“When the wild birds cry out over the marshes, the peasants say they echo Helquin’s long gallop through the centuries. I’d pretend to see him burst through the woods with all the battalions of hell at his heels.”
Rand grinned. “Would you run in terror from Helquin?”
“Certainly not. I would pretend to blow him all the way to the Zuyder Zee with a sixty-pound ball.”
He stopped walking, took her by the shoulders, and rolled his eyes. “I do not approve of your penchant for gunnery.”
Scowling, she struck him lightly on the chest. “Doubtless you would have me cloistered in a lady’s bower, carding wool.”
I would have you folded in my arms, he thought. Next to my heart. He gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I cannot dictate what you should or shouldn’t do. That’s not how it is between friends. But I would prefer you didn’t work with guns. I’ve seen the destruction they can wreak.”
“Very well, Rand the Gascon,” she said, her eyes glittering a challenge, “how would you defend a château?”
“With the might of men-at-arms and archers.”
“Knights.” She spat the word. “They indulge in looting and ransom.” Color rose to her cheeks, and Rand realized he’d discovered a topic she had often pondered, and not happily. She planted her hands on her hips. “Chivalry is but an empty spectacle, an excuse to plunder the weak.”
“Unscrupulous men, not the laws of chivalry, are to blame.”
“Chivalry is but a cloak to hide the excesses of their chevauchées.”
A sudden hideous thought struck him. “Have you been hurt by knights, Lianna? Is that why you disdain chivalry?”
She lowered her gaze. “Anyone who has smelled the smoke of a burning orchard, seen a baby spitted on a sword, heard the cries of a terrified woman, has been hurt by these men who call themselves knights.”
He swallowed hard. She was French; she’d seen these horrors, lived with them all her life. Still, she challenged everything he believed about knighthood. “Do you include me in your censure?”
She looked up. “Do you do those things?”
“No,” he said. “Never. Do you believe me?”
“I think you truly wish to protect the weak and uphold the faith. But I also think you are wrong to believe you can achieve this through chivalry.” She softened the blow by touching his cheek, adding, “You are that rare man, Rand, a man who cannot be touched by corruption.”
Her statement sent him into a spiral of self-reproach. Every lying word he told her would soon come back to haunt him. Unable to extricate himself from the dilemma, he started walking again, then surprised himself by asking, “What think you of archers?” Jesu, was he truly having such a conversation with a girl?
“Rabble,” she said. “Undisciplined rabble.”
“Can you dispute the success of the bowmen at Crécy and Poitiers?”
She glared. “A fine way for a Frenchman to speak, lauding English victories.”
Fool, he said to himself, she’ll find you out even sooner if you don’t guard your tongue. “I laud not the victories, only the way in which they were won. How many arrows could a master archer let fly in the time it takes to load and discharge a cannon?”
“A hundred arrows cannot bring down a stone wall. A single gun can.”
“What good is a firearm that hides the enemy in smoke?”
“What good is an arrow in a strong wind, a bowstring saturated by rain?”
Her vehemence delighted and disturbed him. Deliberately he sidestepped the challenge. “What good is arguing with a maid too precocious for her own welfare?”
She scowled, but he held her with a look of amused affection until the corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile. “You will never defeat my logic in this, sir knight,” she stated. “I am far too quick for you—in more ways than one.” She turned and ran down a grassy slope.
Laughing, he followed her lead past great elms, old yews, giant beeches, over half-buried stones and purplish mud, until he glimpsed the sea through rows of wind-torn hedges.
His caution swept away by her capriciousness and the lithe grace of her movements, he lunged forward and caught her around the waist. Her soft gasp tickled his ear as he swung her in the air. They tumbled together into the soft grass until, with gentle force, Rand pinned her beneath him. One hand bound her delicate wrists and held them above her head, while the other tiptoed in light caresses down her rib cage until she fairly shrieked for mercy.
“Who is the quicker now, pucelle?”
She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to yield. His fingers found and tickled each rib in turn, sending little shocks of awareness through him as her form and the warmth of her flesh came alive beneath her homespun smock.
Boldly he teased the flesh of her neck, his fingers rippling beneath the dense silk of her hair. Her skin was as smooth as ivory, as lustrous as a pearl. Wildly he wondered if she could feel the simmering heat of his desire, if she knew how close he was to letting his passion devour them both.
Sudden guilt flayed him. He was betrothed to another. Yet with Lianna his vows of chastity, of chivalry, flew on the wind, beyond the reach of reason.
As of its own accord, his touch changed to searching caresses, his fingers tracing her cheeks, her shoulders, the dainty line of her collarbone. He explored her form and texture, wanting to stamp her image on his soul. She stirred, and a small whimpering sound escaped her. “Who is the quicker now?” he asked again, forcing lightness into his tone. “Who?”
“You...oh, you,” she gasped.
Immediately Rand released her wrists, but he touched her still with languorous strokes. Bringing his face very close to hers, he studied the clouds of pink color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
“There is naught so heady,” he whispered, “as a battle won.”
“You do not play fair,” she replied breathlessly.
“Where you are concerned,” he said, “I forswear fairness.” The wind stirred the hedges, and a shadow drifted over her face, deepening the color of her eyes to opaque silver. She shifted beneath him, the slight movement bringing his every nerve to a state of burning aliveness.
“Lianna, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment we met.” He touched his lips at random over her flushed and startled face. “You make me want to forget who I am, to forget there’s a world and a time beyond this moment.”
She took a deep, dreamy breath, and he caught it with his mouth, absorbing the warm sweet nectar of her lips. The times he’d held a woman in his arms were few, but had he kissed a thousand women, he knew not one of them could seize his soul as Lianna did.
She lay still, naive, accepting. Her lips felt like moist velvet as he brushed them with his own. She tasted of morning dew and mystery, as if her body held some secret just out of his reach. He burned for her, longed to unlock the person she was, to peel away the layers of her outward identity and cast them aside like petals plucked from a daisy.
Madness, he thought, feathering kisses over her brow, into her hair. Madness to indulge in this forbidden tryst. But oh, how he wanted to explore the insanity. His hand found the sweet curve of her breast. He lifted his head. She eyed him with soft inquiry. Her lips were moist, love-bruised.
“We’d best start back,” he said reluctantly.
Wistfulness darkened her eyes. “Why?”
“Because