Through a Dark Mist (29 page)

“Women should stay clear of war and politics—they understand neither. In the first place, Lord Lucien will not be alone. I have a hundred stout, loyal men of my own to ensure those arrows are not fired.”

“De Gournay is Prince John’s ally—his champion! He will not sit idly by while a man they both plotted to discredit attempts to prove them frauds and murderers.”

“God and the king must judge the weight of John’s greed. Lucien’s quarrel is with his brother.”

“It is a quarrel John will not tolerate in silence.”

The silk flared again. “He will if he is faced with the choice of either recognizing Lucien Wardieu as the rightful heir of the De Gournay title, or having his own crime of kidnapping and attempted murder revealed before witnesses. It was Lackland’s arrogance to suppose he would be safer making the exchange for the Princess Eleanor at Bloodmoor, surrounded by his most trusted allies. It is that same arrogance which will force him to maintain his silence while his champion is challenged for his crimes. To be sure, he will pretend to be suitably shocked at De Gournay’s duplicity, but unless he wants the princess to point an accusing finger at her uncle’s royal intrigues, he will support the man who wins on the field tomorrow.”

“Are you so sure Lucien will win?”

“Your confidence is overwhelming, my lady,” he said dryly. “You do not think he will?”

“I think you are a better match for Etienne Wardieu. You have the trophies and the reputation to prove it.”

“Lucien is no mean squirrel in the lists; he has tipped a fox or two out of the saddle before now.”

“But not so many as you, Lord Randwulf.”

The hooded face turned away for the length of a ripe curse, then looked back. “A man must avenge his honour at any cost,” he hissed. “It is the code by which a knight lives. Take it away and he is nothing. Ask another to interfere, and he is less than nothing.”

“I am not asking you to interfere, my lord. I am asking … nay,
begging
you to save his life.”

“How?”

“By taking to the field yourself tomorrow. You could kill Etienne Wardieu with impunity—another challenge, another trophy to add to your armoury. I have seen the pain in Lucien’s eyes when he speaks of his brother’s treachery. Regardless of the justification, where there was once love, there would be immeasurable guilt should he be the one to take his brother’s life.”

The Scourge of Mirebeau was silent so long Servanne felt a trickle of sweat form between her breasts.

“You speak as if you care what happens to the rogue,” he said with quiet intensity.

“I … suppose I do,” she admitted in a whisper. “In a way.”

La Seyne took a sudden step away from the wall and Servanne, not expecting the movement, flinched back with a small cry of alarm. He was as tall as a pillar and massive with the brawn and muscle of a fighting man. As he walked closer, he flexed his gauntleted hands, and the fingers that crushed the morsel of straw looked as if they could crush her bones with as little effort.

“In what way, madam? Do you care because you now believe his claim and would not want to lose what you so nearly have within your grasp here at Bloodmoor?”

“Lands and titles mean nothing to me!” she insisted.

“No? Is that why you rushed so eagerly to answer the Dragon’s summons, barely a month after your husband’s death?”

“I … had no choice! I was commanded by royal decree!”

“You had a choice in the forest. You could have refused to go with Wardieu.”

“I was given no such choice!” she cried adamantly. “Had I been given one, think you I would be here now?”

“I do not know,” La Seyne said bluntly. “Would you?”

Servanne opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again, stunned by the echo of her own words. She heard them again, breaking down the barrier of her pride, and the echo grew louder and louder, the words and their meaning pounding within her breast like a smithy’s hammer.

“No,” she said softly, her eyes filling with tears. “No, I would not be here, monseigneur. I believe … I would quite happily have stayed in the forest with him, had he offered me the chance, with no complaint, no second thoughts as to what I would be forsaking. Nay, I would go there with him now, if you could but convince him of his folly. I would willingly follow him to Normandy or France, or any of a dozen foreign countries.”

“And what if he does not want your company?” La Seyne growled, drawing close enough to startle Servanne’s heart higher in her throat.

“I—I would follow him anyway,” she maintained. “I would content myself just to be near him.”

Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer stared at her for a long, throbbing moment before breaking the tension with a low, unsteady laugh. “No. No, my lady, by the look of this new revelation dawning in your eyes, I do not think you would be content with anything less than iron chains binding you together hip and thigh.”

Servanne returned his stare. His voice had lapsed from its forced gruffness, and the laugh … the laugh was familiar enough to raise a spray of gooseflesh along her arms.

Without thinking, she lifted her hand toward the mask, but the gloved fingers were just as swift to close around her wrist and halt the motion.

“I would see your face, monseigneur,” she whispered.

“You would not like what you saw.”

“I like it less being laughed at and ridiculed by a man too cowardly to reveal his own faults to the world.”

The fingers clamped tighter around her wrist, causing a shiver of pain to set the stubbornness on her mouth. But he released her before the pain became too real, and with no further warning or protest, bowed his head and removed the black silk mask.

The light from the taper was on his profile, etching a square jaw with several days’ worth of dark stubble blunting it. His hair curled in thick chestnut whorls against his cheeks and throat; his eyes were long-lashed and gray as a turbulent winter sky. There were no scars, no deformities to cringe from. Only a single, partly scabbed slash across one cheek that seemed to add, not detract, from the wild, wolfish beauty of him.

“You!” she gasped, her icy fingers slipping from her mouth to cover the loudly drumming beat of her heart. She could scarcely breathe for the impact he had upon her senses. It struck her like a fist—the realization he was here, standing in front of her, pretending to be someone he was not, listening to her concerns and confessions, mocking the very emotions which had become her only thread to sanity.

“You!” she cried. “How dare you not reveal yourself! How dare you lead me on and goad me into saying things … things that were not meant for you to hear!”

The Wolf glanced past her shoulder to the open door. “The rest of the castle is not meant to hear them either,” he murmured wryly and moved around behind her to close the creaking wood panel.

She whirled to confront him. “How dare you trick me! Where is La Seyne?”

“He is here.”

“Where? Listening somewhere in the shadows so that you might both share a hearty laugh at my expense?”

“It was not my intention to trick you, nor am I laughing at anything you have said.”

“Where is La Seyne Sur Mer?” she demanded, stamping her foot to ward off the threat of tears.

The Wolf saw them shining behind her eyes, and, after waging a minor war with what was left of his common sense, he took up her hand in his and laid the black silk hood across her palm.

“You once asked how I could move from place to place without fear of someone recognizing me.” He glanced down and enclosed her hand, hood and all, in his. “The mask was an affectation at first. It was necessary for me to earn enough wealth and respect to win back my independence—a disguise seemed the most obvious solution to my problems, since there was still a charge of murder and treason standing against the Wardieu name.”

“You
… are La Seyne Sur Mer?” Servanne gasped in astonishment.

“I took the surname from the small village in France where I landed amongst the living again. The Christian name was given me by the physician who swore I should have died a dozen times in the months I spent recovering from my wounds. It all seemed fitting … the name, the hood.”

“The queen? She accepted you without question?”

The Wolf tilted his head slightly, revealing a faint grin to the light. “The queen thought it a delicious ruse—her very words—for a hooded knight to hold her court, and her enemies, in terror.”

“And the Black Wolf?”

“Her pet name for me, I’m afraid.”

“But what of this … this
madness?
Surely she could not have sanctioned it?”

“The dowager knows nothing of my connection to Blood-moor Keep, or that I have a personal score to settle with its master. To her, Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer is her trusted champion, the man she sent to regain her beloved princess’s freedom regardless of the cost.”

“La Seyne Sur Mer … the Black Wolf of Lincoln … Lucien Wardieu …” Servanne shook her head in bewilderment. “Which one of those men is really you?”

“All of them. None of them.” He turned fully into the light and she saw the smudges of weariness under his eyes. “You should not have come here tonight; it was a foolish risk.”

“Why did you agree to see me? You could have refused.”

His gaze was steady, his expression grim. “You are absolutely right. It was stupid of me to worry what kind of trouble you might be in, or that I had promised you help if it was needed. But no matter, if you are discovered here, the blame will fall on equal parts on both our heads.”

“Alaric and the others are outside. They will give ample warning of any threat.”

The threat is here, the Wolf wanted to shout. It was in her eyes and on her lips. It was steeped in her fragrance and woven into every glimmering strand of her hair. Worse, it was raging white-hot throughout his body, and had been since she had walked through the door. It was all he could do now to force his hands to remain down by his sides and to try to turn his thoughts away from the scent of her skin.

“You … have been treated well since your arrival?”

“De Gournay has been very civil, very polite under the circumstances. He asked few questions about you, however, and I am convinced he thinks I know you only as an outlaw, not as his brother.”

“He … has not touched you … or harmed you in any way?”

Servanne looked up into his eyes, wondering how much longer her legs could support her, trembling as badly as they were. “Would you have cared if he had?”

“Of course I would care.” He caught the gruffness in his voice and forced it behind a flat grin. “I would care for the safety of your neck, my lady.”

“Only my neck?”

His jaw tautened to a ridge of corded sinew and a small blue vein leaped to prominence in his temple. Her hood had slipped back, baring the gleaming gold crown of her hair to the light, and he had a sudden, clear image of it scattered around her naked shoulders, clinging to both their bodies as they lay twined together in the steamy dampness of the grotto.

But it passed in the next instant and a clearer image of a jousting field took shape, and the gold of her hair was replaced by the crimson of spilled blood.

“You should not have come here tonight,” he said again, harshly. “I only agreed because I offered La Seyne as a means of protection if you were hurt or required help in some way. Since you look remarkably healthy, my lady, and if, as you say, everyone has been civil and polite—”

“Your brother,” she interrupted sharply, “shows even less emotion than you—if such a thing is possible.”

She turned her back on him, shielding her outburst behind the cloud of yellow hair that had worked its way free of the braid.

“His expression rarely changes from one hour to the next,” she continued bitterly. “Yet I have seen his mere presence reduce a burly man to a mass of cowering fright. The castle is full of fear; the halls and chambers are thick with it, the air reeks of it. To me, he has been polite, yes, but there is a coldness in him, an underlying evil, sinister and cruel … traits I might not have seen or looked for had you not planted the seeds of suspicion in my mind. Now that you have, how am I to deal with it? How can I be expected to go through with the wedding, or be the smiling, dutiful wife he has contracted? And if he comes into my bed at night and touches me—”

“There will be no wedding, by Christ,” the Wolf exclaimed. “And if he touches you …
if he touches you—”
he grasped her by the shoulders and spun her around so that the shadows no longer concealed her features. What he saw, glowing in her eyes, caused the grip of his fingers to squeeze hard enough to promise bruising.

Servanne de Briscourt was smiling. Tears studded her lashes like tiny sparkling gemstones, but she was smiling.

“You do care,” she cried happily. “You do. You do!”

His jaw flexed. His hands tightened and the gleam in his eyes flared with anger.

“No,” he snarled. “No, you are wrong.”

“Am I? Then push me away. Tell me you pray God you never need lay eyes on me again, never need touch me again, never need hold me or feel your body moving deep inside me. Tell me you want no part of this heart that beats so strongly within my breast. Tell me all of that, my lord, with your eyes as well as your lips, and I will walk out the door and never look back. It will be no easy task, for I have only just begun to realize my life will be nothing without you. But I will do it. I will obey your every command to wipe your memory from my heart … if it is what you want me to do.”

The years of hardening himself, years of conditioning himself to feel nothing, betray nothing, reveal nothing of his emotions, were slipping away with each warm, shiny tear that escaped her lashes. His hands squeezed until he felt bone, and he started to push her away. He started … even managed to gain an inch or two of freedom before a pent-up breath exploded from his lungs and he dragged her forward, dragged her into his embrace, into the hungry caress of his lips.

Their mouths came eagerly together. Their arms circled one another, clasping each other tightly, desperate to bring their bodies as close as life and breath would allow. He kissed her deeply again and again, smothering her gasps and sobs, adding his own muffled words of endearment as his hands, lips, and body trembled with further admissions.