“Well, then,” she said on a sigh, “let us waste no more time, the sooner to part company.” And yet she just could not seem to stop herself from adding, “What has your duplicity accomplished?”
“You harp on lies and duplicity, lady, but you opened your gates to me.”
“Because you pretended to give aid!”
“I did give aid. What I did not do was slaughter the rest of your people to take you out of Clydon yesterday, which would have been more easily done. If your misplaced dignity is not worth those lives, say so.”
That effectively knocked the steam out of her. She knew very well that to have taken her any other way than he had would have left countless bodies behind.
“None of that discounts that you had no right to take me at all,” she said in a quieter, though no less bitter, tone. “You didnotcome from my lord as you claimed.”
“There you are mistaken, lady,” he was pleased to tell her. “As your betrothed, Lord Rothwellisyour lord, and I act on his behalf. And he does have the right to take you and force you to honor your betrothal contract with him. Whether ’twas your idea or Shefford’s to put him aside is of no moment. He does not choose to be put aside.”
Reina listened to this quite calmly, and then confounded the man by smiling at him. “If you believe that nonsense, you have been duped. My betrothed died two years ago, just before my father left for the Holy Land. There was no time before he left to arrange another alliance. He charged me to see to the matter, and through correspondence with him, I had two men he and I both approved, and ’tis one of these I would have been wed to within the week.”
“Who?”
“That is hardly a concern of yours, other than this Rothwell you mention is not one of them. I have never even heard of the man, and if he says he has a contract, he lies.”
“Or you do.”
Reina’s chin came up sharply. “I have my father’s letters to prove what I say.”
“Then produce them.”
“Idiot!” she hissed in exasperation. “The letters are at Clydon.”
“So you want me to believe, but Iwouldbe an idiot the day I take a lady at her word,” he snorted.
Her eyes narrowed on him at that left-handed insult. “Then you still intend to take me to your lord?”
“He is not my lord, but aye, for five hundred marks, you most definitely will go to him. What I want to know from you is why my task was made so easy. Why were you so poorly protected?”
Reina was still reeling over the paltry sum he had been offered to ruin her life. As for his wanting answers from her now…
“Go to hell, Fitz Hugh. I am done talking to someone so unreasonably pigheaded. For that matter, I am done suffering his presence.”
So saying, she took flight, and with no one standing between her and the front of the tent, ’twas not difficult. That she blundered into the midst of his entire camp gave her only momentary pause. The thunderous roar she left behind was incentive enough to quicken her step; and, barefoot or not, she raced straight for the nearest horse she spotted, sending up a word of thanks that it was a gelding rather than a war-horse, and still saddled, too. The men lounging all around her, under trees and in front of cooking fires, merely gaped at her as she sped through them, too surprised to do anything.
For not having planned her escape, she was doing remarkably well, and even believed she could actually make it now that she had reached the horse. The cover had to go in order for her to hoist herself into the saddle without a boost up, but that was a small sacrifice to make for success. The horse was not that many hands tall, and once her foot found the stirrup, she managed to pull herself up the rest of the way.
But there her problems began. That her shift rode halfway up her thighs as she sat astride was the least of them. The horse did not care for her light weight on its back and made haste to let her know. That was not her main problem either, for she was not inexperienced with difficult mounts. Her biggest problem was that every man in camp had stood up by then, fully aware now what she was about. There was a solid wall of them blocking the three directions that would take her away from the enraged knight, too close for her to pick up the speed to break through them. The only opening available was back the way she had come, right though the heart of the camp. As long as she could generate enough speed to knock away anyone who tried to stop her, there was still a chance.
She wasted no more time thinking about it, but drew the horse about and dug her bare heels into its sides. Disdainfully, it would not budge, and after all its sidestepping and head tossing until then! Furiously, Reina gave it a sharp taste of the reins she had gathered in one fist, then almost lost her seat when it bolted. But that was the speed she needed, and the first few men who dared get in her way dived for cover when they saw she would run them down rather than stop.
Unfortunately, the closer she got to the end of the camp, the braver they got, reaching for the reins, banging into her knees as they missed, trying to frighten the horse with wildly waving arms. One fellow succeeded in latching onto her arm, but a sharp twist made him loose his grip before she lost her balance. And then she saw Walter de Breaute coming at her, taller than all the others, more able to reach up to her because of his extra height, and she steered away from him, only to find herself riding right at Fitz Hugh on her other side—too late. He did no more than hold out an arm as she passed, and she was plucked right off the horse, the animal riding on without her, while she felt as if she had run into a stone wall.
She lost her breath at the impact of his arm with her belly, and that it still squeezed her while holding her to his side did not make it easy for her to start breathing again. But once her lungs finally filled with air, she let out a screech of outraged fury, half for being stopped, half because she was being hefted back to the tent rather than being allowed to walk.
“Cretin! Devil-spawned lout! Put medow—”
The word ended on a whoosh when he tightened the iron band about her waist. She started to struggle then, kicking backwards at him, hammering at his arm and the shoulder she could reach. But he seemed not to notice her efforts at all, just kept marching along, with her practically sitting on his hip, her feet alongway from the ground.
When he did set her down, it was directly in front of the tent opening. She got a look at his face then, and it was thunderous.
“Lady, you are more trouble than you are worth,” he rumbled out.
If he had not said that, she might have become truly afraid of him at last, for his visage was terrible to behold. But those words rubbed her on the raw. And besides, if he ever did strike her with one of those clublike fists that he was clenching at his sides, she would not be alive to worry about it ever happening again.
