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In this wretched place, that temper had now been unleashed, a glorious tempest of fiery anger.
“Is that you again?” Isabelle sneered from the far end shadows. “Sac à puces!” His boot heels clacked on the flagstones. “If it is, you can take that offer of your warm bed and shove it up your–”
“Isabelle?” He hoisted the lantern. “Are you well?”
She stood, rattling at the bars, curls tumbling about her shoulders, skin pale, that thin cloak hardly covering her and her eyes…
As he’d glimpsed once before, they were of a tempestuous winter sea, flashing a furious silver, turbulent, so beautiful and… He was prosing on whilst she was behind bars, so he dashed over.
“Hell, Isabelle…”
Temper seemed to drain from her and she briefly closed those beautiful eyes. “Y-you came for me.” Then opened them with a glare. “I thought you weren’t back till tomorrow.”
“Rhys, catch!”
He swivelled to pluck an iron ring from the air with a key attached, then plunged it into the lock, hauled the bars open and likewise his Isabelle into his arms.
Vehement, unyielding, he never wished to let her go, buried his head within the curve of her neck, and despite the rank conditions, she still smelled of delicate jasmine.
“Cariad, my cariad aur, I’ll never leave you aga–”
“Could we…” Hugh coughed. “Could we leave the fondling for later, do you think? This place is a bit rancid, even for me.”
Rhys lessened his hold, nodded and with an arm around her waist led Isabelle back the way he’d come.
“He’s not…dead, is he?” she whispered, eyes sliding over the recumbent body of the jailer. “He was only doing his job.”
“No, no,” assured Rhys. Although… “He’s not, is he, Hugh?”
“What? No. What do you take me for?” With a butler’s flourish, Hugh flung open the door to the grubby courtyard. “Lies, bribery, extortion and incapacitation by means of the ancient art of pankration are more my forte.”
Isabelle stared. Rhys rolled his eyes.
Hugh grinned. “All for the well-being of our sovereign and more or less united isles, of course.”
