halt as a slash of cold steel came out of the gloom and stopped an inch from her throat. Eduard FitzRandwulf was at the other end of the blade, startling her a second time with a far more graphic oath than anything she might have coined. He was also bare from the waist up, his face, neck, shoulders, and chest glittering above the ferns as if belonging to some gilded satyr.
“Have you no better sense than to sneak up on a man in the dark?”
Ariel was aware of the blush rising in her cheeks and was hopeful he could not see it. She wished, just as heartily, she had not interrupted his morning ablutions, for it was difficult not to notice the magnificent bulk of muscles ranging across his upper torso; harder still to resist a quick glance down the hard, flat plane of his belly and waist.
“I … have a light,” she said, clearing her throat of hesitation. “So I was hardly sneaking. I should think it was more the poor condition of your eyes and ears that deserves the blame.”
His eyes narrowed. He resheathed his sword with a gesture of disgust and threw the weapon back onto the ground. “I was washing. Do you mind?” “Not at all. Shall I stand guard?”
His mouth curved down but he did not rise to the bait. Instead, he returned to the river’s edge and resumed splashing handfuls of water over his face and shoulders.
Ariel, cold through all the heavy layers of her clothing and a blanket besides, watched him with gently arched brows. Raised in a household with five male cousins and an energetic brother, she was more than passingly familiar with a man’s unclothed body. More than once, she had caught Henry naked and grappling in the arms of some buxom wench, so she was not even maidenly ignorant of how a man and woman fit together. For all their muscle and bravado though, most men were white as milk from the neck down, seldom struck by the desire to expose any skin to sunlight, or, for that matter, soap and water.
FitzRandwulf’s body was certainly a match for any she had seen as far as width and breadth and sheer mass of plated muscle. But he was also as bronzed as weathered oak, his skin smooth and hard-surfaced, gleaming like fine camlet in the glow of the lantern. Dark hairs formed a natural gorget over his chest, narrowing to a cable’s width where it trailed down onto his belly. His forearms bore a light covering of those same smooth hairs, as would, she imagined, the long sinewy legs. He carried no excess flesh anywhere that she could see, and where she could not, did not bear supposition.
The threat of a second discomforting flush prompted her to turn away, but not before a glimpse of something that was not flesh or fur lured her gaze back to his chest. Hanging there, threaded onto a leather thong, was a small gold ring. It swung back and forth with the action of his arms, but Ariel could see it was a woman’s ring, ornately filigreed to decorate and flatter a slender finger.
Her brows inched delicately higher.
A woman’s ring worn about the neck signified deep affection. Moreover, a gold ring, wrought with such exquisite craftsmanship would not have come from the finger of a common trull. It was a token worth far more than a simple silk scarf or a bit of tinseled ribbon usually bestowed upon a knight by his lady of choice. Worn beneath the tunic, borne next to the heart, this particular talisman could be nothing other than a pledge of undying devotion to and from a secret love.
Secret … because she was a noblewoman of high birth?
Ariel’s eyes darkened with the possibility of an intrigue, for had he not denied the existence of any lady love? Had he not denied it most emphatically?
Her reflections went no further as Eduard stood and shook the water from his hands, scattering a bright spray of silvered droplets into the mist.
Not wanting to be caught staring, Ariel glanced away. The darkness was lifting and the sky to the east was beginning to glow with a ruddy luminosity, as if some unearthly giant were approaching, carrying a flaring torch before him. A layer of soupy fog hovered over the surface of the river—steam off a witch’s brew. There must have been a village somewhere nearby, for the current was interrupted by a series of wattled