The More I See You (11 page)

Just when she thought she might really lose it, the door to the hut flew open and a torch was thrust inside.

Everyone inside the hut hollered in terror. Jessica hollered just as loudly.

“Enough!” a voice bellowed.

The voice cut through the shrieks. Jessica saw Richard’s face appear in the torchlight. He didn’t look any happier than he normally did and she wondered absently if he ever loosened up enough to smile.

Without further ado, he stooped inside, reached out, and hauled her up by the hand she’d flung up to shield her eyes from the torchlight. He pulled her outside, bid the family a curt good night, and closed the little flap that served for a door.

He stared down at her, his face cast in harsh shadows
from the torchlight. He looked as if he was trying to come up with something to say, but apparently his efforts weren’t bearing any fruit.

Jessica had never been so glad to see anyone in her entire life—even if he looked like he’d gone and stepped again in something he’d just recently managed to scrape off his shoe. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming expression he was wearing, but it was somehow one she’d become accustomed to, and that was good enough for her. He started to scowl and even that seemed rather endearing, especially when she found herself standing outside a medieval hovel and not in it.

“I’ve been remiss in my duty to you,” Richard announced suddenly, sounding as if the words had been dragged from his mouth by some kind of hospitality drug. “Though perhaps I can be forgiven, as you were trying to steal my horse.”

“Borrow,” she corrected. “I was borrowing.”

“And for the second time, no less,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Another man would surely have been just as suspicious of your motives.”

“I meant to leave you a letter and tell you where I was going,” she said, “but I couldn’t find anything to write with.”

“Therefore,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I extend again the comfort of my hall and pray you will return with me and take your ease. I wouldn’t wish for my liege Henry to think I had offered you any less.”

He wasn’t sincere, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She also decided that perhaps the present moment was not the proper one in which to inform Richard that she didn’t know his king from Adam. She nodded as regally as if she really had been related to the king, then accepted his help up onto a horse and didn’t argue when he turned his little group back toward the castle. He didn’t say any more and she didn’t fight it. She had just been through one of the worst days of her life and she had too much to think about for small talk.

It was dawn when she walked back into Richard’s
tower bedroom. He invited her to make use of the tub of water by the fire.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable,” he said through gritted teeth. “The king will no doubt be concerned that you were treated well.”

Two things Jessica realized immediately: Richard didn’t really care what the king thought; and, two, she had to get the heck out of Dodge before Henry breezed through. She watched Richard leave, realizing that she was going to have to be much more diligent about her horse borrowing if she were going to make it back home. She was going to have to get to Merceham and it was a sure thing she wouldn’t make it there on foot.

Fortunately she knew just where to get a horse. This time, though, she wasn’t about to get tripped up by a little thing like a locked gate. Unfortunately the only time the gate seemed to be unlocked was during the day.

She put her shoulders back and looked around for an appropriate disguise. Probably the sooner she left, the better. Richard wouldn’t be looking for someone dressed up like a boy, would he?

There was only one way to find out.

Richard suppressed the urge to walk away from the training field and go back to bed. Jessica was to blame for that. He hadn’t had any sleep the first night she was gone, nor had he had any the night before courtesy of his search for her whereabouts. And if that wasn’t enough to truly sour him for good, what he faced now certainly was. He looked at Gilbert de Claire and wondered how by all the blessed saints the boy’s father expected him to make a man out of this sniveling babe.

Gilbert’s tasks for the morn had included nothing more strenuous than a small bit of swordplay and saddling Richard’s mount, yet already the boy looked as irritated as if he’d worked a fortnight without pause while the rest of the keep looked on from their positions upon their backsides, wine and sweet figs at their elbows.

And if Gilbert’s sullenness wasn’t trial enough, there was the immediate and intense dislike that had sprung up between Gilbert and Warren. Richard had thought it might work in his favor for the two to be in competition, but apparently such a thing was not having the desired effect. Warren fumbled under the scrutiny and Gilbert, unsurprisingly, had merely looked about sullenly.

Richard wished heartily he had never left Italy.

He looked around for someone upon whom he might vent his displeasure. John stood nearby with his arms folded over his chest and a small smile on his face. Richard glared at him.

“What are you smirking about?”

John’s smile deepened. “I was just watching the events of the day unfold, my lord. Nothing more.”

Richard growled. It seemed the most appropriate noise to express his complete disgust with his life and the goings-on in it.

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice the lad walking toward the gate, hitching up his hose every other step,” John said conversationally.

“Some fool mason, no doubt,” Richard said

“Actually, I believe ’twas
your
hose the lad was hitching up.”

“
What?
” Richard whirled around and looked at the outer bailey gate.

“And I believe,” John continued, in much the same amused tone, “that ’tis your horse the lad is now taking out for a bit of exercise.”

Richard gritted his teeth so hard, he came close to cracking a handful of them. “
Damn
that woman!”

“Clever disguise,” John offered.

Richard threw his captain a glare and stalked off toward the gate. The only thing he could find to be grateful for was that he hadn’t yet donned any mail. His leather jerkin did not hamper him in the least as he began to run. He snagged the first horse he came to and swung up onto it without bothering to find out whose mount it was.

As he thundered along the way after the lone horseman, he came to a conclusion: Jessica Blakely had passing fair skill with the beast. Either that or he’d just managed to choose the slowest horse in the garrison.

But he had ridden his share of horses as well and was determined Jessica should not escape him. By the time he drew alongside her, he and his mount both were frothing at the mouth. He could have stopped Horse with a whistle,
of course, but he wanted Jessica in full possession of her senses when he shouted her deaf. He grabbed Horse’s reins and brought both animals to an abrupt halt. Jessica dismounted with him and
that
certainly wasn’t by her choice.

He took her by the arms and bared his teeth at her until he could muster up something foul enough to express his intense displeasure.

And damn the wench if she didn’t look as displeased to see him as he was her.

“Cease with that expression!” he shouted. “You’ve no cause to do aught but drop to your knees and apologize for stealing my horse yet again!”

“I wasn’t stealing,” she returned hotly as she jerked away from him. “I was
borrowing.
”

“I should have you hanged all the same,” he snarled. “This is thrice I have been forced to retrieve my horse from your vile clutches. And why is it, mistress, you feel the need to snatch
my
poor beast each time?”

Damn the woman if she didn’t pat Horse in a most proprietary manner and look at the beast with a great amount of unwarranted affection.

“Because
he
likes me,” she said, looking back at Richard coolly.

Bloody useless beast with no sense
, Richard thought immediately, but he didn’t say as much. He found, quite suddenly, that his powers of speech had deserted him. And as quickly as he’d become mute, he’d also become feebleminded, for ’twas all he could do to stand there with his hands limp by his sides and stare at the woman before him.

She was blowing her hair out of her face in the same way she had been the night before. It was possibly the single most fascinating thing Richard had ever seen a woman do, and to be sure he had seen them do a great many things. Why this moved him, he couldn’t have said, but it did.

The other thing that was even more distracting was Jessica’s stroking of his mount’s neck. It was a gesture of
genuine affection and it stirred in him some long-disused portion of his black heart and left him wishing she might put her hand on his head and comfort him in like manner.

The realization of what he was torn between—lust and apparently the desire to crawl back as near to the womb as he could and be mothered until he smothered—was almost enough to send him fleeing the other way.

He cast a baleful eye heavenward and wondered what saint was toying with him in such a manner.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way,” Jessica said, removing the reins from his unresisting fingers. “I’m off to your brother’s castle. Will your horse find his way home, or will you need to send someone after him?”

“Wait,” Richard said, snagging his reins before Jessica absconded with not only his horse, but his wits as well, “you are
not
going to Hugh’s.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Nay, lady, I will not permit it.” He took a firm grip on himself and mustered up what he hoped was a stern frown. “You’ll return back to the keep with me and await King Henry’s arrival.”

She shook her head. “Haven’t got the time.”

“I daresay you’ve all the time you need,” he said, “and I am certain the king will be interested in seeing you. Unless,” he said, remembering his deliberations with himself as to just who Jessica might truly be, “unless you are not overanxious to see him for some reason.”

She remained silent but her eyes gave everything away. He decided at that moment that whatever else she was, Jessica Blakely was not a good liar. He had no trouble now looking at her sternly.

“If you have misled me about your kinship to him . . .”

She stuck out her chin. “I never claimed to be anything to him. Warren assumed it.”

“And you allowed him to assume as much,” he said flatly. “’Tis nothing short of lying and for that you should be . . . well, you should be—”

“Drawn and quartered?” she asked tartly.

He could not fathom whence she mustered up her irritation.
By the saints, she was the one caught in transgression, not he!

“The priest should decide your penance,” he said, deciding not to tell her that he had no priest and likely wouldn’t unless one desperate enough to endure his foul moods could be found. He took a firmer grip on both sets of reins and folded his arms over his chest. “If you are not kin of Henry’s, then to whom do you belong? Where is your sire?”

“Dead,” she said calmly. “Gone two years now.”

“And your dam?”

Jessica swallowed hard and began to blink very rapidly. Richard watched as she folded her arms over her chest.

“My mother is so far away, she might as well be dead,” she said quietly.

Richard watched in horror as her eyes began to fill with tears. Ah, not tears! By the saints, how he hated tears!

He suppressed the urge to wring his hands. He watched Jessica weep and felt completely helpless. He shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to another, praying for some sort of inspiration.

And then, as if his hand had taken on a life of its own, it reached out and thumped her awkwardly on the shoulder.

“There now,” he said, hoping with all his might that she would stiffen her spine before he was called upon to render further aid. “No need to weep.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said, her eyes beginning to leak even more enthusiastically. “I am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get home.”

“Ah,” Richard said helplessly, “ah, surely there is no need for such lack of hope—”

“For all I know, it
is
hopeless!”

His feet began to twitch. Richard heartily agreed with them and wished he’d never taken any knightly vows, for if he hadn’t, he would have turned and fled, and thought himself well escaped.

But ’twas as if her eyes knew what his feet were about, for they began to pour forth a torrent of tears. Richard
patted himself frantically but felt no spare cloth there to use to dry her off. He groped about in his head for something to say that would stem the tide. He latched onto the first thing that came to mind.

“I’ll see you home myself,” he blurted out.

Oh, by the saints, he was a babbling fool!

“No matter the time it would take,” he continued, deepening his own grave. He cursed himself thoroughly, but he’d begun the digging. No sense in not finishing the task. Perhaps his words might have some effect and he would escape more of this feminine, watery scourge. In truth, no journey would be too long if it would mean he could be free of it.

She began to laugh. “You could,” she said, “take all the time you have during the rest of your life and it still wouldn’t be enough time to get me home.”

Well, that was the most foolish thing he’d ever heard. He’d traveled extensively and knew a great deal about distances and the time required to cross them.

“I am not as ignorant as you might think,” he said stiffly.

She shook her head, wiping her eyes. It took several moments, but she seemingly mastered her womanly emotions. She gave him something approximating a smile. “I never said you were.” She looked at him with wet cheeks and very red eyes. “It’s just I don’t think anyone can get me home but me. I’m not even sure I can do it.”

Nothing she was saying made any sense to him.

“Why will you not accept aid?” he asked. “I do not offer it lightly.”
Nor with my full wits
, he added silently. Then again, he hardly should have been surprised. Since the moment he’d clapped eyes on her, he’d found himself doing and saying the most ridiculous things.