He came to stand over her, and even within the shadowy forest he blocked the fitful sunlight. She grew suddenly still, but she didn’t dare look up.
“You should be glad I’m not a wild boar, or you would truly have something to weep about,” he said in his most practical voice.
He was unprepared for her response. In seconds she was on her knees, and then she launched herself at him, throwing herself into his arms.
He was unprepared for it, and he went down beneath her, his arms coming around her immediately, cushioning their fall. She looked a sight—her face was streaked with tears and mud, her nose was running, her hair was tangled and full of snarls and brambles, her once pretty gown was ripped and torn and filthy. And to his smitten eyes she had never looked lovelier.
“Thomas,” she cried, and there was an ache in her voice that he couldn’t resist. “Thomas.” And that was all she said, as she wrapped one arm tight around him and held him as if he were her only link with safety.
He should get up and disentangle himself. He should put a distance between them. She was a young, foolish, willful girl who didn’t know her own mind, and he needed to be wise, to protect her from men like himself.
“Thomas,” she said again, with a sigh of relief that sounded perilously close to love. He put his hand beneath her chin to tilt her tear-swollen face to his, to assure her he would keep her safe, but she looked so lost, so woebegone, that he couldn’t resist her. Leaning down, he kissed her, when he knew he shouldn’t, pulling her damp, bedraggled body closer to his, deepening the kiss as she opened her mouth for him, and he knew that he was lost. Hopelessly, irrevocably lost. And he wasn’t going to let her go back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a slow, laborious procession northward. King Henry the Third, the boy king of England, was in residence at one of his castles near York, and the trip from Somerset seemed to take forever.
Not that Simon of Navarre was in any particular hurry to arrive there. He had yet to figure out a way to extricate Alys from her captivity, and each day as they drew nearer he felt his options vanish.
Richard had seen to it that he’d had no chance to talk to her. She was kept closely guarded in that damned cage that at least resembled a carriage. She had cushions and throws and plenty to eat, her every comfort seen to. Richard had a certain wicked cunning—he knew that if he abused her too sorely he would lose Simon’s unwilling cooperation. But if he released her he would no longer have anything to hold over Simon’s head.
Simon kept his expression blank, his gaze forward as they plodded along the rutted roads heading toward the north of England. It was growing colder with each passing day as the winter approached, and his fur-lined mantle was little protection against the bitter wind. He was heading north, for the first time since he’d left, and with each tedious day of travel he felt disaster looming ever larger.
He was eighteen years old when he left the North of England, young and pious and newly knighted, filled with a crusader’s zeal. He would right the wrongs of this world, he would. Free the Holy Lands and win his place in heaven. He would return, loaded with riches and honors, and win back his family’s place in the world. He would regain the lost manor house and lands that King John had torn away from them and passed to another favorite. He would live in peace and harmony, with justice for those who served him.
God, he’d been young! Even then he knew there was no bringing back his mother, dead from cholera, or his father, dead from a drunken accident during a tourney that might just as well have been deliberate suicide. And he’d learned in the ensuing years just how ephemeral peace and harmony were, just what a joke the very notion of justice was.
The only way to survive was to see to your own interests. He’d learned that hard lesson, and all the good men he’d met over the years, the monks of St Anselme’s, the physicians of Arabia, the gypsies of Lombardy, and the ascetic scholars of Switzerland, had failed to convince him there was any alternative. His plan had been simple: amass all the wealth and power he could in the shortest amount of time. And keep himself inviolate from the people that surrounded him.
Alys of Summersedge had destroyed that notion. He should hate her for it, and part of him did. He was no longer the center of his own life, and that made things damnably complicated.
Killing the child of King John should never have been a moral issue. King John had destroyed his family on a whim—it was simple justice that Simon return the favor. But he’d been reluctant from the very start, and he wasn’t certain he could blame that on Alys. Even before she arrived at Summersedge Keep, he’d felt unsettled.
He refused to look back at the traveling carriage that held her prisoner. He hadn’t met her eyes since she was brought forth from the dungeons—if he did he might lose the icy composure that was one of his major weapons. He had no idea what she thought of him, or if she understood what had happened to her. That she would despise him was a given. That she blamed him was also likely. How would she feel when he freed her? If he freed her?
He huddled deeper into his cloak. She had piles of fur throws in her litter; she had curtains drawn against the wind, and against curious eyes. She would be safe enough for the time being. And
