Chapter Fourteen

“You are angered with me.” Anwyn directed a searching look at the man who strode beside her. Each time she so much as glanced at him, she saw him again standing naked in the forest, strong and proud with the leaves dancing behind him and the light in his eyes. She could not identify the source of that light, did not understand it, but it drew her irresistibly.

She still tingled all over from his touch—and ached in a few places, if she were honest. She had never imagined lying with a man could be like that. Aye, and she had come close before, but she did not deceive herself that lying with anyone else could affect her so, could claim and consume her. Only this man. She did not comprehend it, but she knew it to her very soul.

And now she had annoyed him, even as she always annoyed her Da. Aye, and she regretted that but could find it in her to rue nothing else that had taken place between them. A miracle had brought her through the dark to his arms, the one place she needed to be.

She would do it all again. Indeed, she longed to.

A small smile curved her lips. He turned his head sharply and looked at her.

“Why do you smile? Do you not see the trouble you are in?”

“I see it,” she told him comfortably. Trouble could blow right past her, now she was at his side. “Where do you take me?”

“To Oakham.” He scowled as he said it. A village, she presumed, though the name meant nothing to her.

“Is that where you live?”

“I live here.” He lifted his hands in an encompassing gesture.

“Aye, well, since you told my father you are a forester, it seems I am not the only one who utters lies.”

His eyes flashed silver fire. Beautiful eyes they were, full of bright intelligence and, she thought, more than a hint of magic. Aye, but he was beautiful withal, from that mane of chestnut brown hair to those wide shoulders, those narrow hips, and the glorious endowment with which she had become so well acquainted last night. She might never look enough.

“I am a steward of Sherwood,” he told her, “a guardian—that was truth.”

She nodded. Had he told her he was a hobgoblin, she would have accepted it. “A lord of Sherwood.”

His step faltered. They both stopped walking and faced one another.

As if he could not help himself, he reached out and brushed the hair from her shoulder. His fingers lingered, and everything in her leaped toward his touch. “You must return to Nottingham, you know,” he told her almost regretfully. “You cannot stay here.”

“I will not marry that hulking, stinking brute.”

His lips twitched. “You said he would not take you ruined. Lady, you are most surely ruined.”

“I am.” She fought the desire to lean up and press her lips to his. She craved the taste of him, burned into her last night.

“Then what need you fear?”

Being away from you, her heart cried, though she did not say it. Not being able to watch the light dance in your eyes. Not being at liberty to reach for your hand. She could not live so.

“Surely,” she proposed, “folk flee to Sherwood every day and seek refuge. My Da says that is whence half the outlaws come.”

“True.”

“Then why not me?”

“Because you have someone fretting over you, and he is not a man I would have for an enemy.”

“He is already your enemy, so it seems. You stand on opposite sides of the King’s law.”

“But I would not give him the cause of his daughter’s virtue over which to contest me.”

“Too late,” she reminded him blithely. “You should have thought of that last night.”

“I did not know who you were, last night.” But a spark of mischief appeared in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitched again.

“We can go round and round it, or you can take me to Oakham and give me breakfast. I am perished.”

“Aye?” He quirked a brow. “And will you partake of the King’s deer?”

“Gladly.”

“Then come along.”

Had he given in? Not so easily, Anwyn thought. She guessed he just bided his time. They turned and resumed walking, she smiling all the more to herself.

“Tell me of this brute your father would have you marry.”

“Ah, well—he is squat and rancid, wide as he is tall.”

“Rancid?” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“He stinks like a boar, has little eyes like a boar also, and is every bit as mean. He believes in keeping his wife well-beaten and heavy with child. He has two vile children—”

“This paragon has been married before?”

“Aye, and killed his first wife with cruelty, no doubt. The daughter is a sad, morose creature with the look of her father, the son far worse—sharp and sly. Havers wishes a new wife to raise these two cubs.”

“A fate worse than death.”

“Far worse.” She directed her most beguiling look at him. “You would not send me back to that?”

He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. By God, but they stole the breath from her, so full of quick wit and that indefinable light. “Surely ’twould be a shame to do so.”

She slanted another glance at him. “Keep me with you and we can do what we did last night again—and again.”

“Nay.” All the humor fled from him. “I told you, I am not at liberty, child, to be with you that way.”

“I am no child. If what we shared together failed to convince you of that—”

“Aye so, but I am not free to be with anyone.”

Anwyn’s heart sank in her breast. For an instant she felt as if she could not breathe. She fought the terrible feeling. “Are you promised to another, Curlew Champion?”

“Nay.”

“Then—”

“But I am promised to duty.”

“Does this duty preclude you ever taking a woman to wife?”

He paused and stared at her in bemusement. “It does not. But she must be the right woman, one to fill a particular place.”

Anwyn resolved at that moment to be that perfect woman, no matter what it required. She would trade whatever she must.

“’Tis a difficult thing to explain,” he went on. “I and another, my cousin, hold a kind of trust.”

“This cousin—male or female?”

“Heron is male.”

“Heron? It is an odd name. Can he not choose whomever he wishes to wed, either?”

Curlew shot her another measuring glance. “The trust is to be held by three. The third of our number will be a woman, and she has yet to make herself known. She will bond with both of us and wed with one of us—how can we say which, yet?”

“And you will keep yourself free, unclaimed, for this?” Ah, but she had claimed him for hers last night, in her heart, each time he entered her. “It sounds daft.”

“Aye, so it must. Yet ’tis for this I was born.” His tone told her there could be no argument. Yet her whole being wanted to argue it. She wanted to claw and thrash, to fight for him.

“How come you to be an outlaw?” she ventured to ask.

“Not an outlaw. A free man, rather, living on what Sherwood provides.”

Anwyn looked away from him. “There were many such ‘free’ men in the Welsh borders where I grew. They, too, thought themselves masters of their own lives. King Henry teaches them differently now, though.”

“The Welsh will not fold. They are brave, strong fighters, as well as good bowmen.”

“My Da says they fly to the hills when the King’s forces come—melt away like the snow in springtime. But he is not willing to wager who will win in the end. He did not wish to be caught in the midst of the fight, so when his old friend Simon de Asselacton offered this place, he decided we should come.”

“And your mother, lass?”

“She died some years ago of the fever.” The pain of that still caused Anwyn’s eyes to fill with tears. “He has not been the same since.”

“I am sorry.” A faraway look settled over Curlew’s features, as if he thought of something grave and troubling. “A hard loss to bear.”

“She was a kind woman, warm and beautiful.”

He nodded. “Is that not all the more reason for you to go home? If your father has lost her, will you make him bear the loss of his daughter, as well?”

“In due time I will send him word that I am alive and well and mean to stay in Sherwood.” She hesitated. “Do I need your permission to stay?”

“Nay, lass, not mine. You might ask permission of the headman of Oakham. He is my uncle, one Falcon Scarlet.” He stopped suddenly, as if struck. “By the light, I do not even know your given name, Mistress Montfort.”

“It is Anwyn.” She bade him, “Pray you call me by it.”