In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,8
Welshmen kept their fists curled around their hilts, but they made no further move to draw. Their faces hardened into angry masks; all traces of humour—mocking or real—vanished. Only the bearlike Sedrick remained stolidly impassive, although a close observer might have seen the grimace of disgust he directed at his blond, compromised companion.
“You seem to have us at a disadvantage, my lady,” said the one called Rhys. His anger waned somewhat as he took a long and insolently frank perusal of the slender wood nymph’s body. With her long red hair flaming around her shoulders and her tunic still clinging damply to shapely breasts and thighs, she made an intriguing impression on eyes unaccustomed to such delicacy—delicacy with the added pique of a sword in her hand. “Might I inquire as to how we might serve you?”
Ariel was not listening. Her gaze had fallen to the limp, flaccid body of the fawn draped carelessly over the back of Lord Rhys’s saddle. She recognized the small white diamond on the snout and knew it was her fawn, the timid, trusting creature who had begun to answer to her whistle, and for whom she had brought the fragrant sprigs of dried parsley today. A large wound in the pale brown neck was proof of the skill with which the knight wielded the enormous longbow he wore slung across his shoulder.
The surge of cold rage that shivered down her arm caused the edge of the falchion to slice into the taut surface of her captive’s neck. A curse brought his hand shooting up at once and he knocked the blade aside. His fingers grasped Ariel’s wrist and he wrenched her forward with enough force to fling her onto her back in a crush of ferns, and moss, and thrashing white limbs.
The Welsh brothers laughed and wheeled their big war-horses around. Sedrick scratched at his chin and shook his head, but did nothing more than lean an arm over the front of his saddle and observe.
The hotly flushed Norman jumped to his feet and fumbled to refasten his chausses. He dabbed at the cut on his neck, cursing anew as he saw the streaky threads of blood on his fingertips.
“By all the heavenly martyrs—! What manner of game is this? And what the devil are you doing here”—he glanced around as if searching the fringe of woods for more unexpected surprises—“alone!”
“What matter does it make?” Lord Rhys asked with a slow smile. “She is not alone now.”
Ariel saw where his black eyes were roving and scrambled to cover her bared limbs. She stood and brushed furiously at the clods of earth that clung to her tunic, and when she finished, she planted her hands on her waist and ignored the leering Welshman in favour of the knight who still tugged and yanked at his clothing.
“A more worthy question might be: Where the devil have you come from and why are you strayed so far off the main road?”
The knight glared at her. “We thought to avoid any travellers who might announce our arrival in Pembroke.”
“Why? What manner of heinous crimes have you committed that cause you to skulk from one shadow to the next like … like …” She glanced at the dead fawn and the man who had slain it. “Like the lying, thieving, cowardly vermin who infest the nether regions of Wales?”
The piercing hazel eyes narrowed. “You have a bold tongue in front of strangers, wench. Happens one day it might be pulled from your head if you do not take a care.”
She gave a derisive snort and bent over to retrieve her falchion. “I should not give warnings of anything being pulled from anywhere, my dear Lord Henry. Not if I had just been caught with my jewels hanging over the edge of a tree stump.”
The Welshmen showed surprise. “You know each other?”
Lord Sedrick chuckled—a deep, rumbling sound that brought to mind giant boulders rubbing together. “Ma lords … ye have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Lady Ariel de Clare, Lord Henry’s fair sister.”
“Sister?” Lord Rhys whistled under his breath. “He mentioned he had one, but not that she was as delectable a morsel as what I see before me.”
“Take heed not to say such things too loudly to be overheard,” Sedrick warned amiably. “The Lady Ariel takes poorly to compliments, regardless of who delivers them.”
“Perhaps she will accept a gift then,” the Welsh lord announced in bolder tones. “As an offering of peace for having obviously intruded on