The Crimson Lady (8 page)

Braedan scowled in return.

“Ah, let it go, man,” Will said, uncrossing his arms to lift one hand and rub the back of his neck. “It was nothing personal, just a bit of a trial, is all. I confess I didn’t hold out much hope for a lad whose family fed him from infancy on the flaccid teat of the king’s justice. But I’m not too proud to admit that I was perhaps too quick in my judgment. We might find some use for an arm like yours after all.”

“How reassuring. I’m relieved to have proved myself to your satisfaction.”

“You did well enough.”

Though he wore the same half smile, the aura of challenge and distrust emanating from Will was almost palpable; Braedan returned the frosty look, raising his brow to meet the man’s hostile gaze.

“I do, however, have one question that needs answerin’ before I’ll be free to lead you back to our settlement and introduce you to the others,” Will said.

“And what might that be?”

“Just this,” he continued quietly, his voice all the more menacing for its facade of calm. “Because more than anything, I want to know how in hell you managed to get my sister to come back to Alton with you.”

“Y
our
sister
?” Braedan swung his gaze to Fiona, but she looked no less exasperated and off-balance than he felt.

“Pardon us for a moment’s talk in private, would you, Will?” Fiona murmured, as she swept past him to take Braedan’s arm and lead him, bewildered enough so that he didn’t fight her on it, to a spot out of Will’s hearing.

“Just keep calm,” she said, holding up her hand in an attempt to stop him, he supposed, from bellowing the slew of questions that were raging through his mind at that moment.

“You’re Will Singleton’s
sister
?” he finally choked out.

“Aye, though we do not share the same father.”

“Then why in God’s name did you lead me to believe he was your lover?”

“I never led you to believe anything,” Fiona said
coolly. “You decided what you wished about the nature of my relationship with him all on your own.”

That set Braedan back on his heels for a moment. Even through the ever-increasing annoyances this day was presenting, he couldn’t really deny that truth. Fiona had never made comment on anything about Will, other than that he was her thieving partner and that he knew her better than anyone. He’d supplied the assumption about the whys of it all.

But she’d never disabused him of his erroneous beliefs either.

“You could have corrected me when I spoke of him being your lover a few moments ago.”

“I never had the chance.”

“Christ, woman.” Braedan shook his head and released his breath in a rush, glancing over to Will, who kept looking over at them suspiciously even as he checked on his wounded men. Meeting Fiona’s gaze again, Braedan tried to reconcile all that he’d learned just now with what he’d thought. As usual, she seemed to have a knack for disrupting his ordered views of the world—and his perceptions of her in particular.

“All right, then, let me be sure that I am clear on all of this,” he murmured. “Will Singleton is actually your brother. We must play a wedded pair in order for him to believe your reasons for being here, but we cannot tell him about our plans to search for Elizabeth. Once we undertake that search and return to London, my uncle will most likely try to bring you back into his control.” He clenched his jaw, not happy about how thickly this all was piling up on him. “Is there anything else that I should know before we get on with this, then?”

“Nay.” Her face was smooth—more beautiful than
ever in this lush, sun-kissed glade, and when she lifted her gaze to him, he felt a twist in his heart at the sincerity he saw there. “I am truly sorry for the surprises and deceptions, Braedan, but there is no help for them. Above all you must keep silent about our plans for returning to the
stewes
. Will is very protective of me and would call a halt to everything if he found out it was our intent.”

“I have difficulty believing in the protectiveness of a brother who allows his sister to thieve with him,” he rejoined tightly, “not to mention what he was doing…or not doing, as it may be, during the years you were under Draven’s control.”

A beat of silence passed, and Braedan felt the tension winding through her. Her expression hardened, and it sent a welcome fist of pain into his belly, banishing, for the moment, the confusion of the more tender feelings that had been gripping him.

“You don’t know the truth of the matter,” she said finally. “Until you do, it would be best for you simply to accept what I say without constant argument.”

“Is that so?” he challenged. His tolerance this day had already been far overreached, and he found himself unwilling to back down, even though he knew it was foolish to pursue this destructive path further. “And tell me, just how long was it that you plied your skills for Draven? Two years—perhaps three?”

Fiona met his gaze head-on, and he was almost relieved to see the glittering wall of anger beneath the surface of those beautiful eyes, pushing him away. “I was with Draven for almost seven years.”

“I see. Quite long enough, then, for someone to have
intervened—aye, even a brother perhaps,” Braedan clipped, “if he had been so inclined.”

“I’ll say again—you know nothing of this. In fact it was only because of Will that I—”

“Because of Will that you what, love?” her brother said, coming up beside them. Braedan favored the man with a scowl, as angry at himself for having failed to notice his approach as he was with Will’s supremely aggravating presence.

Looking flustered, Fiona turned to her brother, somehow pulling an affectionate smile from the depths of the animosity she’d been directing at Braedan. “I was just telling Braedan it was because of you that I encouraged him to consider the area near Alton as the place to settle.”

“
You
were the one who prompted this return?”

“I was,” she lied, though as with each falsehood Braedan had heard her utter before, the words fell so trippingly, he’d have believed her to his last breath had he not known better.

“But since certain members of his family still reside nearby,” she continued, “he was hesitant to come back and take up the thieving life he has been forced to embark upon since being named an outlaw.”

“Aye—and
that
is a story I look forward to hearin’ later, you can wager,” Will said with a grunt. “A de Cantor on the other side of the law…God’s blood, I never thought I’d see the day.”

The familiar tightness clenched in Braedan’s gut at the words, but before he could answer, Fiona broke in again. “Be that as it may, I managed to convince Braedan to take up this locale by reminding him that knowing one’s
territory well is far easier than having to learn the lay of new lands. I also promised he’d receive a warm welcome from you”—she gave her brother a slightly wounded look—“though I have to say that you’re making me seem less than trustworthy in that respect thus far. In truth, you’ve been less than pleasant, Will.”

“Not without reason,” her brother answered, touching her cheek before letting his hand drop to his side and shifting his unyielding stare to Braedan. “I still haven’t gotten an answer to my earlier question about why the two of you are travelin’ together. Your situation is one thing, de Cantor, but my sister givin’ up the trade she worked so hard to establish in Hampshire is quite another.” He glanced to Fiona again. “No mention was made in your message, love, and I’ll know the full of it before I’ll be cozyin’ up to anyone or bringin’ either of you a step out of this glen.”

“There is no great mystery to it, man,” Braedan grated, determined to erase that superior look from Will’s face, even if it meant sinking up to his neck in the lie Fiona had concocted for them. “Your sister came to Alton with me because it is customary for a wife to follow her husband.”

“What?”
Will choked out, his attention snapping to Braedan again.

Braedan felt a flare of satisfaction at Will’s shocked response, but he tried not to let it show. Fiona’s brother wore the same gaping look he imagined he’d sported himself moments ago when he’d learned that they were siblings, and he relished it. Settling more fully into enacting his ruse with Fiona, he reached out and swung his arm over her shoulders to tug her gently to him. She fit well against him, he noticed, realizing too late that his
action was igniting a slow-burning, pleasurable reaction to her warmth and her closeness.

“Aye, your sister and I are married. We’ve been a happy pair for…oh, it has been a goodly time, hasn’t it, dearest?” he murmured as he looked at Fiona.

“I—I, yes—a goodly time,” she stuttered. She held herself stiff against him, offering up a feeble attempt at the kind of expression a contented wife might wear.

Another flare of something dangerous swelled in Braedan, and he stoked the embers of it, deciding that if he was going to have to play the role of loving husband, Fiona needed to warm to her part in a more credible way as well. Rubbing his hand up and down her shoulder, he tipped his chin down and pressed a kiss to the silken top of her head before drawing her more fully against him.

It was Will’s turn to scowl at them now. “I—I had no idea,” he mumbled, his expression shifting from that dark, unsettled look to one of great perplexity. He looked at Fiona. “In truth I am stunned, lass…I never thought that you would marry…I mean after all that happened and everything that you—”

“Yes, well, people do change, Will,” she broke in breathlessly, her voice sounding high and strained. She ended her comment with a forced little laugh, finally pulling herself completely out of Braedan’s embrace on the pretext of brushing a leaf from Will’s coppery hair, murmuring, “I hope that you’ll be happy for us.”

“Aye, brother,” Braedan said blandly, reaching for Fiona’s hand and tugging her back against him. “We pray you’ll be happy for us—and that you’ll welcome us into your family of outlaws.”

Fiona continued to try to extricate herself from his
embrace, but Braedan held her close. Once she sensed the futility of it, she began to shift and fiddle with her skirt and her hair, her hands in a state of constant movement. It was clear as the sunrise that she yearned to distance herself from the unfamiliar intimacy of his touch, and though it surprised him that a woman of her experience would balk at such closeness, he wasn’t about to let her escape so easily.

When Will remained silent, Braedan went on, “I have no doubt that your sister will recall the practices you perfected those years ago for lightening travelers’ purses—and in truth I know some of what may prove useful toward such endeavors…but I am a de Cantor, after all,” he added, his tone echoing with the faintest note of sarcasm, “bred to uphold justice and right, and I will most surely need the kind of aid and instruction only you can provide if I am to master the skills necessary to be of service to your company of men.”

“And women,” Fiona muttered, clearly still contending with her desire to yank free of his embrace.

At her interjection, Braedan lifted one of her hands to his lips and murmured, “Aye, my darling—and women,” before pressing a tender kiss to the delicate skin of her wrist. Her involuntary gasp disappeared under the words he uttered next.

“So what say you, then, Singleton? For your lovely sister’s sake, will you accept me or not?”

Will was still staring at them with a look that was half-stupefied shock and half-scowling anger. With apparent effort he brought himself under some sort of control, enough at least to mutter, “I suppose the answer must needs be yes, de Cantor, if ’tis true that my sister has chosen you as her own.”

“Aye, it is—in fact it was your sister herself who decided that we should become man and wife,” Braedan said wickedly, cupping Fiona’s cheek with his palm and pulling her head to him so that she had to either rest against his shoulder or risk ruining their deception by jerking away from him.

She chose to comply with their ruse.

Will spent one last moment looking from Braedan’s face to Fiona’s and back again before murmuring, “All right, then. I suppose I must welcome you to the family, man.” He held out his hand to Braedan, who was forced to release Fiona at last in order to grip it and acknowledge the acceptance. Right afterward, Will stepped up to kiss her cheek, murmuring his wish for her happy future before he turned away, still clearly troubled, to gather his men and prepare to lead them all from the clearing to the outlaw’s encampment.

Braedan glanced at Fiona, who’d remained unmoving since Will’s utterance of congratulations on their false marriage. The high color in her cheeks remained and her hands were laced tightly in front of her, but when she finally swung her head to meet his gaze, he found that he could no longer read her feelings in her expression; she had once again managed to close herself off from him in that way of hers that so astounded him.

“I think it best that I go and ready our mounts,” she said, not waiting for his answer before she turned to walk back to where they’d left the horses feeding on the grasses at the clearing’s edge.

He watched her go, his own emotions unnerving him. The ease with which he’d uttered the sweet nothings—the surprisingly natural way Fiona had felt pressed against him—had been nothing less than astonishing to
him. He had been affected, and powerfully so. It had to be his long-suppressed desires surging to the fore, he decided. There could be no other answer for it—though he wasn’t at all sure that he liked being tempted into weakness again that way, any better than he liked having to admit to it. And she was a courtesan, he reminded himself. A woman who had bedded hundreds of men. She wasn’t the kind of woman he should yearn for, no matter how alluring he found her to be.

Aye, it seemed that his playing at being Fiona’s husband was going to be dangerous in more ways than one. For it would require a special care, not only in keeping Will in the dark about the truth of their relationship, as was needed if they were to fulfill their plans in seeking Elizabeth, but also in ways he’d never considered before. There might well be something else to all of this, something potent enough to test his innermost moral strength and his vows against illicit temptation…

Something, God help him, that he sensed could push him to the breaking point—and perhaps beyond.