The Devil's Temptress Page 9

“Have you no children? ’Tis somewhat rare for a man of your age to lack them.”

  “Aye, well,” he said dryly, “among the Norman lordlings I squired with, Saracen’s bastard was no fine title. I’ll inflict it on no child of mine.”

  Bastard born—but his sire must have been a nobleman, to give him a knight’s training. Keenly she wondered at which court he’d trained. Although her avid curiosity about the man disconcerted her, the mystery surrounding him only deepened. Despite the stigma of bastardy, he had won entrée to a royal court. His skill at arms was prodigious, his talent for leadership evident, his Norman French as fine as her own. Yet he swore by Allah’s name, like any Saracen.

  “Whom did you serve, on crusade?”

  “French, Normans, Saracens—whoever paid the most.” His features twisted with bitterness. “Don’t mistake me for your shining Lancelot. I’m no idealistic fool, taking the cross to liberate the Holy Land. After a lifetime in that pestilential hell, I’ve nothing left of honor or virtue. I’m the Devil of Damascus, or haven’t you heard? I’m nothing for you to admire.”

  She flinched from the bolt of fury and pain he’d hurled. Beneath her knees, Remus lifted his head and looked around.

  “I have heard what they call you.” She stared at the knight’s brooding countenance. “No doubt your trials on crusade forced you to deeds that would make a lesser man quail. But you do not strike me as weak or indecisive. If the course of your life displeases you, I do not believe you cannot change it.”

  He stared at her, eyes raw as an open wound, scarred features stripped of his customary indifference. She looked straight through the open window of his soul. Pain, pain and solitude, and a cresting tide of loss.

  She had never seen such feeling in a pair of eyes—except her own, staring out at her from a polished plate.

  “You may still redeem yourself,” she whispered. “’Tis never too late to find your virtue.”

  “Almost a man could believe, to hear you say it. Should’ve been a knight yourself. Your steel’s too keen for a court-bred lady.”

  Self-conscious, she dropped her gaze. Well do I know I am too direct and unpolished to make a court lady.

  “Can’t win your regard by virtue—not this devil.” He grimaced. “So I must fall back on other tactics.”

  “What tactics are those?” she asked, wary. For a dangerous moment she had forgotten what he was.

  The corners of his mouth turned up, distracting her. Bared by the severe pull of hair, he possessed a compelling face—harsh, no longer young, too embittered to be handsome. But the pale scar slashing from ear to jaw, the grim lines bracketing his mouth, merely added to the impression of strength and resolve that pulsed from him. And his mouth was interesting, well shaped, with a full lower lip.

  Sensual. The word whispered in her mind.

  “I’ve a theory about the queen’s most virtuous lady.” His gravel voice dropped an octave. “Your regal manner, your purity that shines like a star. They’re your armor, aye? To protect the beating heart of the woman beneath.”

  “By my faith, I know not what you mean.” Caution prickled her skin.

  “You’re fire, not ice, with passion they must’ve done their damnedest to beat out of you in your convent. Do I speak true?”

  “Nay! Passions of the sort you describe are . . . a dangerous thing, a—destructive force. They have brought too many women to grief. If I’d possessed any such longings, I would have banished them long ago.”

  His uncanny gaze pierced her. “What woman dear to you came to grief for passion’s sake?”

  “Jesus wept! I will not discuss this with you or any man.”

  “Keep your secrets then . . . until you choose to tell me.”

  The pulse of panic hammered in her veins. “You think to find this hidden passion you claim I possess? You are doomed to failure, Lord Raven, for I have none.”

  “Don’t you?” In a whisper of sable fur, he rose.

  “None at all.” She surveyed him with a Lyonstone’s imperious coldness.

  “Then you’ve naught to fear.” He circled the fire with a panther’s lethal grace. Her pulse slammed through her veins. Beneath her knees, Remus slumbered, oblivious.

  “What are you about, monsieur? I shall tolerate no impropriety, and I am well able to defend myself.”

  Step by step, he stalked her. “Your professed lack of passion’s your best defense. If it’s so, you’re safer than a babe from my desires. I’ve no taste for inflicting myself on unwilling women—and that includes your damned cousin. So you should be unaffected.”

  She cleared her throat. “Unaffected by what?”

  Stooping to the kill, he dropped to his knees before her. The aroma of musk and sandalwood clouded her senses as his dark silhouette filled her vision. She pressed her spine against the wall until she could retreat no farther.

  “This,” he whispered. Cinnamon breath brushed her face.

  At the last instant, she closed her eyes.

  When she dared to wonder—as any maid did—what a kiss might be, she never dreamed of hot cinnamon, sweet and melting on her tongue, filling her mouth like a decadent treat. She could counter any assault. She had her knife; she could have used it. But she was undefended against this gentle sweetness that tempted her, until she opened her mouth and asked for more.

  She gripped his shoulders, leashed power bulging under her hands. He made her vulnerable—the feeling she had striven a lifetime to banish.

  He cradled her head beneath her coiled hair, calloused fingers brushing her nape. Her heart staggered like a drunkard, and still she could not breathe. Rashly, she swept aside a lifetime of conditioning and leaned into him, yearning for something she could not name.

  Beneath her knees, the wolf whined. When Remus squirmed out from under her, he dislodged their bodies and broke the kiss.

  Clutching the Raven’s massive shoulders, she drew a shaking breath and opened her eyes. His gold-skinned features filled her world, amber eyes glowing like banked coals.

  “Allah be merciful,” he whispered. “I was right about you, Alienore of Lyonstone. Tell me I was right.”

  She was struggling to form a reply when the wolf barked in warning. A whiplash of alarm hissed through her as the Raven surged to his feet. The sleeping Owain pushed upright with a grunt. Her gaze flew to the door as Thierry burst through at a dead run, his sword drawn.

  “En garde! We’re under attack!”

  Chapter Seven

  A lightning charge of panic sizzled through her body. Clutching her long-knife, fiercely regretting that she carried no sword, Alienore leaped to her feet. Sword or no sword, I will sell my life dearly.

  Owain ran to kneel before the door and braced a steel crossbow against his shoulder. The mechanism whirred as he fired a bolt into the night. From the darkness, a horse screamed in pain, mingled with a man’s rough curse.

  Pressing another quarrel into place, Owain turned the crank against the ratchet to arm the bow. The weapon armed with agonizing slowness—its primary drawback.

  “Surround the shelter!” a voice bellowed in English, making her stomach clench. “Let none escape. The king wants them taken alive!”

  She shook off the paralysis that gripped her. “I’ll not raise arms against the king! ’Tis some misunderstanding—”

  “If you’re taken now, you’re lost.” The Raven pressed against the wall, firelight gleaming along his raised scimitar. “If you carry some treachery, the best you can hope for’s a merciful beheading.”

  “Nay,” she whispered, strength running from her limbs—brittle driftwood tossed on a sea of great events. God save her, he was right.

  “Saddle the horses,” he said. “We flee this trap before it closes. That’s our only hope.”

  Conflicting impulses warred within her: the urge to take her place among the fighting men, set against the instinct to obey. While she debated, a red-fletched arrow whirred through the door and thudded into the wall behind her.


  The Raven’s bird lifted with a caw and went winging through the door. Her wolf growled and darted after.

  “Remus!” she cried, a bolt of fear striking inward.

  The Raven swept out an arm and pulled the wolf to safety, while Owain fired bolt after bolt into the darkness. Outside, the screams of the injured horse tore the fabric of night. Another shaft flew through the door and impaled their piled saddlebags.

  “Alienore, the horses!” Thierry shouted. “Hurry, for God’s love!”

  Slamming her long-knife into its sheath, she ducked among the horses and scooped up a heavy saddle. She struggled to saddle the restless beasts as arrows hissed through the air and men shouted orders outside. The horses sidled away from her, eyes rolling white, their shifting hindquarters a constant threat.

  With a harsh command from the Raven, Thierry darted out with him to engage their attackers. Steel clashed on steel. Working with frantic speed, she caught a confused glimpse of the two braced in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder, in fierce combat with a flurry of shadowy figures. Fear shrieked in her mind.

  She was fighting to tighten a buckle and cursing the skittish horse when a whiskered face appeared at the empty window. The soldier’s gaze swept past her gowned form to find her companions crouched near the door with their backs to him. When he cocked back an arm, steel flashed from a throwing knife.

  Shouting a warning, Alienore drew her blade and lunged for the armpit exposed by his lifted arm. With the force of desperation and seven years’ training, she buried her blade to the hilt.

  The man fell back screaming, nearly wrenching the knife from her before she twisted free. The Raven spun toward her, eyes locking with hers.

  Gripping her red-streaked knife, she stared back at him as tremors of shock swept through her. Never had she attacked a man in earnest, outside the stylized confines of the tourney field.

  Stricken, she looked into the Raven’s amber gaze and saw the fires of hell burning in his soul.

  While the kneeling Owain guarded the door, the Raven tossed her into her saddle—strong and steady even in the pitch of crisis. The others mounted beside her. Owain loosed a last bolt into the darkness and sprang for his mount.

  “Make for the wood.” The Raven gripped his wicked blade. “Stay close.”

  Before she could respond, the black knight roared a battle cry, mingling the name of Allah with a cascade of heathen syllables. Still shouting, he spurred through the door into the dangerous night.

  Unexpectedly, the ancient cry of her ancestors exploded from her heart.

  “For Lyonstone!”

  Her mare bolted through the door on Lucifer’s heels, Remus bounding at her flank.

  At once, the bone-chilling cold of night gripped her. Thick flakes swirled through the air, stinging her face, blinding as they clung to her lashes. Amid billowing gusts of white, she glimpsed flashes of bright red: the king’s Plantagenet guards.

  So many of them. Her heart plummeted.

  A strange horse crashed through the snow and hurtled into her dainty mare. Unaccustomed to such treatment, the little bay stumbled and almost fell. Struck by a flailing hoof, the wolf yelped beneath them.

  “Lyonstone!” Alienore slashed with her knife. When a gauntleted hand captured her wrist, the shock of impact jolted through her, almost crushing the bones.

  Fighting panic, she clamped her legs around the terrified mare—how she missed Galahad now!—and tried to twist free. Somewhere beneath her, Remus snarled and snapped. The other horse screamed in pain, slashed underbelly dripping red against the snow.

  The numbing clamp on her arm dragged her forward, dislodging her grip on the saddle. She felt herself slipping sideways—

  Like an apparition, Lucifer exploded through the snow. His rider’s monstrous shadow towered over him, a river of black hair and garments billowing around him, scimitar screaming through the air. Sparks flew as blades clashed, and abruptly Alienore was free.

  “Run!” the Raven shouted.

  His sword was a silver blur as he held the enemy at bay, blade flashing to counter their blows. Lucifer’s hind legs lashed out, steel-rimmed hooves thudding into his target with lethal force. The enemy horse stumbled and went down, but another reared up in his place.

  In the midst of combat, the Raven burned like a dark flame, eyes wild, white teeth bared in a grimace of effort. Blooms of Plantagenet red appeared and vanished in the blizzard as others converged. Alienore knew they beheld a terror in the night, a black devil with a Saracen sword who slew without mercy.

  Determined to ward his back, she kneed her frightened mare. Fleeing while the man fought for both their lives went against the grain of everything she was. Her heart hammered against her breast, but her grip on the knife was steady.

  Another mounted figure bore down on her. Screaming defiance, she whirled to meet him. Barely in time, she recognized Thierry de Beaumont’s golden hair.

  “This way!” Catching her bridle, he tried to haul her away, but she fought him. She would not abandon the Raven—not while he fought like a cornered beast to hold off three men at once!

  The black knight’s scimitar wove a glittering net of death. Freed from its binding, dark hair flew around him as he roared.

  “Go! Damn you, Beaumont, take her.”

  Sudden recognition flashed through her. The Raven would not retreat without her. Her cold heart splintered and swelled with remorse . . . and another emotion she could not name.

  How badly she had misjudged him. How they had all misjudged him.

  Releasing her death grip on the reins, she gave the terrified horse her head. Blindly they followed Thierry. A detached part of her, still capable of thought, hoped they rode toward the forest rather than the steep ravine—but she had no way of knowing. The clash and cry of combat receded, muffled by falling snow.

  When the forest loomed, relief surged through her. Beneath the boughs, the storm’s fury eased. Once more she could see dimly in the darkness.

  The wolf limped beneath the trees, ribs heaving, and she whispered a prayer of thanks. Thierry pivoted and thundered up beside her, his stallion blowing like a bellows.

  “Why do you halt?” he panted. “We dare not linger.”

  She strained to see through swirling snow. “Have you forgotten our companions? They may require our aid.”

  “We must escape the danger!” He wrenched at her bridle. “Your safety is our paramount concern. I’m certain the others would agree.”

  She stared straight into her Lancelot’s eyes and saw fear lurking in his gaze.

  “Flee if you would,” she said. “I will not abandon our fellows.”

  “Alienore, for mercy—”

  Remus crouched and growled a warning. Firing with the charge of danger, she whipped out her knife as Lucifer surged into view. The Raven’s inky cloak and hair billowed as he spurred past.

  “Hurry! They’re behind us.”

  Their flight became a nightmare from which she could not waken—a flight from her king and his certain vengeance, from the knowledge that somehow she had strayed from the path of honor. They stumbled through darkness with no light to guide them.

  The horses struggled through lashing branches and treacherous drifts. Cold seeped through her garments; her teeth chattered until she locked her jaw to silence them. Again and again, shouts echoed through the wood. How the Raven managed to lead them, she could not comprehend. Dimly she perceived he was making choices, leading them, twisting ever deeper into stands of gnarled oak. Gradually the sounds of pursuit faded.

  Abruptly, her mare pitched down a steep embankment and skidded over an ice-locked stream. Alienore whispered thanks to God and all the saints that the river was frozen solid. Plunging into icy water would be the death of them now.

  When they scrambled up the opposite bank, her exhausted mare hung her head and heaved for air, mane lying in damp tendrils along her neck. Rousing from her stupor, she rubbed the mare’s shoulder and looked anxiously for Remus—nosing in
a tangle of bushes near the bank.

  “Let the horses breathe,” the Raven rasped. “Where’s Owain? He was on my heels when we fled.”

  She brushed ice from her lashes and looked for the bearded guardsman.

  “I have not seen him for some time,” Thierry ventured.

  “Damn.” Roughly, the Raven scrubbed his face.

  “We must press onward,” Thierry said.

  “The man may be injured.” The Raven’s golden eyes hardened. “He may need our aid.”

  “He is a common man-at-arms. Surely he can take care of himself.”

  The Raven’s voice was rusted steel. “Common born or no, he’s our comrade. I’ll not leave a man behind, Beaumont.”

  “Let’s wait here a moment.” Alienore struggled to form the words. “Perhaps he has merely fallen behind.”

  Now that they’d stopped, the deadly cold deepened, seeping through her clothes, reaching greedy fingers for her fading warmth. They said this was the coldest winter in living memory, and prolonged exposure to such extremes was perilous. She longed for her blanket, abandoned with everything else when they’d fled.

  Breath hissing through her teeth, she checked the calfskin pouch at her waist and found the queen’s missive to Castile. It burned her fingers like hellfire—a dangerous letter, a few treasonous lines that could cost them all their heads.

  “We dare not wait,” Thierry said, “against all the dictates of prudence. I’ll escort Lady Alienore ahead.”

  The Raven pushed out a cloud of breath. “You’ll be lost in the wood.”

  “I will not!” The youthful voice rose in protest. “I’ll have you know I was raised in a wood. I won’t lose my way.”

  “That so?” The Raven shot him a keen look. “Then retrace our path—and find our comrade.”

  Thierry’s nostrils flared. “I will not leave my lady. Why don’t you search for him yourself, mercenary?”

  “Because I command this party,” the black knight said softly. “And you’ve sworn to obey me.”

  Shivering, Alienore struggled to remain alert. She could no longer feel her feet or hands. Trying to restore the flow of blood, she flexed her toes.