Passion's Exile (24 page)

‘Twas ridiculous. Surely Guillot was only flattering her—the French were notorious romantics.

Besides, Blade’s nobility changed nothing. First of all, there was no assurance that Blade was the same man Campbell had seen. Second, Blade had earned those shackles somehow, and not by throwing a woman to the chickens. They were probably justly deserved. Third, just because he looked at her as if she were an angel…an
angel
…

Lord, did he truly look upon her like that?

A rush of warmth effused her.

“Maybe, my lady, if it is true,” Guillot ventured, knotting his fingers nervously before him, “you might restore him.”

“What?”

Guillot dipped his eyes. “Sir Ian told me…what you did.”

“What I did?”

He nodded. “He is sure you must be an angel. Sir Ian said you saved him from himself.” He looked away, his mouth working. “If not for you, my lady—” He broke off, choked by emotion.

Rose finished the thought for him. Sir Ian might be dead.

The lad continued when he’d recovered his composure. “The outlaw, Blade, did me a similar kindness,” he said. “So it would seem you are both angels of mercy.” He chewed at his lip. “Forgive my boldness, my lady, but I believe perhaps you are meant to help the fallen knight, that you may hold the key to his shackles.”

Blade, done with his bath and dressed, held out his wrists while Wilham locked the shackles about them again.

Wilham shook his head, replacing the key chain around his neck. “Chains. Shackles. Ach! Ye should have cropped your hair like I did. ‘Tis far less trouble.”

Blade wandered toward the shuttered window, easing it open. An errant breeze sighed through the treetops and ruffled his freshly washed hair as he gazed down to the walled garden below. She was there, among the others—her black tresses gleaming in the sunlight, her scarlet dress like a velvety blossom blowing atop the green sward. The lingering image of the pearly skin that lay beneath quickened his pulse, and he bit back the urge to groan aloud as his loins responded to the memory.

He steeled his newly shaved jaw, trying to convince himself he merely perused the garden for suspects among the half dozen or so pilgrims gathered there. According to Wilham, he was failing miserably.

“Why don’t ye just go down there and have a word with her?” Wilham said, drying what little hair he had left with a linen towel.

“Who?” Blade said stubbornly, his eyes fixed on the scholars milling about among the fruit trees.

Wilham chuckled wickedly. “The red rose in the garden,” he taunted. “The one with the sweet perfume. The one with the lovely twin buds above, and the soft, ripe petals below.”

As irritating as Wilham could be, his words summoned up a vision of Rose that shot a pang of lust streaking through Blade’s groin.

“Save your breath,” he managed to mutter. “Roses always have thorns.”

“Ah, but they’re still the queen o’ the garden,” Wilham continued, undaunted. “Behold, the proud and royal rose who wears a crown where’er she goes…”

Blade, at the end of his patience, turned on Wilham with a scowl. “We’re supposed to be huntin’ assassins, not composin’ verse.”

Wilham lifted a dubious brow and usurped Blade’s place at the window, leaning over the ledge to study the occupants of the garden. “Let me guess. The scholars?”

“Maybe,” Blade challenged.

“Oh, I suspected as much,” Wilham said with lavish sarcasm. “That Bryan has murder in his eye. And if Daniel and Thomas were to ever cease arguin’ for more than the wink of an eye, who can say what mischief they might wreak?”

Blade skewered Wilham with a quelling glare.

Wilham was not quelled. But his sardonic expression faded, and he leaned back against the stone sill, successfully obstructing Blade’s view of the garden.

After a pensive moment, he spoke. “At least grant me this, Pierce,” he said softly.

Blade glanced at him. Wilham never called him by his given name. And he seldom spoke without a mischievous grin skulking at the fringes of his face. He did both now.

“Think on it,” he asked. “This is a lonely existence. We cannot be knights-errant for the rest of our lives.”

Blade sniffed. “Ye should have gone home,” he muttered.

“And abandon ye?” Wilham shook his head. “I couldn’t. But ye’re joustin’ with ghosts, my friend. ‘Tis time ye came back to the livin’.”

Blade
had
felt dead for the last two years. He couldn’t recall the towns he’d ridden into, couldn’t remember the faces of those he’d defeated in tournament.

“Ye need this, Pierce,” Wilham insisted, moving aside to reveal the garden. “Ye need her.”

Blade gazed at the lady set amongst the drab pilgrims like a crimson rose upon the emerald ground—her black hair gleaming like polished jet, her delicate face turning up toward the midmorning sun.

He felt the need rise in him, felt it in that animal part of him that lusted for her flesh and felt it also deep within his heart.

But more powerful was his need to crush such frivolous dreams and return to the despair to which he’d grown accustomed.

“She’s not for the takin’,” he told Wilham.

Wilham blinked. “Why? She’s not wed. She’s young, beautiful, o’ the proper lineage. For the love o’ Mary, she even has all her teeth. And she gazes upon ye as if…” Blade’s glance darted to Wilham’s face. “…as if the sun rose and set upon your shoulder.”

Surely Wilham was mistaken. Aye, Lady Rose might desire his body, as often unworldly maids did, for he wasn’t uncomely. He’d been told so more than once. But ‘twas only a fleeting attraction. Rose didn’t care for him. How could she? She scarcely knew him.

“A wife, a home, children. That’s what ye need. ‘Tis time ye opened your heart,” Wilham prodded.

But Blade had opened his heart before, and he’d destroyed what he’d held most dear. “Open my heart?” he said, smirking. “Not to that one.”

“Why?”

“Wil, my friend,” Blade sighed, clapping him on the shoulder, “only ye would choose for me a wife who’s bound for the nunnery.”

“Nunnery?” Wilham’s brows raised, then furrowed. “She’s bound for the nunnery?”

“Aye.”

“Ye’re jestin.”

“Nae.”

Wilham lost but a moment in contemplation. “Then ye’ll have to change her mind.”

Blade would have argued, but his eye was caught suddenly by a bright flicker from the edge of the woods beyond the garden wall.

Wilham droned on, lost in his machinations. “I know. I’ll let slip how ye single-handedly bested the de Ware twins in tournament. Better yet, I’ll mention the cache o’ gold and jewels ye’ve won o’er…” He trailed off, sobering at once when he saw Blade studying something in the distance. “What is it?”

“Not sure.”

Wilham followed his line of sight.

“A flash,” Blade said. “The sun caught on… There.”

“I see it.”

Another glint of light sparked briefly against the dark trees, then was gone.

“Men-at-arms?” Wilham asked, squinting toward the forest.

“Maybe.”

Two thick stone walls separated the woods from the pleasance garden, and guards were posted at close intervals along the outer curtain. But Blade’s heart still pounded as his gaze drifted over Rose—fragile and innocent and helpless among the flowers—while possible menace threatened only a few dozen yards away.

‘Twas absurd. What he’d seen could have been anything—a lady’s mirror, a gardener’s spade, the pale flash of a bird’s wing—and yet some sense filled him with dread.

Wilham felt it as well. “Ye want your sword?”

Blade snorted. Of course he wanted his sword. His fingers itched to hold the familiar weight, so much a part of him for the last two years. But he’d taken a vow, and thus far he’d never broken his word. ‘Twould take much more than
wanting
to convince him to break an oath. “Nae.”

“We’ll be leavin’ soon,” Wilham urged. “We won’t have the protection o’ the castle or the guards.”

For several moments more, they kept vigil. Finally, Wilham counted the pilgrims milling below.

“Blade.”

“Mm?”

“Who’s missin’?”

No sooner had he asked the question than another flash came from the trees. ‘Twas the glint off of Fulk’s axe, and Fulk and Drogo emerged. They appeared to be quarreling.

“What the devil were
they
up to?” Wilham wondered.

Blade didn’t care. He was just relieved they weren’t Rose’s pursuers. And that relief caught him off guard. First, that he felt so protective of a woman who might, in fact, be a fugitive. And second, because in his mercenary work, Blade always pursued his quarry with single-minded purpose until ‘twas run to ground. ‘Twas foolish—in some instances lethal—to let emotion interfere.

“A couple of assassins,” Wilham guessed, “firmin’ up their plans?”

“Maybe. But what’s their motive?”

“Revenge?” Wilham suggested.

Blade shook his head. “Unlikely, unless young Archibald o’ Laichloan has killed one o’ their kin.”

“Coin?”

“Possibly.”

“A butcher and a cook as hired assassins,” Wilham mused, shuddering. “‘Tis a chillin’ way to dispose of a body.”

Blade nodded. It had seemed altogether too convenient from the beginning that the two men, close companions, unbeknownst to one another, should by fate happen to join the same pilgrimage.

Still, there were others of the company who were just as suspect. The palmer, with his cache of fabricated holy relics, possessed the lack of scruples to commit such a crime for a handful of silver. The tanners, too, were a crude pair who might stoop to a felony to add to their purses. There was still the adulterous couple, Jacob the goldsmith and his paramour, Lettie.

And as long as he was doubting them, he might as well add to the list the Highland woman, the widow, the soldier, the apprentice, the nuns, the priest, and the three scholars, for none could be completely eliminated from the list of suspects.

Nae, the only pilgrims he could be fairly sure about were Wilham and himself…and of course, Rose.

Blade sighed. The pilgrimage was halfway through, and he was no closer to discovering the culprits.

“We should separate today,” Wilham said, running his fingers through his chopped hair, trying to make some order of it. “We’ll hear twice as much that way.”

Blade grunted his agreement.

Of course, Wilham had set him up again. While Wilham went to bring up the rear of the company, he suggested Blade move to the fore, which was how Blade wound up just one Highlander away from Rose.

Not that he minded being close to Rose. He wasn’t completely convinced that Fulk and Drogo were the only ones lurking in the wood. And while that unease possessed him, he’d just as soon place himself between Rose and danger.

He tried to pay heed to the nuances of the forest as they traveled, alert to discrepant sounds or sights. But ‘twas difficult to focus while Rose distracted him with blushing glances.

As if the sun rose and set upon his shoulder,
Wilham had said. Certainly the wench didn’t worship him so fervently. And yet ‘twas difficult not to wish ‘twere true.

Her face was, in Wilham’s words, as beautiful as her namesake. What Wilham didn’t know, what Blade had glimpsed this morn, was that her body was no less perfect than her face. For that treasure alone, any man would feel blessed to claim her as his own.

But for Blade, her beauty ran even deeper. She had clung to him last night, as if he weren’t a felon, as if he weren’t a murderer. In her presence, by her grace, for one fleeting moment, his sins had been erased. She didn’t judge him by his past, nor did she plague him about his future. She simply granted him the gift of the precious time they shared.

‘Twas wrong, he supposed. Life couldn’t be lived as if there were no consequences. One couldn’t careen blindly down a path without knowing where it led. And therein lay the great battle waged between heart and mind, between desire and wisdom, a war too painfully familiar.

Curiosity had tormented Rose ever since Guillot had revealed that Blade might be a fallen noble. So when the pilgrims stopped at a tavern along the Standing Stane road, she decided she had to find out the truth.

Of course, ‘twasn’t a question she could ask outright. She’d have to be subtle. Prying secrets from a man who preferred to be mysterious was an art.

She never imagined ‘twould be so difficult to speak with him. But as they stood together beneath the overhanging thatched roof of the tavern, a flood of sensual memories from the night before assailed her. Her heart fluttered, a flush warmed her cheeks, and her tongue all but failed her.

“I wished to…to thank ye,” she murmured, her voice cracking, “for last night.”

He gave her a hesitant nod. His chin was shaved clean today, and she couldn’t help wondering how it might feel against her cheek, smooth like that, what ‘twould be like to kiss him now.

“I…I’m sorry I fell asleep,” she continued. Lord, she could smell the soap-scrubbed fragrance of his skin. “I would have liked to hear the rest o’ your story.”

“‘Twas no great adventure,” he murmured. “Not as heroic a tale as tamin’ a bear.”

“Oh, nae, ‘twas quite a…” she countered, placing her hand on his sleeve, which stirred a memory of how well-muscled his arm had felt beneath that thin linen shirt last night. “A rivetin’ story. But I was weary, and your voice was soothin’.” She swallowed. “With your arms around me, I—”

“Lass,” he growled. “I’d advise ye watch your tongue. We’re not alone.”

Before common sense could prevent her, she sighed, “I wish we were.”

The only indication he’d heard her was a slight flaring of his nostrils, followed by a long silence. Rose blushed, withdrawing her hand. She’d been too forthright. But she’d spoken the truth. And with so few days left to pursue her heart’s pleasure, there was little time for coy flirtation.

Blade eased the tension by changing the subject. “Your falcon will need to feed soon.”

Rose nodded. She hoped her poor bird had the strength to eat. She’d left Wink in the tavern with Guillot, who was glad to watch over her. “Fulk and Drogo went huntin’ for eggs in the forest this morn—”