Alys felt her brows lower, and she welcomed the anger. Perhaps it would smother the heartbreak she felt at his professed self-loathing.
“I am not a child,”she said shaking him once for emphasis. “And it isnotyour decision to make.” Then she brought her lips to his and kissed him with all the passion she felt, her anger, her fear, her love. She wrapped her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe, and kissed him and kissed him, trying to erase his doubts. He did not deny her, although he did not encourage her.
At last she leaned back, her hands coming to rest on either side of his neck. Her heart pounded in her breast, and she could feel the reverberations of its thumping against Piers’s solid chest.
He stared down at her, his eyes black and starving for what was before him. If only he would reach out and take it, take her …
“We should try to get some rest. We’ll leave as soon as it is light.”
Alys felt tears press against her eyelids and she shook her head faintly as she stepped back from him.
“You don’t love me at all, do you?”
His throat worked as he swallowed. “I simply can make you no promises.”
Alys rolled her lips inward and bit down on them to still their trembling. “Very well, Piers. Have your time in London to do what you feel you must do. No promises. I think we understand each other quite clearly now.”
“I don’t mean to hurt you, Alys,” he said in a low voice.
She walked around him and paused at the side of the cot to slip out of her shoes. She crawled beneath the covers, not bothering to take off her cloak. She turned on her side to face the skin wall, her body feeling stiff and sore, as if she had sustained a great fall. After a moment, she heard Piers sigh softly and then the light from the candle went out, draping the shelter in darkness. The cot dipped as Piers joined her.
Alys didn’t know how they managed to not touch on such a narrow bedstead.
Tiny knew that if she was caught down from the tree in the middle of the night, her Papa would switch her legs raw. But she thought there might be some pudding left from the feast, and she knew there would be mead, and any matter, Layla was restless. Lady Alys would take the monkey with her on the morrow when she and Piers left the town, and Tiny wanted to savor every moment she could steal with the marvelous little animal, and breathe the air that was scented with the presence of a real lady, for as long as possible.
The bonfire was no grand flame now, but its coals were lively and licking in a wide bowl that radiated a welcome heat onto Tiny’s shins and face as she sat on a log, Layla on her shoulder. She was scraping the last cold, congealeddregs from a forgotten bowl with her fingers when Layla started, shrieked, and leapt away into the shadows. Tiny jumped to her feet, the bowl tumbling to the ground, and looked around for what could have startled the animal. She saw nothing.
“Oh, bugger!” Tiny huffed. She bent at the waist and tried to peer into the darkness. “Layla! Layla, come here, you naughty monkey!” She would be switched for certain now, being down from the tree at night alone,andhaving lost Lady Alys’s pet. She heard a rustle behind a nearby tree and crept toward it.
“Layla!Oh mercy, you’re going to get me switched! Come out right now!”
She was just about to peer around the wide gray trunk when a hand reached out and jerked her forward, spinning her around so that she could not see the face of the person who held her. One arm braced across Tiny’s chest and a hand gripped her upper arm, while another hand clapped over her mouth. Tiny could smell heady cologne and then a voice whispered in her ear.
“I have no desire to harm you, child.” It was a woman’s voice, and finely accented. “But I cannot turn you loose for obvious reasons, and you do seem quite frail. So if you struggle, it is likely that I will break your arm. Do you agree?”
Tiny nodded. The arm across her chest was draped in a rich, heavy cloak material, and Tiny could see part of the massive hood out of the corner of her right eye. The woman holding her was not large, but her captor was right—Tiny was frail. With one twist, her arm would separate from her shoulder with a familiar snap.
“Good. Now, listen to me, very carefully, and you need only nod yes or nay: Lady Alys Foxe, she is still here, yes?”
Tiny hesitated, but then nodded.
“But she is to leave soon? With a man?”
Tiny was motionless. She didn’t know who this strange woman was, or in what kind of jeopardy Lady Alys would be placed if she answered the questions.
As if the woman could hear her worried thoughts, she offered. “Had I ill intent, I could have acted any number of times she strayed to the fringe of the village.” She paused, letting the fact sink in that the woman had known Alys had been residing at the village, had possibly been watching her for nigh on a week. “Now, is she to leave?”
Tiny nodded.
“On the morrow?”
She nodded again.
“Good. Well done. Now, I will remove my hand so that you may speak aloud your next answer. If you betray me, everyone in this village shall pay for your mistake. Do you understand?”
Tiny nodded.
“To where do Lady Alys and the man hie?”
