The Conqueror

She sat up again, but more slowly this time. “My head?”

“Was knocked right well, but you’ll be fine.”

Gwyn nodded doubtfully. She examined the room, then turned her gaze back to him. “I can never repay you, Pagan.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” he said woodenly and pushed to his feet.

Gwyn perched back on her elbows and watched him, unable, even had she wanted, to take her eyes off his striding, vaguely predatory form as it paced the room. There was something different about him, altered from before her sleep, something that not only made her think of rocky cliffs, but about being dashed against them. She slid back under the covers.

He suddenly paused in his restless march and pinned his grey gaze on her. “So, who are you, lass, and how came you to be alone on the king’s highway?”

“I told you: Lord Endshire is too eager a suitor.”

“And you were going to the Abbey to await rescue?”

She paused. “I have already been rescued.”

“What do you think Endshire wanted with you?”

“My money, for certes,” she said tartly.

“Have you so very much?”

“Not anymore.”

He kept watching her with the leonine regard, and some perverse part of herself felt both afraid and aroused. “You squandered it?” he suggested dryly. “Marcus will weep when he hears the news.”

“The wars weep with it.”

He turned away. “They weep with blood, mistress.” He crossed to the brazier to stir the coals. His face was backlit by the orange glow, and the planes of his face deepened, so he looked sculpted from some smooth stone, hard and impenetrable. Yet thus far, he’d been nothing but gentle.

Almost.

Gwyn felt a small sliver of unease and slipped further under the covers, peering at him down the slope of her nose. “They do indeed. With blood and money and the wails of women whose husbands have died.”

He looked over his quite broad shoulder. “Have you lost a husband?”

“None would be satisfied with me.”

He looked back at the coals. “A father, perhaps?”

She sat up a little straighter. “Aye. How do you know that?”

He didn’t answer.

“You men may keep your wars,” she said sharply, urged on by some grating force inside. “My father fought far too many in the Outremer, and thought them rousing things.”

“My father was in the Holy Lands, too, when the Holy City fell.”

She smiled bitterly. “So, you, too, think war a glorious thing. Whereas they are an awful business, and I care for them naught.”

“Happens you might care if they were to take your home from you,” he said coldly.

“As Marcus tried, you mean? Trust in me, Pagan, I need no war to hoist men’s ambitions on me or mine. That is a burden women bear in the most peaceful of times.”

He put his palms, outstretched, over the glowing coals. “And yet, here you are, and not with fitzMiles.” He swung away from the fire and crossed the room, bringing a jug of wine with him. Pouring it into two mugs set on a narrow table under the window, he came to the side of the bed and extended one. “One for the ladies, I suppose.”

She laughed, feeling pleased at his little toast. It must have been an errant mood that had poked at him these last few minutes, like brambleweed. She relaxed back into the pillows and took the proffered drink. “One for rogue knights and frightened women, more’s the like. We put up a good fight, did we not, you and I?”