Rowan longed to leap from the pile of dirty straw where he lay and hurl himself against the door of his cell, like a human battering ram. Instead, he held himself in quivering, alert stillness—listening.
By nature, he’d always been a cautious fellow. And if his many wounds over the years had taught him one thing, it was never to surrender to a whim. Until very recently, he’d been able to follow that dictate with ease. When it came to Cecily Tyrell, however, he’d found himself besieged by all sorts of dangerous whims and urges. Perhaps some of her impulsiveness had begun to rub off on him.
The sound of quiet conversation drifted into Rowan’s cell. Unable to make out the words, he crept over to the door and pressed his ear to the narrow space beneath it.
“God must be favoring his lordship,” remarked a man. He sounded like the postern gate guard who had let Rowan and Cecily into Lambourn. “A plum like this falling right into his lap.”
“It shall be our good fortune, too,” replied another man. By his high, reedy voice, Rowan guessed he had not grown a proper whisker yet. “A good feast to celebrate the wedding, I should hope. Then his lordship too well occupied in the bedchamber to chivy us. We shall enjoy our liberty, see if we don’t.”
Wedding? Rowan barely stifled a groan.
Once again, the urge to hurl himself against the stout oak door nearly overcame him. It was partly a desperate yearning to rescue Cecily and flee this place, and partly a craze to batter his bones to jelly as punishment for his own folly.
He had insisted they come this way, trusting that loyalty to the Empress would compel folk to aid them. Too late he realized Cecily’s plan had its own merit. At least by traveling north into country held by the King, they would have been forced to keep their wits about them and trust to no one but themselves. In these treacherous times, when self-interest made a mockery of fealty, suspicion had become a healthy trait to cultivate.
Part of Rowan protested that this might not be such a calamity, after all. If Ranulf Beauchamp wed Cecily, Rowan himself would not be held accountable by the Empress to do so. The thought did nothing to pacify him. He could not abide the notion of his beautiful, vibrant Cecily being pawed over by some lecherous old man. Come to that, he could not abide the idea of her wed to any other man. What option did that leave him?
“She’s a likely looking wench,” said the man with the deeper voice. “Got spirit enough, too, stealing out of Brantham right under DeBoissard’s nose and making her way here by night. I wonder how she’ll take his lordship’s marriage offer?”
In spite of the worry and self-blame roiling within him, an involuntary grin overtook Rowan at the thought. Had Lord Ranulf been the very model of youth, gallantry and male comeliness, Cecily would still violently resent his courting by force. Rowan could picture her hurling crockery at his lordship’s head. Pity the fool if he let her have a knife to carve up her breakfast!
“His lordship has many means of persuasion,” replied the second man in a suggestive tone that inflamed Rowan’s temper. When the pair of them laughed at the jest, he privately vowed to cut their tongues out at the first convenient opportunity.
His skin rose in gooseflesh as he contemplated the means of persuasion open to Lord Ranulf. Cecily’s indignant refusal might only prick the fellow to vindictiveness.
Lurid scenes rose in Rowan’s mind, taunting him—condemning him. He imagined her being shut up and starved into submission. He envisioned the knotted rope being tightened to put her eyes out. He pictured Cecily held down by lewd-minded, brawny-armed henchmen while Ranulf Beauchamp violated her.
Galled to extremity, Rowan fought to calm himself. Exercising a lifetime of harsh discipline, he strove to cauterize his feelings for Cecily. By moving him to imprudent action they made him terrifyingly vulnerable. With a ruthless singleness of purpose, he concentrated on escaping his prison and planning a way to extricate himself and Cecily from Lambourn in one piece.
On reflection, he realized his assets were as limited as the weaknesses of his prison. It was built of thick oaken stakes, planed just enough on the sides that they fit snugly together. It had no window. Unlike the other outbuildings he’d spied when they brought him here, the stockade roof was not thatched, but encased with solid timber. Beneath the straw, the earthen floor had been packed hard and smooth as marble. With good sharp digging tools and all the time in the world, a prisoner would be hard-pressed to tunnel his way out. Rowan had neither.
If he was to leave this place, it must be through the door. That, too, looked impossible.
The sturdy oaken posts appeared capable of withstanding monstrous force. The portal boasted three massive iron hinges of old Saxon design that spanned the whole width, reinforcing its impregnable strength. No doubt the bolt that held it fast was equally stout.
Arrayed against such confining force, Rowan had only his wits and his tenacity. Would they be enough?
He was used to charging into battle fully armed, with his weapon drawn. Cecily had shown him how a woman must use her ingenuity to compensate for disadvantages in size and strength. If only she had been at hand, now. She’d have devised a clever plan in the wink of an eye.
Perhaps, thought Rowan, warmed by a faint ember of hope, he only needed to imagine what Cecily might advise.
One thing he had come to know for certain. Cecily Tyrell would never be safe from this kind of treachery as long as she remained an unwed heiress. If he managed to deliver them from Lambourn, Rowan swore he would offer her the protection of marriage to him.
If he had still been on speaking terms with God, he might have offered that sacrifice in exchange for divine assistance. With the sins that weighed on his soul, however, he knew better than to ask.
As Lord Ranulf’s bloodless lips homed in on hers, Cecily turned her face and tried not to vomit. His attentions revolted her worse than stripping that dead leper.
“Go to, my lord! I have no intention of wedding you!”
His arms snared her with wiry strength. When she would not turn her face to him, he assaulted her cheek, her ear and her hair with kisses.
“You always were a spirited little creature, Cecily. But you can no longer afford to behave like a headstrong child. You said yourself none of us are safe as long as Fulke sees any means of wedding you. Brantham aside, I know this is what your father would have wanted.”
If he had hauled back and struck her, it would have had less impact on Cecily than those words. What her father would have wanted.
She pushed Lord Ranulf away. “I pray you, sir, let me go, that I may breathe and think on what you have said.”
“Very well, my sweet.” As he released her from his embrace, Lord Ranulf’s hands strayed from Cecily’s shoulders down to her bosom, where they gave an assessing little squeeze. “I won’t pretend the prospect of a maiden bride holds no appeal for me.”
She backed away from him, her stomach and her thoughts both churning. Was this a marriage her father might have arranged for her, if he’d lived?
All too likely.
For years she had strived in vain to win his affection, or at least his respect, by proving she could best men at their own games. Might she now atone for deserting her father by adapting to a woman’s proper province—the securing of marital alliances and the breeding of sons?
Would she be a fool to reject Lord Ranulf’s offer out of hand, no matter how the thought of sharing his bed disgusted her? This was the kind of marriage she’d envisioned with Lord DeCourtenay…until she’d met his brother. It was the kind of marriage she’d wanted, with no expectations of deep affection or closeness. And Lambourn was near to Brantham—not like Ravensridge, almost forty miles distant.
Then there was Lord Ranulf’s charge that DeCourtenay had killed his first wife. Cecily took that into account, uncertain what to believe. At least with her father’s old friend she would be safe from anything worse than his odious romantic attentions.
What to do? What to do? Cecily pressed her knuckles to her forehead. If only Mother Ermintrude had let her take the veil!
Just when it seemed that the scales of reason drooped heavily in favor of accepting Ranulf Beauchamp, Cecily set on the opposite end of the balance one minor consideration.
Her time and acquaintance with John FitzCourtenay.
It weighed far more heavily than she had expected.
Especially considering he was not her intended husband. Only Rowan DeCourtenay’s boon companion and look-alike brother.
Considering John’s intense reaction to the unavoidable killing of DeBoissard’s henchman, Cecily could not imagine him on close terms with a cold-blooded murderer. Could Lord Ranulf have concocted the story as a means of coercing her into wedding him?
Cecily gulped a deep breath. “No, my lord, I cannot marry you. I offered the Empress my fealty and she bade me wed Lord DeCourtenay. Whatever manner of man he is, whatever he may have done in the past, I must honor my word.”
Lord Ranulf’s pale blue eyes glittered with icy wrath and his skin seemed to stretch tighter over the sharp angles of his face. “Don’t be daft, girl! You do not have a choice whether you’ll be my wife. Only whether you’ll exercise your reason and do it willingly.”
“You would wed me by force?” She could feel the temper brewing within her like a gathering storm. “Then you are no better than DeBoissard. I demand, in the name of the Empress, that you release me and my companion.”
He strode toward her.
In spite of her resolve to stand firm, Cecily found herself retreating, until her back pressed against a tapestry that covered the timbers of the great hall.
“Think on it, child. You are in no position to make demands.” Lord Ranulf’s voice was hushed, but it had the jagged edge of threat. “I have never taken an unwilling woman, but there are men who highly recommend the practice. They say it stirs the blood.”
Something in Cecily pleaded for restraint. Begged her to pretend submission and play for time. But the tide of indignant fury within her had mounted to a crest and she was powerless to stop its onrush.
“Treacherous cur! See if this will stir your blood!”
Jamming her knee into the lap of his tunic, she scored his face with her nails.
As he clutched at his nether parts, bellowing in pain and outrage, Cecily squeezed past him and ran for the entrance to the hall.
Straight into the arms of a tall, burly guard.
She tried to slip from his ham-handed grasp, but when Lord Ranulf roared, “Hold her!” the fellow caught her long plait of hair and yanked her back.
“Ow, let go! You’re hurting me!”
Lord Ranulf limped toward them. “You will hurt worse before I’m done with you, vixen bitch!” He rasped the last words on an indrawn breath. “Your father erred in not beating this intractable streak out of you long ago. As your husband, I will not commit the same folly.”
Cecily struggled to escape her brutish captor, but he tightened his grip on her hair until it brought tears to her eyes. She quailed at Lord Ranulf’s next words.
“Bend my bride over the table, and bare her backside while I find a likely looking stick.”
As the guard hauled her toward the table, Cecily writhed and kicked. Scratched, pummeled, bit, hissed, until she had exhausted herself. Her resistance had the opposite effect to the one she desired. Rather than loosening his hold, the brawny giant gripped her even more firmly. Painfully so.
Inch by inch he dragged her to the table and bent her over it. The skirts of her borrowed gown and kirtle came up over Cecily’s head, further stifling her. Air bristled over her thighs and backside, like a manifestation of the men’s greedy stares.
Never in her life had she felt so totally helpless and inescapably at the mercy of cruel forces. Never had she faced so high a penalty for her rash, headstrong ways. Never had she experienced the unique vulnerability of being a woman.
Muffled slightly by the folds of cloth over her head came the soft but ominous hiss of a switch cleaving the air.
The next sound Cecily heard was Ranulf Beauchamp’s voice, close to her ear. “I will thrash you, wench, until you beg leave to wed me.”
His cold hand passed over her vulnerable rump in a proprietary caress that made bile rise in her throat.
Give in, fool! her sense of self-preservation pleaded. Plead. Cry. Promise him anything.
“Never!” The rebellious word burst from her lips like a gob of spittle.
“Have it your own way, then. I do this unwillingly and for your own good. It is your intransigence that drives my hand. Every blow that falls is a blow you invite by your own mulishness.”
Cecily tensed in anticipation of the first strike. Biting her lips hard between her teeth, she swore she would not give this man the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. Hard as she tried to steel herself against the pain, nothing could spare her the shock of that first blow.
With savage vigor the switch bit into her flesh. A strangled cry broke from her throat. For a split second, she prayed the pain of that first strike might numb her against those that followed.
The cane fell again, setting her aquiver with an even more intense agony. Another blow landed and another, bringing tears to her eyes. When, after the fifth swat, her tormenter paused, Cecily could hardly breathe for wailing.
“Do you relent?” The breathlessness of Lord Ranulf’s voice told of the strength he was expending to chastise her. Or perhaps the lewd thrill it excited within him.
“I…” The words heaved out of her between sobs. “I will die before I give myself to a brute who would use me thus!”
“Perhaps a further ten will change your mind.”
Cecily sensed him raising his arm. She squirmed in a futile effort to avoid the next strike. It landed awry, scoring her hip—painful still, but nothing compared to the others.
“You there!” She heard Lord Ranulf call out to someone. “Come and hold the lady’s ankles. I do not want my aim spoiled again.”
Footsteps approached.
Then Cecily heard a strange and unexpected sound.
In the darkness of his prison, Rowan DeCourtenay heard an unexpected but most welcome sound.
A woman’s voice. Cecily’s?
Trust her to outwit old Beauchamp and find a way to rescue him. Admiration for her rose like a lump in his throat. Never had he met a creature, man or woman, half so resourceful.
As quietly as he could manage, Rowan scuttled back to the door and pressed his ear to the sliver of light beneath it.
“Food for the prisoner.”
His buoyant heart turned leaden as he realized the woman’s voice was too sharp and high-pitched to be Cecily’s.
The guard bantered with the serving woman. “Will there be a feast tonight to celebrate your father’s wedding?”
Father? What ho?
The woman, no servant but old Beauchamp’s daughter, apparently, answered back. “Aye. Kill the fatted calf and all.”
There could be no questioning the tone of mocking scorn in her voice. Perhaps he could use her discontent to his advantage.
“Mistress Beauchamp,” he called out. “Hear me!”
“I hear you already, stranger,” came the reply. “And you may address me as Lady LeMay.”
Rowan pondered that for a moment, then he understood. A widow, returned to her father’s home. And not just any widow.
“Kin to Lord Fulbert LeMay of Brookthorpe?”
After an instant’s hesitation, she replied, “Aye. Do you know Lord Fulbert?”
“I knew his sons when we were children. I was sorry to hear of Simon’s death.”
“No sorrier than I to witness it, stranger. And who are you, pray, to have a boyhood acquaintance of my late husband?”
Yes! Rowan could almost hear the door swinging open on its stout hinges already.
Calm you, now, he cautioned himself. Don’t trip yourself up in your haste. An extra minute or two would make no great difference to Cecily.
“I think that is a matter for private conversation,” he answered. “Send your man out of earshot and I will be glad to tell you.”
He heard a muted but sharp exchange between Lady LeMay and the guard.
“He goes.” The slap of footsteps confirmed her words. “Now say who you are and be quick about it.”
“Very well. I am Rowan DeCourtenay of Ravensridge. My family’s honor is adjacent to Brookthorpe.”
“DeCourtenay?” Her tone betrayed surprise. And fear. “How can this be?”
“Never mind about that,” he snapped. “Think only on this—Cecily Tyrell is mine, awarded to me by the Empress. If your father commits this senile folly in wedding her, he will incur Maud’s enmity and that of my family. Old Saxon forts like Lambourn are very…vulnerable.”
“Do you think I want this?” she hissed. “Do you think I have not tried to drum sense into his stubborn old pate? Even if the Empress gave him her leave, what would it profit me? Displaced as chatelaine of Lambourn by that Tyrell chit. If Father takes it into his head to breed a new heir, he’ll have no reason in the world to pursue a match for me. I’ll end up no better than a servant in my own home.” Her indignant outburst ended in a strangled little sob.
It was just as he had hoped. “You are a woman of sense, I see. We have a common aim, Lady LeMay. To keep your father from marrying Cecily Tyrell. Will you work with me to achieve that end?”
“How can I? If Father discovers I’ve been in league with you, he will flay me alive.”
“He needn’t know.” Rowan lay on the stockade floor, his mouth pressed to the slit beneath the door. “All I need from you is a mistake, a lapse in judgment. It may vex him, but he need never suspect it was intentional.” His hand pushed against the door’s stout timber, as if the sheer force of his will might thrust his plea out to convince her.
His words met with a prolonged silence. Did it bode well—or ill? What if he had made a grave error, trusting in their common aim? If she revealed his identity to old Beauchamp, Rowan dreaded the consequences.
Just when he feared he would break under the weight of suspense, Lady LeMay finally spoke.
“What mistake? How grave a lapse in judgment?”
His bated breath expelled in a hiccup of laughter. “A minor one. One any person of tender heart might make. I will thrash around and cry out, as if I am in a fit. All you need do is coax the guard to open the door so you may check on my condition. I will take matters from there. If it goes awry and I am caught, you will not be implicated. Also, I need to know where I can find Cecily and where Lambourn’s stable is.”
“She is in the great hall with Father, on the second floor of the motte keep. You’ll find the stable beside the main gate.” Taking that as his cue, Rowan began to thrash and gibber in a noisy parody of the few fits he’d ever witnessed.
From beyond the stockade door he heard Lady LeMay shrieking to the guard that something was wrong with the prisoner.
“Open the door! Open it!”
Perhaps the guard objected, for the next words Rowan could distinguish where the woman’s again.
“If he dies in our custody, we may be in great trouble with the Empress. Now do as I say and open that door!”
Keeping up the noise, Rowan watched for his opportunity, poised to act.
The cell door swung open on screeching hinges. The guard poked his head in to inspect the goings-on. Swiftly and with all his might, Rowan hurled himself against the door, catching the guard’s head between it and the jamb. When he fell back again, the fellow dropped like a stone.
Rowan hoped he wasn’t dead.
“Quick!” he ordered Lord Ranulf’s daughter. “Help me haul him in.”
Working fast, he stripped the prone body of scabbard, sword, leather hauberk and helm, equipping himself with them. Kissing Lady LeMay’s hand, he pulled her into the cell, then stepped out himself and fastened the bar.
“I’m sorry to have to lock you in, too,” he called. “I fear suspicion would fall on you if I didn’t.”
She may have answered that she understood the necessity, or she may have railed at him for imprisoning her. Rowan did not stay to find out.
Keeping his eyes cast down and his stride purposeful, he headed for Lambourn’s great hall. The sound of Cecily’s howls drove him up the stairs three at a time. Rage burst into flame within him, fueled by a sense of remorse that he had not come to her rescue more quickly.
Entering the room, he saw her bent over the table receiving a sound thrashing on her bare bottom. For the second time in his life, murderous fury overtook him.
As he closed the last several steps between himself and Ranulf Beauchamp, the old man glanced up.
“You there!” he cried. “Come and hold the lady’s ankles. I do not want my aim spoiled again.”
The casual cruelty of his words unleashed a feral blood lust, caged in the deepest recesses of Rowan’s being. Instead of grabbing Cecily’s legs, he took hold of Beauchamp’s switch and jerked it tight against his windpipe. The older man struggled, but Rowan drew him back against his own body, throttling him soundly.
The massive guard restraining Cecily took a moment to digest what was happening. Then he let go of her and lumbered to his master’s aid.
Time slowed for Rowan, like flowing blood congealing in the cold. He experienced a lingering void of silence between each thundering pulse of his heart. A hundred separate thoughts cascaded through his mind, accompanied by a hundred separate sensations.
The boulder-size fists of the guard bearing down on him. Lord Ranulf’s increasingly weak efforts to free himself. Cecily righting herself and taking the situation in with a single glance.
Their eyes met. In that fleeting instant, he begged forgiveness and received it. Promised her his heart and received her pledge in return. Called for her help and received her assurance.
As the hulking guard’s fist hurtled toward him, Rowan held Ranulf Beauchamp up like a shield. A sickening crunch of bones broke the spell of his vengeful madness. He loosened his hold and let the older man crumple to the floor.
Stunned, perhaps, by what he had done to his master, the guard froze for an instant. Then he lunged for Rowan. Rowan tried to draw the sword he’d taken off the stockade guard, but it jammed in the scabbard. Giving the hilt one last desperate tug, he expected a bruising blow from his assailant to land at any second.
But it never came.
Instead, the fellow’s eyes rolled back in his head and his whole huge body went limp, plummeting to the floor. Rowan looked up to see Cecily wielding a great wrought-iron candlestick with which she’d bludgeoned Lord Ranulf’s man.
“John!” She dropped the candlestick and vaulted over the pair of prone bodies into Rowan’s arms.
Drowning in a sweet wave of relief, he enfolded her so tightly it was a wonder she could breathe. When she raised her face to his, no power on earth could have stopped him from kissing her.
Their lips collided, grappled, parted. For a first kiss, there was nothing hesitant or bashful about it. Instead, they drank each other in, like sweet, rich malmsey at a homecoming feast. To Rowan, it felt like a homecoming after years of exile. Like heaven after a lifetime of barren purgatory.
Then Lord Ranulf stirred and moaned, breaking the spell of passion that bound them together.
With aching reluctance, Rowan released Cecily—all but her hand. “We must fly!”
She nodded dumbly, her eyes large and liquid, her lips swollen and ripe from their long, fierce kiss. It took every warrior’s instinct in Rowan to keep from kissing her again. Only the imperative that such a kiss might well be their last spurred him to action.
They ran for the door.
At the threshold, Cecily suddenly tore herself from his grasp. “Wait!”
Gathering her skirts up in one hand, she bolted for the table and yanked a knife out of the suckling pig. As she caught up with Rowan again, she flashed him an impudent grin. It tugged at his heart even as it excited his admiration.
Down the stairs they leapt. Skidding on the steep incline of the flying bridge to the bailey, they all but collided with a party of Lord Ranulf’s men. Rowan made to draw his sword, wondering how they could ever take on so many at once.
Before he could tug the wretched thing from its scabbard, he heard Cecily gasp, “To the great hall, at once! There’s trouble!”
To his amazement, the men swarmed past them up the bridge.
“I’ll see the lady safe!” he called after them.
No lie, that.
He clasped her hand again. “If you are not the most quick-witted wench…”
She chuckled ruefully. “It comes of boxing myself into too many tight corners. Which way to the stable?”
Rather than waste more time in speech, Rowan set off toward it. There they found a rider just dismounting.
“What’s all the commotion?” he asked.
“This,” answered Rowan, wrenching his sword free at last and braining the fellow with its hilt.
He looked around for Cecily, who was moving rapidly from stall to stall. “Come, lass! We haven’t time to saddle another. You’ll have to ride pillion with me.”
“I’m not trying to saddle them.” To prove her point, she slapped one horse on the rump, sending it trotting out into the bailey.
When she had set them all into a ponderous stampede, Cecily made her way back to Rowan and let him help her mount. They emerged into a courtyard seething with chaos. Women screeching and hustling their children away from the horses. Poultry scattering noisily. Skittish mares rearing in panic.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rowan saw several of Lambourn’s guards rushing back down from the motte.
Weaving through the press of horses, he led their mount toward the postern gate.
“What’s all this? Where do you think you’re going?” demanded the guard.
Rowan lifted his sword to the man’s throat. “I think we’re going back out the way we came. And I think you’d be a wise fellow to unbar the gate. I’m in rather a hurry and I’d hate to run you through in my haste.”
Perhaps something of his blood lust for old Beauchamp still glittered in his eyes, for the guard almost tore himself to pieces hastening to follow the order.
“I’ll give you the count of ten to bar the gate again after us,” Rowan said as he led the horse through. “If you fail, I will have to come back and carve you up like a joint of mutton.”
The portal slammed so hard behind them, the horse shied.
“Whoa there!” Gracelessly, Rowan managed to scramble onto the bay gelding in front of Cecily. As they galloped away from Lambourn, into the undulating, green countryside, he felt her arms tighten about his waist and her face press into his back.
It warmed his limbs, assuaged his hunger and revived his weary spirit. A man could do worse than have such a woman cleave unto him for the rest of his life. Vigorously as she might protest, she obviously needed his protection. From her own reckless tendencies as much as anything.
Before she could cleave, though, and before he could offer her his protection, he needed to test her feelings. To be certain they were genuine—woman to man.
As Rowan contemplated the form that testing would take, his body roused with the keenest anticipation.