“What do you seek, my lady?”
Glancing over her shoulder, she held him in her steady gaze. With her heart thudding in her throat, she forced a smile. “I was wondering—where will you bury my body?”
Her guileless question struck him like a dash of ice water in the face. For a few precious moments, Sandor had almost succeeded in forgetting who he was and why he was standing on the edge of the world with a butterfly in his hands.
Behind his mask, he blinked. “I had not given thought to that,” he confessed with honesty. No one had said anything to him about disposing of her body—only cutting out her heart.
She turned in his arms so that she faced him. Sandor instinctively pulled her closer to him. The wall walk was far too narrow for much maneuvering. He looked down at her. The wind whipped her dark cloud of hair in all directions, making her seem almost otherworldly. Her lithe body molded against his. His blood, already heated by her presence, sizzled through his veins.
The lady cocked her head. “The warrant plainly states that you are to bury me deeply in the ground.”
He couldn’t help smiling at her, though his heart hung like a stone at her words. “I am glad that one of us can read that paper. I dare not disobey the King’s commands,” he bantered.
Her lower lip trembled a little in the most provocative way. He was tempted to kiss it, but common sense and his lifelong discipline to distance himself from the unclean gadji stopped him. He was expected to kill her, and he had to keep reminding himself of that increasingly disagreeable fact.
She arched one raven’s-wing brow. “’Tis a great shame that my time with you will be…ah…so short, for I could teach you your letters.”
Sandor would have liked that. Unlike the rest of his clan, he had always harbored a secret desire to read and write. And the beautiful gadji would have been a very pleasing teacher. Banish such foolish woolgathering, Sandor! Remember that she is a walking dead person.
He looked over her shoulders at the mountain peak on the far side of the valley. “I am Rom. We have no need for schooling since there is no holy book for us to read.”
Lady Gastonia stared up at him with surprise in her sapphire eyes. “You do not have the Bible?”
Her question amused him. “Our storytellers say that in the beginning the Lord God handed out His laws to all the peoples of the world. The Jews in the Holy Land wrote down the laws on stone tablets, then later in the scrolls of their Torah. The Christians wrote God’s words in their Bible. The Moors of the desert wrote their laws in the Koran, but the Rom?” He shrugged with a wry grin. “My people were, as always, very poor and they had no paper, so they wrote down God’s laws on cabbage leaves. Unfortunately, a hungry donkey came along and ate up the leaves. That is why we have no book to read.”
She regarded him for a long moment then said, “’Tis a tale for children. It cannot possibly be true.”
He brushed the tip of her nose with his forefinger. He couldn’t help himself. “Who knows? But ’tis a good story all the same.”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her delicate pink tongue. “I would love to hear more of your stories, monsieur. The day is still very young.”
He frowned. Why did she have to remind him of the time? He must be on his way to London before nightfall. His cousin’s stay in the Tower’s dank pit grew longer because of his procrastination. Sandor gritted his teeth.
He guided her toward the open archway that led back inside the fortress. “We burn daylight, my lady. Your company has made me forgetful of my duty.”
She gasped as he pushed her down the dark stairway. “You are going to…to do it now?”
He sighed heavily, his voice filled with anguish. “My will is not my own.”
Spinning around, she placed her hands against his chest. Her warmth seeped through his cold skin, straight to his heart. He stopped in his tracks.
“One thought more before you snuff out my life,” she said in a rush. “The day is cold, the ground probably frozen. No doubt ’twill take you several hours to dig a grave that is deep enough to hold me. If you allow me to sit by your side and keep you company, perchance your work will seem lighter and will take less time.”
“You want to watch while I dig your grave?”
Swallowing, she nodded slowly. “Would you rather have my stiffening corpse by your side? Cold, grim comfort indeed for such tedious work. Let me live a little longer and I could talk with you, mayhap even sing you a song or two, though I must confess I have the voice of a raven, not a lark.”
He rubbed the back of his neck while he pondered her latest request. How had things become so complicated? Yet, her argument had a point. Sandor most certainly preferred to keep her alive for as long as possible.
“By my troth, yours is a silver tongue, my lady. I feel sorry for your future husband—” He stopped when he realized that she would never have the chance to marry. “Forgive my foolish words. I must be light-headed from want of food.”
She gave him a sweet smile. “There is nothing to forgive. I forswore the joys of marriage when I dedicated myself to God. I always expected to die a virgin—just not quite so soon as now.” She stared down at her feet.
Appreciating the beauty of the woman before him, Sandor thought all chaste vows, no matter how religious, were a waste of the good God’s gifts. Since he could not think of anything to say in reply, he merely guided her back toward her cell. She stopped at the door.
“In good Saint Michael’s name, Master Headsman, tell me now what you intend to do with me so that I may prepare myself.” Her shoulders shook a little.
He blew out his cheeks. “Break my fast—and yours if you have an appetite for it,” he snapped more roughly than he had intended.
Gazing up at him, her eyes moist with a film of unshed tears, she said, “Aye, sir, I would be grateful to share another meal with you.”
Not trusting himself to say anything else, Sandor pointed to her stool. After she crossed the tiny room and took her seat, he strode quickly down to the guardroom at the end of the passageway, grabbed up his saddle bag and wineskin, and returned to the lady’s chamber before she had the sense to realize that he had left the door wide-open. Of course, there was no place she could go on foot unless she took it into her head to jump off the parapet, an idea that Sandor sincerely doubted. When he stepped though her doorway, he found her in silent prayer.
Respecting her private devotions, he busied himself with unwrapping the food he had bought at the village at the bottom of the mountain pass. Despite his attraction to this lady, his deep-seated prejudice toward all gadje caused him to separate her food from his. If she did not finish the wedge of cheese he cut for her or the chunk of the brown bread that he pulled from his loaf for her, he could never eat the leftovers himself. While he poured wine into her cup and watered it, he marveled at his peculiar situation—he could kill this gadji but not eat the food that she had touched lest she pollute him. When their simple breakfast was ready, he cleared his throat to attract her attention.
“Amen,” she said aloud, then made the sign of the cross—a popish ritual that even Sandor knew had been forbidden by the King’s religious laws. For this simple act, she had been condemned to death.
She smiled when she saw the food on the small table before her. “’Tis a feast,” she murmured before biting into the hard cheddar.
With approval in his heart, Sandor watched her enjoy their small meal. “My grandmother always said that a good woman was one who ate a poor dish and praised it for its richness.” Actually, old Towla Lalow had described this trait as belonging to a good wife, but Sandor