard John’s sudden intake of breath.
As Meghan watched in amazement, the woman’s head rocked back and forth, faster and faster. She had never before witnessed anything like it. The night was too dark for her to see clearly what was taking place; and yet she found herself gasping softly in time to the woman’s rhythm as a strange, fiery sensation swept her.
John groaned suddenly and, reaching down, lifted the woman to her feet. He tore at her skirts, snatched them high above her waist, and then gripped her naked hips in his hands and clasped her to him.
The woman moaned low, her thighs working frantically against his hips, and then she lifted a leg and Meghan saw John thrust against her with a power that elicited a sharp gasp from the woman. Suddenly, Meghan realized what was happening. They were coupling.
She turned and ran, her face blazing with shame and excitement. As a child she had once witnessed the actions of a man and a woman in the high reeds on a riverbank. The woman had lain back and raised her skirts, and the man, his tunic lifted to reveal his erect manhood, had moved between her spread thighs. Later, when she had questioned Una about it, Una had taken a switch to her legs and made her promise never to mention it again. The matter had been forgotten, until now.
Meghan’s cheeks stung as though a switch had been taken
to them as she slipped back beneath her covers. Ualter listened for a moment to her rapid breathing and then lowered his head.
Meghan heard nothing but the thudding of her own heart. She felt hot and cold at the same time, afraid that she might have been seen and ashamed of what she had viewed. Over and above it all was the overwhelming awareness of her new knowledge. Men and women coupling together.
She glanced guiltily at Revelin’s sleeping face. Did he couple with women? The thought made her heart lurch. Had some woman knelt before him and… Meghan frowned, trying to piece together the missing parts. She once had seen a man full in his manhood, and since she raised hogs she knew the facts of mating. Yet, John’s woman had used her mouth.
A hot blush suffused her skin and she sat up gaping at Revelin, innocent in his dream world. Did he know of such things? Memory stirred. By the pond she had gazed upon his flaccid manhood nestled in a wreath of golden curls. She had nearly touched it, but somehow it had seemed wrong. What was it like when he wanted to couple? Did it grow big and stiff like a mating boar’s? Perhaps; for her single memory of another man’s organ was of something much larger.