She wrenched the lumpy felt sack from around her waist and shoved it into his hands. “Take this.”
His fingers closed reflexively around the bag. “What is it?”
“Family heirlooms. For God’s sake, take it!”
Her whispers were short, staccato bursts of sound. Griffyn felt himself standing at a crossroads. Guinevere obviously thought it wasn’t safe inside the abbey, and deep inside, he knew it too. But neither was Everoot safe, if she was not there to keep it until he returned. So he let her go.
Her face was white and frightened under the shadows under the wet trees. Her dark hair slid forward over her shoulders as she reached out to him.
“You will find me?” she whispered.
He grabbed her hand and held it to his chest. “I will,” he said, thinking she’d never been so beautiful as she was just then, disheveled and desperate and needing him.
“Promise,” she insisted, tears filling her eyes.
“On my life,” he vowed hoarsely.
The tears started spilling down her cheeks. “On mine, Pagan. Promise on mine.”
He grabbed her face between his palms and crushed her lips under his in a harsh, possessive kiss. “On our lives.”
Releasing her, he pointed to the abbey gates, which were slowly rolling open. He swung up on Noir. “Go.”
Gwyn turned towards the abbey, barely able to see through her tears. She pushed under a low-hanging branch and looked over her shoulder. “You promised,” she whispered.
There was a shout from the abbey. Two men were coming through the open gates. Pagan melted into the shadows. She barely caught an outline of black-edged cape astride a dancing stallion. A lifted hand. And he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gwyn made her way clumsily, stumbling through growing darkness, over rutted dirt and tufts of dried grass of the outer abbey gardens. The shiny chestnut rump of the last horse of Marcus’s entourage had just disappeared through the gate when the knight on the galloping horse reached her.
Gwyn sighed as she was, once again, hoisted onto a horse by a strange man. He hurried her through the outer gate, which was pulled shut behind them, and trotted past the orchards and the maze of buildings that crowded inside the protective wall of the abbey fortress. Chapter house, cloister, slype—a wide, roofed corridor connecting the cloister with the cemetery—barn, friars’ dining hall. They finally arrived at the abbot’s lodgings on the west side of the abbey church.
She was bustled up to the abbot’s dormir, where she was met by John of Cantebrigge himself, who was pacing in front of the brazier. The abbot turned, stunned, frozen in the act of holding out a sheaf of parchment to Marcus fitzMiles, who was taking off his gloves.
They all gaped at her. The extended papers ruffled unheeded to the floor. She tried to look at John, but it was Marcus’s glittering gaze that held her.
“Good. You are safe,” he observed coldly.
“Aye,” she snapped, regaining her voice and moving into the room, “though by none of your efforts.”
John hurried to her side, and, giving her a brief hug, held her upper arms between his hands and looked her over carefully, his eyes missing nothing. “Gwyn,” he murmured, “Are you all right?”
“I am.” It was tempting to relax into his concern, but instead she nodded briskly and looked over his shoulder at Marcus. She mustn’t appear weak. “Why is Lord Marcus here?”
The abbot of the wealthy and prestigious abbey, glided over to her. “Lady Guinevere,” he said, taking her hand. “We were worried greatly. Praise God you are safely returned to us.”
“My lord abbot, I would praise God if I were returned to you, but why, I ask again, am I returned to him?” She nodded at Marcus. The abbot looked enraged.
Marcus smiled, the picture of calm, solicitous concern. “Lady Guinevere, you have ever been prone to fits of exuberance. ’Tis one of your charms. But with your father’s passing, and none to guard you, I am growing concerned that you may do yourself harm.”
He moved to her side, took her hand and kissed it.
A small, binding thread of good sense made her hold her tongue until he was close enough to be the only one to hear the whispered venom of her words. “Marcus,” she hissed as he bent over her hand, “I will surely do you harm before this night is out. I suggest you worry more on that.”
He unbent. “But I do worry for you, my lady, as do we all.” He gestured to the others.
A small, pricking fear snaked up Gwen’s spine. Her friend John was looking at her as he would a small child who’d nearly been crushed beneath a horse’s onrushing hooves. The abbot was looking at her as if she she’d been the one guiding the horse. He nodded his tonsured head pretentiously.