But no fate could match the woe she nearly suffered. Never had she known a fear as deep and sharp as being wrenched between those grasping male beasts. Faring against a lone opponent worried her less.
He flexed, ducking low over the animal’s neck. Balancing in opposition to quick cuts and jumps, he shielded her from the worst of the battering branches. His breath came in grunting exhales, urging their dreadless pace. Minutes passed as slowly as sleepless nights.
When the horse began to tire, the man straightened and pulled the reins. Meg emerged from the shelter of his body. “Why did we stop?”
“The horse is easily traced.”
Exertion roughened his voice to a gravely rasp. Or, remembering Hugo, she hoped it was exertion. That foul thief had sounded similarly winded when thrusting into her. But then, she had as well.
Suddenly aware of her position on the stranger’s lap, she pushed to loosen his firm hold. “What will you do?”
“Calm yourself. I mean you no bale.” His breathing slowly regained a usual cadence. “With mine, your account will establish the circumstances of the ambush. I’ll not be held answerable for that disorder.”
Meg rubbed a thumb against her lower lip. He must have given the attack a great deal of consideration, studying facts while navigating the forested terrain. By contrast, the wild ride had concealed her logic in a mist of dread and frustration. She swallowed the mineral taste of fear and collected her scattered reason.
He swung from the fatigued horse and pulled her to the safety of still, sure earth. “Will you help me, woman?”
She kept her head bowed. Her captor had brought low two men, perhaps more. To save himself from hanging, he would protect her.
The lie came easily. As always.
“I will.”
“Good.”
She could not see his reaction. In truth, she had not seen a moment of the carnage on the road—nor anything else for five long years.
But the truth mattered not at all. As long as he believed her testimony valuable, he might keep her from harm. Lord Whitstowe and his knights would lay hold of them soon. She only needed to disguise her impairment until their arrival.
Straightening her skirts, she ran a hand over the alms-bag at her waist. She smiled to herself, reassured, for she could always resort to other means if her deception failed.
“Where shall we go?”
He did not answer.
“At least tell me your name, good man.”
“I’m called Will Scarlet.”
Again she waited, resisting the urge to fidget. He must be watching her, and she hated the sensation of a prying gaze on her face, her body. Eyes tenaciously downcast, she could do nothing but suffer the examination and imagine the worst. Apprehension blossomed into spite.
“Will Scarlet,” she said. “That’s an unusual name.”
“You’ve not heard of me?”
A glimmer of emotion peeked through. At last. Her thoughts bounced in busy circles. She searched for a hint, traveling along a tally of pikers and sharps she knew, but found nothing.
“Should I have?”
“We waste time,” he said. “Anyone can catch us out in this clearing.”
Navigating Charnwood’s uneven terrain required her entire notice. Breaks in Scarlet’s steady gait helped her anticipate logs and brush. Scuffing through the autumn leaves, his footfalls became her guide, even as she grew resentful of his sure-footed grace.
Brambles snagged her skirts again. She stumbled and tripped.
“Keep up.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Keep up, or I’ll abandon you to the sheriff’s men.”
A shiver dusted her skin. “But you’re one of them, I know. You were not among Whitstowe’s party, and that man you killed—he knew your name.”
He stopped short. Even near enough to touch, he revealed little. The insulating leather he wore concealed any body heat. His respiration and heartbeat escaped detection. He hovered within her awareness like a menacing wraith, bristling the delicate hairs at her nape.
“For the moment, accept that I’ve renounced my association.”
Surprise of surprises, he talked. She needed to define the hazy line between fostering a useful conversation and provoking him too greatly.
“I appreciate what you’ve wrought on my behalf. I prefer to stay in your keeping.”
“Then do as I say,” he said, his voice low and close. “I’ve no need for your questions.”
Banking her defiance, nurturing her dislike, she nodded. “I understand.”
He turned and resumed their trudge. Meg stumbled nearly as often as she stepped. Without great success, she attempted to solve the basic problems of poise and motion.
For his part, Scarlet muttered useless orders. Pick up your feet. Mind that branch.
With each brusque sentence, she studied his words. Edgy impatience could not disguise the melody of cultured speech. No matter his posturing, he was no brute. The vice of fear that squeezed her since the ambush loosened. Mindless men could behave as animals, but she might appeal to one accustomed to reason and rules.
Apparently tired of issuing orders without results, Scarlet lapsed into silence. Meg’s isolation returned, blanketing her like a thick fog. That she was so lonely for companionship, craving even the random commands of her murderous captor, galled her.
And she missed Ada. What an irritating turn of events.
Only the sounds of snapping branches, halting steps, and their matched respiration intruded on the heavy quiet of the wide woods.
But the menacing rush of a river stopped her heart.
Fear snaked a crooked path through her insides. Old terrors burgeoned. Sliding below the surface. Losing the hard thump of earth beneath her feet. Clutching at a liquid void, deafened by the gurgle of water. Only one terrible sense would remain: She would learn the river’s taste as it filled her mouth.
Panic gorged on the calm she had barely maintained. She pulled free of his hold and stumbled, grasping the nearest means of support: Scarlet’s upper arm. He cried out. Lashing against the creature causing his anguish, he yanked her cowl. Her skull snapped back, dragged by his grip on a handful of cloth and hair.
“Let go!”
His gravelly voice hissed near her ear. “You first.”
She did. He flung her away, disorienting her. She landed on her knees with a splash. A scream burst forth, certain the water would consume her. But her frightened brain identified the mud slinking between her fingers at the river’s shallow edge. With an exhausted gesture of good sense, she shoved the alms-bag behind her back, keeping it dry.
“You said nothing of your injury,” she said. “I didn’t intend to cause you more hurt.” When silence answered, she sat on her heels and turned to Scarlet. “Hello?”
“Telling you shouldn’t have been necessary.”
Anxiety crumpled her weary body. He was farther downriver than she guessed. Pain laced his words, conjuring an assortment of ghastly images. How much of that stench had been
his
blood?
“This wound should be obvious to anyone who can see. But you cannot see, can you?”
Trees creaking, birds singing—the river’s vigor obliterated every noise in the forest. All that remained was the sound of her pumping blood.
“No. I cannot.”
Life ambling through various noble houses had softened his skills, true, but this error was unconscionable. He stood little chance of escaping blame for Whitstowe’s murder if he failed to detect something that obvious.
Failure inevitably led him to thoughts of his uncle. Robin, Earl of Loxley, the famed outlaw Robin Hood, would have handled the situation differently. To start, he would not have crouched at the roadside, ready to do the sheriff’s dirty bidding.
His injury throbbed. What manner of devilish day had he yet to endure?
Kneeling on the shore, water seeping into the ruined soles of his boots, he faced her. “What is your name?”
“Now you think to ask.”
Rubbing the stubble along his jaw, he wanted to shake her until answers fell like rain. He yanked her up and stepped away before she became a target for his strengthening anger.
“In lieu of manners, you’ll have to make do with my rescue,” he said. “What is your name?”
She removed her skewed cowl and shook a tousled plait of dark, waist-length hair dampened by river water. Her face was long and thin. Graceful lips turned upward at the corners, giving her the appearance of smiling.
But what she had to smile about, he had no idea.
“I am Meg,” she said at last.
“Nothing more? Where do you come from, then?”
“First Keyworth. Near Broughton, at present.”
He studied her face, now unfettered of the cowl’s saffron folds, and wondered again at his shoddy handling of their situation. Coated with a pale, silvery film, her sightless eyes shifted constantly and focused on nothing distinct. He found no soul in those icy blue depths, no indication of personality or presence.
A chill of revulsion shook him.
“A fine witness you would’ve been. When did you intend to tell me?”
“I had no such intention.”
“I suppose you awaited an opportunity to make your escape?”
“Or a rescue. Earl Whitstowe and his son offered me aid,” she said. “Surely they’ll send a search party.”
Molded to her body from bust to hips, her woad gown was wet, filthy, and easily older than either of them. An alms-bag hung from the inward flare of her waist. He almost pitied the disheveled wench, but no amount of pity ebbed his frustrations.
“You wait in vain. The earl is dead.”
“You lie.”
“Why would I?”
Dark brows pulled together. She seemed to absorb the question, testing it for truthfulness. “I can’t think of a reason.”
“And I can’t think of a reason to escort a blind witness through the forest.”
“But my home is miles from here!”
A twitch of chivalry grated his conscience, taunting him with images of the poor woman in six hours’ time, wet and stranded in the evening chill. Already the air cooled his skin, or was that the onset of a fever? He shivered uncontrollably. The quicker he abandoned his burdensome obligation, the quicker he could tend his arm.
But where would he go? None of his acquaintances would offer lodging to one of Nottingham’s men. Will’s work for the sheriff had alienated his few friendships.
And as for Marian, he refused to ask her for help—not after his promise. Especially not with Robin likely to return from Châlus.
No. He simply needed to be gone.
“My apologies, miss.”
“Please! I can tend your injury.”
She reached forward, searching for him. Will took hold of her arms; some maddening part of him cringed at the prospect of seeing her fall again.
“You are a physic? A healer?”
She pressed her lips into a line as thin as thread. “Of sorts. My sister helped me.”
“Helped?”
“
Helps
. If I doubted she yet lives, I wouldn’t be stranded here.”
Suspicions sounded a heralding call. With his thumbnail, he picked at the old scar on his palm. “Where is she?”
“I know not. Ada’s been gone these two weeks.”
Ada. That was her name. During the ambush, he had mistaken Meg for that brazen cheat at the Nottingham market. But closer inspection revealed differences. Meg was thinner in both form and face, with an angular chin and that quirky, smiling mouth. And those glassy blue eyes.
Had Will required a more convincing reason to forsake his burden, he found one: He had arrested her sister.
He untangled their fingers, their destinies. “Consider our ride all the gallantry I can muster today.”
“You’ve shone no gallantry!” Her cheeks colored with uneven splotches of pink. “You thought to use me, that I might hold Finch’s hangman at bay.”
Will bit back a protest. He had not flown into the fray to pursue selfish ends. How could he explain those moments of confusion by the roadside? Ally and villain had intertwined in a gruesome dance, exchanging places, until her terror cut through the confusion. Pure, hard, and desperate, her scream had ripped into being without artifice or ambition.
And like it or not, his body responded. His soul. With the cleanest part of himself, with the most honest of intentions, he had rescued her—the opposite of his behavior toward her sister. He could no more understand the primal motives for one than he could excuse his greedy designs for the other. Saving her had been his most selfless act since leaving Marian.
He expected gratitude, but he better deserved what Meg offered: She spat near his feet.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I’m going.”
“And you’ll bleed a trail for anyone to follow.”
“Even a blind woman?”
Outward signs of anger faded at his taunt. She smiled, cold and tight and controlled. “Those brutes will find either a dead man or one too weak to defend himself.”
A mean temper burst his patience like a blister. “On God’s half, woman, I’m not helping you! I cannot. The odd man out takes the blame, and everyone but me knew what awaited Whitstowe.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have risked rescuing you.” Chills doubled and trebled, leaving him breathless and dizzy. He glanced at his mangled shoulder. “I am beset with difficulties and have no need of another. Your family has caused me enough misery.”
Sightless eyes widened to the size of eggs. “What of my family? What do you know?”
Will railed against saints, devils, and his own careless tongue. But deserting a furious woman would be easier than turning his back on a pleading one.
“Your sister—Ada, was it? I arrested her in Nottingham.”
“You spineless bastard!”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Such a pity no man of quality dared save your skin.”
“I’ll slit your throat!”
“I await the attempt, if you can find me.”
He turned and took a step toward freedom. The heels of two feminine hands drove into his upper back, pitching him face-first into the leaves. Air slipped from his lungs. Pain exploded in his shoulder. She landed on his back, her forehead smashing the base of his skull and driving his mouth into the mud. Dirt painted his tongue.
He shrugged free of her weight, turning his fouled face to the sky, but she attacked anew. An armful of female scrambled astride his chest. She crushed his neck, forearm grinding against his windpipe.
“Found you, wastrel,” she said with a snarl.
Will gagged. Hot blazes of color marred his vision, blending to livid streaks. He surged, rolling until he pinned her with the length of his body. “For grace! Enough!”
“Hardly.” Winding a hand between their bodies, she grabbed a handful of bullocks and twisted.
“Foul bitch!”
He crushed an elbow into her upper arm, grinding the muscle until her hand spasmed, freeing him. Catching slender wrists, he fought the base impulse to harm his slight attacker. “I say again—enough.”
She calmed, but harsh breaths shoved her breasts against his armor. With a grim smirk, she bucked her hips. Arched her back. Wiggled.
He gasped. Blood spun from his head to his groin. “What manner of woman are you?”
She laughed. “One you enjoy pinning, coward. Either prick me with that rod of yours or release me.”
Will jumped free as if burned by fire. He would have eyed a snake with less suspicion. “If you reach between my legs again with less than friendly intentions, I’ll cut off your hand.”
“Unwise, Scarlet, because I’d still have hold of your bullocks.” Sitting up, she delicately arranged her skirts. Her voice was sweet, nearly careless, but her loathing swelled against him like a solid fog. “Regardless of who murdered the earl, if he is dead, you killed the sheriff’s men. You are a wounded, hunted man. No one will take you in.”
He wanted to protest. He wanted to recite an impressive list of good families—maybe his own family—ready to welcome him in a time of need. He wanted to prove her wrong.
But he could not.
All he could do was walk away.