Page 9 of Bold Angel
Malvern laughed as he gripped the maid’s arm. “So you thought to escape us, did you?”
“She was helping the others,” the knight said, dragging her closer. “Two of them have come up missing, my lord.”
Stephen chuckled. “The little wench has courage, but in this she has outfoxed herself.” He pulled the tie on his chausses as he stood up. “I shall initiate this one myself.” He reached for the neck of the little maid’s tunic, grabbed hold of the fabric, and ripped it to her waist.
“Let me go!” the maid cried, struggling to pull away. Stephen slid an arm around her waist and brought her hard against his body. He rent her camise and stripped it off her shoulders.
Standing in the shadows, Marta gripped Ral’s arm. “I beg you, my lord! Lady Caryn is the old thegn’s daughter.”
“Harold?”
“No, Harold’s brother Edmund. He was lord before.”
Ral barely heard the old woman’s words. Instead his eyes remained on the maid. She was tiny, but not fragile, a woman fully grown. He couldn’t quite recall what it was but there was something familiar about her.
“Rest easy,” Stephen was saying, forcing her chin up with his hand. “I am not unskilled at bedding an unbroken wench. Give yourself into my care and I will go slowly.” He smiled with cold malice. “Fight me, and I will tear you apart.” Holding her immobile, he pulled the string binding her thick auburn braid, then sifted hisfingers through the shiny mass and spread it about her shoulders.
The moment he did, the hazy images Ral had been seeing came together, colliding with a force that caused a roaring in his ears.
“Sweet Christ,” he said, “’tis her.” It was a face he remembered all too well, one of two that had haunted him for the past three years. Stepping from his place in the shadows, he strode forward into the hall. Behind him the heavy oaken door swung wide and in walked a group of his men.
Near a bench in front of the fire, Malvern laughed at the girl’s useless struggles, bent her back over his arm, and began to fondle her breasts. They were lush and high, Ral saw, feeling a tightness in his groin. Nothing like the tiny plums he had seen that day in the meadow. And her features looked different, her cheeks soft and full, her mouth a rich burnished crimson. She was not the gawky maid he remembered, but nothing could erase the image he carried of her face, nor that of her beautiful raven-haired sister.
“Hold, Stephen!” Ral strode toward him, his mail and spurs clanking as he moved.
“Well… Braxston. Home at last. I might say ’tis good to see you, but we would both know the words for a lie.”
“You’ve been offered the comfort of my hall. ’Tis nothing less than I would expect of you. You’ve women enough to ease your men’s needs. I ask your leave of this one.”
Stephen’s mauling ceased, but his pale blue eyes turned hard. “These women give succor to the enemy. I have claimed them in the name of the king.” The little maid pulled her coarse brown tunic up over her breasts with a trembling hand. “This one will warm my bed ’ere this night is done. She belongs to me and we both know I keep what ismine.”
“You have others to amuse you.”
“This one has fire.” He twisted his fingers in her hair, dark shades of crimson and gold, and pulled her head back. “I would see her spread beneath me. She is mine.”
“Nay!” said the girl, pulling away. “I belong to no man.”
Ral clenched his jaw. He glanced from the maid’s stricken face back to Stephen, whose men had begun to gather round him, their hands resting uneasily on the hilts of their swords. Behind him, Ral’s own men fanned out across the hall.
“You are both wrong,” he said. “The girl belongs to me.”
Malvern set her roughly away. “You dare to gainsay me in this?” Feet splayed, he rested his hand on his blade.
“The girl is mine. She is the daughter of the old Saxon thegn.” He flashed her a hard look of warning. “Caryn of Ivesham is my betrothed.” He smiled at her but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Is that not so, my love?”
Chapter Three
Caryn reeled as if she had been struck. The Dark Knight her betrothed? Never! She had not forgotten him, would never forget those cool blue-gray eyes, that unforgiving jaw and thick black hair. The heavy strands were even longer now, not shorn in the way of most Norman men, but curling softly against the neck of his chain mail hauberk. Sweet Mary he must be mad!
She studied him more closely, trying to battle down her fears and read his fierce look of warning. He was handsome, she saw as she hadn’t before, in a hard, forbidding way far different from Lord Stephen. His nose was straight, his lips well-formed but his jaw was a little too square, his cheekbones a little too severe. He was a massive man, broad of chest, neck thick, arms corded with heavy muscle, and his legs long.
“Is that not so?” he repeated, the glint of warning more pronounced, a reminder that should she deny him, Lord Stephen and his men would ravish her as they had done the others.
She swallowed hard and stared at the tall dark knight who towered above her. She hadn’t forgotten what he and his men had done to her sister. She could still see his face among the others, though the memory was hazy and illusive, mixed with the terror, the anger, and thepain. She did not know the part he had played, but she knew for certain he had been there.
He was just as bad as Malvern.
Still, time was what she needed. She really had no choice. She tried not to tremble beneath his close regard. “Aye, my lord, that is so.”
