Wolfe kept his sights on her as long as he could. For some reason, he couldn’t make himself look away.
“So…”
When Tristan began a sentence with the word and trailed off, Wolfe knew something was afoot.
Finally, with the foreigners out of sight, he steered his steed in the direction of the castle.
“I suppose you already realized that Rui is a maid?”
“Aye,” Wolfe grunted.
He still couldn’t believe it took him so long to come to the conclusion. He blamed it on the fact that he’d never met a female like her before.
She was a warrior. A highly skilled, lethal warrior. Yet, she was also soft and small, fine and delicate. He could hardly comprehend that the convergence of all these contradictions should reside in one exquisite, singular female.
She must be magical.
“Indeed,” Tristan said, as if agreeing with his unspoken thoughts, “it would be difficult to miss when she’s sitting in front of you all day together on a horse. The shape and fit of her arse—”
Wolfe whipped around to face him with a murderous look, making the younger man hastily bite off his words in a fit of coughing.
He grabbed Tristan’s reins in a tight fist and pulled their horses so close, the sides bumped together. Then, he yanked Tristan forward by his collar until they were almost nose to nose, the young man half dangling off his horse.
“Do. Not. Ever. Speak of any part of the lady’s person in or out of my hearing,” he gritted through clenched teeth.
Tristan had the gall to smile while Wolfe choked him with his own tunic.
“Any lady, or justyourlady?”
Wolfe speared a hard look into the young man, but Tristan didn’t look cowed.
With a disgusted growl, he shoved Tristan back. While the lad struggled to regain his seat, Wolfe spurred his stallion into a canter to put distance between them.
“Where are you going?” Tristan called out behind him.
Wolfe didn’t reply.
He had business to take care of. And he wasn’t looking forward to it.
The bloody rotten mood he’d woken up with this morn grew exponentially worse the closer he rode to the castle.
When he passed through the outer gates, his personal displeasures were replaced by an overall feeling of foreboding.
The very air seemed oppressive. So heavy and thick, it had weight. A fog shrouded the castle in living, gray tendrils, as if the stone fortress was smothered in the clutches of a nebulous sea-monster.
Wolfe looked around him.
The guards stood tall at their stations. People went about their activities. On the surface, nothing was amiss. Except the eerie quiet of the place compared to the surrounding towns that Wolfe just rode through.
It was thus each of the two times he’d been summoned here in the past. If he didn’t absolutely require what he obtained on these trips, he would never again set foot in Caerleon.
He left his stallion with a stable hand near the servant’s entrance to the castle. He had to duck and squeeze in sideways through the small wood door. It was made to fit the female servants, not a very tall, very broad warrior such as he.
Once inside, he followed the instructions Tristan had read him in the missive he received and wound through dark, torch-lit passages, stepping ever deeper into the bowels of the fortress. Until he came to another door, unlocked, that led to a set of spiraling stone stairs.
At the bottom, in a nook that was illuminated by a single torch, he waited.
Someone would have taken note of his entry through the castle gates. His figure and black stallion were easily recognizable. No doubt other spies would have run to their master to report his exact location. He never had long to wait the last two times he’d been here, though the place of the meeting was always different.