Читать книгу A Knight Most Wicked - Joanne Rock - Страница 8

A bazaar took place once each fortnight on the Vltava River in Prague. Everywhere Arabella looked as their carriage rolled past the marketplace, she saw vibrant colors and lively people. Hundreds thronged the merchants’ stands to haggle over vegetables, spices, cloth, animals and tools. Gypsy wagons provided entertainments of all kinds, from dancing to fortune telling.

Astonished by the sights, Arabella thrilled to each new discovery. She was as impressed by the Gypsy street entertainers as she was by the Venetian mosaic of the Last Judgment on St. Vitus’s cathedral wall. At the moment, the bazaar caught Arabella’s eye and she wanted desperately to take a closer look.

“We have time to stop, don’t we? It is all so colorful.” Arabella tugged on Mary’s sleeve as she asked their driver to stop. She jumped from the small conveyance they had been given for their expedition. Briefly, she wondered whether exploring the market was a suitably ladylike pursuit, but she pushed her reservations about her place at the Bohemian court from her mind. Surely Zaharia would approve. Arabella could almost smell the herbs at a local wise woman’s stall.

“I don’t know, Arabella. Our driver wishes to take us home before dark.”

“We won’t stay long. And I would remember this bazaar more than the university or the city palaces, long after we depart.” Her gaze already roamed the marketplace for anyone selling unfamiliar tinctures or medicinal oils. “Please?”

Mary bit her lip, clearly unsure of herself in the raucous setting.

“If you promise we won’t stay very long—”

Arabella gave her friend a quick hug before pulling her to a booth overflowing with fabric samples. Perhaps that would be more to Mary’s liking.

“Feel this. Isn’t it sumptuous?” she exclaimed over a piece of brightly colored silk with an exotic Eastern design. Mary chose two bolts, giving the merchant her name to have them delivered.

Moving away from the cloth merchant’s booth, Mary soon engaged another merchant in haggling over a jeweled comb. Now that Mary was enjoying herself, Arabella hoped she might find the local herbalist. She was searching through the crowd when a large figure garbed in black caught her eye.

Tristan Carlisle.

Arabella was not ready to face the familiar figure striding among the Gypsy booths, speaking briefly with several of the peasant families who ran them. Ducking behind a pie-maker’s stand, Arabella watched the English knight as he perused the items of a silversmith.

Observing him while he was not looking at her, she decided his face was handsome enough when he did not have a glower set upon his brow.

His eyes, however, were nothing short of beautiful. A silvery shade of gray rimmed with long, dark lashes. After her few days at court, she already understood the ladies of that realm would have done crime to possess such lashes. The slash of the knight’s brows, however, gave him a slightly fearsome aspect even when he did not scowl. The rest of his face could only be described as angular, with a hard, square jaw and prominent cheekbones.

She blushed to realize how carefully she studied Tristan Carlisle when he failed to hold women in high regard. She guessed he was the kind of man her family had warned her about before her trip.

Pausing to finger a delicate bit of silver that he had picked up off the cloth full of wares, Tristan spoke to the boy behind the counter. Arabella could see the knight held a small knife in his hand.

It was ridiculous to stray near him. Yet she found herself walking closer, avoiding his notice but suddenly curious to hear what he asked the Gypsy boy about the blade.

“…from India,” Arabella overheard the boy telling Tristan. “I brought it all the way here myself.”

While the boy boasted, Tristan took the flat-handled dagger in his palm. Arabella looked longingly at the little weapon, thinking it looked similar to the one she lost before she came to Prague.

“Is that why you can charge an exorbitant amount? Because it weighed you down on the long journey here?” Tristan reached to give the boy’s arm a gentle pinch. “You might swing a sword more often. Then mayhap a little knife wouldn’t seem like such a burden.”

Puffing out his chest, the lad defended himself with the courage of youth.

“It is not exorbitant because it was a burden. It costs much because it is a witch’s knife. It is used to draw magical rings for worshipping demons.” The boy almost whispered the last words, as if imparting great wisdom to the knight.

Arabella scoffed at the tale. Demons indeed. According to Zaharia, other healers used the weapon in a symbolic way, as if to cut away the world and focus inward to pray.

Tristan laughed at the peddler’s ploy. “You may keep your wondrous weapon. I believe I already have a knife that is similar to the one you sell.”

The knight produced something from his pocket and held it up for the boy to see.

Arabella’s herb-cutting knife.

“Saints!” the boy cried, his dark eyes wide. “I hope you had it blessed. That blade surely came from a powerful sorceress.”

Arabella was tempted to run up and snatch it out of the warrior’s big hands. How dare he steal it?

“A powerful sorceress, eh? Mayhap she was.” Tucking the dagger back in his pocket, he tossed a coin up in the air for the boy to catch. “Thanks, lad. You’ll make a fine storyteller one day with tales such as those.”

Mayhap she was? What was that supposed to mean?

Arabella wondered if the knight was teasing the boy or if he indeed thought he had come across a spell-casting sorceress in the forest. Thinking back to their strange encounter in the oaks, Arabella imagined she had looked a fright with her hair covered with twigs and leaves, and her eyes wet with tears. Indeed, she had been wailing at the top of her lungs as though the skies were falling, but only because she thought she was alone.

Yes, she’d probably made quite an impression on the English knight.

Thinking she would look at the boy’s knives herself, Arabella was about to ask Mary to come with her. But when she turned to look for her friend, the emperor’s ward was nowhere to be found.

Arabella tried to remain calm, but she could not see Mary anywhere. All at once, the rumors of stolen women assailed her. She should not have left Mary’s side for even a moment. Running down the row of Gypsy wagons, she searched and called for her friend.

Frantically peering into every conceivable corner, Arabella came to a noisy row of Gypsy booths before she turned around.

“May I help you, my lady?”

A man touched her arm.

Stay calm. Arabella bit her lip, hard, to prevent herself from giving in to full-blown fear.

“No thank you, sir.” Jerking her arm out of his grasp, she stepped away from him.

“A woman alone must need some assistance.” The stranger was a well-dressed Bohemian, but Arabella did not appreciate the steely glint in his eye.

Beyond caring if she attracted attention, Arabella lifted her skirt to run and was yanked back so hard she cried out.

The man’s demeanor changed as he shoved her with unexpected force behind a large tapestry for sale at a merchant’s booth.

“Help!” Arabella shouted at the top of her lungs, a moment before the brute pushed her to the ground and clamped a ruthless hand over her mouth.

Tristan and Simon were already atop their horses and ready to leave when a cry pierced the din of the marketplace.

Requiring no words, the men sprang forward.

Tristan steered his horse through the crowded bazaar, ignoring protests from people forced to clear a path for him.

With a sweeping scrutiny, he quickly narrowed the possible places the scream could have come from. The two most likely spots were either in the back of a Gypsy wagon in a quiet corner of the bazaar, or behind an arras right next to it. Tristan held his horse motionless as he watched the two places simultaneously and listened with the finely tuned hearing of a man used to stealth in battle.

He heard not a sound aside from the shouts of disgruntled merchants in his wake, but he soon saw the tapestry move a fraction of an inch near the ground. Drawing his sword, Tristan slashed it down and watched it fall on top of two struggling forms.

Dropping to his feet, he turned aside the heavy arras to reveal a middle-aged Bohemian man and a rumpled pile of green velvet and dark hair.

A noblewoman.

“Move away from her now.” Though he spoke calmly, he felt the fury of growing bloodlust in his veins. The man wisely scrambled to obey his command.

The villain stuttered his protests as Simon yanked him away from the commotion, but Tristan paid no heed. His eyes were fixed on the woman before him.

Arabella Rowan, the distant beauty he’d met last night at Princess Anne’s reception. Only she didn’t look so immaculately groomed today. Now that she had been rolling around the ground she looked dusty and disheveled and…

Damnation.

Tristan could not believe his eyes as his vision of aloof Arabella Rowan melded with his memory of the green-eyed enchantress from the forest. They were one and the same.

Her hair, so shiny and luxurious the night before, was a formidable tangle around her head. She was covered with dust and smudged with dirt, recalling her forest appearance.

It was the wild glint in her eyes now, however, that confirmed her identity. Unlike her courtly appearance, she now exuded passion. Heat. Fear and anger radiated from her with palpable force. ’Twas clear at a glance this member of Anne’s royal party was not the noblewoman her princess believed her to be.

Arabella knew the instant he recognized her. Really recognized her. The flash of recall revealed itself in the darkening and narrowing of his eyes.

He stepped toward her. Arabella’s first response was to scramble backward but he was too quick. Huge, hard hands wrapped themselves about her waist and lifted her as though she were no more burden than a child. Setting her once again upon her feet, he released her swiftly, giving Arabella the impression the contact had disturbed him as much as it had her.

“You are unharmed, Lady Arabella?” The way he stressed “lady” sounded decidedly unpleasant, conveying his doubt that she deserved the title.

She nodded, her lack of voice betraying her discomfiture.

“The man accosted you?”

Forcing herself to converse with him out of the desire to see her attacker punished, Arabella cleared her throat and met Tristan’s hard gaze.

“He offered his assistance to find Mary. She had disappeared from my view for a moment and I became concerned she had met with harm.”

“And when you refused his help, he attacked you?”

“Yes.”

“When we depart Prague and you are in my charge, you will never wander around without a man to escort you. Do you understand?”

A strange dictate, considering she had been fine today until a man got near her. But perhaps the princess should have asked one of her guards to accompany them, since other noblewomen had disappeared recently.

Then again, perhaps Arabella should not have followed her heart’s desires and asked Mary to leave the safety of the carriage for the marketplace. Guilt pinched her hard, perhaps making her words more biting than she’d intended.

“I would hope that once I am in your charge, sir, I will not be attacked by anyone.”

“I cannot protect wayward lasses.”

Her eyes connected with his and she felt the keen edge of that remark. Tristan Carlisle thought her unworthy of the Bohemian court. He did not think she could be true nobility because he had seen her out in the oak ring, venting her fury to the heavens.

“Wayward?” His remark insulted her grandmother and her heritage as much as it insulted her.

“Arabella!” a small voice cried out moments before Mary appeared from the thick of the surrounding crowd and threw both arms around her friend. “Are you hurt?”

Anger cooling as she reassured Mary of her good health, Arabella decided it would be useless to explain herself to Tristan. He would believe what he wanted.

Heaven knows, most everyone in the Bohemian court already thought she was a wayward lady because of her unusual upbringing. What difference did it make that Tristan Carlisle agreed with their assessment?

What she regretted most about the day was that she had unwittingly broken her grandmother’s most important rule. In the course of an afternoon, she had become very much the center of attention.

After spending a fruitless afternoon trying to twist answers out of the Bohemian trader who’d grabbed Arabella, Tristan accompanied Simon back to the keep to continue their preparations for the journey home. They’d discovered the man’s name was Ivan Litsen, but had learned precious little else about his motive. The man had seemed unconcerned about his encounter with Arabella, assuring Tristan that many men of his acquaintance would have done the same had they spied a beautiful young woman unaccompanied in a crowded marketplace.

If such was the case, why had the princess allowed Arabella and Mary to ride about the city? Did Arabella have enemies at court?

“Arabella Rowan is a fair one,” Simon observed as he studied the horizon from his horse, trotting beside Tristan’s mount.

Simon had been attempting conversation ever since they’d left the alleyway across from the marketplace where they’d questioned Litsen at length and finally given the man into the keeping of the king’s guard.

“Passing fair.” He had no wish to discuss the woman with his friend, whose appetite for feminine diversion had angered more than one protective father in their rare excursions to the English king’s court.

“Are you blind? Such beauty in a lady is as rare as it is striking to the eye.”

“She is no lady.” Tristan wondered if he could be the only man at court who knew of Arabella’s peasant roots.

“I am pleased to hear it. The prospects for our journey home have just begun to improve.”

“No.” Tristan suspected he was being skillfully manipulated—tested for his own interest in Arabella—but the knowledge did not prevent a surge of possessiveness at the thought of Simon with the green-eyed beauty.

“Pardon? Did the Sultan of Silence speak?”

“She is not your type of woman, Percival, and we both know it. You merely mean to examine my reaction to the wench. Why not just ask?” Irritated to realize he indeed found himself attracted to Arabella—nay, more fascinated than attracted—Tristan had no patience for idle talk of her. Yet he listened because Simon was his brother in spirit, if not by blood.

“I thought I was the picture of subtlety.” Simon laughed. “But since you’re offering, I am curious what you think of Lady Arabella.”

“I met her in the woods on one of the last nights we made camp on the way to Prague, and she bore little resemblance to the lady-in-waiting she plays for her princess.” He had not shared the incident with Simon, preferring to remember the encounter in his mind and not pick it apart with questions. “I do not know if the other nobles are aware of a pretender in their midst, or if Princess Anne has purposely gathered as large a retinue as possible, with no regard to the breeding of her travel companions. But either way, Lady Arabella’s court facade is a falsehood.”

“Perhaps the princess knows nothing of it, and Arabella has merely used that charming body of hers to lure a nobleman to her bed in an attempt to be included in the princess’s train.”

“Leave it to you to consider the most illicit possibilities.” Although heaven knows, Tristan of all people should have been quick to consider such a scheme, after having been betrayed by a woman seeking a higher station in life than a lowly knight could afford.

“Women must use what means they possess. A lesson hard won by us both, Tris, wouldn’t you say?”

“There is more.” Briefly, Tristan explained about the knife he found after she left. “It may be just an ordinary tool for gathering herbs, but there are some who believe such weapons are ceremonial items for Gypsy wise women or…”

“You don’t mean to suggest the girl is—”

“I suggest nothing. I’m merely telling you what I found and sharing the local superstitions.”

“You do not believe such rump-fed foolishness.”

“I do not fear the girl could turn me into a hopping toad, if that is what you mean. Yet I know she is not who she pretends to be.”

They were in a more untamed land, after all. A woman brought up in the Bohemian wilderness among the old ways could be a dangerous influence on the English court, even if her only crime was that of deception.

“’Tis all mumble-minded nonsense,” Simon remarked, reining in as they approached the knights’ quarters near the main keep. “Arabella Rowan is naught but a wild beauty with unearthly green eyes, and you would call her a Gypsy witch.”

“Hardly. Mayhap I will simply call her mine, instead.” He had not thought it over before he spoke the words aloud, but the idea had a certain appeal.

“Have you lost your wits? What happened to your aversion to treacherous women?”

“Perhaps my sense of fair play demands I do not allow another ambitious woman to bend the court to her whim.” Tristan was no longer the unknown bastard Elizabeth Fortier had once rejected. After seeing the way his former love had broken the spirits of a much older and far wealthier man following her courtship with Tristan, he had regretted his quiet complicity in her scheme.

He might not have denounced Elizabeth, but he had the power to unmask Arabella Rowan.

Arabella would be the king’s problem in England, but until they reached London, Tristan would be wise to keep a close watch on the reckless female with secrets in her past.

“You’d better be careful then, friend.” Simon grinned, one brow arched in lopsided mockery as he slid from his mount. “If our young enchantress truly is a powerful wise woman in disguise, you may be in for more than you bartered for.”

Tristan did not deny it.