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Lily patted the mare’s soft nose to gain time. The truth seemed safe enough. “I was hiding in the church and he found me.”
Behind her, Hew was silent. Lily stroked the mare, pretending to be unaware. All the lessons learned from being Vorgen’s wife were returning. The knowledge stirred a bitterness inside her. Tonight, when she sat at the abbot’s table, she had felt as if she was at last beginning to throw off the restrictions being Vorgen’s wife had placed upon her. At last she had felt able to say what she really felt instead of what Vorgen wanted her to say. Now, because of Hew, she must assume her hateful disguise again. Become once more the cold, Norman wife who measured her words as carefully as the spices she kept locked up in a box.
“What were you doing in Grimswade church, Lily?”
She glanced at him, and this time did not try to hide her surprise. “My father and mother are buried there, Hew. I went to say goodbye.”
He had forgotten. She saw the flash of remembrance in his eyes, though he nodded as if he had known it all along.
“So,” Lily found her saddle, “it was your men who were watching the camp?”
“Aye. They were careless and the Norman bastards killed half of them. The rest of us got away, but they were lives I can ill-spare until Malcolm sends me more.” He cocked an eyebrow. “But I saw enough to know you were not the usual sort of prisoner. Are you consorting with the enemy, Lily? Or are you more devious than I thought?”
Lily lifted her chin, color flooding her face. “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think, Hew.”
Hew laughed without humor. “Oh, I think I do. I think I know you very well indeed. You would not give that lovely body to a Norman unless you could gain something from it. You are cold and calculating, just as Vorgen said. You bewitched him, and now you’ve bewitched Radulf.”
Lily wondered at his stupidity. Vorgen had known her not at all, and if he had been bewitched it was through no fault of hers. And yet Hew believed him, and did not see the suffering behind Lily’s eyes. Radulf, too, had believed Vorgen. A mixture of frustration and anger filled Lily, but she thrust the volatile emotions down.
Now was not a good time to allow her heart to rule her head.
“I was watching you the morning you left the camp at Grimswade,” Hew went on. “I saw Radulf’s tender demeanor. You have played a fine joke on him, Lily. He will have to explain himself to William the Bastard, explain why he has been riding about the countryside with the very woman he was sent to capture. I think you have made certain his star will very soon be setting!”
Lily managed to shrug as if she didn’t care one way or the other, as if she were really as cold and calculating as he seemed to believe. Hew’s eyes gleamed with respect, and she wondered at a man who would admire a woman who lied and cheated and used others to further her own ambition.
He was far worse than she had ever imagined.
“Will you help me saddle the mare?” she asked coolly, neither her voice nor her manner betraying her sick heart.
Hew smiled and complied. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I would have come to fetch you,” he said, hands busy with straps and buckles. “What’s left of my men are waiting beyond the crest of the hill. I did not trust them,
not after Grimswade. They are fools. Not like us, Lily.”
They led the mare toward the door, Lily whispering soothing words as the animal whickered nervously. Outside, the darkness was as still as ever and the monastery slept on. Hew threw Lily up into the saddle and took the reins, walking the mare toward the gatehouse, a black and bulky silhouette against the cold, starry sky.
“I persuaded one of the lay brothers to open the gate for me,” he murmured, unable to help boasting of his own cleverness. “I told him I was your husband and Radulf had stolen you from me. He believed me. He would have believed far worse of a man with Radulf’s reputation.”
“And you always were a good liar.”
Hew laughed softly, taking her words as a compliment. “Well, maybe it isn’t really a lie. I mean to marry you, Lily. Together we would be an unbeatable force. Better than you and Vorgen—he knew nothing of our people.”
“I remember my father telling you that, just before you betrayed him.”
Hew looked up at her, his face silvered by the starlight. She could tell he did not like what she had said; he did not like to be reminded of his perfidy. It had been foolish to let him know she remembered.
Quite suddenly, Lily was afraid of him.
She had never thought to be afraid before. He had always been Hew, whom she had once loved and now hated, but still Hew, whom she had known all her life. Now, in a flash, she saw that Hew was also a dangerous man, and no friend to her. At present he needed her because of Malcolm’s decree that she head their army, but once Hew had his men…
The gatehouse rose directly before them. Hew led his own mount from where it had been hidden in the shadows by the wall, and climbed quickly into the saddle. He retained his hold on Lily’s reins, sending her an enigmatic look. He did not trust her, either.
Maybe, she thought bitterly, when you had betrayed as many people as Hew had, it was difficult to trust anybody.
“We will ride to the coast,” he told her calmly, as they passed into the deeper shadows beneath the gatehouse. “Find a boat. We can sail north to Malcolm. ’Tis safer and quicker than going overland.”
“As you say.” Lily was empty. She felt as if she were leaving her future behind. With Radulf.
Why had she not trusted him when she had the chance? If she had, she would not now be in this dangerous situation. Though he was her enemy, Lily had never felt as if her life was at risk when she was with Radulf.
