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‘You don’t have to die if you’re sensible,’ the man said. ‘We want what’s in here, not your lives.’ He gestured to Constance’s strongbox.
‘That’s mine!’ she exclaimed angrily.
The man laughed without humour.
‘Is it worth more than your life, lad?’
Constance sat back on her knees, her leg burning with pain. She bowed her head.
‘You’ve got ballock stones to keep trying, I’ll give you that,’ the hooded man said, a touch of admiration creeping into his voice. He snapped his fingers and pointed to Constance. ‘Osgood, search him.’
A short, broad man stalked towards her.
‘Put your hands up,’ he instructed.
She lifted them a little.
‘No. Behind your head.’
Constance did as she was instructed, aware of how the action caused her breasts to lift and jut forward. Osgood’s hands fumbled at her waist.
‘Nothing else, Caddoc.’
He began moving higher up her body. She recoiled in horror as he brushed against the swell of her breasts, then closed his hands over them. He gave a cry of shock and let go as though he had been stung.
‘He’s a woman!’
Constance brought her fist round and smacked Osgood hard across the nose. He cried in pain. As his hands came up protectively she spun away, rising to her feet only to be seized by the neck from behind. She glared up into the blue eyes of the hooded man, Caddoc. He pulled her close to him so their faces were almost touching and examined her intently.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. He lowered his hood, tilting his head to one side and narrowing his eyes.
Constance’s heart missed a beat as the gesture sent her spinning back through time.
‘I know you!’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said curtly. His gaze moved to Constance’s dagger that was frustratingly just out of her reach. His jaw set. He pulled Constance’s cowl off to reveal the coil of hair she had concealed so carefully.
‘Tell me who you are,’ he repeated. He looked back at her and brushed a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. A deep white scar ran the length of his neck and his left ear was missing the lobe, coming to an abrupt stop at the cartilage.
Constance’s heart stopped and she blurted out the name without thinking.
‘Aelric!’
His face twisted with shock.
A searing hot flush raced across Constance’s throat and chest, turning to a chill that left her trembling violently from head to foot. Nausea overwhelmed her, tightening her throat and twisting her belly.
‘Help me, Aelric.’
Her voice sounded distant and dreamlike in her ears and her legs began to shake. She felt herself slipping away from the world, floating to the ground. Felt his arms seize her before she hit the track. The last sight she saw was his eyes; wide, disbelieving and filling her vision, before blackness consumed her.
* * *
The man who called himself Caddoc looked down into the ashen face of the woman he held in his arms. He had caught her instinctively when she began to fall, though after the many attempts she had made to run or fight he could not discount that this was yet another escape attempt.
He blew on her cheeks. She gave no indication she felt his breath. Her head lolled to the side like a recently slaughtered lamb and when Caddoc pulled back one eyelid with a fingertip he saw her pupil had rolled back. This was a true faint and the comparison he had drawn turned his stomach. He lowered her gently to the ground, stepping back carefully.
‘She called you Aelric,’ Osgood said, his voice thick and muffled from clutching his swollen nose. ‘Why did she call you that?’
Caddoc felt his stomach clench. The name was not one he had heard spoken aloud for over seven years. One he had buried deep inside himself. There was no one other than Ulf from his present that would know it and few people from his past were alive to identify him.
‘I asked who she was,’ he said indifferently. ‘Perhaps the name is hers.’
He didn’t expect the men to believe his feeble excuse and sure enough Osgood grimaced. Ulf looked up scornfully from where he knelt binding the hands of the remaining guard.
‘Aelric?’ Osgood scoffed. ‘That’s not a woman’s name. It’s not even a Norman name for that matter and she’s definitely that.’
Caddoc bent to pick up the dagger he had wrested from her hand.
A woman.
Guilt coursed through him as he recalled how he had twisted her arm until she yelped. Worse, he had dragged her from the woods and given her a blow to the head. He hadn’t known she was a woman, though, and she’d fought back fiercely enough. She’d even begun the assault on him by throwing the stick under his feet.
A woman who knew his name.
He stared at the unconscious woman, hoping to see some sign of familiarity, but her face was smeared with dirt and her brown hair was dishevelled. Her lips were full and enticingly pink and long lashes framed each closed eye. He crouched on his heels beside her, wondering how he could possibly have mistaken the high cheekbones and delicate features for those of a boy.
Her dagger lay in the grass. Caddoc reached for it and turned it over in his hands. For the second time a blow struck him between the shoulder blades, knocking the breath from him. His hand twitched to his belt and closed around the familiar handle of the dagger that Constance Arnaud had given him on the night she had set him free. The dagger he held bore the same design and engraved initials. The stone in the hilt was the twin of his, only red instead of blue.
The forest and clearing vanished and he was lost in the past, staring at the woman before him. It could be her. The hair was the right colour and years had passed for her as much as for him. For months he had gone to sleep and woken with that face in his mind and name on his lips until he had forced himself to forget the girl from Hamestan.
His mind began travelling down a long untrodden path, waking senses that had slept for years. He caught himself, ashamed that he should be thinking of such things at a time like this.
She had begged him to help her. He bunched his fists. Once he would have protected Constance Arnaud unthinkingly, but she had made her choice when she did not follow him.
‘Wulf was right,’ Ulf muttered, breaking his reverie. ‘It was a bride the Pig was bringing.’
Caddoc flinched and looked at Gerrod who was still cradling his son’s body, oblivious to everything that was happening around him. Wulf’s name was too raw to be spoken without grief drowning him.
The boy had been wrong, though. If this truly was Constance Arnaud she could not possibly be a bride for de Coudray. He couldn’t tell the men that without revealing he knew her identity. He’d worked hard to be accepted in the group and if he revealed himself as a friend to Normans he’d put that in jeopardy.
‘Do you think the baron’s bride would travel in such a manner? This could be anyone,’ he said. ‘Probably the knight’s whore.’
Constance—until it was confirmed otherwise he could not help thinking of her as that—was beginning to stir. A hint of pink was returning to her cheeks, giving them an alluring blush. Caddoc pushed himself to his feet.
‘This changes things,’ Osgood said. ‘She changes things.’
‘It changes nothing,’ Caddoc answered. He frowned at the enormity of the lie. The plan had been simple. They had come for the contents of the box, yet here he stood with two dead bodies, his companion beside himself with grief, and a woman he had never imagined seeing again. The cur that now lay dead had ignored the lady’s plight in preference for saving the strongbox. Whatever it contained must be important to de Coudray if the bodyguard was willing to risk the life of his charge to protect it.
‘We take the box and anything else with us as we planned. Tie the prisoners together. Hurry, there’s no guarantee the road will be empty for long.’
‘Let’s just kill them and be done with it,’ Gerrod snarled.
‘No!’ Caddoc said sharply. ‘I wanted no killing in the first place and I don’t want any more now.’
‘What about her?’ Osgood asked. ‘What do we do with this Norman bitch?’ He glared at Constance, still cradling his nose between his hands in a manner that promised trouble.
Caddoc pursed his lips. He was happy to leave the men to take their chances, but leaving a woman undefended in the forest to whatever might befall her was wrong. Besides, a sister could be as useful an instrument to use against de Coudray as a bride.
‘She might be useful. We’ll take her, too.’
Chapter Four (#u27bc089d-3a90-5a8e-9de3-d461d29f3a75)
Caddoc.
That was his name now. He had worn it so long that his old one sounded false in his ears and he laid claim to no other. When Constance awoke he would impress that on her. By whatever means it took. He placed Constance’s dagger in his belt alongside the sheath containing his own.
As he expected, his declaration they would be taking her was met with mixed reactions. Ulf began protesting about the dangers of letting an enemy into the camp, Gerrod tore himself from his son’s body and began growling for revenge. Only Osgood showed any approval. He finally let go of his swollen nose and moved his hands to their more usual position between his legs.
‘If that was her man he has no more use for her.’ He grinned, glancing at the corpse of the bodyguard. ‘She can warm our beds instead. Do you think Norman dugs taste as sweet as English when you suckle them? They feel similar enough beneath the fingers.’
Caddoc moved to stand in front of Constance, blocking Osgood’s view.
‘She’ll not be used for that,’ he said sharply.
‘Not by us, you mean.’ Osgood’s expression darkened. ‘I saw the way you looked at her. You want her yourself.’
Caddoc looked behind him to where Constance lay, his eyes roving from her feet to head. The tunic she wore was a man’s, cut to the knee and revealing legs that were shapely inside hose that were bound at the calves with cords. The foot sticking out at an awkward ankle was the final confirmation he needed that this was Constance Arnaud. Her cloak spread beneath her and the heavy tunic hinted at a figure that was obviously not male, cinching in by means of a belt at a narrow waist and rising over the swell of her breasts.
Caddoc’s guts twisted with desire. She’d grown from a slender girl into a full woman in the years since he’d last seen her. Or touched her.
Of course he wanted her. Who wouldn’t?
He tore his gaze away.
‘She’ll not be used by any of us. No one touches her.’ He mustered a crooked smirk that he bestowed on Osgood. ‘Though I’m sure the sight of her will give us all the means to sweeten our nights.’
He strode to the monk and guard who knelt by the horses, hands bound behind them.
‘Who knew you were travelling with a woman?’ he asked quietly. ‘Did either of you?’
Both men nodded.
Caddoc delivered a swift kick to the knee of the guard who cried out in pain.
‘And neither of you cared to protect her when we attacked?’
‘We were told to protect the contents of the box,’ the guard muttered.
‘By Lord de Coudray?’ Caddoc asked.
‘By the lady,’ the guard answered, ‘and she insisted on dressing like that despite Rollo telling her it was unfitting.’
Caddoc raised his eyebrows. So the box was important to Constance, too. She had said it was her property. Jewels probably in that case. Constance could try buying her freedom with a bangle or two. She gave a sigh that drew his attention back to her. Her eyes were closed, but she was moving her head from side to side. Her skin was slick with a sheen of sweat, causing tendrils of hair to stick to her cheeks.
‘Get some water from the river,’ he instructed.
Ulf pulled the leather cap from his head and filled it. He returned and poured it over Constance’s head. Before Caddoc could protest that wasn’t what he had meant Constance’s eyes opened and her body convulsed.
With a cry of shock she pushed herself to a seated position, scrabbling back on her heels. Her hand whipped to her waist, feeling the empty sheath where her dagger belonged. She stared frantically around her, then she paled at the sight of the four men standing over her.
Caddoc pushed forward and knelt astride her. She opened her mouth to speak and he clamped one hand across it, pressing down firmly, the other behind her head, buried deep into her thick coil of hair to stop her twisting away. Constance’s brown eyes widened and Caddoc watched as the emotion in them changed from confusion to terror.
‘My name is Caddoc,’ he said. He lowered his voice low so only she could hear. ‘You don’t know me. If you want your throat to stay unslit, you will give no indication that we have ever met, much less were friends. Do you understand?’
Her lips moved beneath his palm, her breath warm, and the movement making his skin tingle. It sent a shiver up the length of his arm. Constance gave a slight nod.
‘I’m going to let go of you now,’ Caddoc said, loud enough for the men to hear. ‘If you try to run as you did before, you won’t get three paces without a sword through your leg. Nod if you agree to be sensible.’
Another nod, but now her eyes blazed contempt. Caddoc removed his hands and stepped away. Constance climbed unsteadily to her feet. She brushed her hands down her body and legs to straighten her tunic, then froze. Her eyes travelled round her audience and she pulled her cloak around her body protectively, reaching up to lift her cowl over her head.
‘We know you’re a woman,’ Osgood reminded her. She dropped her hands to her sides.
‘Who are you?’ Gerrod growled, stalking across to tower over her.
Caddoc watched as the short, slender woman faced the giant bear of a man. He expected her to cower, but instead she straightened her back, raised her chin and looked him in the eye. In a voice that betrayed none of the fear he imagined she was feeling she answered, ‘I am Constance Arnaud. I am travelling to Hamestan to the house of Robert de Coudray. When he finds out what you have done he will have your heads.’
She included Caddoc in the look of hatred she flashed around. He doubted any of them heard her threat because at the name of de Coudray they began shouting over her. He cursed his lack of foresight. He had warned her not to speak his name, but had placed no injunction on her not to reveal her own.
Gerrod seized her by the arms and began dragging her across the path until he had backed her against the trunk of a tree.
‘Give me a sword,’ he roared. ‘I’ll send her back to the Pig a piece at a time.’
Constance’s face drained of colour.
The guard started to struggle to his feet, only to be kicked in the chest by Ulf. Osgood picked up his staff and advanced on the monk.
‘Enough!’ Caddoc roared.
Gerrod spat an oath. He pulled the rope from his waist and began to bind Constance to the tree, overpowering her struggles with ease as he passed the rope around her waist and chest, pinning her arms to her side.
‘I said get me a sword.’ Gerrod turned to Constance and snarled, ‘My son died today. Your blood can join his.’
‘Please, no,’ Constance begged. ‘I have harmed no one!’
Her lips trembled and Caddoc realised her self-possession was ice thin. She turned her wide brown eyes on her captor.
‘Please, have compassion.’
