She felt as if the earth had truly moved, as if life itself had changed, and she kissed his chest, tasting salt and man, clinging to this warrior whom she’d thought her enemy. “Aye,” she said.
“No other man?”
She managed a naughty smile. “Nay, m’lord, not even the stableboy, Bjorn.”
Jealousy caused a tic at the side of his face. “What of someone at Prydd?”
She thought of Keane, and her throat worked. “I cared for someone once, though I loved him not,” she admitted, seeing Hagan’s eyes turn dark. “He was a good man, though … he seemed more interested in my birthmark and the gossip surrounding the silly thing than he did in me.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead,” she admitted. “Killed the day that Leah was abducted to Erbyn.”
His mouth grew grim. “By my soldiers?”
“By outlaws, but I know not that they weren’t bought by Darton. Seems it not strange that on the very afternoon Leah was captured, that Keane was killed?”
“Odd, yes,” he admitted, his thick eyebrows drawing together. “If I find out an innocent man was slain by my men, everyone involved will pay.”
She sighed. “Be careful, m’lord. You may have just condemned all your soldiers to an early death.”
“My soldiers are loyal,” Hagan argued, and touched a long strand of her hair. “Much more loyal than you, I fear.”
She stared up at him innocently. “Oh, you are wrong. I am very faithful and true.”
“To Prydd.”
“Aye,” she said.
“Just as I feared.” With a crooked smile, he pushed a lock of her hair away from her cheek and stared down at her with his liquid gold eyes. “Well, now, little savior of all that is Prydd, tell me, what the devil am I going to do with you?”
Fourteen
here is the woman?” Darton demanded, his patience stretched thin. Seated in the lord’s chair on the dais, he drummed his fingers. His companions were a nearly empty cup of wine and the dark fury that roiled through his blood.
He took a long swallow from the silver-rimmed mazer and watched as two of his best soldiers, Sir Ralston and Sir Marshall, exchanged worried glances. They stood next to the fire, warming their backsides.
Ralston spoke. “Lady Sorcha escaped us.”
“She escaped you,” Darton said with flat condemnation. “A mere woman and she escaped two of the finest knights in the entire castle.”
“Aye,” Ralston said, ignoring the bite of sarcasm in Darton’s words. “We lost her in the gully that runs by … the witch’s house.”
“The what … ?
“Tullia’s cottage,” Marshall interjected as he took off his gloves, tossed them on the floor, and opened his palms to the warm golden flames. “Some of the men are superstitious.”
“Of course they are.” He couldn’t keep the annoyance from his voice. These were his best men? God h
elp him. His rebellion would surely fail if he had to depend upon the likes of these morons.
“ ’Tis haunted,” Ralston said, nodding his head rapidly. “The house. ’Tis haunted. And ’twas dark by the time we got to the gully. We thought we’d find her in the morn, then came Hagan and his men and …”
“And you failed me,” Darton said, so angry, spittle collected behind his teeth. Fools. He kept company with fools!
Ralston had the decency to appear contrite. He looked down at his grimy fingers and avoided Darton’s condemning gaze.
“Why isn’t Hagan dead?” Darton demanded. He drained his mazer and checked over his shoulder to see that none of the servants might overhear. The great hall wasn’t the best place to discuss this, as the walls seemed to have ears at times, but he had no choice. Ralston and Marshall had returned with disturbing news. Now all of his plans, the plot that had seemed so perfect only hours ago, were suddenly crumbling to jagged pieces that he might be unable to fit together again. Curse and rot his bloody luck. When this was all over, he’d remember those who obeyed him without question and those whose own fears controlled their actions. He had no use for knights who wouldn’t ride willingly into the very gates of hell if commanded.