long, hard ride, and felt as tense in the unnatural silence as a bubble about to burst.
“Forgive me, my dearest. I was not aware I was … ah, squirming.”
“Squirming, twitching, sweating—Mon Dieu, but you reek of a cesspool. Can you not go out and … and see if those lazy wastrels have groomed my poor Arabella properly? If not, if they have ruined her, I swear I shall whip the lot of them until the flesh is shredded from their miserable hides. I shall hang them by their entrails and—” She stopped and glanced up as Wardieu stood. “My lord?” Her voice was instant sweetness. “You have hardly touched a morsel of food. Will you not have more ale? Some grapes, or an apple perhaps?”
In lieu of answering, the golden-haired knight ducked through the opening of the tent and strode out into the darkness. He walked the length of the camp and came to a halt on the knoll that overlooked the slope of the valley. The lowlands were muffled under a pale blanket of mist, but high above the blackened crust of trees were thousands of pinpricks of starlight, and behind him, hung against the velvet sky like a gleaming sickle, was the thin, silvery rim of the moon. There were no lights showing from the windows of Alford. It was past midnight, and the monks, being frugal as well as bone-weary after toiling long hours in their daily duties, wasted no candlewax past the hour of Compline.
“What the devil can be keeping De Vere?” he muttered aloud. “He has been in that accursed forest for hours.”
“You set him a difficult task, my lord,” said Nicolaa, coming quietly up to stand beside him. She touched the sleeve of his chain-mail shirt and ran her fingers possessively onto the quilted thickness of his surcoat, sighing as if she found herself having to explain the very obvious to a petulant child. “It was already dusk when you sent him into the forest; he could hardly be expected to search in the dark.”
“De Vere could track an ant through a meadow on a moonless night. A two-legged wolf should present no great problem.”
Nicolaa lifted a brow delicately. It was not unlike Wardieu to be cross and impatient in the face of inefficiency, nor to become tense and intractable with too many hours of physical inactivity. Some of their more memorable trysts, in fact, had taken place between bouts of a tourney, with him still splashed with the blood of one opponent, and waiting feverishly to split the bones of another. The challenge of rooting out this Black Wolf of Lincoln should have had a similar effect on his carnal urges, and was one of the more prurient reasons why Nicolaa had insisted on accompanying him to Alford.
Yet this was no ordinary tension she could sense thrumming through the finely honed body. Something was distracting De Gournay, tempering the voracious appetite of her prize stallion to the point where he had not glanced in her direction once all evening—an affront to her vanity she could not be expected to entertain in good humour.
“Lucien?” Her hand drifted downward, skipping over the wide leather belt strapped around his waist, and cupped suggestively around the slashed V where his chausses met beneath the hem of his surcoat. There was no response at all. Not even a flicker on the angular planes of his face to show he was aware of the invitation.
“Lucien! For the love of God—” She lowered her voice to a throaty rumble. “You are acting like a man possessed. One would think you would be grateful to this Black Wolf for providing you with a solution to your problem. The marriage contracts have been signed; you are as good as wed to the little bitch now. No court in the land would deny you your right to her estates simply because of the interference of a blood-lusting outlaw.”
Wardieu turned and stared wordlessly.
“It is perfect, do you not see? Let him have her. Let him keep her. Send him your blessings as well as a sharpened blade to do the carving!”
He continued to stare, his gaze so cold and hard Nicolaa felt a corresponding rush of anger surge through her veins.
“First you claim she means nothing to you,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Now, suddenly, you are acting as if she means everything! I warn you, I will not be played the fool, Lucien. Not again. Not by you, or any man!”