Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (66 page)

Plus, Robert had mishandled the situation back at
the Cock and Robin greatly. He’d made the mistake of trusting
Master Cuthbert, for one. He’d refused to listen to Sabina’s
warnings until it was too late, for another. Now they were cowering
in the woods, fleeing pursuit without horses or provisions. Their
money was running out—they barely had enough to secure safe passage
across the Channel to Calais, and the port at Dover was still at
least three days’ journey away by horse. And now, their horses were
gone. God only knew how long it would take them on foot.

And they were hardly equipped to travel on foot,
anyway. Sabina’s thin kid slippers had never been designed for
travel, and they were already worn through. She could hardly march
the forty-odd miles to Dover in her stocking feet, and even the
most immoral of Dover sea captains would refuse to take them on as
passengers in their current filthy state. They probably would never
make it there alive at this point, anyway. There had to be a better
way.

“Have we considered surrender?” she asked once
Robert had recovered his faculties enough to stand.

Robert looked at her as if she’d grown another head.
“What? Surrender? Are you mad?”

“I’m merely bringing the topic up for
discussion.”

Robert slumped down onto a tree stump. “Surrender is
completely out of the question, and for a hundred different
reasons.”

“Really? Then name one.”

“I’ll name you a dozen. Lord Reginald doesn’t accept
terms of surrender from anyone, for one. He prefers to kill down to
the last man. And the last man is usually drawn and quartered.”

“What about his fiancée? Surely
he’d accept
my
surrender.”

Robert looked away. Not meeting her eyes, he said,
“I suppose anything’s possible.”

“What kind of answer is that? You’re the one who’s
supposed to be a master soldier and battle planner.”

“Master soldier I’ll give you,” he
said, still not meeting her eyes. “I don’t know about
master battle planner
anymore, though. How could I have made such a mistake about
the Cock and Robin? I put us—you, especially—at unnecessary risk.
It’s a mistake I’m afraid we won’t recover from either,
milady.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Though she knew
exactly what he meant.

“Surely you can tell that we have our backs against
the proverbial wall, milady,” he said. He stood and looked up at
her at last, and she saw his face had gone ashen. “We cannot risk
leaving the woods. At this point, we have to assume that we’re
surrounded. Lord Reginald has literally thousands of men at his
disposal, and I’m certain he’s called almost all of them up for
duty. It’s likely your father is supporting him with troops of his
own. You are a coveted prize, milady, and mostly for political
reasons. And Lord Reginald’s tactical skills are unmatched by any
man anywhere in Europe, royal or otherwise. When we still had the
horses and provisions we had a chance to escape, but now I’m afraid
we no longer do.”

“Then why not surrender?”

“Because it’s the last thing on Earth that we both
want,” Robert said, taking her hands in his, though his voice was
grim. “At least, that’s what I thought. Or am I wrong?”

Sabina didn’t answer. She just stared at the dead
leaves scattered along the ground.

He leaned his head against her shoulder. “If you
wish to go, Sabina, I shall not keep you against your will,” he
whispered. “Though you must understand that you would make the rest
of the journey alone.”

She kept looking at the dead leaves. “I understand,”
she said.

“Is this goodbye then?”

Sabina remained silent. But Robert could read her
answer well enough in her eyes.

“I’ll guide you to the forest edge,” he said. “Then
you’d be on your own. Though I expect that once you’re out in the
open, Lord Reginald’s men will find you very quickly.”

Sabina nodded. Tears collected in the corners of her
eyes, and she suddenly found herself unable to speak.

Robert reached out, touched the side of her face.
“Sabina, know this. No matter what happens now, I shall never
regret a single moment we spent together. Even if I die upon a
spear before the night is over. It was worth it.”

Sabina didn’t respond. She knew if she did, she
would collapse into sobs. It was all she could do to keep herself
standing upright.

“Come on, milady. Let’s get you home.”

Robert wrapped both his arms around her side,
supported her as she tried to walk. Sabina could barely move; in
fact, she felt moments away from total physical collapse. She knew
some of it was just from exhaustion and hunger—but not all of
it.

It seemed that for all the ecstasy and euphoria it
could bring, true love had a dark side. It could raise you up to
the pinnacle of heaven at its highest point, but then it was a long
way back down. Sabina’s whole being ached with a new kind of pain,
a kind that no medicine or even holy prayer could heal.

Was this why so many of the love
songs she’d heard the bards sing were so sad? Was this why most
women of noble blood never married for love in the first place?
Surely it had to be so. Why would anyone
choose
to feel such agony of their
own free will? Why wouldn’t anyone avoid it altogether if she
could? Maybe her father had done her favor by betrothing her to
Lord Reginald. At least with him, she wouldn’t feel anything at
all. Maybe that was better.

Only one thing was certain. Sabina couldn’t endure
being in Robert’s presence a moment longer. The more distance she
put between the two of them, the faster she could heal. Or if not
heal, at least build an impenetrable wall of indifference around
herself, enough that she’d be guaranteed never to feel anything
ever again—good, bad, or otherwise.

How naïve she’d been to run away! Her life could
have been so much simpler if she’d just obeyed her father and
stayed locked in her tower. How stupid she’d been to mix herself up
with a Norman mercenary in the first place! Any dunce could have
seen the whole affair was doomed before it had even begun. Saxons
just did not mix well with Normans, especially where love was
concerned. Political marriages between Saxons and Normans could
work, certainly—but only because love never entered the
equation.

How stupid she’d been to think she could take
control of her own destiny, too. It seemed in the end that the
lessons her mother, her father, her priest, even her governesses
had all hammered into her head since she was a toddler were true.
Women never had any say in their own lives—not in this time and
place, at least. And any woman who tried to behave otherwise was
just destined for a life of pain and misery. The only way for that
pain and misery to end would be for her to return swiftly to her
place in the predetermined background.

She broke away from Robert then, and suddenly found
the strength to run. She ran faster than she’d ever run before,
even though she was tired, hungry, weak from pain, even though her
shoes were in tatters and her vision blurred from tears. It was
over, all over. Her life, her love, everything she knew. From now
on she would simply exist. No more, no less.

And Sabina supposed if simply existing got too hard,
there was always her father’s sword.

Chapter
15

Robert stood and watched her go. He made no effort
to stop her, because it knew it would be futile. She had made up
her mind, and he would respect that. Because he loved her.

He understood the way she felt. A rough-and-tumble
life on the run was no life for a refined lady, even a fiercely
independent one like Sabina. Lord Reginald wasn’t known for giving
up the hunt on an ordinary day, and his fiancée was no ordinary
prey. Days and weeks spent evading capture would eventually turn
into years—assuming one or both of them wasn’t killed first. Such a
hard life would have made Sabina prematurely old, and surely angry
and bitter. Their love couldn’t have survived for long under such
conditions. And Robert frankly was doubtful it could have survived
long under any conditions. He wasn’t the marrying or settling-down
kind, after all. Even if they had found a small, safe,
out-of-the-way place to build their lives together, at some point
he knew he would get the itch to go back to mercenary work. Working
as a farmer or a blacksmith or some other stable, ordinary
profession went against his very nature. And if it was inevitable
that he would someday again find himself back to work as a
mercenary, it was also inevitable that Lord Reginald and his
minions would catch up to them. Lord Reginald de Guillaume’s reach
went far and wide, and he had his fingers in so many sticky pies
across the continent that it wasn’t even likely to end with his
death. No, Lord Reginald had made the careers and fortunes of too
many of Europe’s rapscallions, pirates, and all-around ruthless
bastards to ever be without major influence, whether he was still
alive or six feet underground. At some point, whether they were
living on a small farm in Provence or running a tavern in the wilds
of Scotland, the past would show up with a sharp sword and a
vengeance, and their life of bliss would be over in a bloody,
violent flash.

No, it was far better to let Sabina go while their
love was still new, the memories of their best night together still
fresh. They’d already reached the pinnacle, and it was all downhill
from there.

Still, he wasn’t going to abandon her completely.
The situation was far too dangerous for that. He would tail her
until he knew she was safe, and then he would disappear.

And
safe
was a relative word. When she
rejoined her father and Lord Reginald, she might be safe from
physical harm—Robert knew his old employer well enough to
understand that his murderous and violent attitudes towards men did
not extend to women—there was more than one way for a woman to get
hurt.

More than one way for a man to get hurt, too—even a
man who had long thought he was above such things.

Robert shook his head back and forth rapidly. He had
to stop that line of thinking. He didn’t have the luxury of pining
over Sabina. He’d bedded scores of women in his life before Sabina,
and had never once given a single one of them a second thought the
next morning. He should be able to forget her just like he’d
forgotten all the rest. But try as he might, he just couldn’t. It
was a completely different game where Sabina was concerned. A
different game, with different rules.

Why did things have to be so different with the one
woman he knew he could never have?

Damnation
, he cursed to himself in French.
Hell and damnation.
On the bright
side, now that Sabina was gone he could go back to speaking (and
swearing in) his native tongue. But that was little comfort,
especially when he knew that his beloved was still in
danger.

His beloved.
Even now that she was gone from his life forever, he could
still think of her only in those terms.

That kind of thinking had to stop immediately. He’d
already let his guard down once as a result of his feelings for
Sabina, and look at the mess it had gotten the both of them into.
He couldn’t risk it happening again. Even if he had to do so from a
distance, he would keep her safe—or die.

He stole silently from tree to tree, always keeping
her in his sights. He really wished she would slow down, at least.
She was running through the forest like a madwoman—he kept finding
torn pieces of her cloak and gown stuck to brambles and branches.
He feared that a passing scout or solider might mistake her for the
enemy and fire an arrow straight through her heart.

Sabina’s frantic pace finally slowed, whether from
exhaustion or fear, he didn’t know. Whatever the reason, he was
relieved. Now she at least had a fighting chance to make it out of
the woods alive. And even if it took his last dying breath, he
would see she got to the forest’s edge in one piece.

Sabina came to a stop and leaned
against a treestump to catch her breath. Robert hung back just out
of sight, leaning against an enormous oak tree, watching. His mind
sent her silent orders.
Don’t move too
fast. Don’t make too much noise. Keep your head down, and your eyes
and ears open.
Don’t show fear. Fear is
your enemy
. He wished she could hear him.
He wished he could touch her, hold her, keep her close. But he
couldn’t.

Incredibly, though, Sabina seemed to have understood
his silent orders somehow, at least on an unconscious level. She
was back on the move again, but much more slowly and carefully this
time. She picked her way around tree trunks and boulders, taking
care not to rustle leaves or break twigs with every step, like she
had before. She was swift, alert, always checking behind her, in
front, beside her for enemies and hazards. The cloud of fear that
had enveloped her like a sea storm had completely evaporated. She
was confident, resolute. All at once, she had taken on the skills
of a seasoned woodswoman—the only question was how.

Robert was amazed. Had he somehow managed to share
all his many years’ worth of mercenary knowledge with her by a
single thought? Or had her primal survival instincts simply taken
over? Whatever the cause, it was a wonder to behold—and it only
made Robert adore her all the more.

Sabina was in her element now, moving through the
forest with a skill and competence that was well beyond her
pampered upbringing. The only thing she seemed to miss was the fact
that Robert was tailing her every move. And that was fine by him.
Far better for her to think she was all alone when she was
captured. Far better for her to think that even if she called to
him, begged for his rescue, that no one would come. Far better for
her to think that where she and Robert were concerned, there was no
longer any hope. Because, quite simply, there wasn’t.