Rexanne Becnel (22 page)

Her instant relief was quickly replaced by cold anger. “You planned to rape me,” she accused, sending him a furious glare now that her fears on that score had been somewhat eased.

“I … uh … If I’d known who you were …” He trailed off awkwardly.

Joanna’s pulse still raced from the fright he’d given her, but she realized that they would not dare to harm her now. The king himself requested her presence.

Yet that knowledge brought her no particular comfort either. She looked up at Rylan’s taut expression, then back at the captain. What a choice! Go with Rylan or with the king’s men when both of them plotted the same unwelcome future for her. Or did they? Rylan planned to wed her to some stranger, but she realized that she could not be so sure of the king. She had only Rylan’s word that King John plotted the same for her, but Rylan could just have been trying to scare her. Besides, the king would have to listen to reason when she explained that she was no longer a maiden.

She swallowed hard at that thought, then took a fortifying breath. “You will take me to the king?” she asked the captain.

“Don’t do it,” Rylan muttered. His grip tightened painfully on her arm.

Seeing how things lay, the captain pressed his advantage. “Unhand her, Blaecston. The king would not judge me harshly were I to skewer you on this lady’s behalf.”

As if on cue, the mounted riders drew their weapons. In the quiet glade the sound was sinister indeed. “Fact is,” the man went on, “even if you turn ’er over to us willingly, who’s to say that you didn’t force our hand?”

In the chilling silence following that threat, Joanna’s voice sounded thin and very young.

“I, for one.”

Though she trembled with fear, this time it was not for herself. She had no reason to come to Rylan’s aid. By anyone’s logic he deserved whatever the scowling king’s guard wished to mete out to him. Yet her reaction did not look to logic for its source. She would not see blood let on her account. Not Rylan’s or anyone else’s.

She felt Rylan’s eyes on her, but she kept her gaze trained on the perplexed captain.

“Now, milady, this don’t—”

“I mean what I say, Sir … Sir …” She gave him a meaningful look and he glanced away.

“Sir Peyton,” he muttered.

“Sir Peyton. Yes, well, I will accompany you to court. However, I’m sure I would hear should anything befall Sir Rylan, and I’ll make sure the other barons know who is responsible.” Sensing that she’d won her battle of wills with Sir Peyton, she once more tried to pull away from Rylan’s tight grip on her arm.

For a long moment he did not release her. She glanced up at him, wanting to be disdainful and triumphant, to flaunt her victory over him and gloat over his failed plan. But as her eyes met his, those emotions faded away. For that one endless moment she was filled only with regret. His eyes were dark. From anger or frustration or defeat, she could not tell, for of a sudden her eyes swam with ridiculous tears.

She felt his fingers slacken, and she pulled free of him. Turning away, she faced the captain, but in her mind’s eye she still saw Rylan, tall and powerful, sword at the ready, face dark and fierce.

She was swiftly put on a horse with a lead rein to another soldier’s mount. Then with a minimum of delay, they were off at a fast pace, leaving Rylan far behind. But though she rode away from him, Joanna could not leave behind the image of the man who had been both ruthless captor and masterful lover to her. She compressed her lips tightly as she clung to the hard saddle. He had come into her life without warning and was gone in the same abrupt manner. But she knew she would never be able to cast his memory entirely away.

B
OTH HORSE AND RIDER
were in a lather when they crested the low hill that provided the first view of Blaecston Castle. But knowing his destination was so close at hand did not cause Rylan to slacken his pace. Rather, the proximity of his home spurred him to new haste.

All during the four-hour ride he’d been beset alternately by fury and frustration. He’d been so near to ensuring Yorkshire’s solidity against the king. That, coupled with his own marriage to Sir Egbert Crosley’s heir, would have struck England’s fool of a king a harsh blow indeed. But now the Lady Joanna had fallen into the king’s clutches. To make things even worse, he’d compromised the girl. Honor demanded that he make things right by marrying her. But that would ruin his own marriage plans—and political ones as well.

Not that the king would let Joanna marry him—not with Oxwich as the prize. At least King John did not know about his agreement with Sir Egbert. But the king’s ignorance on that point brought no real ease to Rylan’s mind. Joanna was still in the man’s clutches because
he
had been so careless.

He thundered down the muddy track, unmindful of the shepherds who waved at their lord’s passing, then scratched their heads at his tearing pace. Rylan had one thought only on his mind, and that was to collect a contingent of his best men and make haste to the royal court now set up in Ely. He could salvage nothing by remaining at Blaecston. Indeed, he might very well gain no better by making straight for John’s corrupt court either. But he had to try. Joanna would be no more than a pawn in the king’s foul clutches, and although she’d been little more than that in his own care, he consoled himself with the thought that he, at least, had meant to see her happily settled.

But that self-serving logic did not sit as comfortably with him now as it had when he’d first conceived his plan. As he made his way up the hard-packed road that rose to his looming fortress, he was uncomfortably aware that she’d fought him every step of the way. She had not wanted marriage nor the home of her birth. But he’d nonetheless tried to force them both upon her.

He’d forced himself upon her as well.

“Christ and bedamned!” he muttered. Then he barreled across the narrow drawbridge and pulled his destrier to a clattering halt in the stony forecourt. In a trifling he flung himself down from the heaving animal and tossed the reins to a wide-eyed stableboy.

“Summon the captain of the guard,” he barked to the first man who scurried up. “Prepare another horse and set out a meal. And ale,” he added as he strode furiously toward the great hall.

The seneschal sat at a table poring over a parchment listing of the Blaecston holdings—arpents and chains, cropland and pasture—muttering to himself. When the lord of the demesne strode in unexpectedly, however, he leaped up from his seat, a ready welcome on his lips. But his quick smile of greeting faded when he spied Rylan’s black expression.

“My … my lord. You are found. We had word that you were missing.”

“Is Kell here?” Rylan snapped as he flung his dusty leather gloves on the broad tabletop.

“He yet directs the search for you, milord. He came here but briefly and then left with more men.”

“Have him found. And all the others as well. Damn,” he swore impatiently. “Everything conspires against me. Had it not been for that storm—”

He broke off his muttering as a serving girl hurried in with an ewer of ale in one hand and a heavy mug in the other. Rylan poured a full mug and quickly quaffed the cool refreshing liquid. He dismissed the girl with a heavy sigh, pulled out a high-backed chair, and lowered his weary frame into it. He filled the mug again, then finally looked over at the waiting seneschal.

“I travel to the king’s court, Peter, with a full complement of men. If Kell appears before dawn he shall accompany me. If not—” He rubbed his sweaty brow. “If not then he can follow later, for I cannot wait on him. See to the horses and other supplies, will you. I’ll need a small box of coins and whatever trappings you deem necessary for a visit to court.”

“How long shall you be in London?”

Once more Rylan sighed. He stared into the cool depths of his ale, not really seeing the dark liquid or pale foam. “The king moves to Ely, so I am told. And as for how long, that is hard to say. Till my goal is met … or else truly lost.” He took another long pull of the ale and in the silence Peter began to edge away, assuming he was dismissed. But Rylan came out of his dark thoughts.

“One other thing, Peter. Be sure each man is well armed.” He did not explain further despite the seneschal’s clearly startled face. Indeed, after Peter left, Rylan was not sure himself what use a well-armed following would be to him in the midst of the royal court. Again he lifted the mug and downed the potent drink. Using force to steal Joanna from under the king’s nose would be ludicrous and might cost him the support of the barons he had worked so hard to gain. Besides that, it would be nearly impossible to achieve. Yet as he thought about Lady Joanna of Oxwich, he was consumed with a blind need to get her back at any cost.

With a vicious curse he slammed one clenched fist down on the solid table, unmindful of the pain it caused him. How could a mere woman have ruined his plans so easily? Yet to term her a mere woman was a disservice, he realized. For she was unlike any woman he’d dealt with before. He’d been surprised by everything having to do with her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on the Lady Joanna Preston.

She was supposed to have been a plain, unappealing girl who would be eternally grateful for being rescued from a boring life as a nun. She should have embraced his idea wholeheartedly and willingly done her duty to Oxwich and England by marrying as he dictated she should. Yet from the first she’d been determined to thwart him. She rejected his plan to find her a suitable husband, refused to leave St. Theresa’s, and had gone so far as to laugh when he pointed out her duties to her.

But worst of all, she was exquisitely beautiful.

Even in her unflattering gray gown, her fairness had been undeniable, and then on the island with her hair loose upon her shoulders like a magnificent bronze cape, and clad only in her kirtle, she had inspired an all-consuming desire in him.

“Sweet Jesu,” he muttered as blood rushed to his loins at the memory. He was a twice-damned fool to yet feel such a powerful desire for her soft womanly form. Wasn’t it just such a reckless passion that had brought him to this pass? If he’d had his wits about him, she would never have escaped him in the first place. But his thinking had been clouded by the strong ache centered in his braies. Then, when he’d thought to keep some distance from her, she’d turned it to her advantage and escaped. Once the damage had been done and they’d been trapped together, she’d turned that to her advantage as well.

He exhaled noisily, willing away the taut arousal caused by the memory of Joanna.
Remember what a willful and devious little witch she is,
he told himself. He was unable to generate the anger he wanted, however, for overriding both his anger and the physical longing he felt was another even more unwelcome emotion.

Guilt.

Just three days ago she’d been an innocent maiden, content with her life and anticipating taking up the veil in the service of the Lord. Now she was without the home she desired—and without her maidenhead as well. At court she would be parlayed as a prize to win her king the most useful political union possible. Despite her loss of virginity, Rylan knew there were those men who would gladly overlook that single flaw in her in return for the freedom of access to her delectable young body.

His jaw tensed in fury at the thought, and he leaped so abruptly from his chair that it tumbled backward. John would not prevail in this, he vowed. If he himself must coerce every man who owed him—or feared him—he would find a way to stymie the king. He would see her settled as best he could no matter what happened. It was the least he could do.

Joanna’s legs buckled beneath her when she slid down from the cream-colored palfrey she’d ridden for so long. Had she not grabbed at the saddle, she might have collapsed in a heap. And in front of all these staring faces.

Yet at the moment Joanna did not care a fig for the round-eyed stares she was receiving. A bed was all she craved. A bath and a bed. As she clung trembling to the saddle, waiting for the aged maid who accompanied her to come, she almost laughed at the irony of it all. How long had she struggled at St. Theresa’s to rid herself of her pride—to no avail, it often had seemed. Only now, when she was brought so unexpectedly to the court of King John and Queen Isabel, was she finally free of that cursed pride. She did not care what anyone saw, nor what they thought of her. Just give her a bed and leave her alone, and she would be content.

The bailey of the abbey at Ely was alive with people and fairly buzzing with talk as she was finally assisted by a sturdy young maid. It was someone new, she realized as she stumbled beside the girl. The old maid whose services had been purchased at Market Weighton had been needed for the three-day journey to Ely. A necessity for a noblewoman traveling among men. Likewise, so had the traveling cloak and rough clogs been obtained. She was now a ward of the king, she’d been told by Sir Peyton. It would not do for her to arrive at court with bare head and bare feet.

Not that she looked so grand even with those additions to her wardrobe. Even through her exhaustion Joanna could see that the people at court were dressed in a fashion far beyond her experience in recent years. Fine fabrics. Beautiful colors. She’d seen such goods used for altar cloths and bishop’s robes, and she vaguely recalled her mother’s fine gowns and tunics. But these were even finer, with jewels added, and furs and braided trims—a dazzling sight indeed. Or it would have been under differing circumstances. Now, however, the only thought that occurred to her at the sight of such a luxurious display was that if the clothes were fine, the beds must be as well. Fine linen sheets. A soft, overstuffed mattress …

“Take her to the ladies’ quarters. She looks nigh on to dropping. A bath and a bed. Put her in with the new girl.”

Joanna was too tired to even search out the source of that self-assured voice. She only trailed the maid up three steps and into a covered passageway. Like a sleepwalker she stumbled along until they reached a little solar where several women sat at their stitching and gossip.

“Milady Marilyn,” the maid began with a swift curtsey. “Herself says I am to put Lady Joanna in with you.”