then only because she was an imbecile and has kept to her own foul company in the woods these past twenty years.”
“Perhaps we should make this imbecile sheriff then,” Wardieu said angrily. “Who else would think to look first on cursed grounds for a man who would like the world to think of him as a spectre who can appear and disappear at will? By God, it is just as well Onfroi de la Haye lies so near death; I would strangle him myself for all the worth he is to me.”
Nicolaa de la Haye emerged from Wardieu’s pavilion and scowled up at the sun. Light filtering through the overhanging flap gave her milk-white complexion a faintly bluish caste. Her eyes were puffed and her stance unsteady, for she had needed strong decoctions of crushed willow bark to help her sleep without dreaming too vividly.
“What is all this about strangling Onfroi?” she grumbled. “I have been entreating you to let me do so for years, but you have always stayed my hand.”
“Thornfeld Abbey,” Wardieu asked brusquely. “Do you know of it?”
“Thornfeld? Thornfeld … the name tastes familiar somehow …”
Wardieu allowed a flicker of disgust to cross his face as he regarded her unkempt, dissolute condition. Was it just the sickly blue glow from the pavilion overhang giving Nicolaa’s raven beauty a brittle edge, or was it the stirring of memories that vaguely repulsed him? She had clung to him like a leech the past two nights, and while her body had afforded its usual erotic release for his tensions, there had been no real pleasure derived from her frantic manipulations.
Wardieu turned back to De Vere. “Have the men in full armour and ready to ride in twenty minutes. Are you certain you can find the place again?”
De Vere smiled wanly. “We still have the hag and she still has possession of half her fingers and toes. Milord D’Aeth has been most persuasive in winning her cooperation thus far; I have no doubt he can continue to do so.”
“Tell him he can have more than her fingers and toes to chew on so long as she lives long enough to guide us to Thornfeld Abbey.”
It might have been an hour, a week, or a month later when Servanne wakened from her passion-induced drowse. The air was markedly cooler where they lay twined together on the moss, although there was more than enough heat emanating from the Wolf’s body to maintain hers at a rosy flush. The edge of the pool was a few inches from where her fingers rested limply on the moss, but the slight disturbance caused by uncurling them and dipping them into the water produced a distinct change in the tempo of the heart beating beneath her ear.
Servanne sighed and raised her head with an effort. He was awake, but not much longer before her, judging by the heaviness around his eyes.
“The hour must be dreadfully late,” she said, warming self-consciously when she saw how intimately their bodies were positioned, one cradled atop the other in contrasting lengths of palest white and weathered bronze.
“You were sleeping like a kitten. I had not the heart to waken you.”
The Black Wolf of Lincoln—admitting to a heart?
Servanne smiled at the thought and looked around her in the gloom. Their clothes would undoubtedly be damp and wrinkled beyond any possible logical explanation. Biddy would know—the whole camp would know where they had been and what they had been doing for most of the afternoon. Her hair would take hours to dry and tame into a semblance of order. Her knees, back, and buttocks felt chafted raw from the sand, and she was certain, in any but the dimmest light, the whiteness of her skin would be marred by visually explicit bruises.
The gray eyes were observing her every change of expression and it was not too difficult to interpret her thoughts. An unexpected surge of protectiveness gripped him and he had to keep his hands flat by his sides to stop them from reaching out and gathering her back into his embrace.
He had not wanted this to happen, had not intended this to happen and for the very reasons that sickened and appalled him as he saw her trying very hard to shield her thoughts and emotions. The Dragon would see her guilt as if it were a beacon on a stormy night. Arrogant bastard that he was, it might not occur to him that she had allowed herself to be despoiled willingly.