Читать книгу The Conqueror - Kris Kennedy - Страница 14

They sat at the edge of a small clearing. Lurking around its edges was the deep, dark forest, with its sharp-edged black trees and small scurryings in the undereaves. In the middle of the clearing squatted five or six daub-and-wattle huts. And in front of the ragged half-circle they created roared an enormous bonfire.

Gwyn sighed in relief, then considered it more closely. That was a great deal of wood and peat to be burning so wastefully. Some dim recollection coalesced in her mind. She looked to Pagan.

“What is the bonfire for?”

“All Hallows’ Eve.”

The night when the portal from the Other World to this world were opened, the only night in the year. Magic flowed, spirits dwelt.

The smokey greyness of his eyes was unreadable in the darkness. “Warm and safe and dry,” he reminded her.

“If you say.”

“If you behave.”

Her eyebrows went down. “Behave?”

“Don’t talk too much. Can you manage that?”

She dropped her head to the side. “Of course.”

“Good. And a ride to your Abbey tomorrow.”

“You?”

He swung off Noir just as the door to the largest hut swung wide. A thick band of yellow firelight spilled out over the muddy earth.

“No. Them.”

Two figures appeared in the doorway, one behind the other. Large, broad-shouldered figures who seemed to be holding blunt-edged weapons of some sort. Aloft.

Pagan said something in the guttural Saxon tongue and that’s all there was to it. The men lowered their weapons and came out with welcoming gestures. Gwyn could understand nothing of their Saxon-held conversation, but it was clear Pagan was not worried.

She rested her hands on Noir’s furry, warm withers, patting his neck while listening to the murmurs of the men’s conversation, watching Pagan. He stood unaffectedly, a day’s growth of stubble roughening his face. He put his foot up on a log. The leather of his knee-high black boot rose up his calf, dully reflecting the firelight. One mailed forearm rested on his bent knee as he nodded and laughed at something one of the men said.

Gwyn found herself smiling too, and her belly did a little flip when he turned his dark gaze back to her. He said something to the men, then started over, his stride long and confident.

They walked together into the warm hut. Eight or so souls stood and sat in the small open space at the centre. It was crowded, but not uncomfortably so. Over the firepit near the centre hung a black cauldron, and inside the contents bubbled and burped. To the right, behind a half-wall, Gwyn could hear a cow shuffling in the hay.

All the faces were staring at her. She smiled. They didn’t exactly smile in return, but neither did they brandish swords. They were dirty faces, unkempt, but they did not appear hostile, nor like they wanted anything from her, and for the moment, that was sufficient.

One of the women, the blunt-nosed, square-shouldered matron, came forward and, with a nod, indicated Gwyn should sit at the table. A bowl of hot stew was plunked down in front of her. Small flecks of colour swirled in the dark brown broth, carrots and onions. Alongside lay a chunk of day-old rye bread.

“My thanks,” she exhaled in true, great gratitude.

Pagan nodded to her. “I’ll leave you here, then, mistress.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled, then tried to hide it. How embarrassing. Certes, he had more important things to do. She had no claim on him. “Of course.”

“Tomorrow morn, Clid there,” he said, gesturing to one of the square-shouldered men who had greeted them, “will be your escort to Saint Alban’s.”

She swung her leg over the bench. He was already backing towards the door. “I cannot express my thanks, Pagan. I owe you more than I can ever repay. You saved my life.”

He shrugged. “Your virtue, more’s the like. I don’t think your life was in any danger, mistress.”

“Oh, truth, sir, ’twas. For I’d have killed myself before I married Marcus fitzMiles.”

He paused, gauntleted hand on the door jam, and grinned over his shoulder, just like a friend would do. “Me too.”

She pushed to her feet then, feeling reckless and unruly and everything she hadn’t let herself feel for a dozen years. Crossing to the door, she kept her eyes on the dirt floor and fumbled with the bag of silver tied round her waist, shocked at how weepy she felt.

“Lady, please.” A touch of impatience sharpened the masculine rumble of his words. He turned and walked out.

“I am simply looking for a way to recompense you,” she explained helplessly to his back.

The length of his mail-clad body stilled, then he turned and strode back to within inches of her. He swept up the hair by her ear with the edge of a warm, calloused hand, and leaned in. “Smile.”

Something hot flashed through her body. “Sir?”

“Smile for me.”

He could have said anything. In that husky voice, his long fingers brushing back her hair, his breath warm on her skin, he could have said he was a traitor to the king and she would have smiled. And when she did, slowly, hesitantly, a corner of his own mouth crooked up in reply.

“I have been recompensed,” he murmured.

Something hot and cold and shivery came down like a rainstorm through her body. Every breath she tried to take came rushing back out again. She could hardly listen to his next words, with his muscular body pulsing heat onto hers, his lips just by her ear, whispering words that were all of sense, nothing of the animal arousal he’d just awakened in her.

“Take care here, Raven. Don’t talk too much. Don’t ask too many questions. Hide that silly pouch of silver and whatever you’ve got in the other one.”

He ran his index finger briefly along her jaw. It was a careless gesture, but it made the hot-cold chills explode like fire through her blood. She reached out and her fingertips brushed his mailed forearm.

“Don’t go. Yet. Please.”

And like that, deep inside of Griffyn, something that hadn’t moved for a very long time suddenly shifted.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her outside, propelling her behind Noir, using the horse as a shield between them and the huts. His intention was clear, and he barely dared breathe, waiting for her refusal. Let her pull back the slightest bit and he would step away, forget the whole thing, interpret her unsteady breathing as fear, her trembles as exhaustion.

But God, he prayed silently, please let her move not so much as an eyelash.

Why was his blood hammering so? Why was it hard to draw breath? He had barely touched her on two occasions, touches so innocent he could have performed them in a crowded room and barely brought a gasp. Why?

Because something about this small, courageous wisp of a woman was plunging into recesses of a desire he’d never known existed, and his arousal pulsed hot and hard and inassuagable inside him, all from the feel of a curving spine and the sight of a delicate, dirt-stained face.

Without a thought for custom or destiny or anything other than the green-eyed angel pressed against his horse and panting, he bent his head to taste the trembling lips. Sliding his thumb slowly down her neck, he brushed his lips over hers.

Her small intake of breath, like velvet on air, made him stiffen into a thick, hard rod. Catching hold of his breath, he pressed the tip of his tongue against the seam of her lips, pushing them open ever so slightly.

Gwyn threw her head back, stunned by the bolt of wet heat that blasted through her body. A slow-moving shudder rippled behind, quivering between her thighs, lashing pleasure through her blood. His tongue slid in further, coaxing her to open for him, taking long, slow sweeps of her, mining an unknown passion that was pulsing heat between her legs. She dimly realised she was embracing him, had her arms around his neck and was pulling him down. Ever gallant, he responded, cupping her face with one hard, gloved hand. He locked his other hand around her hip and tugged, coaxing her closer, his thumb pressed against the rounded flesh of her abdomen, coming dangerously and head-spinningly close to the place where hot, wet heat flashed inside her womb.

“Oh, Pagan.” The wasted whimper slid out of her, a moan, a ministration, a murmur of something she didn’t even know how to dream about.

Without thinking, which was no part of what she was doing, she pushed her body into his. Breasts, belly, hips, everything arched up into him. An invitation.

In a single, confident move, he dragged her up off the ground, tight against him, so her toes scraped the earth, his mouth hungry on hers. He pushed the flat of his hand against her belly and slid up her ribs until his thumb rested just under the swell of her breast.

She threw her head to the side, crying out. She had no idea what she might have done next if Noir hadn’t shifted just then, away from the pressure.

Griffyn did, though. He knew exactly what he would have done to her, starting with her parted lips straight down to her curling toes. But when Noir shifted, that woke him up. His hand shot out and grabbed the reins.

He dragged his head up a bare inch and found her eyes almost closed. Only a thin glitter of green was visible. The rest of her face was suffused with incipient passion: red, parted lips, panting chest, flushed cheeks.

A breath of air never tasted before.

He let her go as if burned, released her onto obviously wobbly feet, his breath ragged, his very blood burning. Had he just almost ravished a noblewoman as if she were a strumpet, backed her up against his horse and gone to lift her skirts? Had he truly abandoned his mission on the eve of its execution? What had he become? A distractible man? A desirous man? A fool?

Never before, and never, ever again.

Groin pounding, heart thundering, he wiped his palm over his mouth. “That was wrong of me, Guinevere,” he muttered. “I was foolish, and I am sorry.”

She kept her eyes downcast. “You were not the only fool.”

“I have never—” He wiped his hand over his entire face this time. “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

She touched the back of her hand to her lips. “You’ve never what?” she asked in a small voice.

“Pressed myself on…an unwilling…” He scratched his head briskly. “I am sorry.”

She drew herself straighter and met his eye. “I was not unwilling.” Small tangled curls idled over her brow. She brushed them back. “’Tis true we’ve both done things tonight we’ve ne’er done before.” She paused. “For instance, you saved my life.”

“Aye.” A small explosion of released tension took the form of a laugh. “Never done that before.”

“So we can allow a few…”

“Allowances,” he finished.

She smiled, that enchanting, faerie-like smile which made him forget he had no heart. He was uneasy to realise he was quite willing to stand here all night in order to make her do it again. Smile, that is. Smile, and moan, and part her lips and then her thighs…

“And now, you must go.” She said what he should have done ten minutes ago.

“Aye,” he said, but didn’t move.

“You have things to do. As do I.” Each word broke like a tiny ice chip. “So, please,” she glaciated. “Go.”

He planted a swift kiss on her lips, then swung into the saddle and reined into the woods without looking back once.

Gwyn watched for a long time, her breath fast and unsteady. Each breath birthed a small smokey puff in front of her mouth. She stood there so long the echo of Noir’s hooves merged with the sound of her own furiously beating heart, then silence.

She was treading a very dangerous path tonight. All Hallows’ Eve, indeed. Doorways that lay closed every other night of the year were flung wide open. And she had just walked through one.

Such beliefs were nonsense, of course, even though she’d grown up with them, tutored by her childhood friends, the Scottish villagers and servants. But they were old pagan beliefs, not of the Church—.

She stopped walking. Oh, Lord. Pagan.

She trudged back to the hut, her belly hot and flipping, which was absurd and ridiculous and most certainly immoral. It was also reckless, to be so focused on one errant knight when her beloved home was at risk. Recklessness, her besetting sin. Wayward, disobedient.

A wretched disappointment.

She tugged Pagan’s cloak tighter around her shoulders, grateful for its warmth, then spun sharply. If she was wearing his cloak, that meant he had none. She peered into the trees, but he was gone. Long gone. Far gone. Never to be seen again.

She blinked away the sharp bite of tears the frigid temperatures must have brought to her eyes. Time to attend to what mattered. Pagan had his mission, she had hers: get word to the king. Only Gwyn could save Everoot now. It was all in her hands.

In fact, she considered glumly, perhaps the whole debacle was a gift from God. A chance to do proper penance for one very old, very awful sin.

And to do that, she needed to be somewhere, anywhere, other than this village with its milk cows and single swaybacked plough horse.

I’ll never see him again, echoed inside her head as she pushed open the thin wooden door to the hut. She was surprised by the thought, considering she’d already forgotten him.

But she was aghast at the emotion that followed: despair.

The door swung wide and the villagers looked up.

“I need a horse,” she said.