Wild Wind (42 page)

She saddled up. “Don’t let anyone into the stable. When I get back, I’ll have Gaspar transported to the ducal prison. Go back to bed. Have Beal bring you some porridge, and try not to drink too much—”

“I’m sick to death of that bed. I’d rather stay out her for a bit. Don’t worry about me.” He took her hand. “Find Alex and marry him.”

“I’m already married, remember?”

His expression sobered. “Look at me, Nicolette. How much longer do you think I have?”

“Milo—”

“I’ve been denying it. So have you. But I’m dying. We both know it.”

“It could be years, Milo—”

“Find him.” Milo gripped her hand almost painfully. “And marry him, and be happy. I owe you that much.”

“Milo—”

“If you delay much longer, he’ll be halfway across the Channel by the time you get to Fécamp.” He released her hand and made his halting way to a nearby shade tree. Lowering himself wearily to the ground, he sat down with his back against the trunk, his eyes closed. “Go. And ride fast.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She flicked the reins and rode away swiftly.

NICKI RODE ZURIE
hard on the road that led north through the woods—too hard, for as they passed a particularly rough stretch, the horse stumbled, tossing Nicki to the ground. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the agitated mare’s reins and murmured soothingly to her until she quieted.

With a sense of dread, Nicki bent down to inspect Zurie’s legs and hooves, hoping she’d merely picked up a stone that could be pried loose. She moaned when she saw see that the back of the animal’s right front leg was sharply bowed between the knee and fetlock. Touching it gingerly, she found a pulled tendon, but no bones broken; thank the saints, for she couldn’t bear to think of delivering the mercy stroke, and she needed this horse.

The leg swelled quickly, but some horses were rather sanguine about such injuries. Marjolaina would have cheerfully continued on three legs, and Nicki prayed that Zurie was as accommodating. Retrieving her eating knife, she reached beneath the skirt of her tunic, sliced a strip from her linen undershift, split the ends, and wound it around the leg, tying it off tightly. Once they were back at Peverell, she could stand Zurie in the bracing water of the stream to ease the swelling, and then rub her down with lineament; but until then, she’d have to keep going.

“All right, girl.” Nicki saddled back up and flicked the reins. “Let’s go.” Zurie took a step and then stopped. “Zurie, please.” Nicki did everything she could think of to urge the horse forward, wasting precious time in the process, but in the end she had to admit defeat.

Her only hope at this point was to leave Zurie here and continue on foot. She had money in her purse; she could buy another horse and send someone back for Zurie.

Dismounting, she tethered the mare to a tree on the side of the road. No one would steal an obviously lame horse, and she had to leave her where she could be seen by whomever she sent back for her.

Nicki walked on as swiftly as she could, peering through the autumn-hued trees for signs of a cottage. If she didn’t get another horse soon, she’d never catch up with Alex. She began to entertain the hope that he’d slowed his journey by stopping at a tavern for a bite to eat. Perhaps he would spend the night in Rouen at the ducal palace; she hoped so.

She’d gone several miles when she heard the soft rumble of hoofbeats from behind. Alarm tightened her belly before she recalled Alex’s observation that bandits usually traveled on foot. Perhaps she could ride north with this group, at least for a while. They might even be willing to sell her a horse.

Nicki turned toward the riders just as they came into view. One of them pointed. “There she is!”

“Sweet Jesus!” It was Gaspar and his men, thundering straight toward her. Nicki lifted her skirts and fled into the woods, running with all her might, her hair flying behind her. Dear God, it was Gaspar! How did he get out of the stable?

The woods were dense, making it unlikely they would try and follow her on horseback. Did she have enough of a head start to outrun them? With no choice but to try, she sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her, leaping boulders and darting between trees, her lungs burning, whispering frantic prayers.

From behind came the ominous crunching of footsteps on the dried leaves blanketing the forest floor. The footsteps grew louder as the men gained on her. Over her own hoarse pants, she heard their breathless curses and exclamations. The ground thudded as they approached. She heard Gaspar’s harsh, gasping chuckle, and then something smacked her in the back and the ground slammed up to meet her.

Nicki cried out as the big man pressed her facedown into the crackling leaves, panicked as he leaned on her back, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She thrashed helplessly, trying desperately to breathe, while the three men laughed. Her vision faded; her extremities grew numb. But before she could slide into unconsciousness, Gaspar shifted his weight off her back. Her chest heaved, sucking in precious air—and dirt, for as he rose, he closed a hand over the back of her head and shoved her face into the ground.

And then he released her, standing over her with the others while she lay on her belly, struggling to catch her breath and trying desperately to think of a way out of this. She heard a lascivious snort of laughter, but ignored it...until she felt something cold and smooth moving swiftly up her stockinged leg, gliding over her ankle, her calf, her thigh. She flinched and rolled over, only to discover Gaspar lifting her skirt with the lead spike on the head of his mallet.

She scrambled backward, swatting her skirt back down while those two primitive louts, Vicq and Leone, gaped at her legs. Vicq held a club balanced casually on his shoulder; Leone had a dagger sheathed on his belt.

“On your feet,” Gaspar ordered, gesturing with the mallet.

Swallowing hard, she looked around frantically, wondering if she could make a run for it, knowing she couldn’t.

“I said get up!” Grabbing a handful of her hair, tangled with leaves and twigs, Gaspar wrapped it around his fist and yanked her to her feet. She yelped as he dragged her several feet and backed her against a tree.

“She doesn’t look so high and mighty now, does she, boys?” Vicq and Leone moved closer, their feral gazes trained on her. Her nostrils stung with the stench of unwashed flesh and clothes that had been lived in and slept in for years. They were hulking, hairy brutes with prominent brow ridges, both of them. They had about them the look of wild animals that one has tried with limited success to domesticate.

Gaspar pushed her snarled hair away from her face and rubbed a clump of dirt off her cheek. “She’s as filthy on the outside now as she is on the inside—and that’s pretty damned filthy.” Looking down, she saw that her white tunic was torn and dirt-smeared.

Something hot trickled from her nose. She swiped at it automatically, and her hand came away bloody.

“Hands at your sides,” Gaspar barked. “Don’t move until I tell you to. And then you’ll do exactly as you’re told. Do you understand?”

“Roast in hell.”

In a heartbeat he pressed the spike of his mallet so hard into her throat that she could scarcely draw a breath. She grabbed it and tried to pull it away, but he only pressed harder, until she feared it would crush her windpipe.

“Hands at your sides,” he instructed softly.

She lowered her hands.

“That’s better.” He let up a bit on the mallet. She gasped for air. He smiled thinly. “I must say I was rather put off to awaken and find myself tied up in your stable. I screamed myself hoarse before that dimwitted stable boy finally came and untied me. Your husband probably would have tried to stop him, if he were still alive.”

Nicki just stared at Gaspar, his dull black eyes, his predatory smile, thinking, No...

“Aye, he was dead as a stone, under that tree, with the flagon next to him, empty. I suppose, in his own pathetic way, he was trying to do you and his cousin a favor.”

Milo, Milo... Nicki shut her eyes against the tears that scorched them. A favor...yes. Her husband had taken his own life in a final attempt to wrest some measure of purpose and dignity from it. He did it so that Nicki would be free to marry Alex. The gesture was all the more selfless for being such a grievous sin, and Nicki promised herself that if she survived this afternoon she would pray for Milo’s soul every day of her life.

“The amusing part of it,” Gaspar said, “is that de Périgeaux will never reap the benefits of this favor. I will.”

“If you think you can convince me to marry you—”

“Silence!” He jammed the spike into Nicki’s throat until she gagged and choked, then let up on it a bit. “When I want you to use that lovely mouth of yours—” he jabbed his thumb between her lips, eliciting a gasp from Nicki and snickers from his men “—I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, you’re to keep it shut.”

Nicki closed her eyes.

“Look at me.”

She looked at him. On either side, Vicq and Leone watched in open-mouthed fascination, clearly amazed and titillated by Gaspar’s treatment of her.

“You can remarry now,” Gaspar said, “and you’re going to marry me. Forget about de Périgeaux. He couldn’t leave you fast enough once his job was done, eh? By now, he’s many miles from here, delighted to be rid of you.”

“Nay,” Nicki whispered under her breath. How could it all have been pretense? How could he not have loved her?

But it was true that he had left her. Alex was gone, and she was at the mercy of an enraged lunatic. Gaspar had clearly crossed over a threshold of sorts. Years of frustration and imagined slights had driven him to a kind of madness, with Nicki as its target.

“You’re obviously still reluctant to be bound in wedlock to the apothecary castellan,” he said. “But perhaps I can think of a way to persuade you.” He slid the tip of the spike slowly downward, following its progress over her throat, the rise and fall of a breast, her belly...She swallowed a strangled cry as he nudged it between her legs. Vicq and Leone leered openly.

“For fifteen years,” he said, trailing the spike back up the way it had come, “I’ve imagined what it would be like to have that pretty little body of yours at my disposal. And, rest assured, I do have a rather vivid imagination. I’ve thought of a thousand different ways to make you scream and beg. Way out here, there’d be no one to hear you, would there? And when I’m done with you, I think it would be only fair to let Vicq and Leone take their turns—fair, and possibly quite entertaining as well.”

Leone’s lips stretched over a sparse mouthful of tooth stubs. Vicq just stared her up and down, his small eyes glinting with lewd anticipation.

Gaspar caressed her face with the spike’s sharp point. “I almost had you once, you know. But, of course, you don’t. Do you remember the night you took ill after drinking the raisin wine Edith brought you?”

Nicki had a vague memory of Edith making her drink a goblet of raisin wine that night. ‘Twill help you sleep, lamb. You must drink it all. “What did you put in—”

“Shh!” Gaspar pressed the spike against her lips. “Just something to make you a bit easier to handle while I sired a son on you.”

Shock gripped Nicki. A memory surfaced...a man in a black mask holding a dagger to her nose. No...he didn’t...he couldn’t have...

“Unfortunately,” Gaspar said, “de Périgeaux chose that moment to creep upstairs for his nightly poke, and I couldn’t finish what I started.” He smiled. “But he’s not here to ruin it this time. Today I may do with you as I please. Then I’ll turn you over to Vicq and Leone. If you aren’t dead by the time they’re done with—and you very well may be, for they do tend to get a bit carried away—I’ll finish the job and bury you out here where no one will ever find you. People will just assume that you abandoned your ailing husband to run after your cousin, and that Milo consequently killed himself in despair.”

Nicki began to shiver.

“That,” Gaspar said, withdrawing the mallet and taking a step back, “is what will happen if you refuse to marry me. Accept me, and we’ll leave now and find an agreeable priest. We could be husband and wife by tonight.”

Nicki shook her head automatically, appalled by the prospect of being bound in matrimony to such a beast—but not eager to face the alternative, either. Perhaps, despite his madness, he could still be reasoned with. “Gaspar, listen to me,” she said quickly. “With me dead, Peverell will go to the church. You’ll have lost your chance at it.”

“If you don’t marry me, I won’t get it, anyway, but at least I’ll have my revenge, and there’s something to be said for that. No more stalling. Yes or no?” He tucked the head of the mallet under her skirt and began lifting it.

“Gaspar, for God’s—”

“Yes or no, bitch?”

She leaned over to push the mallet away.

Seizing her by the throat, he slammed her back against the tree. “Give me your answer!”

“I—I can’t. Gaspar, listen to—”

“Is that your answer? No?”

Struggling to keep her wits—she had to talk her way out of this—she said, “Gaspar, please, let’s just—”

“That’s your answer. You stupid bitch.” A red stain encompassed his face. He clenched his jaw, looking as if he might explode. “You stupid fucking bitch.” With a sudden burst of rage, he swung the mallet, imbedding the spike in the tree right next to Nicki’s legs. “You can’t bear to think of marrying beneath you, can you, you spoiled little whore? All right. You’ve made your choice. Strip.”

“Wh-what?”

“You heard me.” Gaspar unbuckled his belt. “Take your clothes off—all of them.”

Nicki’s shivering turned to violent tremors as she looked from one man to the next, standing in a row watching her. Leone’s tongue slid out to lick his lips; both he and Vicq seemed to quiver with excitement. Gaspar folded the belt in half and snapped it. “Do it!”

Something moved in the woods some distance behind them; a flash of white amid the trees.

“Now!” Gaspar screamed, shaking with fury. “Or I’ll have my men do it for you.”

The form in the distance took shape as a man—white shirt, dark hair tied back in a queue. Alex! It couldn’t be, and yet it was. He moved toward them with silent, measured steps, his sword drawn, his gaze intent.