Le Renard applied pressure to the flank of the horse with his legs, making it sprint faster, weaving briskly through the woods.
‘Damned impudence! Slow down, boy.’
‘No!’
Le Renard careered ahead at breakneck speed, evidently knowing the woods extremely well as he pulled the reins in every direction and missed flying branches. But Hugh now knew them well too, and it seemed the outlaw was going back to the small dilapidated hut he had followed Eleanor and Claymore to before.
Hugh had to think of something. He couldn’t reach his sword belt, lodged underneath him, but he managed to filch a dagger from the back of the outlaw’s belt. He pushed himself to a sitting position and coiled his arms around Le Renard, pointing the tip of the weapon to the outlaw’s neck.
‘I swear if you don’t stop I’ll—’
‘Cut me from my neck to my navel?’
The voice of Le Renard seemed different...feminine—in fact it sounded remarkably like Eleanor’s... But that was not possible. His ears must be deceiving him.
He gave his head a shake, hoping to clear it.
It couldn’t be her...
‘It is me, Hugh.’
‘Eleanor?’ he said, almost falling off the horse. ‘It can’t be!’
‘I’m afraid that it is.’
‘I... I don’t believe it,’ Hugh muttered. ‘You must be a decoy for him.’
Le Renard, or rather Eleanor, sighed. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘How? How can this be?’
‘Please...let’s get away from here and I can explain everything.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hugh glanced around the small, unassuming hut as he leant against the wooden table with his arms folded. His eyes flicked back to Eleanor, dressed in green hose and tunic with a rope around her waist. He opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again. He had so much to say, so much he wanted to know, that it was difficult to know where to start.
She was dressed as Le Renard, for the love of God.
No, she was Le Renard!
‘I find this hard to believe,’ he said finally. ‘Any of this.’
‘I know.’ She nodded.
‘But you...? You are and have been Le Renard?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘All this time?’
‘I realise it’s not how a lady should behave.’
‘That,’ he said, ‘is an understatement.’
‘Precisely—no one would ever believe it. No one would ever believe a woman to be capable. In all honesty, people see what they want to see.’ She shrugged.
‘Is that what this is about? You showing off your prodigious talents?’
‘No, of course not. This is nothing to do with my being an unnatural woman.’
‘You seem natural enough to me, Eleanor—and that’s not the issue,’ he ground out. ‘It is the fact that you lied to me.’
‘I know, but it was never intentional. I wanted to tell you...’
‘And yet you didn’t.’ He narrowed his gaze.
‘I tried to.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He tilted his head. ‘When exactly was that, my lady?’
‘In Winchester.’
True, he hadn’t wanted to listen to anything she might have said about Le Renard, but then never in his wildest imagination could he have believed that she would be telling him this. That his wife was in actual fact the outlaw he had been seeking all this time.
What an idiot he had been...
There was a subdued lull for a moment, before Eleanor broke the silence.
‘I had better get out of these clothes.’
‘You keep them here?’
She nodded. ‘The last time I was here I left a dress.’ She moved towards the coffer in the corner of the room and started to undress, slipping into a plain grey dress. ‘Can you help me with the laces?’
With deft fingers Hugh helped tie the laces on her dress. ‘That must have been the night I followed you,’ he said from behind her.
‘Yes.’
The night Hugh had been consumed with jealousy and hurt by her betrayal. Yes, he was a damnable idiot...
‘You gave me your word that you wouldn’t meet with the outlaws again.’
‘I couldn’t stand by and allow an innocent man to die.’
Hugh bit back a smile. ‘Commendable sentiment, sweetheart, but your friend is far from innocent. Anselm’s an outlaw, for heaven’s sake.’
‘We were never just your ordinary run-of-the-mill outlaws.’
‘You surprise me.’ He gave her a perceptive look. ‘Tell me, though, are you a wife pretending to be an outlaw, or an outlaw pretending to be a wife?’
Her forehead creased as she thought of her answer. ‘Is there a difference?’
‘Oh, yes, Eleanor—since one would suggest that The Fox is not real and the other that everything you and I shared was not.’
‘Then I would say neither... I am both Lady Eleanor Tallany and the outlaw Le Renard.’
Hugh shook his head. ‘It’s so dangerous and reckless of you. Why take all this unnecessary risk?’
‘I did what I did to survive.’
‘But to pursue this for all this time?’
She took a deep breath and met his eyes. ‘It all started a long time ago, Hugh, when I was a young girl. My interests, as you might guess, were not the same as other children’s. And my father trained me in the art of combat—in secret, of course. I even dressed as a young squire.’
‘Your father encouraged you?’
‘He did it because I was his heir and because I harassed him continually to do so. And he realised that I was an apt pupil.’
‘Now, that I can believe.’ His lips curled upwards slightly and she returned his smile hesitantly. ‘But this also has something to do with Millais?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. He was a monster.’ She swallowed before continuing. ‘It wasn’t until after Richard died that I could put everything my father had taught me into practice. And so, in Tallany’s hour of need, I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t do anything as a woman—as Lady Eleanor Tallany—but as a young man I could. With Gilbert’s help and Father Thomas’s blessing I got together a group of likeminded local men, bent on redressing the balance and safeguarding those in need.’
‘Are you telling me that all those men knew and accepted you as a
