Danger's Kiss (26 page)

Then the poor wretch began to cry.  Not soft whimpers of pain or fear, but gut-wrenching sobs of pure anguish.

Nicholas bit back a natural urge to comfort the lad, instead pressing his advantage, crouching beside him and demanding, “Where is she?”

The lad pinned him with intensely baleful eyes and cried, “She is no more!”

Nicholas’s heart jerked as if he’d been stabbed.  That was his worst fear.  He bit out, “You killed her?”

The man rolled his head back and forth in the straw, wailing in misery.

“What did you do to her?” Nicholas barked.

“Nothing,” he sobbed.  “Nothing.”

“Where is she?”

The man’s chin quivered.  “At the bottom of the cliff at Hyrnan.”  He wailed, “Oh, God.”

Nicholas’s heart went cold.  If the lad had killed an innocent lass, one with child...

He choked back rage, asking with false calm, “And how did she come to be at the bottom of the cliff?”

“I begged her not to do it.  I begged her.  I told her I would take her away.  I don’t have much coin, but I’d see she had food and shelter.”

Nicholas swallowed hard, and his fury dissolved into despair.  Now he understood.  “She leaped from the cliff?”

The man nodded, then his face crumpled with grief.

Nicholas’s shoulders sank.  He knew the lad was telling the truth.  He hadn’t been reluctant to speak before.  He’d only been in shock.  “Why?”

“He’ll kill me now, won’t he?” the lad blubbered.  “He’ll say I did it, and then he’ll string me up.”

“Why did she kill herself?”

The man’s sobs subsided, and a burning anger slowly replaced the sorrow in his eyes.  “’Twas
his
babe.”

“Whose?”

The young man looked at him with all the searing hatred he felt.  “The miller’s,” he bit out.  “Her own father’s.”

Nicholas felt a chill blade slice across his soul.  “Bloody hell.”

He knew men were capable of unspeakable acts.  He’d dealt with the worst of humankind.  But this was among the lowest.  To think that the miller would get his own daughter with child and then accuse an innocent man, a merciful man, of abducting her...

It was beyond reprehensible.

It was diabolical.

Yet what the lad said was true.  The accusation might be false, but there were no witnesses to say it wasn’t murder.  It was only the word of a stable lad against that of the village miller.  The townsfolk didn’t care if a lowly servant swung from the gallows, as long as they still had a place to grind their grain.

It was unjust.  But nothing could save the wretch.  The evidence against the lad was overwhelming.  Once the maid’s body was found, he’d be accused of the crime.  Once accused, he’d be quickly convicted and sentenced.  Indeed, Nicholas might be called upon to summon the executioner before nightfall.

“Why did you return here?” he muttered.  “Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”

The lad’s eyes turned as cold and gray as an approaching storm.  “I came back to kill him.”

Nicholas nodded.  He understood perfectly.  His own fists itched to beat the miller to a bloody carcass.

But no man could serve two masters.  Because he was a servant of justice, he had to take the side of the law.  Revenge was not the prerogative of a shire-reeve.

He rose slowly and hung his head.  At times like these, he wished he’d become a mercenary, like his father wanted.  Or an armorer.  Or a fishmonger.  Anything but a lawman.

“Shite!”  He turned, punching the nearest haunch of pork in frustration.  Was there nothing he could do?

He glanced down at the helpless young man weeping on the floor of the smokehouse.  Aye, there was one thing he could do.  He could make certain the lad’s final moments were swift and painless, get him senselessly drunk and help him make peace with his death.

His mind suddenly swerved, as if someone else had jerked away the reins of his thoughts.  While he stood over the doomed lad, staring at the pork roast he’d just punched, a most insidious idea began to brew and curdle and twist into possibility.  And that possibility ripened into a plan before he recognized who it was exerting such an influence over his brain.

Desirée.

The devious wench’s ways must have been rubbing off on him.  Her “distractions” and her weighted dice and her sleight of hand were perverting his morality.  Yet for the first time since he’d donned the cloak of the shire-reeve, he felt a thrill of hope.

“Listen to me, lad.  Here’s what we’re going to do.”

"
Y
e want some help carryin’ that?”

Desirée should have known better than to stop.  But she
was
juggling an enormous pike, a pie, and a jug of wine, and it was no easy task.  Accustomed to enlisting the aid of men with the mere flutter of lashes, she whipped around at the inquiry, smiling brightly at the pair of lads trailing her like worshipful pups.

Any other day, she might have gauged them with a more cynical eye.  But today, resplendent in her new kirtle and having thrice resisted thievery’s call, she felt saintly and generous of spirit, and she wasn’t thinking properly.  Surely the lads only meant to offer assistance and perhaps earn a kind word for their efforts.  And she could use the help.

“You’re too kind, gentlemen,” she replied.

One lad took the pike.  “I’m John.”

The other took the pie.  “I’m John, as well.”

“Indeed?  Good morn, John and John-as-well.”

“And what’s your name, m’lady?”

“I’m Desirée.”

“Desirée,” the first John repeated carefully, as if he meant to memorize it.

“Do ye live nearby?” the second John asked.  “I haven’t seen ye in Canterbury before.  Have ye, John?”

“Nay, haven’t seen her before.”

“Me neither.  How long have ye been here?”

“Not long,” she replied, “a fortnight.”

“What business do ye have in Canterbury?” the first John asked gruffly.

The second John scowled at him.  “Ye’re goin’ too fast.”

“Sorry.”

Desirée furrowed her brow.  Going too fast?  What did he mean by that?

“’Tis a lovely day, isn’t it?” the second John asked.

Desirée glanced about the streets, still gloomy with fog.  “Is it?”

“But then, any day would be lovely, walkin’ beside a maid such as yourself.”

Desirée resisted the urge to smirk.

“I’m surprised ye don’t have an escort,” he said.  “Is there no one who’s
—
“

“Have ye got a husband?”  The first John apparently disliked mincing words.

“John!”  The second reached around her to shove the first.

“What?  Isn’t that what ye want to know?”

“Pardon my friend,” John the second said.  “He’s got no manners.”

“You’re pardoned,” she said.  But she didn’t answer his question.  In fact, she became suddenly wary of their interest.  Before, she’d always had Hubert to intercede if men took too much of an interest in her.  Now she was on her own.

She stopped in the lane.  “Perhaps I should continue on myself.”  She reached for the pike.

He pulled it away.  “Nay, m’lady.  John didn’t mean no harm.  Besides, ye don’t want to walk these streets alone.  They’re dangerous.  All manner of thieves and scoundrels roam about, ready to pounce on a lady all by herself.”

An inner alarm warned Desirée the Johns shouldn’t be trusted.  After all, only yesterday, Odger and a pack of urchins had cost her the greater part of a savory meal.  She didn’t want it to happen again.

“Give us another chance,” he urged.  “John won’t say another word, will ye, John?”

“I s’pose not,” he said unhappily.

“See?  And we’ll take ye home, safe and sound...to your husband.”  He hesitated, obviously waiting for her to confirm or deny his statement.

She refused to take the bait.  Perhaps if they suspected she had a husband, they’d leave off their pursuit.  “Very well.”  She resumed walking.

“I
told
ye she was wed,” the supposed-to-be-silent John said.

“And I told ye to be quiet!  Besides, she didn’t say if she was or wasn’t.”  He winked at Desirée.  “Maybe she prefers to...leave her options open.”

Desirée smiled, wondering what the lads would say if she told them she was maidservant to the shire-reeve of Kent.

As they traveled on through the fog, straying farther and farther from the crowded center of town, she realized, of course, that she would have to mislead the lads.  She didn’t want them to know where Nicholas lived.  So as John the second continued on with his prattle, asking her questions that she answered as vaguely as possible, she picked out a walled demesne along a side street and stopped before it, indicating it was her home.

John the silent scratched his head.  “Here?  The shire-reeve lives here?“

“Fool!”  John the not-so-silent cuffed him.

Desirée glanced between the two men.  They glanced back, their eyes alarmed and guilty.  Now on high alert, she clenched her hands around the jug of wine, ready to use the thing as a weapon, if need be.

“What did you say?” she asked.

John the second tried to laugh off the situation.  “He didn’t say nothin’.  He’s just addled in the head.”

She wasn’t fooled for an instant.  “What did you say about the shire-reeve?”

The first John sputtered an unintelligible response, then his eyes went wild with panic.  He dropped the pie and lunged forward, seizing her around the waist.

Desirée clung to the claret.  She wasn’t about to lose a second jug of wine.

“John!  What are ye...?” the second John spat, glancing about to see if there were any witnesses.  “Stop it!  What the bloody hell...”

But John the first wasn’t about to let go, and Desirée was having a hard time fighting him off, since she was desperate to hang on to the claret.  “Let go of me, you son of a
—
“

John number two clapped a hand over her mouth.  “Shh, lass.  It’ll be all right.  I promise.”

She bit down hard on his fingers.

“Ow!”  He yanked his hand back, but as soon as she took a breath to scream, he dropped the fish and attacked her from behind, locking his arm around her throat.

Desirée had no choice but to sacrifice the wine.  She gave the first John a swift knee to the groin.  While he sank to the ground with a bloodless face, she swung the jug up over her shoulder and bashed John the second in the head.

To her delight, the jug didn’t break, and her assailant was rendered dizzy by the blow.

The first John looked up from where he was doubled over in pain.  “Ye’re not the shire-reeve’s wife, then, are ye?” he wheezed.  “Ye’re his whore.  Right?”

Desirée gasped in outrage, then drew back her fist and punched him hard in the nose.  He staggered backward, moaning, one hand cupping his crotch, the other cradling his nose.

“Ye fool,” the second John groaned, holding his cracked brow.  “This isn’t her demesne.  She just said that to get rid of us.”

The first John’s words were muffled by his hand.  “Then she
does
live with him.”

Desirée had had enough.  Her knuckles ached, and her supper lay in disarray upon the ground.  Confounded by their questions and incensed by their assault, she tossed her head and shouted, “Aye, I live with the shire-reeve!”  She narrowed her eyes at John the first and gave him a nasty smile.  “And when he hears that you attacked me...John...”

His eyes grew round with fear.  With a sound that was half-gasp, half-squeak, he lurched off down the lane, still shielding his injured parts.

“John!  Come back here!” his companion called.  “Coward!”

Desirée turned on the remaining John, advancing on him with her jug raised until he was backed against the wall of the demesne.  “Who sent you?”