Chapter 8

Rose awoke, bleary-eyed, to begin her day. As she dressed and allowed Constance to brush the tangles from her hair, she listed in her mind the many duties she had to perform. It was something she did every morning, and yet today, with every task she listed, her spirits sank a little lower. She glanced toward the shuttered window, where the sun was leaking through the gaps. It seemed to beckon to her.

“Where are the mercenaries, Constance?”

The old woman didn’t pause. “They have ridden out, lady. I know not where.”

So Gunnar Olafson was hunting again.

“I shall go to the village this morning,”

Rose announced, and braced herself.

As expected, Constance began to splutter like an overfull pot. “But lady, it is not safe! You cannot go into danger!”

“I am not going ‘into danger.’ I want to see the damage that has been done in my village. If I were Edric you would not be making feeble excuses to prevent me from going.”

“You are not Edric.”

“Well then! Send an order to have my mare saddled. I will set out immediately.”

Her voice was firm and authorative—her lady-of-the-manor voice.

Constance knew better than to argue with her when she was in this autocratic mood. But she didn’t have to like it.

“Aye, my lady-stubborn,”

the old woman muttered, and stomped off unwillingly to do her bidding.

Rose settled her veil firmly on her hair, straightening the metal circlet that held it in place. She was looking forward to escaping the confines of the keep. Of course, her work was important, but what was the point of making candles and sorting through their limited stock of food when a man’s life rested in her hands? Harold the miller was locked up for killing a man, and if she did not find a way to save him, he would be hanged.

How could Gunnar Olafson care about a man he did not know? And Arno would not show sympathy for an Englishman accused of murdering a Norman. Who else was there to do it but Rose? She wanted to see the setting of Harold’s crime with her own eyes.

Aye, thought Rose smugly, she would cast her eye over the scene, and offer her people what consolation she could on the destruction of their village, and be back in the keep by midday.

It was not that simple.

Arno was horrified by the very idea. “My lady, you cannot go to the village! You will be placing yourself in danger.”

Rose stood her ground. “I have made up my mind, Sir Arno. I will ride this morning.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, but Arno, like Constance, had learned when she could be turned from her course and when she could not. “Very well, lady,”

he said through thinned lips. “But I will accompany you.”

Rose opened her mouth.

“Whether you wish it or not!”

Rose sighed and managed a resigned smile. “Then I wish it, Sir Arno, and thank you.”

They set out, clattering across the bridge. Rose lifted her face to the sun and wished her journey was one of pleasure. It seemed a very long time since she had done anything for pleasure. Beside her, Arno was looking from side to side, his hand firm on the hilt of his sword, obviously ready to do battle for her if the need arose. Here was loyalty, whatever Constance might say and think.

Rose recalled the scene at Edric’s deathbed a year past. Edric had been determined to speak to Arno, no matter his own weakness. When Arno had come to his bedside, Edric had grasped his hand, pulling him nearer as his eyesight failed. The old man had seemed shrunken with illness, diminished, yet oddly determined.

In contrast, Arno had appeared reluctant, uneasy, as if he would rather have been anywhere other than by Edric’s deathbed.

“Swear your allegiance to my wife, Sir Arno,”

Edric had croaked insistently. And, when Arno was still hesitant, perhaps unbelieving that Edric was really dying: “On your knees, sir, and swear!”

Arno had dropped down immediately, and his voice had shaken with emotion as he had sworn his allegiance to Rose. When it was done, Edric had fallen back, satisfied, and slept. He had never awakened.

Remembering the moment now, Rose was certain Arno would never betray her. He might have his faults, but he was loyal. Rose refused to believe otherwise.

The burned village was a grim place beneath the blue summer sky. Rose rode slowly through stark reminders of the tragedy. Despite their predicament, her people gave her a ragged cheer, followed by respectful bows or curtsies. So much lost, she thought hollowly.

“What will we do, Sir Arno?”

She spoke without really expecting an answer. “How will we rebuild all this before the harvest is due to be brought in?”

“It is time to look to your friends for help, lady,”

he said soberly, an unfamiliar gleam in his eye.

“I don’t know if I would call Lord Radulf my friend,”

she replied slowly. “Lady Lily has always been my patron, but she is unwell, Sir Arno, and I cannot turn to her. And you know I don’t want Lord Radulf to believe I am weak. He will take Somerford from me.”

Arno pulled a face, his fingers clenching and unclenching his reins in an oddly nervous manner. “Maybe there are others who would listen more favorably to your cry for help, Rose. Lord Radulf is not the only powerful man here in the southwest of England.”

Surprised, Rose turned in her saddle to face him. “Arno? Are you counseling me to treason?”

She managed a shaken laugh. “You are jesting me! We will manage somehow.”

Arno looked away from her searching gaze, his hands suddenly still, and then, as if coming to a decision, nodded to himself. “Lady, you and I have been together much this past year, since Edric died. I have been patient. But now, I want you to consider—”

A commotion at the farther end of the village brought Rose’s head around, and she stopped listening. A big man on a gray horse was galloping swiftly toward them. Rose felt her surroundings tilt momentarily as her dream world and the real world collided, and then she tightened her grip on herself.

Beside her, Arno swore under his breath. “’Tis our brave mercenary captain,”

he said, with such bitterness that Rose recoiled.

She had no time to reply; Gunnar Olafson was already upon them. He drew up, charred earth scattering, his horse tossing its head as he restrained it. The round shield hung in its customary place over his shoulder. He was wearing his helmet, and now he took it off, tucking it under his arm. His face was streaked with sweat, his copper hair hanging in long damp tendrils. His eyes were sharp as blue spears, and Rose read his anger before he said a word.

“Lady, you should not be here.”

Rose pushed her intense reaction to him from her mind, noting instead the hard set of his jaw, the grim line of his mouth. Gunnar was seriously displeased with her, but she refused to allow that to intimidate her. “These are my people and this is my village, Captain,”

she said evenly.

“’Tis not safe,”

he growled.

For once, Rose thought in surprise, she was the calm one.

“You forget, Captain, Sir Arno is with me.”

Gunnar gave the knight a cursory glance, insulting in its brevity. Arno hissed in a breath, his hand going once more to his sword.

“And you are here, Captain Olafson,”

Rose added, as if she had not noticed what had passed between the two men. “You will protect me, won’t you?”

His wide chest heaved as he drew a deep breath, held it, and let it go. “Aye, lady, I will.”

She leaned toward him, dizzy suddenly with her own power. “And you will obey me, Captain? You swore to do that, too.”

Gunnar Olafson had been very angry with her, but now as he stared into her eyes, the anger seemed to peel from him, leaving his face as still as a mere pond. “I did swear that, Lady Rose, and I do not make such promises lightly.”

What did he mean? There was a message there in his eyes. A glow. It spread through her body, rippling across her own calm and threatening a serious disturbance. He saw it; his mouth quirked. He leaned back in his saddle, and his anger was gone.

“Have you seen what you came to see, lady?”

he inquired.

Rose nodded, and with an effort said, “And now I wish to see where it was that the merefolk escaped into the Mere, after they attacked my village.”

Arno made a further protest, but Rose did not take her eyes from the mercenary. He was the real power here, not the knight. It was Gunnar who would make any decisions concerning her movements and her safety. Rose understood that now for the first time, and she was all the more determined to have her way. To assert her rightful authority.

Abruptly Gunnar nodded his head. Calling out to two of his men—the two fairheads—who had been sitting upon their horses at a distance, waiting, he wheeled about and led the way.

“Come.”

Rose glanced to Arno, and only then saw how flushed and angry he appeared. His own authority had been usurped, she realized with an inner sigh. Later on she would have to soothe Arno’s ruffled feathers—she had always done so before, and she was confident she could do it now.

They rode by the ruins of the miller’s cottage and the mill, empty and silent but thankfully untouched. Once the harvest was in they would need Harold to grind the grain. Where would they find another like him, so particular in his work and yet so reliable? What a waste it would be, if he were to die.

The woods covered the slopes to the west, but to the north the land fell away, flattening into meadows of green grass and yellow cowslips, and then sinking into the wetlands. Reeds and saltgrass poked from the mud and water, and wild duck and snipe hunted in the deeper pools.

“There, where the land dips low.”

Gunnar Olafson had drawn up his gray horse and, lifting his arm, pointed out across the Mere. “We followed their footprints as far as that low island and then the water grew too deep. They must have had a boat.”

Rose scanned the horizon, frowning against the hazy glare of sun and sky. The wetlands, the Levels seemed to go on forever—flat, marshy, endless. The islands rose up out of them, the knoll of the dark and mysterious Burrow Mump looming like an ill omen against the summer sky. The home of her ghostly warrior. Her gaze skittered away before the doubts and fears could return to plague her. Instead she turned her mind to the attack of two nights ago, those shadowy, faceless men who had run from the burning village. Anger shook her.

“Will they come again?”

she wondered aloud.

Gunnar glanced sideways, and Rose could feel him reading her. The temptation to meet his eyes was great, but she held back.

“Maybe we have frightened them away,”

he said, with nothing in his voice to tell her whether he believed his own words.

It was then she heard it, the thud of many horses approaching.

Gunnar turned first, his hand going to his sword. It slid silently from its scabbard, the lethal black metal gleaming like ebony. Arno tugged at his own sword and forced his horse around, cursing and digging in his spurs when it refused him. Several horsemen came up over the rise. They were strangers, grim-faced, armored. Rose was instantly aware that this was no friendly visit.

“Ride back to the keep, Rose!”

Arno commanded, finally managing to turn his horse and place it between her and the approaching men.

Rose threw off her numb shock, gathering herself to obey, when suddenly Gunnar Olafson’s powerful arm curved around her waist and she was lifted onto his horse.

“No!”

It was a gasp. Whether she was rejecting his presumption, or the sensation of hard male flesh all about her, Rose wasn’t sure. She began to struggle.

Gunnar had no time for doubts. “Keep still, lady,”

he ordered through gritted teeth, and tightened his arm. “They are Fitzmorton’s men.”

Rose froze, her eyes widening. He was right! The flapping banner was blue and yellow—Fitzmorton’s colors. A cold, numbing fear spread through her. Why would Fitzmorton send his men here, now?

Mayhap he had found a use for her at last?

Fitzmorton hated Radulf, and she was Radulf’s vassal. Was she now to be the pawn in this game between two powerful men? No, Rose determined, she would fight to the death before being taken captive by Fitzmorton…and besides, Gunnar Olafson would protect her.

In that moment, and for no reason she could properly understand, Rose was certain of it.

“Fitzmorton?”

Arno had repeated, frowning. Then, his brow clearing: “Aye, Fitzmorton’s men. But what do they want here, now?”

Gunnar had been looking at him curiously, as if something in Arno’s manner struck him as odd. Now he turned back to the approaching riders, and his blue eyes narrowed. “They are on your manor, Lady Rose. Did you invite them here?

He looked dangerous, she decided, peering up at him. She was breathless as she sat, pressed against his hard chest, her thighs resting upon his, his powerful arm squeezing her, and realized she had not been this close to any man, apart from Edric, in her whole life. And Edric had never felt like this.

“No, of course I did not invite them here!”

she gasped, and brushed aside a swathe of dark hair. She had lost her veil and her braid was coming undone. She tried to straighten, to edge away from this unbearable closeness. “Please put me back on my horse, Captain! There is no need—”

To her dismay, but not her surprise, he ignored her. The troop with the blue and yellow banner came to a halt before them. Their leader urged his mount forward a little, and to Rose’s consternation she saw amusement in his gray eyes as they took in her rigid demeanor, and the muscular arm wrapped possessively about her middle. His thin, rather austere face relaxed, he was even handsome in a priestly sort of way, but he was not a man Rose would ever trust. Even as the thought occurred to her, the man’s gaze slid from her dishevelment to Gunnar behind her, and his face went blank with surprise.

Gunnar stiffened, his body going solid as stone. He even seemed to have stopped breathing. It was then that Rose understood: they knew each other.

“Gunnar Olafson.”

There was no denying the recognition in the man’s voice, or the dislike. “What misfortune brings you here to Somerford Manor?”

Gunnar’s shock was already fading as he looked ahead to this new challenge. Miles! The last person he hoped to see, though in hindsight he should not have been surprised. It was natural that Miles should have aligned himself with someone like Fitzmorton. Gunnar was just grateful that Ivo wasn’t there—his friend had returned to the place in the woods where they had found the miller, hoping to find something, anything, to help solve the mystery of the attack on the village.

“Miles.”

Gunnar sounded as if they were meeting in perfectly normal circumstances. “You are with Fitzmorton, then. Why am I not surprised?”

Miles snorted a laugh. “God rot you, Gunnar, I hoped you were dead.”

In his arms, Rose had been rigid with fear and with an equal determination not to show it. Now she went pliant, as if she might be about to faint. Or maybe his grip around her was too tight? Gunnar loosened his hold, and felt the soft weight of her breasts upon his arm. A sweet scent rose from her uncovered hair and her warm body; it filled his nostrils, threatening to divert his mind from their very real danger. Gunnar forced himself to coldness—more of a weapon and less of a man—concentrating on the enemy before him.

“Why are you here anyway?”

Miles demanded, glancing suspiciously at Arno and then away again. “I had heard you were in Wales.”

“I was.”

“I have been to the north, seeing to Lord Fitzmorton’s lands there,”

Miles’s gaze traveled over Rose as he spoke, taking in her dark hair and beautiful face and lush shape. He nodded at her breasts. “You always did take the most desirable wenches for yourself, Gunnar.”

Gunnar would have enjoyed striking the smirk from his mouth and watching him bleed. He held in the violence and gave a cold smile. “This is Lady Rose of Somerford, Miles.”

His voice was as icy as Norse snow. “You are standing on her land.”

The smirk vanished. Miles glared a moment at Gunnar and then bowed his head to Rose in a manner far too brisk and soldierlike to be apologetic. “Lady, I am sorry.”

Gunnar had decided there was little point in making an issue of his rudeness. Matters were tense enough. But he wasn’t sure how Rose would react. Most of the Norman ladies he had known would take serious offense at Miles’s remarks…

Rose wasn’t most ladies.

She nodded coolly, accepting Miles’s apology as if it were her due. Gunnar admired her for that, although her next words startled him. “You are known to Captain Olafson, sir?”

Miles’s gray eyes flicked to Gunnar and away again. “Aye. We fought together…long ago. I am Sir Miles de Vessey.”

“And why are you here at Somerford, Sir Miles de Vessey?”

she asked him in that soft, authoritative voice that could have extracted obedience from the lowest serf to the highest baron in the land.

But Miles was as cunning and slippery as the eels that lived in the Mere. “When I returned from the north it was to learn that one of Fitzmorton’s men had gone astray, lady. He was traveling across Somerford Manor with messages to Lord Radulf at Crevitch Castle, and didn’t return when he was meant to. I have come to find him.”

Gunnar had been content to allow Rose to ask the questions, but now he felt her tense. A missing messenger from Fitzmorton and a dead Norman. He did not need her warm fingers, slipping into his to press a warning—he had already drawn the same conclusions. Still, he could not help but wonder at her bored tone when again she spoke. “Then you are on your way to Crevitch Castle?”

“Aye, lady.”

“Then we will not delay you—”

“Hell and damnation!”

It was Arno’s muttered imprecation that brought Miles de Vessey’s head around. Rose sighed, and Gunnar squeezed her fingers in comfort or warning, he didn’t know which. “Will no one tell him?” Arno growled, turning from one to the other. “We have a dead Norman and Sir Miles is missing a man—does that not strike anyone as odd?”

Gunnar watched Rose widen her eyes in assumed surprise. “But why would one of Lord Fitzmorton’s men set fire to the miller’s cottage and assault his daughter?”

Her even voice was designed to dampen Arno’s certainty.

“If he did,”

Arno retorted in disgust, not in the least dampened. “We have only the miller’s word for that, lady.”

“And that of Millisent, his daughter.”

“Exactly,”

Arno said, as if she had been feeding his argument rather than her own.

“What is this?”

Miles’s gray eyes were turning from Gunnar to Rose, and there was distrust in every line of him.

Arno did likewise, and when he saw the reluctance evident on both their faces, he scowled. “Come with me,”

he spoke grimly to Miles de Vessey. “There is a body lying unburied in the village. You can judge for yourself whether it is your missing man.”

Arno rode away, and Miles, with another soldierlike bow to Rose, followed with his men. Gunnar nodded for Sweyn and Ethelred to accompany them. Sweyn grimaced, eyes on Miles. “Did you know he’d be here, captain?”

“No.”

Briefly Gunnar wondered how he was going to extract them all from an increasingly complicated situation, and then he dismissed what-might-bes and concentrated on here and now.

“If Miles questions you, say nothing,”

he commanded his men. “We have been instructed to protect Somerford Manor and its lady. The money is good. That is all you know.”

Sweyn grinned and rode off, with Ethelred following.

Rose had turned her head to look up at him, so that she could see his face properly. The turn of events had made her pale and anxious. “Why will Sir Miles ask questions?”

Gunnar hoped his eyes were blank. “It is in his nature.”

“Why should your men tell him anything but the truth; what else is there to tell?”

She was suspicious and he didn’t blame her. Did that mean she was entirely innocent of any involvement with Fitzmorton, or was she simply leading him in the direction she wanted him to go? Gunnar wished he knew.

“If the dead man is Lord Fitzmorton’s messenger…?”

she murmured uncertainly.

“Do you want the sour truth, lady, or honey-coated lies?”

Rose frowned, shifting in his lap, her soft bottom pressing against his thighs. Gunnar winced. “I want the truth.”

“Then I will give it to you. The more powerful the man, the harsher the punishment. If the body in the village is Fitzmorton’s messenger, then there will be no reprieve for your miller.”

Her lips parted on a little sigh but she didn’t look away. Suddenly he wished both the foolish miller and Miles de Vessey to hell. He was holding Rose in his arms and there were more pleasurable things to do.

Rose could see a pulse beating smoothly in Gunnar’s throat. The tanned texture of his skin was broken by gold-red stubble on his cheeks and along his jaw—he hadn’t had time to shave that morning. His own gaze was roaming over her face, probing, searching, and she wondered what he could see. All her fears about Fitzmorton and the miller and the dead Norman laid out like counters for his perusal? Or her growing awareness that they were now even closer than they had been the night before last, when he had kissed her.

While Miles de Vessey and Arno had been there, Rose had maintained her calm authority—her lady-of-the-manor face. But now they were gone and suddenly she was very close to tears. Was it safe for Gunnar Olafson to know that? Women in her position should hide their weakness—she had learned that on her mother’s knee. And still, when Miles had spoken of the dead Norman and she had realized the implications, she had voluntarily placed her hand in Gunnar Olafson’s, and felt his strong, scarred fingers close firmly on hers. As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Miles de Vessey is not to be trusted,”

he said, after what seemed an age. His voice was husky.

Still, Rose stared back into his eyes, seeking…what? She only knew that they were as blue as the ocean, that they evinced everything she pretended to be but was not, and that they soothed her like a balm.

She looked away, before he could draw out her very soul, and took a deep breath for courage. He was still holding her, his body against hers, and it felt so good. Better than anything had felt for a very long time. She did not want to move, and yet in a moment he would lift her back onto her horse and she must straighten her shoulders and resume her lady-of-the-manor face and pretend she felt nothing for the mercenary captain.

“So Miles de Vessey is known to you, Captain,”

she said quietly, and it was not a question.

“Aye, lady. Whatever he tells you…promises you, do not believe him.”

“I have never seen him before; why should he promise me anything?”

“Sir Arno d’Alan knows him.”

That brought her head up and around. She had planned to deny it, but as her lips opened to spill forth the words Rose realized he had spoken the truth. Arno did know him. Remembering now, Rose was suddenly conscious of the fact that Arno had not been surprised to see Miles, or if he was, it was only that he should appear abruptly over the rise like that. Aye, they were known to each other; Miles had not even asked for Arno’s name!

The realization made her very uncomfortable, and she swiftly sought an acceptable, comfortable explanation. “Mayhap Arno knows Miles from the days when my husband was alive,”

she said in a stiff little voice. “There was a time when we had negotiations with Lord Fitzmorton, after he stole most of our garrison.”

Fitzmorton had found their attempts at negotiation amusing, Arno had told her.

If anything, her explanation caused the probe of his gaze to grow more intense. Rose knew then she had changed her mind. She wanted very much to be returned to her mare, she needed to escape the hold of this man who seemed to have such power over her, emotionally and physically.

“Your loyalty is misguided, Rose,”

he said quietly. “Or is it more than loyalty?”

His familiarity with her name was not to be borne. Rose opened her mouth to tell him so, and instead was surprised to hear herself saying, “Arno has stood by me during hard times, Captain. You have been here but a short while—you do not know—”

The glint in his eyes startled her to a halt. He cupped her chin with his hand, lifting her face even closer to his, and his mouth swooped down until his lips brushed hers. “Ah, but I would know you, Rose. I would know every inch of you. I want to put my hands on your body, my mouth on your mouth. I want to be inside you.”

Her blood was drumming in her head. The taste of him, the feel of him, the nudge of his manhood against her hip…It was as if he had put a spell upon her, tamed her to his hand. Rose sat, frozen, knowing if she made the slightest move to acquiesce she would be lost. And this would be a very bad moment to give her senses over to desire.

She pulled away from the grip of his hand on her chin. She straightened her back and froze her expression into one of haughty indifference. “Please return me to my mount, Captain,”

she commanded him coldly. She seemed to wait a long time for his response, so long that she began to be afraid he might not do as she asked, that he might run his hand over her breasts and kiss her, and then what would she do? Her breath grew ragged.

Abruptly, and with little tenderness, he gripped her about the waist and deposited her back onto her saddle. “Oh!”

Her gown was twisted about her legs, exposing her stockings and the flesh of one thigh, her hair covered her eyes and hampered her movements. Flushed and cross, Rose adjusted her skirts more modestly, and then tossed her long dark hair over her shoulder. She shot him a glare. “I will not thank you, Captain.”

He glared back at her, and then, as before, the storm cleared from his features as he regained his phenomenal control. “I do not want your thanks, lady,”

he replied evenly. “You know what it is I want.”

Rose pretended not to hear him. Gunnar might have regained his control, but just now, as she gazed into his handsome face, she had felt as if she were close to losing hers. And although she was afraid of the consequences, aye, terribly afraid, she did not think that would be enough to stop.