The wagon pulled to a stop just outside Pickney’s campsite. She took quick note of the fact that the man had barely two dozen armed men to help him. As Robert and Pickney walked to the side of the wagon to stare at her, she turned her full attention back to them. The way Pickney glared at her stomach frightened her, but she fought to hide that. Robert, she swiftly noted, looked stricken. She shrugged that away. Pickney was the one she had to watch. He was the leader.
“You are with child.” Pickney clenched his hands into fists, fighting the sharp urge to beat Gytha.
“How keen your eye is. ’Tis something that often happens when a woman has a husband.”
“Enough of your impertinence. Curse that man and curse you,” he hissed, slamming his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Well, that shall have to be dealt with.”
Pickney’s cold words sent icy tremors of fear through her. She caught a look of horror briefly come and go on Robert’s face. Therewasa limit to what Robert could condone. What she needed to find out was whether Robert could gain the courage to stop what so clearly horrified him—or, she thought before she turned her full attention back to Pickney, if she could give him that needed courage.
“I should not make too many plans,” she told Pickney in a cold voice, not even trying to hide her hate for the man.
“Are you fool enough to think your great Red Devil can win this time?”
“Are you fool enough to think that he cannot?”
“Woman, I hold you, and through you I will soon hold Saitun Manor. I have that red bastard now.”
“Not yet.”
Leaning over the side of the wagon, Pickney jabbed his pointing finger at her. “I should be careful, m’lady. Idohold younow.”
“Best you hold me securely and safely, sir. I may be all that stands between you and a well-deserved death at the hands of my husband. You stand there gloating as if you have won, but you best not gloat too soon, for the battle has yet to be fought.”
Seeing how Gytha’s words were enraging his uncle, Robert dared to murmur, “’Ware, Gytha.”
“Aye, heed my fool of a nephew. ’Tis not wise to taunt me. Enough of this. ’Tis time to ride for Saitun Manor,” he bellowed as he strode towards his men.
For a moment it looked as if Robert was going to speak to her, but then he scurried after Pickney. They started on their way too quickly for Gytha’s liking. Pickney clearly did not want to chance a pursuing Thayer catching him in the open. Looking away from the men riding ahead of them, Gytha caught Henry staring at her. She was a little surprised to detect a shadow of concern in his dark eyes.
“That fool, Robert, spoke true,” Henry said after a moment. “Beware, m’lady. Pickney is given to blind rages. His plan may be to wed you to that weak gosling he calls nephew, but that will not stop him if you stir his fury. He will kill you.” He turned away from her, muttering to John to urge the horses to a quicker pace.
Gytha settled against the sacks in the back of the wagon. Her thoughts were not on the warning Henry had given her, but why he had given her one at all. She suddenly realized that she had marked Henry and John as greater rogues than they were. They had not truly treated her poorly. Callously, perhaps, but not cruelly. They did what they were hired to do, no less but no more either. Now it appeared they too had limits to what they could condone. Closing her eyes, she decided to rest and try to think of a way to make use of that.
“She sleeps,” Gytha heard Henry say a little while later.
“How can she sleep when the wagon rattles along so?” John muttered.
“I have heard it said a woman with child can sleep most anywheres. ’Tis strange, but I think ’tis true.”
“Aye, and something else is true. We have set ourselves in the midst of more than we were told of.”
“Curse that bastard, Pickney. To shed an heir, he said. To wed the woman to that suckling Robert, he said. And we believed him. S’truth, all we heeded was the clink of coins, fools that we are. ’Tis much deeper than the ridding of a troublesome heir. Much deeper indeed.”
“And we could be pulled down with him. Do you think he means his threat,” John whispered, “about the child she carries?”
“Has the man ever uttered a threat he did not mean?”
“Jesu. I felt a bit uneasy over the murder of the two men—but, well, they could fight and ’tis the way of the gentry. Stealing a wife?” John shrugged. “Happens a lot. No real harm. But, he talks of killing a babe. A babe, Henry. And I think he means to kill the woman when her use is past.”
“Aye, he means both. Women and babes.” Henry shook his head. “I have more sins weighing on my soul than I want to think on, but not that. Not the blood of women and babes. I have no mind to put it there either.”
“Then we can flee now? Pull away from this ere it goes any further?”
“And how do we do that? We turn this wagon any way but right behind Pickney there and we are dead men. Pickney will not ask what we do, but will kill us without hesitation.”
“So we are trapped.”
“Mayhap. But mayhap not. We will see what happens at Saitun Manor.”
