Behold the Dawn (15 page)

Why shouldn’t he treat her like Marek? They were not so very different after all. They had both been endangered, friendless children, and he had rescued them both through the misguided sense of compassion that was forever entangling him with the dregs of mankind.

“Countess.” He stood at the horse’s hindquarters and did not move until she looked down at him. “I did nothing that did not have to be done. If the Baptist told you Matthias was a good man, he did not speak the truth.”

She shook her head. Some of the tightness seemed to ebb from her shoulders, but not enough to make his effort worth the trouble. “I believe you that you did not murder him.” She lowered her eyes, until her eyelashes brushed her cheek. “But if indeed you silenced this man of Claidmore, you made a terrible mistake.”

Dusk had closed upon them by the time Annan spotted a dark shape amid the brush fifty paces ahead.

He reined to a stop, one hand raised to keep Mairead silent.

“What is it,” she whispered.

He shook his head. All he could see was a shadow that could easily have been a boulder—but wasn’t. His free hand settled on the hilt of the Baptist’s sword.

Ahead, the object shifted, and a horse’s tail flicked through the air. Annan nodded, his lungs hardening. It was as he had thought.

He had no way of knowing if the horse’s owner was an old enemy or someone about to become a new one. Either way, he and Mairead had stumbled too close to leave without being seen. And that left only one option: attack now, while he yet had the element of surprise.

“Stay here.” He withdrew the sword from its sheath on the saddlebow and dismounted, swinging his leg over the courser’s neck and dropping to the ground with a soft thump. Neither the dark horse nor its owner seemed to notice.

He held the courser long enough for Mairead to ease forward into the saddle and take the reins. “If I shout for you to leave, go and don’t look back. Follow the river until you reach the sea. I’ll come after you if I can.”

Her head dipped in a short nod, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth.

He drew the infidel saber from his belt. Keeping low, he crept through the sand. When he was near enough to discern the slight figure of a man crouching on the other side of the horse, he filled his lungs and charged, uttering the battle cry of the Moslems. “
Le ilah ile alah
!”

With a gust of breath, the horse shied hard to the side. The animal’s owner spun on the balls of his feet to see his attacker, then turned and lunged for a weapon that lay about a pace to his right. With a quickness Annan could only envy, the stranger whirled, a short sword lifted before his face.

Annan was on him with a wordless bellow, even as the back of his mind grabbed at the realization that the uplifted sword was of Western design. He brought his saber down in a hammering blow that tore the sword from his opponent’s hand.

“St. Jude—”

From beneath unruly hair, a pair of hazel eyes glared up at him, and Annan stopped his second blow at its apex. He whipped the saber around to touch the soft flesh under the jaw and lifted the other’s head until he could see through the shadows’ distortion into his prisoner’s face.

With a growl, he cast the saber aside. “Peregrine Marek! I thought you on your way to Jerusalem by now.”

Marek scrambled to his feet, slapping sand from his breeches. “And I thought you bloody well cold in the ground! What’s the meaning of sneaking up on me like you was your own ghost and scaring me near to death!”

“If you’d been paying attention, no one could have sneaked up on you.” Annan slid his sword beneath Marek’s fallen blade and flipped it into the air so he could catch it. He thrust the hilt against Marek’s chest. “How many times have I told you to always keep this at your side? Had I been a Saracen or a marauder, not even St. Jude would have kept you from having your guts thrown into the river.”

Marek frowned as he sheathed his sword. “Having a sword didn’t much protect you from that Turk’s arrow.” His gaze traveled to Annan’s shoulder. “Speaking of which, why hasn’t Saladin dragged you back to Jerusalem behind his favorite donkey?”

Annan ignored the question. He cast a glance round Marek’s slipshod preparations for passing the night. “You make a terrible camp, laddie.” He drove his sword deep enough into the sand that it stood on its own, then bent to pick up the saber. “Bring your palfrey farther into the brush, and if you haven’t already done it, fill your wineskin. I’ll be back. If you’ve got any
viands
, now’d be a good time to break them out.”

“Yes, dear ol’ Master.”

Annan shot him a glare.

Marek blinked. “I don’t suppose now would be a good time to mention that the strain of watching one’s master fall in battle should diminish one’s time of servitude by at least half?”

“No, it would not.”

“Then I also suppose this isn’t a good time to mention that, since you were dead and everything, I was rather expecting to be in my Maid Dolly’s arms before Christmastide?”

Something cracked in the brush behind, and Marek’s palfrey snorted. Annan spun, saber whipping in front of his face.

From the deep shadows of the brush emerged the gray head of the courser. Mairead sat his back like a queen, her eyes wide open and her mouth rigid. She took in the scene at a glance, her gaze flitting over Marek, then coming back to Annan.

Lowering the sword, he stepped forward to take the courser’s bit. His brows tightened into a glower despite himself. “I told you to stay where you were.”

“Everything went quiet. I didn’t know what to think.” Her eyes flicked back to Marek, and her lip slid between her teeth.

Annan let out a sigh that sounded more like a growl. “It’s all right.” He looked back to Marek. “He’s a friend.”

“St. Jude.” Marek stood stock-still, sword halfway out of its sheath, a tilt to his mouth that hinted at both laughter and bewilderment. Annan hoped the lad would show a little sense and choose to express the latter. The last thing he needed was for Marek to laugh his head off at the idea of his master escorting a countess through hostile territory.

But Marek showed more aplomb than Annan would have given him credit for. He drew his sword with a flourish, slammed its hilt against his heart, and plunged to one knee. “Peregrine Marek, gracious lady—forever in your service.”

Mairead’s mouth opened slightly, but a lady of high blood didn’t gape when people pledged their allegiance. She dropped her head in a bow. “Thank you, Peregrine Marek.” Then she glanced at Annan.

Marek looked up expectantly, and Annan raised an arm in a futile gesture, knowing he would never be able to explain the lad’s quirks before Marek had a chance to demonstrate any more of them.

“He is indentured,” he said at last. “Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to escape the siege.” He bit back a weary breath. “Marek, this is the Lady Mairead, Countess of Keaton.”

Annan could sense her quick glance in his direction, her question—and probably relief—that he had not said
former
Countess of Keaton. But he had done it for his own sake as well as hers. Marek’s charm, along with any tact he possessed, would die an instant death should Annan announce that this striking noblewoman—with her wide eyes and tousled hair—was his wife.

Marek’s eyebrows lifted. “
The
Keaton?”

As Annan led the courser forward into the open slot of space between the trees, he fixed the lad with a warning look. Having to deal with Mairead’s tears would be one trial too many for the day. And Marek certainly wasn’t entitled to know the whole story. “The earl requested I escort her to a convent in Orleans,” he said, and left it at that.

“Then I, too, pledge myself to your safety, lady.” Marek bowed his head, then rose to his feet, sheathing the sword. “Welcome to my humble camp.”

“Thank you.” For the first time in the days he had known her, Annan heard a smile in her voice. He glanced at her, and in the last rays of light, he could see that the smile was fixed on Marek.

Was it any wonder she found Marek less intimidating than him? Even when Marek tried, his nature hardly lent itself to destruction. Marek was the one who had argued to come on this Crusade, not because he had old bodies from the past to bury, but because he desired absolution for his wayward master. Marek, superstitious wretch that he was, was the one who regularly invoked the saints and covered himself with the blessing of the Cross. Marek was the one who named the horses.

Annan stood back, one hand on the bridle, the other on the courser’s damp neck, and watched Marek help the countess down. She did not shy from Marek’s touch, nor look away from him, though she had known him only a handful of moments. Had she accepted him so quickly because she now had someone to buffer her from Annan?

He turned to lead the courser aside. Why should he care? It was not his duty to win the countess’s trust. He was to take her to Orleans, nothing more; and for that, he did not need her trust.

This feeling wasn’t the jealousy of a husband for his bride. Had it been that, Marek would have been set in place the moment his mouth had fallen open at the sight of her.

Annan was not jealous. How could he be, when there was nothing to be jealous of? She was William’s wife even now, and would die William’s wife, as far as he was concerned.

But this fear she had of him gored something deep inside. As Marek led her to a clump of brush he had gathered for his own bed—no doubt heedless of the thought that such would be clear evidence to anyone wishing to track him—Annan stopped the tired courser at a nearby tree and tossed the reins over a low-hanging branch.

When a man became such that a woman feared him, not because of who he was, but because of what he had done, he had probably crossed that irrevocable line of eternity Marek was always haranguing about.

Annan rubbed his palm across the horse’s hard shoulder and summoned the bitter smile that had been his shield against these truths for such a long time. It didn’t matter. Within two score days, the lady would be ensconced in the walls of St. Catherine’s. And then, perhaps, it would at last be time for him to seek in earnest an opponent with an arm stronger than his own.

Chapter X

BY THE TIME Annan finished unsaddling the courser and tethering him in the brush, out of kicking range of the bay palfrey, Marek had remembered to fill his wineskin from the river and haul out his sack of food. His supply was more than ample, which was hardly surprising. The lad had an appetite to rival any dozen bloated noblemen.

Annan lugged the saddle through the gathering darkness and dropped it next to Marek’s crouched form. He could just make out the dark shadow that was Mairead, still poised upon the leafy
couch
to which Marek had led her. He could see the subtle movement of her head, the white glitter of her eyes as she looked at him.

“Just a moment, lady,” Marek said, and Annan glanced down in time to see the skip of an orange spark and hear the scratch of flint against steel.

“Marek. No fire.”

The lad looked up at him. “You can’t very well let her shiver all night.”

“I said no.” He bunched up the linen shawl, now dry, and tossed it at Mairead’s feet. One didn’t build fires when facing possible pursuit. Keeping the countess safe was far more important than keeping her warm.

“But we can’t see a blithering thing!”

Ah, so that was it. The laddie wanted to admire his new companion. “I said no.” He turned toward the river, then stopped. He could hear Mairead shifting in her bed of boughs, no doubt believing this was the way he treated his servants all the time.

He forced an exhale past his clenched teeth. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need her to trust his decisions.

Didn’t need it, perhaps, but despite himself he
wanted
her to—wanted her not to look at him with wide-eyed fear because all she could see was the bloodstained tourneyer.

He stayed where he was, arms at his sides, still facing the river, but made himself speak softly—slowly—with only a trace of the growl that had become his long-ingrained habit. “If we can see by firelight, then we can also be seen. We can fight the cold better than we can marauders.”

Marek let out a little snort that wasn’t half as impertinent as Annan expected. The boughs shifted again beneath Mairead’s weight, but she said nothing.

Annan left it at that and started back down to the river.

Mairead watched Annan’s dark shape retreat down the hill to the riverbank and found herself blowing out a sigh of relief. She shouldn’t fear him. He had done nothing to her—
would
do nothing to her.

But he was so volatile, so abrupt. And if what he said this afternoon was true, then he was a black mark in the sight of God and saints alike.

Across from her, Marek clucked his tongue. “Well.” He turned to her. “It’s my personal opinion that my master has spent rather too much time avoiding humankind.”

“Indeed.” She picked up the shawl from where Annan had tossed it and drew it across her lap. Her eyes sought his silhouette against the river.

“Well, before he rescued me anyway. I’ve done me best to cure him, but he still behaves like a troll most of the time.”

“Rescued you?”

Marek pushed to his feet. “This old shopkeeper back in Glasgow wasn’t being all that generous about the sharing of vittles with a starving laddie like meself. He was going to heave me into the dungeon since I couldn’t pay him.” Marek stepped over to his food purse and began rummaging through its contents. “Annan saw him chasing after me, and he paid the bloke his money.”

“Why?”

“It is my suspicion that he was in search of a top-rate servant and bodyguard.”

She raised her brow. “Bodyguard?” That Marcus Annan would need a bodyguard was absurd in itself, but this lad didn’t even have the width to stand in front of his master and act a shield.

“Well.” The word wasn’t quite a concession. Marek came away from the sack with a handful of food and brought it back to her. “Cheese, my lady? I’ve some fish and crusts as well.”

She accepted the pieces and laid them on the shawl. Marek backed off to what he apparently deemed a respectful distance and sat down cross-legged in front of her. He seemed a good lad, even if he was hewn from a rough log.