“More like merciless—or do you want me to carry you to my bed right now?”
Actually, she would not mind that, not at all, but she said instead, “Did you forget you ordered a bath?”
“If that was said to cool my ardor,youforget the last bath I had—with you in it.”
“Nay, I do not forget, but ’tis like to be cold again,” she warned him.
He bent to nuzzle her neck. “Do you mind?”
“Did I then?”
He chuckled as he stood up and set her on her feet. “Come, then, and bring the wine. I trust you will not choke on it this time?”
“Nay, I am sure I will not.”
Rowena was not yet used to such verbal play. It had her cheeks glowing, but also her pulses racing. She was still a prisoner after all,’twould seem—of her desires. But mayhap Warrick was, too.
Chapter 40
“I had sent a man ahead to Gilly Field, to scout the area. By the time he returned to report that he could find no activity of any kind, I had already received other reports of a large army seen moving north toward Fulkhurst.”
“Then youknewabout the army in those woods?” Rowena exclaimed. “You let me go on and on about it, trying to convince you of the danger, whilst all along you—”
“What are you complaining about?” Warrick asked. “Did I not listen to your every word?”
“You wereamusedby my every word,” she retorted indignantly.
“Not every word.”
That curt reminder closed her mouth for the moment. He had asked her again her brother’s name. Then he had thought to ask where the lands were located that she had claimed to possess, possibly thinking Gilbert might be there. He had become quite annoyed when she would not answer either query, and she could only guess how furious he was over what Gilbert had attempted to do here.
They had not left his chamber yet this morn, though Warrick had been up for several hours already. Gilbert’s army, or what was left of it, had not come to besiege the castle during the night, and was not like to now. But Rowena had finally got around to asking again what had brought Warrick back so soon to Fulkhurst. ’Twas what he was now telling her—if she could keep from interrupting.
He did wait a moment, to see if she would say more, then finally continued. “Since we did not come upon this reported army by the end of the first day’s march, I thought it prudent to return home. ’Twould have been what I might expect of d’Ambray, to lure me out so he could attack Fulkhurst whilst I was not there to defend it. Instead, your brother thought to take advantage of my absence. I wonder now if d’Ambray did not receive word of this other army and thought it mine, lying in wait to ambush the ambusher. If so, he must have been furious to think I had guessed his plan.”
And Warrick was going to be more than furious if he ever found out that d’Ambray and her stepbrother were one and the same.
He could have guessed with this latest fiasco. Rowena was surprised he had not, since only the one army had been sighted in the area. But to draw the right conclusion, he would have to acknowledge that ’twas his worst enemy who had captured and abused him at Kirkburough, and he was like to accept any other possibility, no matter how outlandish, before he would accept that one.
She had kept silent on this subject for too long. As soon as she had concluded that he would not kill her for who she was, she should have told him the truth. Now he might see her silence as a plot against him, her seduction of him as a means to learn his plans so she could warn Gilbert. After all, why should he believe that she hated her stepbrother, when ’twas just as likely that the two of them were working together against Warrick? The truth now would not only bring his anger back to her, but ’twas like to have him wanting revenge again also. She could not bear that now, not when she was discovering she had strong feelings for the man.
’Twas stupid of her to let that happen, she knew. Mildred had warned her of the possibility. Though she had scoffed then, she did not see how she could actually have prevented it, since it had sneaked up on her when she was not looking. The culprit was likely those damn desires of hers that she had so little control over. ’Twas hard to dislike a man she so enjoyed in bed. ’Twas harder still to dislike one who kept showing her a more gentle side to his nature.
She finished combing her hair and started to braid it. She was wearing her yellow bliaut again, which had not drawn comments yesterday, nor yet today, even though she had the serf’s gown that she had stuffed in the sack she had brought back with her. She supposed she was testing Warrick by not donning it instead, to see just how closely he meant to adhere to the original dictates he had set down for her, when his attitude toward her was no longer the same.
She turned now to ask, “Think you d’Ambray will try something else underhanded?”
Warrick dropped back on the bed, where he had been sitting and watching her. “I do not intend to give him the opportunity. I march on his castle in two days.”
Rowena’s fingers stilled in her hair, her breath in her throat. “Which—that is, has he more than one?”
“Aye, and others in his control that he has no right to. But ’tis his stronghold, Ambray Castle, I will take. Hopefully, this time he will be in it when I do.”
If Gilbert was not, Rowena’s mother still was. The Lady Anne could be freed, finally, from Gilbert’s control—or she could be hurt if Ambray did not surrender, if the battle was taken inside its walls.
“Do you and your men—kill wantonly when you take a castle?” she asked hesitantly.
“Was anyone killed at Kirkburough?”
