Elizabeth swept it away, the wine spilling, staining one of the luxurious carpets that comprised the floor of the tent.
Miles glanced at it, unconcerned, and drank his wine. “And now, Elizabeth, what am I to do with you?”
Chapter 2
ELIZABETH SAT UPON THE COT, HER LEGS WELL COVERED, only her head and one shoulder bare, and refused to look at Miles Montgomery. She would not lower herself to try and reason with him as he seemed to consider her ideas begging.
After a time of silence, Miles rose and stepped outside the tent, his hand holding the flap doorway open. She heard him order a basin of hot water.
Elizabeth didn’t respond to his momentary absence but thought that he had to sleep sometime and when he did, she would escape. Perhaps it would be better to wait until she had some proper clothes.
Miles didn’t let his man enter with the water, but carried it in himself and set it at the side of the cot. “The water is for you, Elizabeth. I thought perhaps you’d like to wash.”
She kept her arms folded across her chest and her head turned away from him. “I want nothing from you.”
“Elizabeth,” he said and there was exasperation in his voice. He sat down beside her, took her hands in his. He waited patiently until she turned her angry glare toward him. “I am not going to hurt you,” he said gently. “I have never beat a woman in my life and I don’t plan to start now. I cannot allow you to jump on a horse wearing practically nothing and ride across the countryside. You wouldn’t last an hour before you’d be attacked by hordes of highway-men.”
“Am I to believe you’re any better?” Her hands clasped his for a moment and her eyes softened. “Will you return me to my brother?”
Miles’s eyes looked into hers with an almost frightening intensity. “I…will consider it.”
She thrust his hands from hers and looked away. “What could I expect from a Montgomery? Get away from me!”
Miles rose. “The water grows cold.”
She looked up at him with a slight smile. “Why should I wash? For you? Do you like your women clean and fresh smelling? If so, then I’ll never wash! I will grow so dirty I will look like a Nubian slave and my hair will crawl with lice and other vermin that will soil your pretty clothes.”
Miles looked at her a moment before speaking. “The tent is surrounded by men and I will be outside. If you try to leave, you will be returned to me.” With that, he left her alone.
As Miles knew he would be, Sir Guy was waiting for him outside the tent. Miles nodded once and the giant followed him into the trees.
“I sent two men for the clothes,” Sir Guy said. When Miles’s father died, Miles was nine and the elder Montgomery’s dying wish was that Sir Guy take care of the young boy who was sometimes like a stranger even in his own family. Miles talked as much to Sir Guy as he did to anyone.
“Who is she?” Sir Guy asked, his hand on the bark of an enormous old oak tree.
“Elizabeth Chatworth.”
Sir Guy nodded once. The moonlight cast eerie shadows on the scar across his face. “I thought as much. Lord Pagnell’s sense of humor would run to delivering a Chatworth to a Montgomery.” He paused, watching Miles for a long moment. “Do we return her to her brother on the morrow?”
Miles walked away from his man. “What do you know of her brother, Edmund Chatworth?”
Sir Guy spit lustily before answering. “Compared to Chatworth, Pagnell is a saint. Chatworth loved to torture women. He used to tie them up and rape them. On the night he was killed—and bless the man who did the killing—a young woman cut her wrists in his chamber.”
Sir Guy watched as Miles clenched and unclenched his fists, and Guy regretted his words. More than anything else in the world, Miles loved women. Hundreds of times Guy had had to pull Miles off a man who’d dared to wrong a woman. As a boy he’d attacked grown men and when his temper was aroused it was all Guy could do to hold him. Last year, Guy had not succeeded in keeping Miles from killing a man who’d slapped his sharp-tongued wife. The king’d almost refused to pardon Miles for that fracas.
“Her brother Roger isn’t like Edmund,” Sir Guy said.
Miles whirled on him, his eyes black. “Roger Chatworth raped my sister and caused her suicide! Do you forget that?”
Guy knew that the best way to handle Miles’s temper was to remain silent on the subject that angered him. “What do you plan to do with the girl?”
Miles turned away, ran his hand down the trunk of a tree. “Do you know that she hates the Montgomery name? We have been innocent in all the hatred between the Montgomerys and Chatworths yet still she hates us.” He turned to face Sir Guy. “And she seems to hate me in particular. When I touch her she is repulsed. She wipes where I have touched her with a cloth, as if I’d defiled her.”
As soon as Sir Guy closed his open mouth, he almost laughed. If possible, women loved Miles more than he loved them. As a child, he’d spent most of his time surrounded by girls, which is one reason why Miles was put in Sir Guy’s charge—to make sure he turned into a man. But Guy had known from the first that there was no doubt of young Miles’s masculinity. He just liked women. It was a quirk, rather like the love of a good horse or a sharp sword. At times, Miles’s absurdly gentle treatment of women was a brother, such as his lethally enforced rule of no raping after a battle, but on the whole, Sir Guy’d learned to live with the boy’s affliction—he was all right otherwise.
But Sir Guy had never, never heard of a woman who wasn’t willing to lay down her life for Miles. Young, old, in between, even newborn girls clung to him. And Elizabeth Chatworth wiped away his touch!
Sir Guy tried to put this information into perspective. Perhaps it was like losing your first battle. He reached out and put a big hand on Miles’s shoulder. “We all lose now and then. It doesn’t make you less of a man. Perhaps the girl hates all men. With her brother for an example—”