Читать книгу The Conqueror - Kris Kennedy - Страница 17

They fell into a clump against the far wall, Griffyn propelled backwards by her headlong rush. He struggled to his knees and clamped his hand over her mouth, which she’d opened to scream.

“I cannot believe it,” he announced, removing his hand when he saw she was not going to loose the shriek.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” she cried in a whisper. “Pagan! How came you here? No, no, not now. I cannot believe you came, but we must get out of here—”

“We? What are you doing here?”

“—for I’ve only a little while until he comes for me.”

“Comes for you?” he shouted back in a whisper. “What are you talking about? I left you with Clid, a safe refuge, and now you’re here?” He stared at her a moment. Realisation dawned. “His betrothed.”

“I am not!”

He rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead, muttering, “I can’t believe it. How incredibly unlikely. Abducted, twice in one night.”

She scowled. “Astonishing. I can barely bestill my wonder. I left the village—”

“Why? It was warm and dry—”

“Yes, yes.” She brushed off his kept promises with an urgent whisper. “But not safe.”

“Aye, well, I can see how being here suits you so much the better.”

She touched his arm lightly, but the subtle contact felt more forceful than that, a flash of feminine verve. “You were mad to leave me there,” she whispered vehemently. “But there is no time for that now. I came because I had to. I know of Hipping’s reputation, of course, and the trouble he’s caused my lord king. But I did not know he was a…a brigand.” Her lips twisted, and Griffyn wondered if Hipping’s lips had touched hers. The thought, against all reason, brought a flood of anger surging through his blood. “He is holding me against my will.”

“For what?” he asked suspiciously.

She paused for half a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter. Politics.”

The evasion seemed unnecessary, and would have caught his attention if he hadn’t had his attention captured by so many other things, such as the bewildering verity that he was kneeling on the floor of a minor nobleman’s corridor with a woman he’d already rescued once tonight and left miles from here not three hours ago. And she needed more rescuing yet.

Then again, abductions were commonplace enough. Kidnappings, forced betrothals. An unprotected woman on the road was fair game.

And all of a sudden, Griffyn’s largest concern was not expanding Henri fitzEmpress’s frontiers, it was the raven-haired, flushing-cheeked demoiselle in front of him. Her tousled hair and wild eyes made him worry, but it was her incredible, indomitable spirit that turned his tides.

“I hate to be a burden yet again…”

He grabbed her arm. “Let’s go.”

He leaned in and took a quick survey of her room—much nicer than his—then grabbed a lantern sitting on the table. Lowering its flame to almost nothing, he propelled her down the stairs.

Keeping close to the shadows, they made their way straight out the front door and through the rising winds to the stables without being seen or heard. No one could have heard an approaching army over the winds, and no one was about to witness this abduction.

Griffyn pulled open the stable door. A powerful gust wrenched it out of his hands and flung it wide, slamming it against the wall. Muttering under his breath, he shuttled them inside and hauled it shut behind them.

The roaring quieted. There were the dim sounds of animals crunching hay and shuffling. It was warm, with tighter seams between the planks of wood than of his guest bedchamber, he noticed grimly in passing. He began fumbling around in the darkness, feeling about on the ledge by the doorway for a flint.

Her shadowy figure moved down the row of stalls. “Where’s my horse?”

He set the lantern on a small ledge. Light spread further into the dark stable. “What horse?”

“I had a horse.”

“What?”

“A horse, a horse. I came here on a horse.”

His looked at her suspiciously. “Where did you get a horse?”

She shrugged. “From the village.”

“They gave you a horse?” he said in flat disbelief. The purchase of a single plough horse would require the village’s annual intake, which was nigh on nil, for a few decades.

“They didn’t exactly give me the horse.”

“You took the horse.”

She gave him an evil look. “Yes. I took the horse. I didn’t kill a man, so you need not look at me like that. I planned to ensure Old Barney was returned, but now, well.” She stopped.

“Well, that’s that,” he muttered, stalking to Noir, whose seventeen-hand measurement at the withers made him stand taller than any other horse in the stables. He nickered at the sound of Griffyn’s voice.

“What’s what?” She hurried after him, tugging hair away from her face.

He led Noir out of his stall and grabbed the saddle. She came to the horse’s head and reached out to pet him.

“I wouldn’t,” Griffyn said grimly. He threw the saddle blanket over Noir’s sloping back, then placed the saddle atop, just at the horse’s withers. He slid the saddle and blanket back an inch, smoothing the fur. “He doesn’t like…people.”

“He seems to like you.”

“Yes, well, I’m not a person. To him.” He flipped the cinch off the saddle and let it drop. Reaching under Noir’s belly, he grabbed the buckle and pulled.

“Oh.”

They didn’t say anything else. Griffyn dourly finished his saddling, then bid her to the huge oaken stable door.

“I’ll open it, you hold it. Keep it from slamming.”

She nodded. He nudged it slightly ajar. The winds flung it wide and smashed it gleefully against the wall. She almost fell down trying to hold it back.

He glared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered fiercely, wrestling with it. Griffyn reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut. “Think you I wish to be discovered any more than you?”

“I have no idea what you wish for.” He threw her up in front of the saddle and climbed up himself. “I would have thought a warm, dry place, but apparently not. You prefer storms and abduction. Sit close as you can, no, lean back against me, and here, I’ll wrap my cloak around us both. No one will come out to examine us too closely, and the winds should make a mockery of any clear shape or form. I came, now I’m leaving, and let us hope they will see it like that. But if they do come out,” he added more slowly, looking down into her wide, bright green eyes, “don’t scream when I kill them.”

She blinked. “Give me a blade. Truly,” she insisted when he just looked at her. “I am in earnest. You saw me with a rock. Imagine me with a blade.”

“I’m terrified,” he muttered, but unsheathed the blade wrapped at his thigh and slipped it to her, then pulled his hood up. “Now slide down as far as you can, sit as close as you can, and silence, if ever you can.”

“Pah,” she snorted from her dark, cloaked nest.

Griffyn lifted his head and, pressing his heels against Noir’s flanks, rode slowly through the bailey and under the inner gates, which were still raised, a good omen. This porter had not been alerted he was staying the night. Perhaps the outer guards were as ignorant.

No one even appeared to notice he was passing until he reached the guards at the outer bailey, and they waved him through with barely a glance.

He rode under the straining portcullis gate, the wicked wooden talons hanging half a foot above his head, and like that, they were outside in the king’s woods, he with a mission to accomplish and a heady woman huddled beneath his cape.