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She blinked, as if she couldn’t quite accept what he had said. As if she was certain he had some other, crueler meaning he meant to hurl upon her.
“I don’t care,” Reynard repeated softly, so she could not mistake him. “Your past is nothing to me, and I hope mine does not influence you. We are two lonely souls, and we have found each other. Let us be grateful for it.”
Tears filled her eyes, her mouth trembled, but she managed to answer him. “I am grateful. Help me, Reynard. If I can escape my father, if I can save myself and my brother, and Lady Jenova, too, then I will! But I cannot do it on my own.”
“I know, lady, and I will help you. We will win through.”
He kissed her, feeling the need in her, holding back. Now was not the time. When he had freed her, when they were together, then he would be able to love her as he wished, as she wished. Until then, they must wait.
“’Tis cold as a witch’s heart out there,” Matilda said, looking up as her nephew sat down on the bench beside her.
Reynard laughed. “What do you know of a witch’s heart?” he mocked gently.
The old woman grumbled into the pot she was stirring over the coals. Hare stew, the same hare Reynard had brought with him. It smelled good.
“She is a fine lady,” she said now, refusing to meet his eyes. “Too fine for you, Reynard. The Normans are too proud a race to look beneath their own.”
“Perhaps she is tired of her own race. Perhaps I can give her something they cannot.”
“I saw her, in her velvets and her furs, her fingers heavy with jewels. How can you compete with that, Reynard? Nay, ’twill be only unhappiness you find with her.”
Knowing his aunt’s own background, Reynard could understand her need to preach caution. But she didn’t understand Rhona as he did. She did not see her pain and her hurt and her need for the simple, valuable things he could give her. Kindness, gentleness, compassion, but most of all, love.
“I will be careful,” he said now, sniffing appreciatively at the hare stew. “Don’t worry about me. I know what I am doing.”
She gave him a narrow, sorrowing glance. “I have heard many men say those words in my long life, Reynard, and none of them did. Not in the end.”
Rhona’s horse flew over the stony ground, leaping half concealed branches and logs and dangerous dips in the ground. She was being reckless, and she didn’t care. She had never been so happy. She had thought to find a spy in Reynard, someone to use in her plot, and instead she had found love, and a man who was everything she had ever wanted.
Of course he was a servant. A mercenary. The son of a shipwright and navigator. Doubts circled her, but she pushed them away and rode on. This was beyond any considerations of wealth and blood and power. Her father might believe such things were all that mattered, but Rhona no longer did.
They would be together.
Just how, she did not know. Reynard had sworn to meet her again tomorrow, at Uther’s Tower. Mayhap he would have thought of something by then. She knew now that Lord Henry had no intention of placing Lady Jenova into her father’s hands. He would die rather than allow that to happen. But Jean-Paul must have known that, she realized, just as he seemed to understand so many other aspects of Lord Henry’s character.
He must have another plan.
She must learn what she could, and then tell Reynard. Together they would thwart Jean-Paul, and her father. And then? Her father would not simply be furious with her. If he found out, he would kill her.
“The king will not be pleased to hear what Baldessare has been up to,” Reynard had said, holding her in his arms, his deep voice filling her senses. “The king will punish him, possibly he will strip him of his lands and his wealth. How will you like being just Rhona, a simple, freeborn girl?”
Rhona had expected to feel regret. There was none. It would not matter to her, she realized in surprise. She would still have the thing that mattered to her most. She would have Reynard.
But s
he might not be able to wait until the king returned to England. She might have to run as soon as Baldessare’s plot began to go wrong. And so she had told Reynard.
“Come to Gunlinghorn,” he had replied. “You will be safe there.”
Come to Gunlinghorn. As if it were the simplest thing in the world. As if it were not partly her fault Lady Jenova was in this predicament.
But Rhona knew that if it became necessary, she would do just that. Come to Gunlinghorn. And pray she had a welcome there.
The walls of Hilldown Castle came into sight. She rode through the postern gate, nodding at the guard on duty. He had been given a coin for his trouble and would say nothing about her slipping out for so long. Rhona left her horse with one of the grooms and hurried into the keep and up the stairs to her small room—no more than a corner in the tower. She would straighten her clothing and comb her hair, and go downstairs to play her part. There was much to be done, and she needed to be brave….
As Rhona opened the door, someone rose from the seat by the window.
It was Jean-Paul.
