Disarmed by a woman again! Will’s confusion mounted as his vision began to fade. Her long, disheveled braid brushed over his face, teasing his senses with the scent of flowers. Unfamiliar, but clearly a woman—not Gillian, however.
But who was she? He squinted up at her, but her features blurred in the uneven light. His strength gone, his arm collapsed beneath him. His head hit the ground, and he knew no more.
“Hellfire, he’s swooned.” Lady Julianna d’Arcy grabbed hold of the fallen man’s mail-clad arm—caught beneath him when he collapsed—and shifted it to rest at his side. Her touch gentle, she brushed his hair away from his brow with a frown. Blood welled under her fingers and ran down his face; more dark streaks of it oozed sluggishly from his neck and arm.
He clearly needed more help than she could give him here. She grabbed the hem of her surcoat and sliced away two strips of fabric with the long dagger lying beside him on the road. “Rolf, come help me bind his wounds, then you and Bart may move him.”
Bart knelt on the far side of the victim and carefully raised the man so she could wind the material round his brow while Rolf tended to his throat. “Move him where, milady?” Bart asked.
She knotted the linen and used the end of it to blot away the worst of the blood besmirching the man’s face. “Back to Tuck’s Tower, of course.” Clambering to her feet, she took up the dagger and thrust it into her boot top, next to her own.
“Bring a stranger within our walls, milady?” Bart protested as he rose.
“He’s no danger to anyone in his present condition,” Julianna pointed out tartly. By the saints, would he ever cease to look upon her as a child? Her father had been gone for nigh on a year now, her mother slightly more, yet unlike most of her people, Bart continued to quietly challenge her authority to rule her lands, treating her instead as the cherished young lady of Tuck’s Tower.
Something she’d never sought to be—and had certainly never been.
Rolf, waiting patiently near the injured man’s head, motioned for Bart to help lift him, but her father’s old retainer ignored him and moved closer to Julianna. “What of later, Lady Julianna?” he asked low-voiced. “Once he’s healed? What will you do then, if he turns out to be dangerous?”
“You dare to question me, Bart—to question me here, now?” Though she kept her tone as restrained as Bart’s, she made certain he could not mistake her displeasure. “Make no mistake, we shall discuss this later.” Biting back a snarl of frustration, Julianna spun away and bent to grasp the victim’s feet. She nodded to Rolf and they lifted the man. “Now is hardly the time,” she added. “At this point, the poor fool’s more like to die here in the road.”
Though ’twas a struggle for her—the fellow was tall and solidly built—she didn’t permit herself so much as a grunt of discomfort as they carried him to her mount.
“I’ll take him with me,” she said, gratefully shifting her burden to a glowering Bart and climbing unassisted onto her mount.
It took three men, grumbling and complaining, to support the fellow and shift him into the saddle before her. Biting back a few curses of her own, Julianna fitted her arms about him to hold him more securely. His tall, lean body fit snug against her, his back to her front, making her all too aware of his muscled physique even through the layers of mail separating them.
She eased her hold a bit, making him groan and shift in her grasp and his empty scabbard bump against her leg. Tightening her hold again, she glanced about, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sword. If he survived, he’d not thank her for leaving the weapon behind in the forest.
And if he did not, ’twould be another blade to add to her own ever-dwindling arsenal. Though the thought made her feel like a grave robber, of late she’d reached the point where she could not afford to be too particular. As long as she wasn’t forced to turn outlaw…
“Rolf, find his sword and anything else that looks like it belongs to him,” she ordered. “His horse, as well, if it hasn’t run off. God willing, he’ll have need of them someday soon.”
Wheeling her mount, she led her troop along the moon-shadowed trail, doing her best to ignore the intriguing feel of the man’s weight pressing her into the saddle. She glanced down at the stranger’s face, at the strength no amount of blood and bruising could hide.
And prayed she’d not have cause to regret this night’s work.
Chapter Two
The torches along the walls of Tuck’s Tower glowed in the distance, a welcome greeting that lent Julianna the strength to hold on to the man slumped in her arms a bit longer. Never had the road from the forest to the keep seemed so long, nor her own resources so puny. She’d worked hard to perfect the ability to suppress any signs of exhaustion or weakness, yet this unknown man threatened to expose the woman she tried to hide beneath her mannish ways.
The weight of him, his muscled body nested against her, felt foreign in a deliciously intriguing way, making her aware of how different her own body was from his. Tall and lean, male. The scent of leather and armor, the subtle brush of his whiskered cheek against her neck…. That simple contact heightened her senses until her mind and body fair reeled from the overwhelming enticement of sound, scent and touch.
But the tide of heat that passed through her owed as much to embarrassment as to feminine awareness. To feel such things for a man nigh lifeless in her arms! What was wrong with her? Had she grown so desperate in her self-imposed chastity?
She shook her head in disgust. ’Twas an easy thing to live a chaste life when not faced with temptation. The good Lord knew she’d never before been tempted by any man at Tuck’s Tower.
Or elsewhere.
’Twas a good thing she had not, she thought wryly as she rode beneath the raised portcullis and nudged her mount toward the stables. For if she were to give herself to a man, she suspected her fragile and treasured authority over Tuck’s Tower and all who dwelled within its walls would come to an end.
And that, she would never allow to happen—not while she had breath in her body, and the support of her doting and powerful uncle—her overlord—behind her.
She’d willingly sacrifice herself for Tuck’s Tower, if need be.
Two of her men approached and eased the wounded man from her grasp, though she feared she’d not free herself of the feelings he’d engendered within her so readily. But she’d work to do it now, to settle the man and treat his injuries. For the sooner he recovered and left Tuck’s Tower, the less opportunity for her to do something she might regret.
Despite the late hour and her own state of exhaustion, Julianna took charge of seeing to her unexpected guest. The fact that outsiders seldom passed through their gates had made some of her people suspicious of every stranger, while others—mostly those too young to realize the threat a stranger could pose—would welcome anyone to Tuck’s Tower without a thought of caution. Julianna, however, had been taught vigilance nigh from the cradle; she would protect her own until time and experience allowed her to do otherwise.
They carried the man to a small chamber adjoining hers—a room equipped with stout doors that could be locked—and laid him upon a straw pallet on the floor. After she’d given them several low-voiced commands, the men-at-arms left.
Biting back a sigh of exhaustion, Julianna entered her chamber and collected the night candle from beside her bed, kindled it and returned to the storeroom to set the tall iron stand next to her patient. The thick taper cast its brightness too high to be of much use, although it gave her a clear enough look at him to see that the disheveled hair hanging to his shoulders, where not matted with blood,