Lord of Vengeance (42 page)

Wide blue eyes flicked up uncertainly, then down again, shuttered by a sweep of her long lashes. She squirmed, turning her head away from him. Her voice stammered when she finally found it, wobbling just above a whisper. “I...I think you take my meaning. Do not make me say it.”

Braedon grunted low in his throat, a predatory sound of pure male interest that should have scared her off like a frightened hare. “If you cannot say it, Lady Ariana, then how do you intend to
do
it?”

She swallowed hard, but that guileless gaze lifted once more and met his steady stare. “I told you. Name your price. Just...say you'll do this for me. Take me to France. Please.”

As he contemplated the sensual allure of her mouth, those lush pink lips that seemed so ripe for kissing, he wondered if he ought to test her, right then and there. Her scent--a mix of trepidation and stubborn resolve--drew him closer, heightening his body's awareness of her. All that was male in him, all that was untamed and animal, went taut with anticipation.

“You are that intent on reaching the Continent,” he challenged, his voice a soft growl, his breath steaming in the scant space between them. “Are you that determined to see your brother?”

She stared up at him in mute silence, her foolish tongue no doubt paralyzed by the weight of the bargain she was on the verge of striking. But there was no need for her to answer his question. Braedon could see the truth of it in her eyes. The determination, the desperation.

The stark, quivering fear.

Testing her, he reached up and touched her cheek, letting his fingers sift through the silky tendrils of her hair. She scarcely flinched at the contact. Only the slightest tremor of her indrawn breath, and the sudden skitter of her pulse beneath his fingertips as they curled around her nape, betrayed her anxiety at his touch. She held herself very still, her eyes on his as he gradually pulled her to him.

His desire thrummed as their bodies came together. At the feel of her pressed so deliciously against his thighs and abdomen, his sex stirred, his arousal swift and complete. She had to feel his interest, no doubt she saw it in his hungry gaze, in the flaring of his nostrils as he greedily breathed her in. Innocent or nay, she was old enough to know what he was about in that moment. She was far too clever not to understand what she encouraged with her rash offer. Yet she did not shriek in virginal terror or make the slightest effort to pull away.

He didn't know whether to be elated or dismayed.

Irritated, he decided, realizing just now that she truly was that desperate to reach France. Desperate enough to consider giving herself to a virtual stranger--a ruthless, dangerous man, Braedon acknowledged wryly, who would be all too willing to collect on the debt when the time came.

He might have been tempted to sample some of his boon right there on the dock, if not for the rise of voices coming from farther down the wharf. Lifting his head, he turned his gaze over his shoulder and peered through a swirl of thin morning mist, to where a group of sailors had gathered. The knot of rough-looking men were watching him and the girl.

Ferrand's men.

One of them pointed and gave a shout. The group started running on the man's command, heading straight for Braedon's dock.

“Damn,” he cursed, shoving aside his enticing thoughts of a delectable tangle with the lady to thwart this current mayhem. “We have to go, my lady. Now.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and turned to haul her onto his ship. To his surprise, she dug her heels in and resisted. “Wait! My horses,” she said, shaking her head. “James's mount and mine are stabled back there, near the tavern. I can't leave them. I will need a mount once I reach France.”

“Too late for that, demoiselle.”

The sailors' shouts grew louder. Footsteps thundered on the wharf. Something whizzed over their heads and lodged in the cog's mast with a dull
thwunk!

A crossbow bolt. One of Ferrand's men paused to load another missile, then raised the weapon and let the second bolt fly. Another took up a similar position, leaning against a barrel to prepare a further attack.

“Down!” Braedon shouted to Ariana, bringing her under his arm. Hunched over with her, he ran a couple paces on the dock, pulling them out of the arrow's deadly path. It missed its mark by a hairbreadth and splashed into the icy river. He crouched low and ran to untie the last line, releasing the cog from its slip. “If you're coming with me, demoiselle, come now.”

With a shriek, she ran the handful of steps to his ship and gave him her hand to help her up onto the deck. Braedon shoved off from the pier and shifted the cog's wide sail to catch a gust of chilly morning air.

“Stay down,” he instructed her, directing her to the forecastle at the head of the cog's deck. The elevated square structure rose up on squat, sturdy beams, one of two small watchtowers at either end of the vessel, which also served as the sole means of protection from the elements. “Stay beneath here,” he ordered her. “Don't move until I tell you.”

She scrambled into place with a quick nod while Braedon ran for the rudder at the stern. Ferrand's men launched a few more bolts, but the cog caught wind and was already gliding out of range, sailing off into the wide swell of the Thames.

Braedon steered the ship upriver as efficiently as he could, wondering whose head Ferrand wanted more: his, or Lady Mayhem's. He glanced to where she huddled on the foredeck, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them. Her eyes were wild, fixed on him as if waiting for reassurance. Her lush lower lip trembled, caught between the neat white line of her teeth. She was shivering and scared beneath the forecastle, but she was safe.

God help her if she trusted
him
to keep her that way.

Braedon swore under his breath as he left London in his wake and headed for the estuary that would set him on a course toward the Channel.

Toward France, the place of his birth...very nearly the scene of his demise.

Jesu. What had he gotten himself into?

HEART OF THE HUNTER is available now, wherever ebooks are sold.

~*~

HEART OF THE FLAME (Book 2)

Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award Nominee

“A richly imagined, paranormal-tinged historical . . .

dark, exquisitely sensual and beautifully written.”
–Booklist

Six months in an enemy's dungeon might have broken a weaker man, but former Templar knight Kenrick of Clairmont has emerged from imprisonment with an unyielding determination, and consumed by a single daunting quest: to find the Dragon Chalice, a mystical treasure said to grant its bearer unlimited power. It is a dangerous chase, one that pits Kenrick against foes skilled in dark, deadly arts. But no obstacle will prove more treacherous--nor more seductively lethal--than the fiery beauty called Haven.

Caught up in the battle for the Chalice, Haven survives a night of terror that leaves her wounded and near death. Her memory scorched by fever, Haven awakens to find herself in the care of the forbidding, handsome Kenrick, who offers his protection in return for her alliance. A tenuous trust is formed between them, which soon ignites into a fierce passion neither can deny. But Haven's memory of her past is slowly beginning to surface, and it will threaten the fragile bond she and Kenrick share--and embroil them in a fight for their very lives. . . .

~*~

EXCERPT

Cornwall, England

May, 1275

He entered the place slowly, his footsteps hesitant now that he had breached the threshold. After so long an absence from his Father's house, he was not at all sure he would be welcome. He doubted he would be heard. But embraced or nay, his heart was heavy, and he knew of nowhere else to lay his burdens. The blame here, however, was wholly his own; he reckoned he would carry that for the rest of his days.

Fine silver spurs rode at the heels of his boots, ticking softly on the smooth stone floor as he advanced, their tinny music the only disturbance of sound in the vacant chamber. Unwarmed, unlit save for the hazy overcast glare that washed in through a high arched window, the vaulted space held the cool stillness of a tomb. Fitting, he thought, his eyes yet burning from the sight that had greeted him upon his arrival.

For a moment, as he reached the end of his path, the knight could only stand there, his limbs leaden from his days of travel, his throat scorched and dry like the bitter chalk of ash.

Golden head bowed, he closed his eyes and sank to his knees on the floor.

“
Pater noster, qui es in caelis...”

The prayer fell from his lips by rote, familiar as his own name. Kenrick of Clairmont had said this prayer a thousand times, nay, countless repetitions--a hundred times a day for seven days straight, as was required every time one of his Templar brethren had fallen. Although he was no longer of the Order, he wanted to believe that where his vow was broken, some scrap of his faith might still remain. The prayer he recited now was for a friend and that man's family, for Randwulf of Greycliff and the wife and young son who once lived in this place.

Each breath Kenrick drew to speak held the cloying tang of smoke and cinder. Soot blackened the floor of the chapel where he knelt, as it did the walls of the small tower keep beyond. The place was in ruin, all of it dead and cold some weeks before he had arrived.

Rand and his cherished family...gone.

Kenrick needed not question why, or whom. The annihilation bore the stamp of Silas de Mortaine, the man who had held him hostage in a Rouen dungeon for nigh on half a year, and surely would have killed him anon, had it not been for his daring rescue a few months ago. Kenrick found it hard to maintain his relief at that thought now. While he was recuperating from his torture, Rand and his loved ones were meeting a hellish end.

All because of him.

All because of a secret pact he had shared with his friend and brother-in-arms, a pledge sealed more than a year ago at this humble Cornish manor near Land's End.

God's blood.

If he had known what it would cost Rand, he never would have sought his help.

“
...sed libera nos a malo...”

Too late, he thought, bitter with grief and remorse. De Mortaine's evil was inescapable. His grasp was far-reaching. He was a menacing force, a wealthy man who dealt in dark magic and commanded a small army of mercenary beasts to assist him in his malevolent goals. He wanted the Dragon Chalice, a legendary treasure of mystical origins. Kenrick had stumbled upon the Chalice tales in his work for the Order. In truth, he had thought it mere myth, until he had held part of the fabled treasure in his hands and witnessed the astonishing breadth of its powers.

The Dragon Chalice was real, and the carnage here was merely one more demonstration of Silas de Mortaine's intent to claim the Chalice for his own. For Kenrick of Clairmont, who still bore the scars of his incarceration, the travesty surrounding him at Rand's keep was further proof of why he could not allow de Mortaine to win.

Not at any cost.

“Amen,” he growled, then brought himself to his feet in the charred nave of the chapel.

For a moment, he allowed his gaze to settle on the wreckage of the place, at the modest gold crucifix hanging above the altar, unscathed. He bit back the wry curse that rose to his tongue, but only barely.

Not even God could stop de Mortaine from visiting his wrath on these noble folk.

A mild blasphemy to think such a thing, particularly in a place of worship. All the worse that it should come from a man once sworn into God's service, first as a novitiate monk, then, later, as a Knight of the Temple of Solomon.

“Saint” was what Rand and his friends had often called Kenrick in their youth, a name given in jest for his rigid nobility and scholarly ways.

But those days were long past. He would waste no further time dwelling on old memories than he would now afford his grief. There would be time for both once his business here was concluded.

As eager as he had been to arrive earlier that day, now he longed to be away. His scalp itched beneath the cropped cut of his hair, a lingering reminder of his captivity, when his head and beard had crawled with lice. He had cut it all away at first chance, preferring to be clean shaven daily, his dark blond hair kept shorter than was stylish, curling just above the collar of his brown tunic and gambeson. He scratched at his nape, cursing the bitter reminder.

On second thought, he reflected, pivoting sharply, perhaps the niggling crawl of his scalp had more to do with the sudden feeling he had that he was not alone in the abandoned keep. There seemed a mild disturbance in the stillness of the air, as though someone--or something--breathed amid the death that permeated the place. Outside in the yard, one of the townsfolk who had witnessed the carnage waited with Kenrick's mount. The graybeard's portly form had not moved from where he stood.

His sharp blue gaze flicked into every shadowed corner, quickly assessing his surroundings. Nothing stirred. Nothing met his eye but cold stone and vacant silence. The chapel, like the adjacent tower keep, was empty. He was alone here after all.

That there were few around to meet him when he arrived, nary a peasant or neighbor willing to come forth and speak with him about what they might have witnessed, would have seemed unsettling had this not been Cornwall. Folk were different in this far-flung end of the realm. They kept to their own affairs, and they were not in the habit of welcoming strangers.