She made her way quickly and quietly down to the great hall. She peered around the edge of the stairwell. Jake sat at the high table with her brothers. Montgomery and John were blathering on about this and that, without ceasing, one jumping in to carry on the tale whilst the other paused for breath.
But instead of being irritated, as most men would have been, Jake merely sat there, stroking his lips with a finger, as if he fought not to smile. And when Montgomery finished John's favorite jest for him, Jake actually laughed.
Amanda considered. Her brothers were notoriously hard on visitors. That Jake could tolerate them, nay, even appear to enjoy them was something indeed.
She watched him as he stretched for his cup, then winced. He rubbed his arm gently, then said something to Montgomery. Montgomery nodded and the three of them rose and made their way from the great hall.
Interesting.
Amanda filched a hunk of bread from the table and walked to the front door. Were they going to the healer's house? She suspected so. Montgomery had told her, at various times during her confinement upstairs in the solar, that Jake had a most curious method of tending to his wounds. Amanda had her own notions on the methods most healers employed, but then again, she had grown up with a woman as Artane's healer who had had her own very strong thoughts on the matter.
Amanda sighed. 'Twas no wonder she drove all men away. Her opinions were too strong and her tongue too quick to express them.
She peeked out the door and saw the threesome making their way across the courtyard in the direction she'd anticipated. She stood there and watched thoughtfully until they entered the small house. She had forgotten how tall Jake was, or how handsome. Sir Walter had made her take all her meals upstairs, so she'd only had brief glimpses of him from a great distance as he followed her brothers to the lists.
She had forgotten, indeed.
Well, that was of no import in her present business. She made her way quickly across the courtyard and paused at the doorway to the healer's quarters. She eased the door open and listened.
"Wine?" said Master Erneis. "Again, my lords?"
"Jake wishes to soak his arm in it," Montgomery said earnestly. " 'Tis his way of healing. Quite new and exciting, wouldn't you say?"
Amanda suspected she knew precisely what Master Erneis would say, and that wouldn't include praise for new and exciting methods of healing. The man was certainly capable, but he wasn't overly imaginative.
But she listened as the healer provided what was asked for and made noises of interest at the list of herbs that Montgomery and Jake managed to fashion between themselves.
"Thank you, sir healer," Jake said clearly.
"He means he'll return on the morrow for more," Montgomery added.
"Aye, thank you," Jake said. "I am grateful."
Well, at least he was no longer a fragrant rose, a village gigolo, or a braised swine rump, all of which he'd been at some point during his first week—according to her brothers and thanks to their tutelage. It was little wonder Jake had reportedly given up speaking for a few days.
But the saints only knew what he would be now that he had taken it up again: a peasant; a disinherited son; a ruffian with handsome manners and no scruples.
Or a lord who had been waylaid and now sought refuge at her home?
She was almost afraid to find out.
But she could hardly bear not knowing.
She heard footsteps coming toward the door and she leaped backward and hid herself behind the firewood stacked along the wall. She waited until her babbling brothers and their charge had headed toward the stables before she raised up and looked over the wood. She watched them go, Jake with wine and herbs in hand and her brothers still wearing his ears down to nubs.
Were they on to a lesson in riding, then?
She slipped along the wall, hiding behind shrubberies and other kinds of vegetation that could be found inside her father's walls. She eased toward the stable doors, then stopped suddenly when she heard Jake's voice. His language was, remarkably, much improved. She was still marveling at that when she heard the unmistakable sound of breathing behind her. She whirled around to find three of her guardsmen standing there, each with their hands over their mouths, as if that might stifle the noise. Amanda put her hands on her hips and frowned at them.
"I'm not leaving the keep," she said.
They nodded as one, but didn't move.
"My gratitude, lads, for the aid, but I'm about a bit of investigation and don't need a cluster of men following—"
The sound of Jake's voice right behind her sent her scurrying around her men. She made certain she was well hidden, then held her breath.
"Amanda's guardsmen," Montgomery said. "They follow her everywhere, but I don't see her here. Do you, John?"
John grunted. "I do not, but she's sure to be nearby. Come on, Montgomery, let's take him to the armory. He'll need a sword of some kind if we're going to train with him later. I still think he needs lessons in horsemastery."
"He doesn't want to ride a horse," Montgomery argued, "not with his arm and all."
"His arm is fine," John said. "Isn't it, Jake?"
"It is better, John," Jake said easily. "Perhaps later."
"Don't you want to learn to ride?" John asked incredulously. "How can you not want to ride?"
"I don't think 'tis that he has no desire." Montgomery defended Jake. "I daresay he will when his arm is better. Fortunately for him, the wound is to his left arm. We'll be about training him with his right straightway."
Amanda listened to them discuss how best to begin Jake's training until their voices faded away. And once she could look around her men and see that they were gone in truth, she came out from her hiding place and considered. She could follow her quarry to the armory, she supposed, but what would it serve her? She had her doubts that Jake would reveal any of his true self to her brothers. If he had some great secret, did it follow that he would confide in two lads of uncertain discretion?
It most certainly did not.
She continued on slowly toward the lists, wondering mightily about their guest.
"My lady?"
She turned to look at Robert of Conyers, a guardsman her father had imported from an estate near her great-grandmother's in France to captain her personal guard. Robert was fierce indeed, but he had been nothing but kind to her, leading her men to follow her on all sorts of ridiculous adventures without complaint.
"Aye, good sir?"
"Are you about more investigating, or…" He paused and looked at her uneasily. "Or…"
"The lists," she announced. "A bit of training there. You needn't come, of course. I'll be safe enough."
He nodded and he and the other two men made her low bows and walked away. Of course, they would regroup near the lists, she knew, and watch her just the same, but at least she would have the illusion of privacy. She made directly for the lists before they changed their minds.
She hadn't begun to actually be about her work of running when it began to rain.
Somehow, she was unsurprised.
It matched her mood perfectly. She wasn't one to allow circumstances to trouble her, or events to depress her, but for the first time in her life, she felt rather hopeless. All her planning, all her schemes and dips into her reserves of courage, all for naught. Her freedom had been snatched before she'd managed to truly have a taste of it. And now she was back where she started: locked in the cage of her beloved home, loving it and hating it at the same time, with marriage the only key available to set her free.
By the saints, a small rest was sounding better all the time.
She outran that tempting thought until she was drenched and she didn't think she could put another foot down. She hunched over with her hands on her thighs, gasping for breath. Robin would have been impressed that it had taken twenty trips around the lists and not just one to wind her so. She would have to write and tell him, though he likely wouldn't believe it unless he saw it himself.
Then she realized, with a start, that someone else might have seen her feat.
A man stood leaning casually against a wall, having conveniently located himself under an overhang that the less sturdy of Artane's guardsmen were wont to use when inclement weather threatened, watching her. He held something folded over his arm. A cloak? Perhaps he was trying to keep it dry for her. Perhaps he was trying to keep it dry for himself.
Or, finally, perhaps she should continue to drive herself into the ground in a manner worthy of one of Robin's more legendary bouts of list-running until her head cleared itself of these damnably foolish thoughts. The man had probably brought something to sit himself upon should he encounter a less-than-hospitable bit of bench.
She came to herself enough to realize that she was gaping at him whilst panting. She quickly straightened, lest he mistake her breathlessness for something it wasn't.
Not that he wasn't breath-stealing.
He turned to hang up what he'd brought, which she could now see was indeed her cloak, on a bracket put there for such purposes, then came across the muddy field toward her. Amanda reminded herself of all the reasons he was unsuitable.
He couldn't wield a sword.
He couldn't ride a horse.
He could barely speak her language.
But, by the saints, he was enough to make her cast those reasons to the wind. Not only his face, but his broad shoulders, his easy gait that was so different from Robin's swagger. This man padded toward her as if he were an animal on the hunt.
She felt decidedly like the prey.
She would have fanned her suddenly warm cheeks, but it was pouring with rain and that should have been enough to cool them.
Jake came to a halt before her and smiled gravely. "Finished?" he asked politely.
Finished? Ah, but she suspected she might never be finished—looking at, listening to, wondering about the man in front of her. But looking was all she could manage at present, and there was no sense in not doing a thorough job of it, so she applied herself immediately to the task.
He stood there, not three paces from her, with his hands clasped behind his back. If she'd been a woman given to it, she would have cast herself fully into a vat of lust. Nicholas's oldest clothes did little to hide Jake's fine form. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought herself facing a nobleman of unimpeachable lineage and limitless power and influence. He carried himself just as her brothers did, with confidence and ease. And if his bearing wasn't enough to weaken her knees, the stark beauty of his face would have been. He looked at her from sea-green eyes that seemed to sear her where they looked, as if he strove to burn her into his memory.
And then, as if he knew the depths of lustful depravity into which she'd tumbled, he smiled.
Just a little smile.
But it almost felled her where she stood.
She grasped frantically at the shreds of good sense she still possessed. No matter the seductive beauty of the peasant before her, he was not for her. She was still trapped in her father's larder until the appropriate dinner guest arrived to demand her as his main course, and, damnation, the rain was increasing, not abating.
"Finished?" she managed, finally. "Ah, nay, I am not."
And with that, she did the most sensible thing she'd done all morning.
She ran away.
She realized, after a time, that she had a companion for her labors. Amanda was acutely aware of Jake loping alongside her so easily, as easily as Robin himself would have. She looked at his feet and was faintly surprised to see boots there. Worn ones, but still serviceable. Perhaps someone had taken pity on him and given him something besides court shoes. Boots were a vast improvement over Nicholas's footwear.
"May I join you?" he asked, as politely as before.
"It seems you have already," she managed.
He only smiled.
It almost undid her.
She made her circuit five more times. It fair killed her to stop, given that Jake wasn't even breathing hard and she didn't want to look weak beside him, but she suspected it might kill her to go on. Besides, she'd already worn herself out that morning—no small feat in itself. She was due a rest.
"I am finished now," she announced, gasping for breath, clutching her side, and wishing she had a place to sit down that didn't require walking to reach it. She pushed her dripping hair out of her eyes and looked at him. "And you?"
"I am here to…" he seemingly searched for words, "to be company."
She couldn't answer. She shivered instead, and it had little to do with the rain.
By the saints, she had to find some control over her galloping feminine sentiments. She would be begging him to wed with her soon if she did not.
"Wait, if you will," he said, pausing to retrieve the cloak, which was indeed hers.
She stood on the side of the lists in the rain and trembled as he put her cloak around her shoulders. He hesitated, then reached out and pulled her braid free. Then he stood back and smiled again, that little smile that spoke of secrets that only she would be allowed to have part in.
She felt her forehead.
She had a fever. She was certain of it.
"I must go in," she said weakly.
"As my lady wishes."
She nodded, then walked quickly back, even though she would have greatly preferred to have limped there. Jake accompanied her silently. She found that to be almost as devastating as running next to him had been. She was desperately aware of him and found herself without a single weapon to fight it.
By the saints, she needed a rest.
She ran up the steps to the great hall, then paused at the door and looked at him.
"I've many important things to do," she said importantly.
He made her a low bow. "As my lady wishes."
By the saints, could the man muster up no other words? She scowled at him and strode into the great hall and back to the stairs, where she could flee up them in peace. She wasted no time tromping up them and preparing to be about her important tasks.
Now, if she only had something important to be doing.
She tidied the chamber she shared with Isabelle—something that took very little time, as Isabelle had taken most of her belongings with her and Amanda had few things of her own. She walked over to the window, sank down upon the stone bench there, and stared out at the rain.
She sighed, sparing a wish for her life of a fortnight ago, when things were simple and all she had to fear were a few overanxious suitors.
She rose and walked to the door before she could think better of it. The saints only knew what sort of mischief her younger brothers were about. Best that she stop them from engaging in it whilst she could.
Or so she told herself.
She honestly couldn't have been less interested in what Jake was doing.
She walked down the stairs and stopped at the bottom when she heard her brothers' voices. She peeked around the wall's edge, much as she had done earlier, and saw her brothers and their student sitting at the high table. They were talking, unsurprisingly, about food.
"Eels?" Jake asked. "Under sauce?"
"You daren't eat them any other way," John said. "Passing foul, though at least here Cook can manage a decent sauce. At Lord Pevensey's keep, the sauces are worse than the meat."
Amanda was suddenly quite grateful she'd grown to womanhood in a place where the food was edible.
"And the king's supper?" Jake asked. "It is better?"
"It had best be," Montgomery said with a laugh. "Though I daresay Henry wouldn't go into a rage over it. Not like King John might have."
"Henry III," Jake said slowly. "He is the king now?"
Amanda scowled. Of course he was the king. Who else?
She continued to listen to Jake, in his suddenly vastly improved French—far improved over what he'd used with herquestion her brother as to the events of the day, the state of the king's armies, the condition of England in the glorious year of Our Lord 1227. It oc
curred to her suddenly, with the same sort of suddenness that made her realize she was almost asleep on her feet, that Jake was far more intelligent than he let on. And her brothers were too stupid to realize it.
He was not at all what he seemed. She couldn't decide if she should be frightened or intrigued.
She jumped suddenly when she saw that he had turned and caught sight of her. Her brothers, sitting not-so-innocently behind him, were grinning.
Damn them.
Amanda walked briskly across the great hall. A pity she'd already exhausted herself in the lists, else she would have gone there straightway. She supposed she could have retreated back upstairs and made for the roof. But that was too wet.
She considered the armory. Nay, too tempting to pinch something to use on any of the three souls behind her who were calling for her to leave the lists be and torture them no longer with her pounding.
She slammed the hall door home with great energy. She looked across the courtyard and espied the chapel. Aye that was the place for her. She had several things to repent of whilst she was there: lying; subterfuge; too much swearing…
And, most importantly, lust.
* * *
Chapter 10
Jake rolled his shoulders as he jogged in place, trying to work the kinks out of his neck and the chill from his bones. Historic homes were drafty in the twenty-first century, but at least most had been modernized with some sort of heating system. Artane in the Middle Ages was just the raw deal—and it was only June. Heaven help him when it was December…
He shook his head. He wasn't going to be there in December. At least not at medieval Artane.
He swung his arms back and forth to warm up and walked over to the window seat before he had the chance to give that too much thought. He pulled the shutters open and was rewarded with a blast of air. Medieval window treatments weren't exactly energy efficient.