Shana Abe (43 page)

He was standing there, almost grinning at her after having made that ridiculous formal introduction, as if they were at a ball and not toe-to-toe in the darkness of an inn where she had come with half a mind to kill him.

“Give me the letter,” she said in a low voice, rubbing her knuckles slightly.

Roland took a careful step away from her before replying. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t have it.”

He watched with interest the despair that flickered across her face and was then gone. Her eyes narrowed in the half-light. He really couldn’t see what color they were, something light. Green, he would guess, or robin’s-egg blue, perhaps, to go with that cherry hair …

“You lie,” she hissed.

“I’m afraid not, my lady. The letter is not here.”

She hesitated; he watched her fight the urge to look at the wooden box on the table, the corner of paper sticking out.

“It’s blank,” he said gently.

She shifted on her feet, allowing a thick fall of hair to cover half her face. With abrupt intensity Roland found himself wanting to touch it, wanting to feel for himself the fire of its color. It almost caused him to miss the forward leap she made for the window.

He caught her, but not without a struggle, and he was desperately afraid they were making too much noise. For lack of a better idea he forced her over to the thin pallet that was the bed and made her sit still while he sat beside her, holding her against him.

Again he felt her tremble, but he couldn’t be distracted
by that now. He was going to save her even if she didn’t want him to.

Roland placed his lips close to her ear.

“Take me to your brother. I will promise you both safe passage to London. I will speak to the king for you.”

She said nothing in response to this, but he thought he felt the trembling increase.

“I can help you, Kyla. You know that. I can help you both.”

He felt the moment stretch out, growing longer and thinner with an undefined emotion that hummed and sang between them.

“Spawn of the devil!” she burst out loudly. “Leave me be! I’ll kill you!”

Instantly he was on top of her, smothering her with his body as he clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened, she twisted her body beneath his with surprising strength, but he was able to hold on to her as the door opened.

“My lord?” came the gruff call. “All is well?”

“Aye, Gilchrist,” Roland said with lazy humor. “This wench and I are having a bit of sport. She’s a saucy thing.” He kept his arm down by her face, blocking the view of the soldier in the doorway.

“Ah,” said the man with dawning understanding and a chuckle. “Good sporting, my lord.”

“There is no doubt of that,” Roland said pleasantly.

“Good eve to you, my lord.” The soldier shut the door.

Kyla bit the inside of his palm.

“You are not endearing yourself to me, my lady,”
said Roland in the same pleasant tone he had used with the soldier.

She didn’t care for that, it was clear. If possible, her eyes got wider, then narrowed again. She tried a mighty heave to throw him off her.

As interesting as the position was, he was going to have to do something to calm the lady. He didn’t want her to hurt herself, not to mention him. He would try reason one more time.

“Kyla,” he said quietly. “I can help you. Let me. I can take you and your brother to London under my protection. No harm will come to you, I swear it.”

He lifted his hand from her mouth.

In the gloom she stared up at him, eyes wild and her mouth a little bruised from the struggle. It came to him then that she was not merely beautiful, as he had first thought, but that she was amazingly beautiful, fantastically beautiful, quite the most incredible thing he had ever seen.

If her face was a little too thin, her mouth a little too sensual, her brows too straight, her neck too long, none of it mattered when the sum of the parts made up the whole. He found himself caught in the spell, mesmerized, and she allowed him this, seemingly diverted in her own perusal of him.

Roland came back to himself with a slight shake of his head. It was unlike him to play the part of a smitten boy, no matter how bewitching the woman. He was her protector, not her lover.

Not even her betrothed.

But embers in the fireplace let him catch the movement
of the tip of her tongue as she moistened her lips, and he felt himself respond with an immediate rush of passion.

He sat up abruptly, scowling. This was not supposed to happen.

“Where is the real letter?” Her voice was husky. She didn’t move from the pallet, a sweet temptation with her hair spilling around her face and her body not nearly concealed enough in her black tunic and hose.

He heard the question. Yes, he heard it; it floated out into the room, and certainly she deserved a response. But what he wanted to do was hold her, hold her tenderly, and break the news to her as gently as possible.

“There is no letter at all,” he said instead. “I made it up.”

Her lips parted slightly in shock. She shook her head mutely.

“It was a trick, to trap you,” he said ruthlessly, trying to slay this soft, unfamiliar thing inside of him she had found. “It was successful.”

Her eyes closed, squinted shut, as if to fight off the words.

The weakness inside of him rolled over, horrified at his callousness. She looked so helpless. How could he do this to her?

“Kyla. It’s over. Take me to your brother.”

She opened her eyes, looked past his shoulder to the ceiling of the room. “All those lives lost,” she whispered. “For a lie. For nothing.”

The weakness exploded into life again. He fought it, he didn’t have time for it, weakness would not help anyone. Weakness would leave them vulnerable, and Roland had spent the last hard years of his life making sure that vulnerability would never be a factor for him again. He stood.

“We need to get back to London. I know your father is dead. Take me to Alister, and we will go.”

She came back from someplace far away, looked up at him, and he saw her focus sharpen on him again. Saw the loathing she had for him. It was such a contrast to the immediate memory of the lushness of her body beneath his.…

“You knew I would come if you lied,” she said.

“Well,” he conceded. “I thought it might be your brother instead. I thought he might be the more impulsive of the two of you.”

There had been no news of either Kyla or Alister after the massacre of Glencarson. An entire village of people had vanished, seemingly without a trace, save those left in the field. By the time Roland arrived, those that had been left behind had been too long dead to identify. He had a feeling that the Warwicks weren’t there anyway. Searching the hills would have been an exercise in futility; the villagers were far more experienced than his own people in surviving in the Highlands. He had pulled back here to rethink his options.

Roland wasn’t about to let anyone know, least of all this angry young woman, how lucky for him it was that she had been spotted that day by his squire,
who had seen her before in London and alerted him immediately.

He knew one or the other of them would show up tonight. He knew it in his bones, and these feelings were never wrong.

“Where is Alister? Is he ill?” he asked now, already making plans to surprise the boy before he got wind of his sister’s capture.

Kyla ignored his questions. “You made up the story of the letter. You made up the proof of my father’s innocence.”

Roland said nothing, just watched her, waiting for her to accept it.

“You sent word to me that you had a letter to prove he didn’t murder my mother.” Her voice cracked slightly. “You told me you would give it to me—”

“If you met me at Glencarson,” Roland concluded. “And you did not.”

She was silent, contemplating him. Then:

“I don’t know why I should be surprised that you would lie. You are naught but a slave to the king, everyone knows that. You have no soul. You have no remorse. Of course you would lie.”

“Of course. Take me to Alister, Kyla.”

She gave a muffled laugh, then turned her head to the side. Roland felt something in him freeze, go numb.

Damn
, he thought,
damn, damn
 …

“How did he die?” he asked.

“How do you think?” she spat, sitting up quickly and scrambling to the other side of the pallet.

“The cold,” he said, following her form with his
eyes, wanting to believe what he said. “The Highland snows—”

“It was not the cold, my lord Strathmore. It was not the snow. It was you. It was your command to attack at Glencarson that killed my brother.”

There was a surfeit of pain in her voice, calm as it was. It spoke measures beyond a scream or a cry. It sliced him to the core, hearing that pain come from her.

But perhaps more of his torment came from within himself. He wanted to deny he was responsible for the attack. He wanted to deny the indecency that had taken place in his name. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.

He had not been there at Glencarson. But he should have been.

“I’m sorry,” Roland said. “I’m very sorry. What happened at Glencarson should never have occurred. It was a mistake, and I will always regret it.”

Kyla took a heavy breath and let it out slowly, staring at him all the while. She seemed to make up her mind about something.

“I’ll be going now.” She walked over to her dagger, which had landed on the floor amid the rushes.

Roland crossed the short distance and took the knife from her hand before she could close her fingers around the hilt. “We’re all leaving soon. Have you any other supplies to take?”

He saw her shoulders stiffen beneath the tunic she wore.

“I would sooner travel with the devil himself than with you,” she said flatly. “Leave me alone.”

“If this is all you have, I suppose it will have to do. I’ll see what I can do about getting you some proper clothing. Perhaps the barmaid has something you could wear.”

He tucked the dagger into the heavy leather belt he wore. Kyla shook her head at him. Her eyes were shadowed.

“Again, my lord, you manage to astonish me with your audacity. Perhaps I have not made myself clear to one as thick-skulled as you. I came here to kill you. By the grace of the Lord I have decided not to do that. But now I am leaving.”

He blocked her way by stepping in front of her without touching her, maneuvering her until she was backed up almost against the wooden wall.

“Forgive me, my lady. I think I have been the one who was not clear. You are accompanying me to London.” Roland kept the threat in his voice to a velvet purr. He had found that this usually had the maximum effect. She was so much smaller than him. He wanted to smile at the fierceness of the look she threw up at him.

“I will die first!”

“No,” he said softly.

“I will kill you, then!”

“No,” he said again, then waited. He listened to the raggedness of her breath, felt the tension radiate from her to him with almost physical force, then felt it begin to wane.
Good
, he thought,
almost there
.

“Give me back my dagger,” she said tonelessly.

“I think not, my lady. Not just yet. Perhaps later.”

She moved one hand a fraction.

“It’s mine.”

“I’ll keep it safe for you.”

Again that tense silence from her, that blaze of emotion he could almost feel for her, the anger, the uncertainty.

“When we are in London,” he said, placing one of his hands on the hilt of her dagger, “we will look for that proof of your father’s innocence.”

“Oh yes,” she said scornfully.
“Now
I believe you. There’s certainly no reason for you to lie to me
now
. Everyone knows the Hound of Hell would offer his word to keep a village safe, even as he burned it down.”

He turned the anguish her words caused him into a careless shrug, backing away slightly.

“If you wish to leave, Lady Kyla, you are free to do so. The soldiers outside will retain you, of course. I will see to that. My men would never harm a lady.” He gave a fearsome smile in the shadows and had the satisfaction of seeing her take a step back. “Some of the soldiers here, however, are Henry’s men. And they have been promised a fortune to bring you back, living or dead. Although I think they might prefer you living, at least for the next few nights. There are more than forty of them, after all.”

He turned away from her indignant gasp and walked back over to the table by the door. “It matters not to me which path you choose. As you say, the Hound of
Hell has no soul, and certainly no reason to regret the foolish choice of someone who does not recognize her redemption when it is offered to her.”

He let her see him take hold of the door handle. “I offer you my protection. Whatever else you may think of me, I
will
keep you safe. It is my mission to do so. What say you, my lady? Where will you cast your fate?”

Surprisingly, an ember in the fireplace popped with a brief flowering of golden sparks, illuminating her for a fraction of a moment. It was enough for him to catch the look of resignation shrouding her, and although he should have been happy with the turn of her thoughts, he was slightly ashamed of himself, of his blatant manipulation of her fears.

Another irksome quality she had unearthed in him. How inconvenient. He would have to see what he could do about banishing this new sensation inside of him as soon as possible.

“I cannot trust you,” she said in a frustrated tone. “You would as soon have me dead, no doubt.”

“Oh no, my lady,” he said quietly, so quietly she had to strain to hear him. “Not I. I would have you live a long and fruitful life.”

She made a sound of disbelief. Roland turned the door handle, opened the door a crack.

“And in the final outcome, what does trust matter, Lady Kyla? It seems to me your choices are quite clear. Either come with me peaceably, or come with me forcibly.”

She watched him toy with the handle, then glanced
over longingly at the balcony window. Her hands were balled into fists.

“You have tricked me, made it impossible for me to leave. I cannot win.”