After the Storm (11 page)

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Bastien's camp didn't look a thing like a movie version of
Robin Hood
. The half dozen huts were thrown together out of sticks and bracken. She saw a couple of smoking cookpits and the carcass of a deer hanging from the low branches of a tree. The people who slowly-gathered in the center of the clearing wore ragged clothing, along with numerous layers of dirt. Gender was hard to discern underneath hoods and loose, layered garments but she thought there were several women in the group of outlaws. She counted three toddlers and four or five older children playing around the fires. She was too far from the small settlement to make out any conversations and didn't have any remote audio equipment with her to safely eavesdrop.

Nearby, interrupting her watchful silence, Bastien began to hum. She automatically swung the binoculars toward the sound. He was a tall man and it was a shallow pool. The water reached only to his lower thighs.

Seeing him naked made her realize one thing about herself. She knew that at some time in her lost years she must have learned a great deal about sex.

Because as she looked at Bastien of Bale's long, elegant, beautifully proportioned, muscled body she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it, the places she wanted to touch and taste and hold. She found herself imagining wrapping her thighs around those narrow hips, her fingertips playing across the flat expanse of his stomach, her breasts pressed hard against his chest, her lips working their way from his lips to his toes and slowly back up again. She already knew the scent of him, the texture of his skin, the enveloping strength of his embrace, the taste of his mouth. Without conscious thought her imagination translated the knowledge she already had into a fantasy that left her shaken by desire. The intensity of her need surprised her, and she ended up making some small, frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

It was like the unfulfilled promise of a feast for her soul when she hadn't even Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

known how deep-down hungry she was. It left her confused and trying to grasp memories of the reality she was missing. She was all too aware that while her imagination served up vivid details of sex with this virtual stranger who had no idea she was there, the reality was that she was hiding up in a tree. She was violating his privacy. She shouldn't be looking at him at all. She knew she should turn away, that she had no right to intrude on Bastien this way, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. While Bastien splashed and hummed and scrubbed himself clean she pressed herself against the tree branch and worked on calming the aching need that tried to consume her.

And then she went cold with fear as he looked up and at the tree where she was hiding. Libby slammed down the binoculars and pulled her hat down to cover her face. The pounding of her heart changed to panic. It was the dangerous, cold glitter in his eyes that terrified her. She cowered motionless on the branch as she prayed that the angel-of-death look would pass her by.

The noise that had drawn his attention had sounded like a woman in need. It had been soft and demanding at once, a lustful call that was almost a whimper, not quite a plea, definitely an invitation. He felt as though he had heard it more with his flesh than with his ears and it must have been his imagination, for the soft sound had seemed to come from a tree across the stream. It could have been no more than the calling of a bird, or the wind in the willow branches. Yet, Bastien couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched as he searched the nearby trees for a sight of what had made the odd sound. He'd been enjoying his privacy and the cool, cleansing water, but now he felt spied upon, vulnerable, more naked somehow. But he couldn't see anyone there. After a few moments of watching he got out of the water and hurriedly dressed. He couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched as he headed back to the camp.

Cynric was waiting for him at the edge of the clearing. He pointed toward the Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

gathered people. "They're waiting."

Bastien nodded and moved forward to face the silent group. "Did you enjoy last night's feast?"

He was answered by nods, cheerful smiles and a few voices. What he remembered of the night before was being nauseated by the smell of roasting meat, and pain lancing into his temples with every laugh or shout from the revelers outside his hut. Sometime after the last roisterers had stumbled off to bed Cynric had offered him a flask of mead, but he hadn't been able to keep the honey brew down. He'd ended up stumbling outside to empty his stomach and interrupting a pair of lovers coupling in the glow of the banked cookfire. He'd hardly noticed at the time, but the memory came back to him now, driving home the point of just how much the lonely outsider he was among his own people.

For a few moments yesterday he'd looked at Isabeau of Lilydrake and been tempted by the seductive, false promise of her beauty. While they'd talked he'd pretended to be something other than he was, and while he pretended he'd almost believed she could offer him an end to his exile from passion. But that had been a dangerous game to save his people from the hangman.

He crossed his arms before him and said sternly, "I'm glad you enjoy being alive.

Try to remember how pleasant the sensation feels the next time you consider walking into a trap."

"Trap?" Cynric asked. "What trap?"

He turned toward his second-in-command. "You of all people should have recognized what the new sheriff intended when he escorted Lady Isabeau through the forest. She and her riches were bait in a trap. An obvious trap." One Bastien wouldn't have put past the clever Isabeau having suggested to Reynard.

She and Sir Reynard had seemed friendly enough. She'd been friendly with his Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

men while they were captive as well. He wondered why. To his abashed men he said, "I told you to leave the sheriff's party alone before I went hunting. Why didn't you listen? Greed," he said before anyone could offer an excuse. "Pure, simple greed."

Cynric offered him a wide smile. "We knew you'd come for us, Bas."

"I don't know why I bothered. You deserved to be hanged for acting like fools."

"You wouldn't let that happen," Odda spoke up.

"You should have," a voice spoke up from the rear of the gathering. "Sikes would have," Warin of Flaye added as the crowd parted to let him through.

"Sikes can do what he likes in his part of the forest," Bastien announced as the other man came forward.

"That's so," Warin answered. "But it's well known that he considers all parts of the forest to be his."

"So he sends you often enough to remind us," Bastien said.

Warin was small and wiry, a quick-moving, rat-faced man with stringy yellow hair and watery blue eyes. Bastien noted that the outlaw had one hand on his sword hilt and grasped the neck of an earthenware jug in the other. Warin held out the jug to Bastien as he spoke, "Sikes sends me in friendship. Drink up, friend, and let us have a private talk."

Bastien looked the other man over with narrow-eyed suspicion. He still felt an invisible gaze on his back. They were probably safe enough but he felt that his camp was in danger even though Warin had appeared with one of his own sentries as an escort.

"Did he come alone?" he asked the sentry.

"I abide by the terms of our truce," Warin answered indignantly, while the sentry Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

merely nodded.

"Of course you do," Bastien agreed affably. "Check the guard posts," he said to Cynric before he spoke to Warin again. "I'll take your drink, friend." He pointed toward his hut. "And we'll have our private talk about what Sikes wants in my part of the forest."

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Chapter 6

"
You could have
gotten me killed, you know that, don't you?"

The dogs just continued to lope happily along beside her horse, tongues lolling.

They were obviously enjoying being out for a good run while Libby's heart was still pounding from her narrow escape from the forest. It would have been the stupid dogs' fault if she'd gotten caught. Bastien had not been looking happy when he disappeared into one of the huts with one of the other outlaws. She'd been able to tell that from a distance even though she'd put her binoculars away.

His already dark mood wouldn't have improved if his guards had brought her into the camp. She'd already had one encounter too many with the leader of the wolvesheads. She wasn't ready for another, at least not yet, and not on his terms.

She was glad she'd been able to get away with these idiot animals in tow.

The deerhounds had followed her trail from the castle and ended up sniffing around the base of the tree where she'd been observing the outlaw camp. If they'd started barking when they found her she would have been in big trouble.

Fortunately, she and the dogs had managed to sneak past the sentries and back to the clearing on the edge of the forest where she'd left her horse hobbled.

"Don't do that again," she ordered the animals as the path bent and Lilydrake came into view. They ignored her, of course, and started barking as Joe stepped onto the path from the shadow of a tree. Libby quickly brought the horse to a stop as the big man held up a hand to catch her bridle. "What?" she asked.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

He pointed toward Lilydrake. "You don't want to go in there dressed like that."

Libby looked up at the ragged crenelations of the castle wall. "Why not?"

"Company," he answered. "Hurry up, Lib, before somebody sees us."

Libby got off the horse and snatched the costume he tossed her. She went behind the nearest clump of bushes and hurried to pull off her camouflage clothing. "I should have carried a change of clothes with me."

"Yes, you should have. You left in way too much of a hurry. Did anybody see you?"

"Of course not."

She hadn't actually worried about being observed except for the few dicey minutes after the dogs showed up. The village nearest Lilydrake was as abandoned as the castle and the barely discernible track she'd taken into the dense forest could only be there for the use of outlaws and poachers. She would have faded easily into the green background if she'd heard anyone approach.

"I didn't think I'd have trouble getting back into my own castle." She emerged from the bushes clad in her yellow dress, the sheer white veil covering her braided hair. "Do I look medieval enough?"

Joe nodded. "And you've got me as an escort when we go in. So nobody's going to think that you've been riding around the countryside by yourself."

Libby resented that anyone would think to question her going anywhere she wanted, dressed any way she wanted, with anyone she wanted. But she also knew that the locals would think her being on her own was strange. It was a good thing foe had been waiting for her. She had to play by this culture's rules no matter how much they grated on her. She had to try to lead the properly circumspect life of a medieval woman while she was here. Either that, or go back where she came from. "Right," she said after giving herself this stern Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm