Shana Abe (16 page)

Damon seemed not to notice any of what just took place. He remained frozen above her, a great portion of the weight of him, she noticed, placed squarely on her torso. Her legs were tingling, and the arm trapped under him had gone completely numb. How long were those women going to loiter over their wash? Solange was positive she could have finished up in a quarter of the time they were taking.

Finally they were ready to leave. The last of the clothing had been cleaned and spread to dry. The women picked up the empty basket and clumped back though the bushes to the village. The child followed obediently, throwing Solange one last look and a little wave good-bye.

Solange waved back with her free hand. The girl
skipped ahead, catching up with the others. Solange waited until she could hear nothing more of them.

“Damon.”

He lifted his head off hers.

“Damon, it’s safe now. We should go before they return.”

He didn’t answer her, so she wiggled around to pull her arm from beneath his chest. He exhaled deeply, as if he had been holding his breath for a very long time.

She had gotten her arm free and was trying to roll over to look at him, but he rose abruptly and walked away from her, over to the horses.

She sat up, and then stood, wincing at the rush of feeling that poured through her limbs. Twigs and leaves decorated her, and her hands were muddy. Ruefully she examined her new leather boots, now soaked through and sure to shrink. She was brushing herself clean as best she could when he spoke.

“Enough of this. It is unseemly.”

She paused, staring at his back.

“What, pray, is unseemly? I admit I appear now to be more a straw figure than either man or woman, but—”

“Hold your tongue,” he ordered, swinging up on Tarrant. “Time enough for talking later.”

She flashed him her regal look to hide the hurt his words caused. “I am not the one who began the speech, my lord.”

He ignored her and rode past the thicket, away from the village, leaving her to follow or not. She shook her head at his retreating figure. A strong part of her
actually considered continuing her journey alone, but soon she mounted and caught up with Damon without incident. They continued the ride in silence.

B
ut I thought you said we should avoid people,” Solange said in a puzzled voice.

She pointed to the battered wooden signpost marking the fork in the road ahead. “Calais is close, true, but it is the largest port in the area. If you wish us to remain unseen, that is certainly not the place to do it.”

Damon shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. He had decided, upon reflection of yesterday’s near encounter with the women at the creek, that perhaps more important than anonymity was the need to finish this journey with all possible haste.

It was not a smart thing to do, he knew. It was certainly not the strategy he would have chosen in a battle, for instance. It shirked all of his instinctual warnings and would plunge them into an unpredictable situation with almost endless possibilities beyond his control.

If this were a war, he would have laughed at the man who dared to suggest such a plan.

Solange was looking at him, waiting for him to explain his logic. But how could he explain to her that she was killing him, taking him apart piece by piece, a little more every day that passed?

How could he tell her that he was sending them both into danger simply because if he didn’t, he would surely lose control of his sanity?

He kept thinking about that moment in the crabapple
grove with an almost crazed intensity, remembering the whole of it as if it were happening to him all over again. Even now the early morning breeze danced up and tossed about the loose locks of hair surrounding her face, and it bedazzled him. It intoxicated him, watching the silky strands brush her cheeks, cling to the moisture on her lips. He could stare at her all day, forever, but for the fact that he wanted her so badly. He did not think he could continue indefinitely to convince himself that keeping his distance from her physically was a good idea.

He was already living in a dangerous situation, it was clear. He didn’t know how much longer he could just watch her and not touch her again. And once he touched her, he was grimly afraid he would not be able to stop. The need for her was overwhelming everything else, including his logic.

Solange brushed back the hair from her cheeks and tucked it behind her ears. Her hands were graceful even in this spare movement.

He wanted them on him, caressing him. She was making him insane.

She spoke again. “I say we keep going, my lord, follow the path you originally laid out. It seems the wiser course.”

“No,” he said, fighting his senses. He stared out at the signpost, at the fork in the road. “This way is better. We will go into the city and find passage from there.”

“But—”

“Just follow me,” he snarled, and pushed Tarrant into a gallop down the road to Calais.

The city was filled with shadows and people, stinking of fish and refuse, just as he remembered from his journey over. He kept his focus on the surroundings, the tight buildings, the darkened alleyways, the strangers with curious glances.

Solange rode with her head shielded by the hood of her cloak, yet to him she shouted out femininity despite the hose, despite the way she sat like a man in the saddle. Every now and then he could feel her glance to him, and even though it reflected his own mounting unease, he ignored her. He was taking them to the docks. The docks would lead them to England. In England he would be free of her.

The wharf was seething with people. They had arrived in the midst of the fishing boats returning with the morning’s catch. Great mounds of dead fish, crabs, eels, anything the nets could snare, were piled up high under the cloudless sky, surrounded by the fishermen and the marketeers ready to buy the catch. Wheeling flocks of sea birds circled them all, shrieking and diving, perching and waddling and snapping up whatever they could. The noise of the surf and the birds and the people mingled in an almost steady boom.

When the ocean breeze stilled, the stench was almost unbearable, and Damon wondered how anyone could live this way. But it was not his business. He would be away from this place as soon as possible.

They walked the horses slowly down the narrow street edging the docks and piers, jostling with the crowd. Damon was looking for a small boat like the one that had brought him over but with room for the horses. He passed one because it looked too rickety,
another because the owner looked too greedy. He would find the right one. There had to be a craft for them.

Beside him Solange rode quietly, keeping her gaze pinned on the harbored ships as well. He noticed her hood had fallen back, revealing the thickness of her braid, the perfect feminine features of her face. He was about to instruct her to pull it back on, when she gave a little cry and pointed to the sea.

He followed her gaze and saw the boat that had captured her attention. It looked good. Not too small nor too large, solid wood, with an old man mopping down the deck.

He turned to Solange. “Wait here.”

Without giving her time to answer, he handed his reins over to her and dismounted, approaching the man.

Solange watched him go, feeling the apprehension in her grow with every step he took. Iolande was fitful as well; she didn’t like the crowds and it took more than Solange’s usual efforts to calm the horse. Tarrant stood obediently beside them with his reins in her hands, but she could tell he was disquieted also. Both horses shook their heads, rolled their eyes.

The people jostled past but looked up at her curiously, at the fine horseflesh, the lone woman mounted and waiting. Belatedly she realized her hood had fallen back, and so she reached around to pull it up again. As she did so her eyes fell on the movement of a familiar form walking through the mass of people.

A profound chill stole over her. Time seemed to slow, every movement she made counted out in eons.

Casually she lowered her head, keeping the hood as
far down as it would go, while she pulled her hands back in close to her body. Iolande responded by taking a step sideways, allowing Solange to turn her head and scan the crowd again from beneath the edge of the material covering her face.

Where was he? Had she imagined that man who looked so like the captain of Redmond’s guard? It had been so quick, she wasn’t certain she had actually seen anything at all. There were so many people. She was jumping at nothing.

Nevertheless, she dismounted to be less conspicuous. Damon was still speaking with the old man, who was shaking his head with pursed lips. That didn’t look good. She walked between the two horses, keeping them as buffers against the passersby. Stroking the nose of Iolande, she gradually turned her head again toward the buildings and warehouses lining the docks. The crowd was finally beginning to thin, taking the loads of fish with them.

She looked back at Damon, who was doing the talking now, obviously trying to persuade the reluctant fisherman to take them over the channel, then back at the wharf, where the people were slipping away down the streets, into the buildings.

Except there, back the way they had come, was a small knot of people surrounding something she could not see—a man, or several men, and a few were shaking their heads, but some were nodding and looking around, looking toward her. They parted, and she saw the familiar orange and green tunics.

At that instant the world became very quiet. There was her heartbeat, pounding so hard it flooded her
senses. There was the gasping of her breath, the labored breathing of fear. Above her circled a pelican in a lazy spiral, a seemingly harmless quirk of the winds and its own inclinations, drawing the eye right to her.

She ducked her head and walked the horses past the boat with Damon on it, down the wharf. She could not let them see him as well.

It took all her willpower not to mount up and flee, but she couldn’t leave Damon behind. She had to pray he would notice her moving off and guess the reason for it. She had to hope he would be clever enough not to come chasing after her.

A quick glance over her shoulder showed him still talking, the old man still shaking his head, pointing to the mast, to the deck of the boat.

Her heartbeat thudded over the words, over all the noise. She couldn’t get the breath to scream, she couldn’t inhale deeply enough to shout at him. She was having trouble moving her feet, her hands.

She paused as if to check the shoe of Iolande, and as she bent over she looked up again, risking a direct look at where she had seen Redmond’s men.

And they were looking back at her.

There was no help for it now. Still holding the reins, she scrambled up onto Iolande and turned both horses around to the ship with Damon on it at a full gallop, scattering people in her path.

He had seen her. He was running toward her, asking her something she could not hear, and because she couldn’t speak over her heartbeat, she threw the reins down at him, looking wildly past him to the soldiers, who were running on foot now, coming so close.

Damon needed no further encouragement. He vaulted up into the saddle and followed her lead, though she didn’t know where she was going. She steered Iolande past the last of the crowd with a delicacy of footwork that left Damon filled with a combination of admiration and dread.

The hood was free, her cloak billowed back behind her like a banner, the tail of her braid unwinding in the wind. She was heading for a side street, one of the many leading into the town, the closest one to them. She was almost upon it, when from the shadows of the building stepped a woman holding a child.

No, oh, no, she thought, but it was far too late to stop. Even as the woman screamed in fright and turned to run, Solange felt the familiar tensing of Iolande’s powerful muscles, felt the neatness of the jump that carried them over the woman and safely down again past her.

Behind her, Tarrant followed in their wake, but the woman had retreated to the wall of the alley, still screaming. Damon and his horse pounded harmlessly past her.

They were in a circle with a fountain in the middle, a meeting of streets that was all but abandoned. Damon caught up with her and motioned her to slow down. She didn’t want to—hadn’t he seen those men? Didn’t he know they would find their own mounts and follow? Didn’t he realize they would do anything to get her?

But he didn’t realize, because she hadn’t told him. She slowed Iolande to a walk down a long cobblestone lane and then stopped.

Her breath was coming in short, staccato bursts. There was a deafening buzzing in her ears. She could see Damon’s mouth moving but still could not hear him. He appeared angry, but she was unable to explain. How could she, when it was all she could do to drag the air into her lungs?

Damon paused, looking at her, then reached over and took one of her hands which had clenched around the reins. She could see his lips form her name, an inquiry. The anger had melted into something else, something she did not have the presence of mind to identify. His eyes became hooded and bright.