What A Scoundrel Wants (21 page)

“Hush now. Listen.”

She unwound her limbs from Meg’s stiff hold. Confusion and anger festered behind her breastbone. Because confusion too closely resembled fear—the fear she had lived and breathed for weeks—she concentrated on anger.

“I will not,” she said. “I demand to know what is happening!”

“And I’m trying to hear that.”

She whipped her head. Meg had never spoken so sharply, her words hissing like a snake.

A body slammed against the other side of the wall. Both women jumped. In the passage, a man ground out a hard cry. Meg gasped. The need to reassure her, in turn to allay her own worries, returned to Ada like an ancient instinct. “We will endure.”

“I pray, yes.”

Another clash of bodies and swords shook the oaken door. A sword imbedded in the wood. A thump. Another man cried out. “Halt! We yield!”

“Meg, who is that who spoke?”

“Dryden.” Her sister stood. The sword she held scraped like a claw along the floor. “He has surrendered.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“I know not.” Another set of keys jangled outside. “Get to the back of me.”

Ada arose. The soles of her feet ached. Hobbling on her heels, she put no pressure on the dressings wrapped in irregular rolls around the arches. She found her sister’s raised forearms, the muscles bunched to support the weight of her sword.

“Stop, Meg. Please. If the earl’s son has surrendered, what hope have you?”

“None.” An unexplained sob cracked the word.

The door swung open. Sheriff Finch stood silhouetted in front of a cache of weapons and torches. Ada shrank back. Her feet blazed in pain. She stumbled. Only meeting the sandstone wall with the sharp bones of her shoulders prevented a fall. “Get away from me!”

Meg hefted the sword. “Who is it, Ada?”

“Ah, you must be my uninvited guest,” the sheriff said.

The milquetoast quiet of his voice erased the last vestige of conflict from the dungeon. Only he remained, weaving a soft threat into the air. “Ada, you must tell your sister that in Nottingham, introductions are never made across drawn weapons. Such barbarism shows poor manners.”

“Please, Meg,” she whispered. “He’ll kill you.”

She hitched the sword higher. “No, he won’t. He needs me.”

Finch smiled, a serpent readying his strike. “She is no simpleton. No coward either—unlike some participating in this botched escapade.”

Ada looked behind the sheriff, briefly meeting Dryden’s gaze. A sickening blend of shame and disgust covered his features. He turned away.

“But she does not know me like you do, Ada,” Finch said. “She does not know how convincing I can be.”

“Please!” She did not know to whom she begged: Finch for mercy or Meg for good sense.

Finch stepped into the cell. Had Meg been able to see, she could have taken off his head with one slice. “You are right, my new friend Meg. I do have need of you. But you will drop the sword. Now.”

A foursome of helmeted guards entered the cell and flanked Finch. A man wearing a tunic slashed with blood stepped away from the others. He pinned Ada to the wall with a hand to her neck. He raised the blade and laid it gently against her skin.

“Meg,” she whispered.
“Please.”

Ada fairly trembled at her side. The fear pulsing from her stooped body roiled against the walls, turning Meg’s stomach into nauseous twists. Whatever Finch had done to her sister proved he could make good on the threats he delivered with calm grace. Other men cluttered the cell, their panting breaths like horses penned in a stable. More waited in the passage.

And Dryden had surrendered. He must be there too.

But Will. She could not hear Will. The temptation to call his name stabbed the inside of her mouth.

“Be a clever girl,” Finch said. “Release the weapon.”

She frowned, working his intonations in her mind. Menace. A tranquil menace unlike any she had ever heard. A shiver skimmed the bared skin at the back of her neck. But she would not be trodden under by this man. A thief and a bully, only his station separated Finch from someone of Hugo’s ilk.

She opened her eyes and her fingers, both. The sword clanged to the floor. A soldier scraped it along the floor as he retrieved it.

“Gramercy,” Finch said.

Meg lowered her chin. If Will was dead, their survival depended on her success in maneuvering the sheriff. She cleared her mind of fear and a surprising stab of grief. From deep in her blood, she found the strength to submit.

“My apologies, my lord sheriff. I shall offer whatever cooperation I am able. Please release her.”

“What an agreeable sister you have, Ada. Far more than you were at our first meeting. Did you tell her about your feet, perhaps?”

“Yes.” Ada’s voice rasped a bird’s broken wing dragging in the dirt.

“She is brave and a quick learner.” Finch touched Meg’s chin with gloved fingers. “Such qualities must explain her proficiency in the ancient arts.”

“Release me! I demand an audience with Finch!”

Her knees bowed. Her heart jumped to life.

Will! Will lived!

But secrets might bolster their chance of escape. The only secret Meg concealed was her altered feelings for the man who had once been her adversary.

“Get that man away from me,” she said with a snarl. “He is a liar and a traitor.”

“Meg, Meg, no cause for insults.” Will’s mocking tone said he agreed with her strategy, a pact written between them without forethought.

“There most certainly is cause,” she said. “You lured me with the promise of my sister’s release, and yet you locked me in with her! Let me out at once.”

The guards ushered them into the passage. Ada clung to Meg’s arm, whimpering in obvious pain. “Meg, you came here with Will Scarlet?”

“And with Dryden, I did.”

“But he’s one of their men! He kidnapped me these weeks ago and left me to Finch’s whims.”

“I have no whims, Ada,” the sheriff said. “I have
intentions
. And I intend to have your sister work on my behalf.”

“She’s here thanks in large part to my dedication,” said Will, dragging what sounded like heavy manacles. “I shall collect my reward and be on my way.”

“Hardly, Scarlet,” said Finch. “You killed two of my men here and at least as many in the great hall, not to mention the list of crimes for which you’ve been hunted. What was the first? The Earl of Whitstowe’s murder?”

Ada squeezed Meg’s arm. “How could you?”

“The story is a long and tedious one,” she said. “Just as my captivity with this man has been long and tedious.”

Will laughed, a sound like a sneer. “My joy is boundless now that I’m free of your mad prattle.”

“I had no intention of slinking into Nottingham Castle to cause trouble,” she said. “The fault is his. I wanted nothing but my sister’s safety.”

The sheriff stepped nearer. She felt his eyes boring into her face, testing her, measuring her resolve. “Are you willing to make an exchange for your services?”

“Of course.”

“Before this ridiculous pantomime of violence, I was prepared to offer you a choice.”

Fiery anticipation licked her from the inside. “What choice?”

“In exchange for your services, you may choose who will go free—and who will be hanged.”

Speech and reason fled with equal haste. A deadly ice storm doused her fire, leaving her to shiver in an unearthly cold. Will said nothing. Ada said nothing. But the words in Meg’s mind screamed, railed, and sobbed.

He stroked her cheek. “The choice is yours, Meg. Will Scarlet or your sister.”

She clenched her jaw. “Your pardon, my lord sheriff?”

Finch crossed his arms and cast Will an insipid grin. He wanted to shake the man’s head from his neck. No weapons. No tricks. Just limitless frustrations focused on a single slimy individual. “By the way you and Scarlet danced in the hall upstairs, I would have thought you at quite the crossroads.”

“Meg, you danced with him?”

She flinched but ignored her sister’s revolted question, concentrating on the sheriff as surely as if she stared him in the eyes. “I cannot choose.”

“But you will,” Finch said. “That is part of my enjoyment. And that is my price for letting one of them free.”

Relish danced merry circles across his face—a face Will was glad she could not see. Meg would not have held her temper, or he hoped as much. He could have used a dose of her sparkling anger. Flanked between Finch and her sister, she seemed incapable of standing straight.

The dungeon door banged on its hinges. All heads turned to see Carlisle stride down the four steps. Another dozen men lined the passage behind him. Will shot Dryden a foul look. The man cowered between two guards, his head lowered like a man at prayer. Had the nobleman any mettle, any backbone at all. But no. They were well and truly trapped.

Carlisle joined the knot of guards and prisoners. “Scarlet.”

“Carlisle.”

The sheriff stepped closer to Meg. She sniffed, wrinkling her nose—Meg, the girl who toiled among the foulest smelling compounds in England. “And if I refuse?” she asked. “You cannot make me work for you.”

“You know very well that I could send both to their ends, without question or protest.”

“I cannot.”

Ada began to cry. “The sheriff tortured me! And you ponder whether to free the man who sent me here?”

Will listened to Ada with great interest. She spoke to her sister with the shrewish insistence of a woman used to being obeyed. Meg shrank with every word, a willow tree drooping beneath a gale.

“Why are you even contemplating this?” Tears streaked Ada’s grimy face, her eyelids rimmed in red.

“We both know why I might be tempted,” Meg whispered.

It was Ada’s turn to flinch. “You would punish me still? And so harshly? Have you enjoyed thinking on my suffering, sitting in this cell?”

“I would not be here if that were true.”

“You have no notion of the trials I have endured.”

Meg raised her head. She shrugged from her sister’s hold. “And you have no notion of mine.”

Will suppressed a grim smile and caught the daggers Ada threw with her eyes, hurling them right back. She hardly merited the arduous path Meg had traveled to that bleak dungeon, and she fostered an inhuman quantity of guilt in him. Aiming his frustrations at her entailed no hardship.

“I grow impatient,” said Finch. “Make your decision. We have time yet this evening to display your less fortunate friend to the crowd outside.”

Meg paled, her features turning to granite as she faced Finch. “I shall do what you ask of me, Sheriff Finch. Please release my sister.”

He smiled. “To be sure, this is the less interesting decision. I had been prepared to strike a more personal bargain with Ada for her release, but such as it is.”

Dryden shifted his weight. “And what is to become of me?”

“Now you think to speak up, coward,” Will shouted, pulling against the guards who held him. The chains at his wrists rattled. “A blind woman held her sword longer than you!”

But Dryden ignored the taunt, looking to Finch with expectation of a dog awaiting scraps.

“Meg, you chose interesting companions for this foolhardy quest,” the sheriff said.

“I had little choice, seeing as how your men killed Lord Whitstowe.”

His painted grin did not change. “We already established that your friend Scarlet was responsible for that debacle. That is correct, yes, Carlisle?”

“Of course. And for that he’ll hang.”

Will sneered at his former commander, noticing Meg’s satchel slung over Carlisle’s shoulder. He cut a cold glare between his adversaries, Dryden included. “Shall I have company?”

“Alas, no,” said Finch. “Hanging a nobleman is a tricky matter—far more so than disposing of a bastard piece of rubbish such as yourself. I have detained him long enough.” The sheriff turned to Dryden and signaled a guard to release him. “Take Ada out of Nottingham. If you hold your peace about what occurred here, we shall have no further involvement.”

Dryden nodded, his face sodden with sweat and pale beneath his shadowed beard. “I beg your pardon, Meg, please. I, I cannot—”

She interrupted with a quick cut of her jaw, lips mashed together. Strands of hair escaped her plait and framed the ire on her face. “I appreciate all you have done in your father’s stead, but you have begged my pardon one time too many. Get my sister to safety and have done.”