“Kirkburough was not defended,” she reminded him. “Ambray will be.”
“Men die indiscriminately in any battle, Rowena, but I have never killed wantonly.” Then he sat up. “Why do you ask? And if you tell me you are worried for folk you do not even know, I will—”
“Do not start threatening me so early in the morn,” she cut in crossly. “I was only thinking of the women and children. Does this lord have a family, a wife—a mother?”
“No one since his father died…nay, actually, there are his father’s widow and her daughter, but they are no blood kin to him.”
“Yet I have heard it said you destroy whole families when you go after an enemy.”
He grinned at her. “They say a great many things about me, wench. Mayhap half is true.”
He was not telling her what she needed to hear, and she was starting to feel sick in her apprehension, so she asked outright, “Then you would not kill those women, though they are related to the Lord of Ambray through marriage?”
He finally frowned at her. “Were I capable of killing women, Rowena,youwould not be here to ask me such silly questions.”
She turned her back on him, but not before he saw her stricken expression. He muttered a curse and moved to stand behind her, drawing her back against his chest.
“I did not mean that the way it sounded, but was merely making a point,” he told her. “Think you I like these questions of yours when they paint me so vicious? I thought you were not frightened of me anymore.”
“I am not.”
“Whyare you not?”
She turned around to look up at him, but color suddenly flooded her cheeks and she looked down again in embarrassment. In a small, repentant voice, she said, “Because you do not hurt women—even when you have reason to. I am sorry, Warrick. I should not have let my thoughts run hither and yon, but—but I like it not that you go to make war.”
“I am a knight—”
“I know, and knights will ever have one battle or another to fight. Women do not have tolikeit. Will—will you be gone for long?”
His arms wrapped around her to draw her close. “Aye, mayhap months. Will you miss me, wench?”
“When half my duties go with you?”
He whacked her bottom. “That was not a proper answer for your lord.”
“That answer was for the man who calls me his serf. I have another answer for the man who loved me through the night. Him I will dream of, and pray for, and count the days until he comes safely—”
His arms crushed her. His mouth devoured her. Before her thoughts scattered from the heat he aroused so quickly, she decided he must have liked that answer better. She just wished it were not all true.
Chapter 41
Warrick looked up from his cold meal as the tent flap opened. He grinned slowly as he saw who had entered.
“Be damned, what do you here, Sheldon? And do not tell me you were just passing by.”
“I come with your supply wains from Fulkhurst. You might want to put that slop aside and wait for some fresh pork. I counted a dozen fat pigs, one of which is even now being slaughtered.”
“We were not doing so badly,” Warrick replied. “The village had had a prosperous summer ere we arrived, and I made surenoneof its stock was herded into the castle, though I let all of the villagers seek shelter there.”
Sheldon laughed at that strategy. “More mouths for them to feed, but less food to feed them with. Usually besiegers are not so lucky.”
Warrick shrugged. “I was fortunate in catching them unawares with an advance guard. But with the harvest just in, the castle was likely well stocked. It has been a month, but I doubt they are even rationing yet.”
“Well, I have brought you a few trebuchets you might make use of.”
“The devil you did!”
“As well as a small mountain of stones to fire from them. But I noticed you brought your mangonel down from Tures. I should have brought you boulders instead.”
