marriage drawn, knowing the match was as sound politically as it was personally. Her eager and immediate acceptance had sent him thundering to her father’s castle, where, in a burst of love-smitten irreverence, he had not waited for her to be summoned, but had sought her out in her private solar.
The sight of her, all white skin, raven-black hair, and flashing eyes, naked and grappling blindly to the churning hips of another lover had stopped him cold in the doorway. Seeing the man fling his golden head back to keen his ecstasy, and recognizing who was drawing the guttural screams of rapture from Nicolaa’s arched throat, nearly caused him to unsheath his sword then and there and slay the pair at the height of their betrayal.
Instead, the Wolf had waited, his heart building a wall of ice around it while he watched their rutting acrobatics grind to a sweating, shivering halt. Nicolaa had seen him first, and had screamed. Her lover had turned toward the door and … smiled his triumph.
Without a word, he had torn the marriage contract asunder and left the room, left the castle. A week later, he had sailed away from England, his gypon emblazoned with the red cross of the Crusader.
An eye for an eye, the Wolf reminded himself as he flexed his hands open and slowly lowered them to the pale, sleeping form of Servanne de Briscourt. It was a cruel, callous world —cruder by far to a woman than a man, but there too it was Fate who ultimately decided which gender should spring from the seeds sown. It was his fate to have been born a man of destiny; hers to have been born the pawn whose life or death meant very little in the scheme of things. He could not afford to think of her as anything else, despite the innocence and vulnerability she tried so hard to conceal behind the snapping blue eyes. If he did, if he dared feel any compassion or regret, all of their lives, including hers, would be forfeit.
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6
The messenger thundered up to the castle gates on a horse lathered nose to rump in the sour white foam of haste. The man himself was so winded he could barely communicate his demands to the guard who angled a bleary eye through the portcullis gates to identify him. Once admitted, he was escorted through the outer bailey, across a wooden drawbridge to an inner courtyard, through more gates and more annoying questions, until finally he was admitted to the innermost court. The horse’s hooves clacked loudly on both wood and cobbled surfaces, echoing the urgency of the message he carried, scattering the throngs of servants and pages who were going about their morning duties. Dismounting at last, he forced his cramped legs to run up the enclosed stairway to the entrance of the main keep, where he reiterated, with no small amount of irritation, his breathless demand to see Lord Lucien Wardieu.
The seneschal, a dour and grim-faced stub of a man, warned with equal acidity that the lord was still abed and would not humour an interruption. The guard, against all sane advice and protocol, shoved the seneschal aside and bolted the length of the corridor to enter the narrow stone spiral of stairs that led up into the lord’s private tower.
At the top, he was delayed by the poniards and drawn swords of the two alerted squires who slept in the anteroom adjoining their master’s sleeping chamber. The ruckus they caused in challenging the intrusion was sufficient to bring the naked and enraged Baron de Gournay slamming out of the chamber, his own sword unsheathed and gleaming in readiness.
“What the devil goes on here?” he demanded. “Rolf! Eduard! Who in blazes is this man and what does he want?”
“Please, my lord,” the guard gasped, his one arm bent to the breaking point by the elder of the two squires, Rolf. The younger one, his face earnest with intent, jabbed the point of his knife deeper into the intruder’s straining throat, causing a fine thread of blood to leak from the cut.
“Please, my lord! Hear me out! I bring urgent news from the sheriff! News I was commanded to relay to your ears only, my lord. Your ears only!”
Some of the tension eased from Wardieu’s arms as he lowered the huge steel blade. After another taut moment, he nodded curtly to his squires, who relaxed their grips only enough to allow the man