This good humor of his is nearly as annoying as his pretty face, and it makes me want to stab something. Mayhap during our next performance I will be less careful with my sword. That thought makes me smile.
My hope that he is as eager to put last night behind us is soon quashed. When he looks at me, there is an unnerving warm light in his eyes. Twice he tries to break the silence between us, but I successfully rebuff both attempts.
I need time to reason with myself, to wrestle my mind back under control. My body has been too long deprived of such pleasure and is simply being greedy, that is all. Not to mention that Maraud himself has not been with a woman in, what—a year? Surely a goodly portion of his skill was simply due to pent-up demand.
Any thread that connects us is merely having lived through a shared escape. We are joint survivors of narrowly averted disaster. The intensity of my feelings is nothing more than still being slightly drunk with my newfound freedom. Surely that is all there was to our coupling. To think it was anything other than that is to make the same mistake all the noblewomen at court make—to think that it matters only leads to broken hearts, tears, and unwanted babes.
With my thoughts untangled, I breathe deeply and look around, taking in the utter emptiness of the countryside. There are no buildings, no nobles, no one watching. There are no demands to pretend I am something I’m not. Just gently rolling green hills, a wide open gray sky, and an empty road. Yes, I am awash in an intensity of feelings, but very few, if any, have to do with Maraud.
That is when he decides to break my hard-won silence. “Don’t worry.” He speaks quietly. “It will not happen again unless you wish it to.”
I stare at him in horror, but his face is resolutely on the road before him. My need to shout that I do not have maidenly qualms is tempered only by the knowledge it would simply make things worse. Every other time I have taken a lover, we have both moved on immediately. That was no accident. But now I am stuck with Maraud for several more days. Several more nights with an attentive, skilled lover rather than a rutting bore, lying just within arm’s reach. There is only one way to end this.
When I reply, my face is utterly blank. “What?” I ask. “What will not happen again?”
There is a brief flash of disbelief on his face—incredulity that for a second time I am denying something we both know to be true. His jaw tightens, and he turns his face to the road.
Remorse crashes through me like a wave, but I harden my heart against it. His feelings, my feelings, are not what are important. The convent, the younger girls, the older nuns—they are what is important. That is why we are riding side by side. He is a weapon in my arsenal, a bargaining piece. Nothing more.
* * *
Shortly after noon, thunder rumbles through the air. I look up into the thick gray clouds overhead, but they do not have the appearance of storm clouds. And there is no rain.
It is Maraud who understands what is happening first. “Riders,” he shouts. “Get off the road.”
There is a moment of inaction as everyone tries to make sense of what he is saying, then we all begin scrambling to make way for the company of mounted knights barreling in our direction.
They are visible now, a standard bearer riding in front, the blue and gold banner he carries streaming behind him. At least fourscore mounted knights follow.
“They’re not slowing down,” Herbin says uneasily as he tries to steer the oxen to the side of the road.
“They won’t.” Maraud grabs the head of the closest ox to shove him along. “They have the right of way and these knights in particular will take their due and more.”
The two women next to me both carry sleeping children. While I rack my brain to remember which house bears the blue and gold standard, I reach out and steady their elbows so they can cross the deep ruts and reach the safety of the side of the road.
Two of the children eager to see the horses slip from their mothers’ sides and edge back toward the road. I let go of the women, grab the children by the hands, and haul them back to safety. The riders are coming fast now, recklessly fast. The road is full of deep ruts that could easily trip one of their mounts and cause it to break a leg.
But they do not slow or check their speed. The churning hooves turn up small clods of dried mud, sounding like a smattering of hail along with the thunder of their stride.
Just as they are nearly upon us, one of the straggling children clambers over the berm back into the road. Perhaps he thinks it is a game. Or he wants to see the knights more clearly. Perhaps he thinks he is quicker than the oncoming horses or that he is small enough to dart between their legs. Who knows what thoughts children have in such moments? But now he is on the road with fourscore mounted knights bearing down on him and none of them—not one—is breaking stride or slowing in the slightest. The sight of them strikes all reason from the child’s head, and he freezes with terror. And still they do not slow. They will simply run him down.
“Stay here!” I thrust the children next to me farther from the road. Before I can run out to snag the boy, Maraud launches himself from the ox cart like an arrow from a bow. His long arms reach out and snatch up the child, curling his body around the boy as the momentum from his leap carries them both to the far side of the road. There is a loud thud and then the riders are upon us.
Unable to do anything but watch the streaming knights and flailing hooves, I grab the children’s hands again and hold them tight. My heart beats so hard I fear it will break one of my ribs. Is it Maraud’s and the child’s heartbeats I feel? Or simply my own? The thunder of the passing horses reverberates so heavily from the earth through my legs to my chest that it is impossible to tell.
I glare in impotent fury at the riders. Their visors are down, their spurs lowered, their horses covered in sweat. The knights’ armor is dark, their faces hard and cruel-lipped. That these men can ride down others with no consequence to themselves causes my stomach to twist into a seething knot.
When at last they have passed, there is a muffled sob as one of the women dashes across the road to Maraud and the child.
With the sound of hooves still ringing in our ears, a small voice calls out. “Get off! You’re squishing me!”
A near hysterical laugh escapes me, and I squeeze the two boys’ hands before letting them go check on their friend. I am halfway across the road before I realize I have even moved. The child wriggles out from under Maraud, bouncing up like a spring rabbit and running to his mother, complaining that the wolf threw him down on the dirt.
Jacquette grabs him tightly to her bosom, then clouts his head and tells him to be grateful because that big wolf just saved his scrawny life.
When I reach Maraud, he is still lying on the ground, staring up at the sky. His face is deathly pale. No, no, no. I will not go through this again.