A Kingdom of Dreams

  Brenna scooted backward in terror when the giant, Arik, entered their tent, the earth seeming to tremble with each of his footsteps. "Nay, please," she whispered desperately. "Don't take me back before him."

  Ignoring Brenna completely, he stalked over to Jenny, clenched her arm in his enormous fist and hauled her to her feet. Legend, Jenny realized a little hysterically, had not exaggerated the size of Arik's war axe: its handle was as thick as a stout tree limb.

  The Wolf was pacing restlessly within the confines of his large tent, but he stopped abruptly when Jenny was thrust inside, his silver eyes raking over her as she stood proudly erect, her hands bound behind her. Although her face was carefully expressionless, Royce was amazed to see veiled contempt in the blue eyes staring defiantly into his. Contempt—and not a trace of tears. Suddenly he recalled what he'd heard of Merrick's eldest girl. The younger was called the "Jewel of Scotland," but legend had it that this one was a cold, proud heiress with a dowry so rich, and bloodlines so noble, that no man was above her touch. Not only that, she was purported to be a plain girl who'd scorned the only offer of marriage she was likely to receive and had then been sent to a nunnery by her father. With her face streaked all over with dirt, it was impossible to tell how "plain" she was, but she certainly didn't possess her sister's angelic beauty and temperament. The other girl had wept piteously—this one was glaring at him. "God's teeth, are you truly sisters?"

  Her chin lifted higher. "Yes."

  "Amazing," he said in a derisive voice. "Are you full sisters?" he asked suddenly as if puzzled. "Answer me!" he snapped when she remained stubbornly silent.

  Jenny, who was far more terrified than she showed, suddenly doubted he meant to torture her or put her to death at the end of an interview which began with innocuous questions about her genealogy. "She is my stepsister," she admitted, and then a spurt of defiant courage overcame her terror. "I find it difficult to concentrate on anything when my wrists are bound behind me. It's painful and unnecessary."

  "You're right," he remarked with deliberate crudity, recalling she'd kicked him in the groin. "It's your feet that should be bound."

  He sounded so disgruntled that amused satisfaction made her lips twitch. Royce saw it and could not believe his eyes. Grown men, warriors, quailed in his presence, but this young girl with the haughty stance and stubborn chin was actually enjoying defying him. His curiosity and his patience abruptly evaporated. "Enough polite trivialities," he said sharply, advancing slowly on her.

  Jenny's amusement vanished and she retreated a step, then she stopped and made herself hold her ground.

  "I want answers to some questions. How many men-at-arms does your father keep at Merrick castle?"

  "I don't know," Jenny said flatly, then she spoiled the effect of her bravado by taking another cautious step backward.

  "Does your father think I mean to march on him?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're trying my patience," he warned in a silky, ominous voice. "Would you prefer I ask these questions of your tender little sister instead?"

  That threat had the desired effect; her defiant expression turned desperate. "Why wouldn't he think you're going to attack him? For years, there have been rumors that you're going to do it. Now, you have an excuse! Not that you need one." Jennifer cried, frightened past all reason when he began advancing on her again. "You're an animal! You enjoy killing innocent people!" When he didn't deny that he enjoyed it, Jenny felt her insides cringe.

  "Now that you know that much," he said in a dangerously soft voice, "suppose you tell me how many men-at-arms your father has?"

  Jenny hastily calculated that there must be at least 500 left. "Two hundred," she said.

  "You stupid, reckless little fool!" Royce hissed, grabbing her arms and giving her a hard shake. "I could break you in half with my bare hands, yet you still lie to me?"

  "What do you expect me to do?" Jenny cried, quaking all over, but still stubborn. "Betray my own father to you?"

  "Before you leave this tent," he promised, "you'll tell me what you know of his plans—willingly or with some help from me you won't enjoy."

  "I don't know how many men he's gathered," Jenny cried helplessly. "It's true," she flung out. "Until yesterday, my father hadn't seen me in two years, and before that he rarely spoke to me!"

  That answer so took Royce by surprise that he stared at her. "Why not?"

  "I—I displeased him," she admitted.

  "I can understand why," he said bluntly, thinking her to be the most unbiddable female he'd ever had the misfortune to encounter. She also, he noticed with a start, had the softest, most inviting mouth he'd ever seen and, very possibly, the bluest eyes.

  "He hasn't spoken to you, or paid the slightest heed to you in years, and yet you still risk your very life to protect him from me?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  There were several, truthful and safer, answers Jenny could have given, but anger and pain were numbing her brain. "Because," she said flatly, "I despise you, and I despise everything you represent."

  Royce stared at her, caught somewhere between fury, amazement, and admiration for her defiant courage. Short of murdering her, which would not give him the answers he sought, he was at a loss as to how to deal with her, and although strangling her held a certain appeal at the moment, it was out of the question. In any case, with Merrick's daughters his captives, it was possible Merrick might surrender without putting up a struggle. "Get out," he said shortly.

  Needing no further urging to leave his hated presence, Jenny turned to flee from the tent, but the flap was down and she stopped.

  "I said, get out!" Royce warned ominously, and she swung around.

  "There's nothing I'd like better, however, I can't very well walk through canvas."

  Wordlessly, he reached out and lifted the flap, then to her surprise he bent low in an insulting mockery of a bow. "Your servant ma'am. If there's anything at all I can do to help make your stay with us more pleasant, I hope you won't hesitate to call it to my attention."

  "Untie my wrists then," Jenny demanded to his utter disbelief.

  "No," Royce snapped. The flap dropped down, smacking her in the backside, and Jenny bolted forward in angry surprise, then let out a stifled scream when an unseen hand shot out and caught her arm, but it was merely one of the dozen guards who were posted just outside the Wolf's tent.

  By the time Jenny returned to their tent, Brenna was ashen with fright at being left alone. "I'm perfectly all right, I promise," Jenny reassured her as she awkwardly lowered herself to the ground.

  Chapter Four

  Fires burned at periodic intervals in the valley where the Wolfs men were still encamped that night. Standing in the open doorway of the tent, her wrists bound behind her, Jenny thoughtfully studied the activity going on all about them. "If we're going to escape, Brenna—" she began.

  "Escape?" her sister repeated, gaping. "How in the name of the Blessed Mother can we possibly do that, Jenny?"

  "I'm not certain, but however we do it, we shall have to do it very soon. I heard some of the men talking outside, and they think we'll be used to force Father to surrender."

  "Will he do that?"

  Jenny bit her lip. "I don't know. There was a time—before Alexander came to Merrick—when my kinsmen would have laid down their weapons rather than see me harmed. Now I don't matter to them."

  Brenna heard the catch in her sister's voice, and though she longed to comfort Jenny, she knew Alexander had so alienated clan Merrick from their young mistress that they didn't care about her any more.

  "They do love you, however, so it's hard to know what they'll decide or how much influence Father will have on them. However, if we can escape soon, we could reach Merrick before any decision is made, which is what we must do."

  Of all the obstacles in their way, the one that worried Jenny most was the actual trip back to Merrick, which she estimated to be a two-day journey on horseback from here. Every
hour they would be required to spend on the road was risky; bandits roamed everywhere, and two women alone were considered fair game even by honest men. The roads simply were not safe. Neither were the inns. The only safe lodgings were to be found at abbeys and priories, which was where all honest, respectable travelers chose to stay.

  "The problem is, we don't stand a chance of escaping with our hands bound," Jenny continued aloud, as she gazed out at the busy camp. "Which means we either have to convince them to untie our wrists, or else manage to escape into the woods during mealtime when we're not bound. But if we do that, our absence will be discovered as soon as they come to collect our trays before we're very far away. Still, if that's the only chance that presents itself during the next day or two, we shall very likely have to take it," she announced cheerfully.

  "Once we slip into the woods, what will we do?" Brenna asked, bravely quelling her inner terror at the thought of being alone in the woods at night.

  "I'm not certain—hide somewhere, I suppose, until they give up looking for us. Or else we might be able to fool them into thinking we went east instead of north. If we could steal two of their horses, that would increase our chances of outrunning them, even if it made it more difficult to hide. The trick is to find some way to do both. We need to be able to hide and outrun them."

  "How can we do that?" Brenna asked, her forehead knotted deeply in futile thought.

  "I don't know, but we have to try something." Lost in contemplation, she stared unseeing past the tall, bearded man who had stopped talking to one of his knights and was studying her intently.

  The fires had dwindled and their guard had collected their trays and retied their wrists, but still neither girl had come up with an acceptable scheme, even though they'd discussed several outlandish ones. "We can't just remain here like willing pawns to be used to his advantage," Jenny burst out when they were lying side by side that night. "We must escape."

  "Jenny, has it occurred to you what he might do to us when—if," she amended quickly, "he catches us?"

  "I don't think he'd kill us," Jenny reassured her after a moment's contemplation. "We wouldn't be any use to him as hostages if we were dead. Father would insist on seeing us before agreeing to surrender, and the earl will have to produce us—alive and breathing —or else Father will tear him to shreds," Jenny said, deciding it was better, less frightening, to think of him as the earl of Claymore, rather than the Wolf.

  "You're right," Brenna agreed and promptly fell asleep.

  But it was several hours before Jenny could relax enough to do the same, for despite her outward show of bravery and confidence, she was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life. She was frightened for Brenna, for herself, and for her clan, and she hadn't the vaguest notion how to escape. She only knew they had to try.

  As to their captor not murdering them if he caught them, that much was likely true; however, there were other—unthinkable—male alternatives to outright murder that he had at hand to retaliate against them. Her mind conjured up an image of his dark face all but hidden by at least a fortnight's growth of thick, black beard, and she shivered at the memory of those strange silver eyes as they'd looked last night with the leaping flames from the fires reflected in them. Today his eyes had been the angry gray of a stormy sky—but there had been a moment, when his eyes had shifted to her mouth, that the expression in their depths had changed—and that indefinable change had made him seem more threatening than ever before. It was his black beard, she told herself bracingly, that made him seem so frightening, for it hid his features. Without that dark beard, he'd doubtless look like any other elderly man of… thirty-five? Forty? She'd heard the legend of him since she was a child of three or four, so he must be very old indeed! She felt better, realizing he was old. 'Twas only his beard that made him seem alarming, she reassured herself. His beard, and his daunting height and build, and his strange, silver eyes.

  Morning came and still she'd come up with no truly feasible plan that would satisfy their need to make all speed as well as hide and to avoid being set upon by bandits, or worse. "If only we had some men's clothing," Jenny said, not for the first time, "then we'd have a much better chance, both to escape and to reach our destination."

  "We can't very well just ask our guard to lend us his," Brenna said a little desperately, as fear overwhelmed even her placid disposition. "I wish I had my sewing," she added with a ragged sigh. "I'm so jumpy I can hardly sit still. Besides, I always think most clearly when I've my needle in my hand. Do you suppose our guard would secure a needle for me if I asked him very nicely to do it?"

  "Hardly," Jenny replied absently, plucking at the hem of her habit as she gazed out at the men tramping about in war-torn clothes. If anyone needed a needle and thread, it was those men. "Besides, what would you sew with the—" Jenny's voice dropped but her spirits soared, and it was all she could do to smooth the joyous smile from her face as she turned slowly to Brenna. "Brenna," she said in a carefully offhand voice, "you're quite right to ask the guard to secure you a needle and thread. He seems nice enough, and I know he finds you lovely. Why don't you call him over and ask him to get us two needles."

  Jenny waited, laughing inwardly as Brenna went to the flap of the tent and motioned to the guard. Soon she would tell Brenna the plan, but not yet; Brenna's face would give her away if she tried to lie.

  "It's a different guard—I don't know this one at all," Brenna whispered in disappointment as the man came toward her. "Shall I send him to fetch the nice guard?"

  "By all means," Jenny said, grinning.

  Sir Eustace was with Royce and Stefan looking over some maps when he was informed by the guard that the ladies were asking for him. "Is there no end to her arrogance!" Royce bit out, referring to Jenny. "She even sends her guards on errands, and what's more, they run to do her bidding." Checking his tirade, he said shortly, "I assume it was the blue-eyed one with the dirty face who sent you?"

  Sir Lionel chuckled and shook his head. "I saw two clean faces, Royce, but the one who talked to me had greenish eyes, not blue."

  "Ah, I see," Royce said sarcastically, "it wasn't Arrogance that sent you trotting away from your post, it was Beauty. What does she want?"

  "She wouldn't tell me. Wants to see Eustace, she said."

  "Get back to your post and stay there. Tell her to wait," he snapped.

  "Royce, they're no more than two helpless females," the knight reminded him, "and small ones at that. What's more, you won't trust anyone to guard them except Arik or one of us," he said, referring to the knights who made up Royce's elite personal guard and were also trusted friends. "You're keeping them bound and under guard like they were dangerous men, able to overpower us and escape."

  "I can't trust anyone else with the women," Royce said, absently rubbing the back of his neck. Abruptly, he lurched out of his chair. "I'm tired of the inside of this tent. I'll go with you and see what they want."

  "So will I," Stefan said.

  Jenny saw the earl coming, his long effortless strides bringing him swiftly toward their tent, two guards on his right and his brother on the left.

  "Well?" Royce said, stepping into their tent with the three men. "What is it this time?" he demanded of Jenny.

  Brenna whirled around in panic, her hand over her heart, her face a picture of flustered innocence as she hastened to take the blame for annoying him. "I—it was I who asked for him." She nodded in the direction of the guard. "For Sir Eustace."

  With a sigh of impatience, Royce withdrew his gaze from Jenny and looked at her foolish sister. "Would you care to tell me why you did?"

  "Yes."

  It was actually all she was going to say, Royce realized. "Very well, then tell me."

  "I… we"—she cast a look of sheer misery at Jenny, then plunged ahead—"we… would like very much to be given thread and needles."

  Royce's gaze swung suspiciously to the person most likely to have conceived some way of using needles to his own physical discom
fort, but today Lady Jennifer Merrick returned his gaze levelly, her face subdued, and he felt an odd sense of disappointment that her bravado had been depleted so quickly. "Needles?" he repeated, frowning at her.

  "Yes," Jenny answered in a carefully modulated voice that was neither challenging nor submissive, but calmly polite as if she'd quietly accepted her fate. "The days grow long and we have little to do. My sister, Brenna, suggested we spend the time sewing."

  "Sewing?" Royce repeated, disgusted with himself for keeping them bound and under heavy guard. Lionel was right—Jenny was merely a small female. A young, reckless, headstrong girl with more bravado than sense. He'd overestimated her simply because no other prisoner brought before him had dared to strike him. "What do you think this is, the queen's drawing room?" he snapped. "We don't have any of those—" His brain stalled as he searched for the names of the contraptions which women at court spent hours of every day sewing upon with embroidery thread.

  "Embroidery hoops?" Jenny provided helpfully.

  His eyes raked over her in disgust. "I'm afraid not—no embroidery hoops."

  "Perhaps a small quilting frame then?" she added, innocently widening her eyes as she held back her laughter.

  "No!"

  "There must be something we could use needle and thread on," Jenny added swiftly when he turned to leave. "We'll go quite mad with nothing to do, day after day. It doesn't matter what we sew. Surely you must have something that needs sewing—"

  He swung around, looking startled and pleased and dubious. "You're volunteering to do mending for us?"

  Brenna was a picture of innocent shock at his suggestion; Jenny tried to imitate her look. "I hadn't thought of mending exactly…"

  "There's enough mending needed here to keep a hundred seamstresses busy for a year," Royce said decisively, deciding in that moment they ought to earn their bed and board—such as it was—and mending was exactly the right form of payment. Turning to Godfrey, he said, "See to it."