A Knight’s Enchantment (5 page)

Joanna followed his pointing finger to a cluster of swaying elder and hazel bushes. The one nearest to her seemed to explode and then two small, crouching figures burst through the undergrowth and pelted up the grassy slope, stumbling often in sheer haste. Both were red-cheeked and at the same time haggard—with worry, Joanna guessed, her heart lifting as she saw the couple rush up to the child and snatch the boy up into furious hugs.

“Blessings on you, my lord!” the mother exclaimed, bobbing before Hugh. “We heard him call, but we were so far away—”

“Thank her,” Hugh answered, nodding to Joanna.

At once Joanna felt herself enveloped by the older woman, who, although small and thin, could hug like a bear and would not let go. More praise and thanks spilled from her as Joanna tried to explain she had done no more than anyone would have done and the woman’s husband pumped Hugh’s hand.

“Keep the clothes,” Hugh answered easily, refusing to admit to any part in the child’s rescue. “I have plenty more. But now I must away.”

“As must we,” growled a guard, plainly bored and discomforted by the whole affair.

The party split up soon after, Joanna being promised a jar of honeycomb by the cottar’s wife as she retrieved her scraps of fleece and prepared to return to West Sarum. Hugh had already turned and was striding away; the light caught on the points of his shoulder blades and the muscles down his back seemed to ripple.

I will see you again,
Joanna almost called after him, before she realized what she was about to do and stopped herself. If Hugh was too bad-mannered to say farewell, why should she prompt him to speak? He might even think she wanted him to turn so she could look at him again. Stubbornly she kept silent and fell in between the guards.

They walked back down the steep slope, Joanna wondering how Hugh had gone away from them so quickly. Wrenching her thoughts away from him, she reflected bleakly that this trip had been almost a waste, apart from the fragments of gold. These were now safely tucked away in the small purse hidden inside her gown, and she should be directing her ideas as to how she might increase them.

I have less than a month to do so. So how may I do it?

Deep in thought, she did not know where her plodding feet were taking her until one of her guards muttered, “That is a very fancy nag,” and the other one gave a long whistle. She raised her head to see what the commotion was about, not at all surprised to see Hugh again, although her heart beat a little faster.

He was standing on the main woodland path, gripping the reins to a truly magnificent black stallion: a big, long-legged, strong-necked, handsome brute, much like his master. His wolfhound lay close to his horse’s feet and both were prick-eared and ready, waiting for a sign from Hugh.

Is he waiting for me?

Foolish one! Joanna remonstrated herself. Hugh doubtless wished to talk to the men for some reason; it was nothing to do with her.

Now he patted the gleaming neck of his black horse and stepped away from stallion and hound, tapping his sword belt.

“Give me the girl and you may go free.”

Wide-eyed, the guards stared at him and then at each other, plainly trying to spur themselves on to some reaction.

Hugh drew his sword and scraped a line in the dirt track with his boot. “I have no quarrel with you men, and I swear to you now that the girl will not be harmed. Walk away now, uninjured, your honor intact.”

Genuinely angry, Joanna picked up a stone and hurled it at his feet. “Hey! Now I have your attention!” she yelled, planting both fists on her hips. “I am no parcel! You do not dare to fight over me! I am walking out of this wood and no man is going to stop me!”

She took a step forward, beside a cluster of hazel bushes and then sideways, neatly shielding her departure. Tossing away her basket a second time, she picked up her skirts and began to run, sprinting from one patch of cover to another.

Behind her she could hear shouting but no clash of arms—she had not expected it, nor did she blame the guards for not accepting Manhill’s challenge. Even two against one was an uneven match when the one was a tourney knight, and Bishop Thomas’s men knew that as well as she. But for him to call them out in her presence, to not even look at her—

Her face burned with indignation.

How could he? How dare he?
Her thoughts pounded in her aching head as fast as her rushing feet. Again, as with the glove, Hugh Manhill had belittled her. She was sore in her aching legs and in her jolted stomach and there was a soreness, too, in her chest, that had nothing to do with physical hurt.

“He speaks of honor when he has none!” she burst out, almost spent as she crossed a small stream and began climbing up another tree-clad hill. The guards would be safe enough, she reckoned—those were not his target. She was—and why? “What have I ever done to you?” she panted aloud and missed her footing, stumbling against a holly bush that raked her arms.

And now she heard behind her the steady rumble of an approaching horse, ridden swiftly through this maze of trees, with great skill. She dropped and tried to crawl over the rough ground, trying to find some hiding place, but the wolfhound burst through the grass, bounding up close to her and, startled, she yelled.

No longer able to conceal herself, she tottered to her feet and lunged ahead, her vision blurring as she strained with the effort of running. Her blood was now banging so loudly in her ears she could no longer hear the horse, but then she sensed its looming shadow and jinked aside, swerving at the last moment. Above, she heard a muffled curse and almost laughed, but then a massive arm hooked her round her waist and off her feet.

Flung roughly over the neck of the stallion, with the pommel of the saddle grinding into her stomach and her arms and legs beating the air as she tried to break free, she was carried off by Hugh de Manhill.

He had been following Joanna and her party at a distance ever since he spotted them leaving West Sarum. Coming late to the rescue of the cottar’s child, Hugh had done what was needed to ensure the boy’s safety and then had decided to take his leave. After seeing the girl’s valiant efforts with the child—and her keepers’ appalling lack of interest in the boy or Joanna—he had felt too ashamed to put his earlier plan into action.

How could he, in good conscience, seize Joanna as his hostage after he had found her risking her own neck to save a little peasant lad? Telling himself there had to be another way to grab Bishop Thomas’s attention, Hugh walked away from the woodland pool, prepared to ride off.

Then, halfway down the long hillside to the main track, he thought of how she had ordered him, asking him to bring her carrying basket as if he was a maid, not a knight. And he remembered her staring at him. In truth he had stripped to the waist as a means of giving the lad warm clothes, but he had been glad to show himself off to her. Now, imagining how she would compare his fit, young frame to the bishop’s soft, sagging body, Hugh found himself becoming angry again. How could she prefer a man like Thomas?

“She is the bishop’s leman. If she does not like how I treat her next, she must take it up with him,” he muttered under his breath, changing his mind in that instant and reverting to his original plan.

So he had challenged the guards. And she had cast stones and fury and hard looks at him. And now, even hauled across his horse, with the earth skimming less than a yard beneath her nose, she fought him still, squirming like an eel. He planted a hand in the middle of her back, pressing her tightly against the horse’s powerful flanks.

“Yield, girl, and you may ride pillion.”

He did not expect thanks and he only wanted her to stop struggling, but she jerked her shoulders free, hardly seeming to care if she fell. As he grabbed her waist to stop her plunging headfirst off the beast, she twisted her head, her face a single dark scowl.

“Or what, sir knight? Will you use your other glove to silence me?”

Still she remembered that! Hugh reined in the horse a little. “I told you, I am sorry for that. Be at peace! I do not abuse my captives.”

“If you believe that, you are deluded. Look out!”

Hugh glanced forward, checking the horse, and Joanna pushed off with her arms. He was only just quick enough to seize her skirts as she tumbled toward the ground.

“Yield!” he yelled in French, in that instant transported to the combat ground and badly shaken as he tugged her back, seating her astride his horse, and wrapped both arms tightly round her. “Be not so reckless!”

She reared up again. “Why not, when I am now riding with you, without any promise?”

“Hell’s teeth, girl! No man prisoner gave me so much trouble!”

“And I fight my way!”

Her hair, which had been loosened in their turmoil, now spilled free of its gold net. The thick brown mass whipped Hugh’s face and he could not answer for a moment: his mouth and eyes were full of hair. He could smell her, taste her: peppery and spicy. His mind reeled with the scent as his body reacted, stiffening and yielding at the same time. He was naked to the waist still and the feel of her against his naked skin made him burn up with desire. He still clasped her, but more gently, his fingers spreading in a semi-caress over her narrow waist.

Using his knees and thighs, he brought the snorting stallion to a stop.

“You are the bishop’s woman,” he said urgently when she moved restively against him and he could speak without the gag of her hair. “For you he will give much, including the release of my brother.”

“Is that your justification?” she flung back, spiraling round in his arms to face him down. “If so, I do not think David would approve! But then he is thrice the man you are!”

“In that we are agreed,” Hugh said, smarting at her easy use of his brother’s name, “and it changes nothing.”

“Were I the strumpet of the garrison, you should not treat me this way.”

“No, you are more choice in the men you bed: raddled, decaying churchmen who can pay you gold.”

She gasped, a blaze of color rushing into her face. Seeing the glint in her bright brown eyes, Hugh held himself taut. She marked that—she noticed everything—and her lip, from trembling, stiffened.

“You do me wrong. Again, you do me wrong,” she said quietly. “What woman harmed you so, that you are this discourteous?”

He had braced himself for a blow. Her words, though less dramatic, stung the more. He had injured his mother first, fatally, and since then had seemed fated to do badly with women.

“’Tis not you,” he admitted, wondering why he was troubling to explain. He was used to women thinking the worst of him. “If you swear not to dash your skull into the track, I will tell you the whole of it.”

“You expect me to obey my own kidnapper? Besides, I know the whole already. You mean to instigate a hostage exchange. I should be in your ‘care’ for one, two days, no more, before you barter me for your brother. A most powerful plan.”

She had pretty eyes, he thought, especially as she now was: flushed with battle. Her mouth was reddened by the ride and he was tempted again to kiss it. Instead, he drew his legs over hers, fixing her in place.

“You laugh at me, mistress.”

“If my laughter means you stop calling me ‘girl,’ then why not?”

Abruptly, she twisted round again and faced forward.

“You are watching where we go to find your way back when you escape,” he remarked, several moments later, when she was quiet.

“You can always blindfold me with a glove.”

Hugh chuckled: doubtless he deserved that. And now she was no longer fighting him, it was oddly pleasant to have her sitting in front of him on his horse. Making his living in tournaments, he’d had little actual contact with women and being this close to Joanna made him feel light-headed, almost happy. The scent of her, the pliant, sweet feel of her—it was like sinking into a warm bath at the end of a grueling day’s battle, one where he had won many prizes.

He had to remind himself that she had not yielded yet. She was turning her head this way and that, picking out landmarks. “Is this your first time out of West Sarum?” he asked as the round ramparts of the city stole into view from the woodland track they were on.

“It is not,” she replied, triangulating with her fingers the course of the meandering river and the hill on which the city was built.

“See those walls?” He pointed ahead, above the flat, reed-filled landscape to the east and north and the tree-clad slopes of the city hill to the massive circular earth-works. “I think these must have been made by giants. What do you think?”

“I think if you have men in West Sarum you should get word to them, lest my lord take out his anger on them. Have you jousted in many places?”

“In Picardy, France, Italy—” A small sigh from her then prompted him to expand his answer. “In Italy the cities are amazing: so many people! And the markets there! You can buy pepper and spices and silks and books!”

“What do you like to read?”

Hugh cursed softly, then admitted, “I do not. I cannot.”

She touched his arm—a gesture of pity?—then asked, “What do men call you at the tournaments? Do you have a nickname?”

Hugh felt himself going hot: this was becoming worse and worse. “Destroyer,” he mumbled, then berated himself for being ashamed. Why should he be made to feel guilty by this scrap of a female? “Though men like your bishop decry it, the tourney is a good life for a man. Better that than being dragged into King John’s wars with the King of France or his barons, where only the leaders gain.”

“A life for a young man, certainly,” Joanna answered, “and he is not my bishop.”

She drew in a large breath that he felt through his own ribs. Alerted by that, he reined in the ambling horse, caught her shoulders, bent her back into the crook of his arm and kissed her—just as a shepherd appeared around a corner on the track in front of them with a small flock of sheep.

Her lips were hard under his, rigid. He nuzzled her mouth with his, then thought,
If she dislikes this so much, let her make her appeal to the shepherd: he can only raise the alarm sooner.

He withdrew slightly, then, when she did not cry out, he kissed her again, his lips now soft against hers. He eased her small, tense frame more comfortably against his shoulder and kissed her very lightly several times: tiny, swift embraces, as if he was burying his face into rose petals. Her mouth tasted of salt and a fresh sweetness that was her own perfume.

She sighed and then relaxed, allowing him to kiss her, even kissing him in return. Her hands brushed over his neck and shoulders as she lifted herself to him, plunging her tongue into his mouth.

Hugh reeled, heat pounding into him. He dropped the reins, forgot horse, shepherd, and sheep, and wrapped his arms about her, wanting their kiss to go on and on.

“Why?” he asked, when they finally broke apart. The shepherd was a distant speck, entering the city.

She did not pretend not to know what he meant. “I wanted to know what it was like,” she answered. “And now I have my answer.”

She shifted smoothly from the crook of his arm to face forward again. “Do we have far to go?”

“Ah.” He shook a finger at her. “You must wait to discover that.”

“I am used to waiting,” she answered as he urged the horse into a steady trot.

They moved through the landscape of vineyards, hay fields, reed beds, and woods, Hugh watching her and watching out for the bishop’s men or any hue and cry while most of his mind was racked by a single question.

Did Joanna like his kissing?