Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,69

match for this Saxon, no children to ride upon my shoulders and watch grow tall, handsome, and lovely as I grow stooped and grey.” As if sensing argument, he raised a hand. “I shall end my days here in England, but they will be naught like yours.” Giving her his back, he resumed his stride.

Returned to worry over what awaited him in Thetford, Nicola called, “May I accompany you to town?”

He looked around, and once more in her language said, “You may not, and still you will not hunt without me. You understand you must keep your word—absolutely must. Oui, Nicola?”

Grateful for the distance between them that, hopefully, hid the moisture in her eyes, she said, “Upon your return, you will find me here trying not to tear out my hair.” She set her chin higher. “You understand you must return—absolutely must. Oui, Vitalis?”

Seeing anger in his eyes, she knew he saw tears in hers. Perhaps for that, he did not further rebuke her. “Vixen,” he muttered and pivoted.

Nicola tried to seal her lips. Really, she did. “Methinks we make good progress,” she called. “Vixen—far preferable to termagant.” Then she pivoted.

Refusing to look behind to gauge his response, she crossed to the bed fashioned of a blanket tucked around heaped leaves at the base of a tree, dropped onto it, and leaning against the trunk, closed her eyes as if to rest.

And prayed for Vitalis’s safe return.

He trusted the woman, not only through observation and in the gut of him, but for what was told by others who answered seemingly offhanded inquiries about her.

She who had urged him to live, who asked little coin for the foodstuffs he purchased, had much reason to hate Normans. Her son, a young man skilled in working iron the same as Zedekiah, had been crippled a year past during an encounter with several of De Warenne’s men. The cause for his crippling was an attempt to retrieve his sisters who had been taken to work in Red Castle’s kitchens, serving not only the appetites of the belly but the flesh.

Aye, Vitalis trusted the Saxon, and because her daughters continued to labor at the castle, the information she passed to him as if in casual conversation was as reliable as possible. And that which was given this day would finally move him and Nicola out of Thetford’s wood.

It was good the woman could be trusted since now she knew who he was—he had seen it in her eyes and heard it in the urgency with which she told him to run. And live.

The head. Much favor that had gained him. Grisly though its delivery, making him retch in his mouth when he pulled it from the bag and swallow hard as he raised it aloft by blood-matted hair, he had been wise to himself present it to the abbot though one of Turold’s men had harvested it.

For that, here his reward—sitting with De Warenne in Red Castle’s great hall, not at a lower table like the score of knights over which Daryl had been given command to hunt greater prey, but at the high table and only three places to the right of one of King William’s companions, which would be only two spaces if not for Prince Richard.

Though the youth given into De Warenne’s charge to better his skill at arms and understanding of lordship had left the table an hour past, appearing bored with talk over efforts made to capture Vitalis that now extended to Thetford and its wood, the seat beside the Lord of Red Castle remained vacant. And with each passing minute that saw Daryl recede into the background, greater the temptation to trade this chair for that one.

Would it be too bold, causing him to fall out of favor with the great warrior who had just called for a fourth pour of wine?

Daryl chewed the side of his tongue as he watched a pretty Saxon of flaxen hair hasten from a lower table where men-at-arms had groped her while she poured ale. Though no longer did he count himself Saxon, that race having met its demise at Hastings when King Harold failed to keep the counsel of men like Daryl’s departed sire who urged him not to be drawn into battle before England’s forces recovered from the Norwegian invaders, he felt for the young woman. Whatever her life before the conquering, it had to have been better than this. When night came crawling across the floorboards, doubtless many a corner