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.
Chapter Eight
Griffyn looked up as the sharp, cautionary whistle dusted down through the dark night air. He whistled back, three trills and one long sustained note. Silence, then high on the hill, the manor gates creaked open, wood pressed hard against ancient wood. Hippingthorpe Hall was admitting its guest.
It was a moody autumn night, stuffy. The atmosphere was thick and murmuring. Overhead the sky was clear, blooming with bright, glittering stars, but in the west, clouds huddled ominously. A gust of wind galloped across the plains, dragging a lock of hair over Griffyn’s forehead. He brushed it back impatiently.
His heart still pounded, his loins still ached, but he would never have brought Guinevere here, not if she’d begged him. Hipping was a dangerous fool, and no one knew he’d already changed sides, secretly forsworn his oath to King Stephen and joined Henri’s cause.
Some would call that traitorous. Griffyn even might have, in different circumstances, but he chose to call it prudence. Above all, it was a secret. No one knew Hipping had changed sides, but change he had, and he was an opportunistic turncoat. An heiress loyal to Stephen might be in true peril.
Griffyn rode over the narrow bridge spanning the moat and ducked his head as he passed beneath the murderous wooden spikes of the portcullis gate hanging tautly overhead. If they lowered it now, he’d be skewered, skull on down. Helmed faces peered grimly at him from the narrow windows of the gatehouse, attended by crossbow quarrels aimed even more grimly, and directly, at his throat.
He rode Noir about halfway into the centre of the dark, silent bailey and, swinging his leg over, dropped to the cobbled ground. Hipping’s burly figure appeared at the top of the stairwell, backlit by the torches burning on the walls behind him.
“Welcome, Pagan,” he growled, grabbing Griffyn’s wrist in greeting. “We thought mayhap you’d changed your mind. Out doing dark, clandestine things, no doubt.”
Griffyn smiled faintly. “No doubt.”
Hipping threw his head back and guffawed, still pumping Griffyn’s arm. “Just as I like it.” His forearm spanned the same width as a sapling and his chest was half again as wide as a wagon wheel. Bushy grey and black hair hung down past his shoulders, and he had a wolf cape thrown over his shoulders. Glittering, shrewd eyes held Griffyn’s. “But your special guest is frothing at the mouth.”
Griffyn lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen Robert Beaumont froth from anywhere.”
“You’ve not been looking hard enough, my boy!” roared Hipping in laughter. “From across the Channel, ’tis hard to see, I admit. From where I sit, I see every twitter and shake of the great ones.”
Hipping hurried him inside the building. They paused at the top of a set of stairs leading down to the great hall. The air was stale and frigid. A few tapestries hanging limply on the walls looked like they contributed much of the mouldy odour to the room. It was dimly lit, but he could see that it was emptied of all retainers.
Hipping stomped down a long corridor and pushed back a tapestry to his right, gesturing Griffyn inside.
Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, rose. A brazier sat near the rough-hewn table that dominated the centre of the room, and there were several fat candles plunged into puddles of their own wax on the tabletop, but otherwise the room was set in darkness. A jug