From nowhere came the sound of a snorting horse, and a raw-boned rampager appeared from between two giant oak trees. He looked like a furry error, all slanting edges and legs. He wore a bitless bridle inlaid with silver, though, a headpiece that would cost more than a bribe for the Nottingham sheriffdom. Costly finery for an error.
The warrior made a gesture with his hand and the horse started picking his way over. She watched as he ran an affectionate hand over his horse’s neck, murmuring in the tongue of the Normans to his obviously beloved mount.
Her gaze drifted aimlessly, then froze. Why, there was her slipper, huddled along the side of the road like a frightened child, half-hidden beneath the muck. She hobbled over and picked it up. By all the saints, how had she thought to save her saviour with that?
And what was she to do now? Her original destination, so swiftly planned as she tripped and ran down the streets of London, was St. Alban’s Abbey. But the monks were twenty miles away, and unhorsed, that had become an insurmountable distance.
She put her hand to her forehead. Everything seemed sinister. The mists, the dark, rutted road, and most especially the sword-bearing stranger who was watching her now with grey-blue eyes, his body motionless. What before had been red-hot fire in her blood became ice-cold fear, and it slid down her back in knife thrusts.
“So,” he said with a booming roar—at least that’s how it sounded—“what am I to do with you?”
The chill plunged deeper into her spine. What did that mean: do with her? Hadn’t she spent the whole first part of this evening assuring no man should do anything with her?
To this awful end.
She shoved her foot into her slipper. Cold, wet mud slopped out the sides. “My thanks for saving me, sir, but there is nothing you are required, nor invited, to do with me.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I am truly grateful for the risks you have taken here,” she added. “Not only to your person, but any reputation you might have.”
He didn’t appear overly concerned about that last, considering that nothing about his grey-eyed, taut-bodied regard changed. He didn’t appear very pleased. She didn’t have many choices. She cleared her throat.
“You wouldn’t be pilgrimming towards Saint Alban’s Abbey, now, would you?”
He shook his head.
“No, I didn’t think so.” She took a breath. There was one other option, much closer, although she did not know the way herself. But perhaps this knight did. Of course, it was not the safest option. Papa had always said Lord Aubrey of Hippingthorpe, who had estates nearby, was a man with a ridiculous name and a most dangerous temperament.
Well, Gwyn decided, pushing her foot deeper into the cold muck filling her slipper, danger was really quite relative now, wasn’t it?
She looked up at her saviour. “You wouldn’t be able to direct me towards Hippingthorpe Hall, would you?”
The smallest flicker altered his gaze. “Are you to name every stop along the road to York?” he asked coldly.
She drew back, hugged her tattered cloak around her shoulders, and lifted her chin a little bit. “No. Of course not. My apologies for all the…troubles. May I recompense you?” She began fumbling with the bag of silver tied around her waist.
“No.”
“Are you certain? Your tunic was torn, and…?” She drifted off as he crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her like he might some heretofore-unknown insect.
“Well, then,” she remarked brightly and turned on her heel. With great dignity, she began hiking down the highway, a lone, dark, limping figure, damp skirts clinging to her knees, which she kicked away on every alternate step.
“For certes, I stepped onto a strange path when I left the house tonight,” she muttered, pushing unruly strands of muck-covered hair out of her face. “If I thought life was a thing in my control, I have been proven wrong.” She fumbled to remove the heavy clump of fabric that edged its way higher and higher between her legs. “And I do not like that.”
Behind her, Griffyn ‘Pagan’ Sauvage stood for a long time, staring down the road. A breeze crept up and blew persistently around the hem of his cape.
The last thing he needed, the very last thing in all the world, was another burden. Tonight of all nights.
Griffyn’s mission was clear and uncomplicated: Prepare England for invasion. Lure the powerful, enlist the merchants, persuade the wise, and bribe the fools, but come hell or high water, clear the way, because Henri fitzEmpress, Count d’Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and rightful king of England, was poised to blow through the country like a tempest and conquer it from Sea to Wall.
Landing in secret on the English coast six months ago, Griffyn had met with dozens of war-weary lords since then, men balanced on the edge of a knife, and convinced them Henri’s blade was the sharper. He had done things no other man had been able to do, and he was planning to do them one last time, tonight, in the most vital meeting of his entire mission. At a remote hunting lodge half a mile off the king’s highway. One carefully-arranged meeting with the most powerful baron in Stephen’s realm, the earl of Leicester, Robert Beaumont. Turn him, and they had the country.
The name of that hunting lodge? Hippingthorpe. The very place she’d asked to go.
Could she be more in the way? Literally, in his path.
The fate of two kingdoms rested on this meeting. Turn Beaumont and England would fall like chaff.
And Griffyn could finally go home.
A flash of pain eddied into his chest. Dimmed by time, it was always there, a burning ache: home. Sweetly scented hilltops, primeval forests, and heather bracketing the everlasting moors. Mountains and seas. Wild, windswept, home.
He did not need a distraction. Not tonight, not ever.
He watched her lone, dark, limping figure diminish in the distance for a moment longer, then cursed softly and swung away.
Chapter Five
Gwyn sniffed and peered optimistically up the highway. Then she scowled. St. Alban’s did not appear to be any closer. Then again, she’d only been walking for about ten minutes.
“I suppose I’ll have to sleep in a hollowed tree stump tonight, and hope no wild boars find me too tempting to resist.” She wrinkled her nose. “With the way I smell, I’ll attract them from all around.”
She glanced up at the sky. Clouds were moving in. Her brows came down in an angry glare. “Perfect. I could have predicted a storm. Of course it would rain. Why not send a cloud of locusts and splay me with boils next? ’Twould be a fitting end to this wretched night.”
She was trembling from head to soggy foot, chilled from the outside in. Her fingertips were numb, her knees trembling from cold and spent emotion. Lifting a hand, she wiped her nose and scrubbed at her eyes, which were beginning to leak. “No crying,” she ordered in a furious whisper. “You brought this on yourself. Headstrong, foolish, wretched girl.”
She kept walking, stumbling through mud puddles and over a small crest in the road. Her legs wobbled and threatened to give out fully. Part of the reason became clear when she looked down: the heel of her slipper had given out completely.
She plunked herself on the ground and wrenched it off. Accursed thing. What good was a pair of shoes if they couldn’t stand up to a night of combat? Her dress was torn from collar to waist, and she clutched feebly at the shreds of silk, trying to pull them tighter, feeling colder and more alone than she ever had in her life.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The question came from above. She craned her neck back and stared into the pewter eyes of her saviour. He sat astride his raw-boned horse with an easy grace, and against the backdrop of night sky and blowing