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A smidgen of worry nudged at Hugh’s mind. “How many women marry their last husband’s executioner?”
“Ye didn’t execute him. Not exactly. An’ anyway, he deserved it. I don’t suppose ye’ll be wanting my services this night?” Wharton shook out his bedroll.
“Nay. I have no need of your services tonight.” Hugh glanced back at his tent. He’d left Edlyn sleeping, but he had the urge to wake her again. For some reason, he needed to imprint himself on her, and he needed to do it tonight. With only half a mind on his words, he said, “Have the sheriff hang the reavers as soon as we leave Eastbury.”
Wharton paused in the act of kicking the already sleeping squires. “Not first thing in th’ morning?”
“’Twill upset my lady. She developed a tender place for those reavers.”
“Move, ye varlets!” Wharton used his foot to clear a space for his bedroll. “’Tis odd. They seemed to know her more than simple reavers should know.”
Alarm jangled in Hugh’s mind. “Why do you say that?”
“When we said they’d hang fer trying t’ rape a lady, they groveled. They said they never would have touched her.”
“Flimsy prattle.” Hugh dismissed that.
“I thought they meant it.” Wharton scratched as he lowered himself to the ground. “They’d been watching her, I think. It sounded as if ’twas her they’d been planning t’ capture. Not just any woman, but Edlyn, countess of Jagger.”
The rumble of men’s voices woke Edlyn, but her eyelids were so weighted she thought it would take a mill wheel to lift them. She thought about prying them open with her fingers, but that would involve moving her hand from wherever it rested.
She wiggled her fingers.
Ah, her hand lay beneath her cheek. Close to her eyelids. Very close. As the abbess always said—
Without use of mill wheel or fingers, Edlyn’s eyes sprang open. Lady Corliss. The abbey. She observed the dim sunlight that entered the open tent flap. Morning Mass. She’d missed them all!
The men’s babble died. A large shadowy shape stood up from the table where the voices had originated, moved across the tent floor, and knelt beside her. “You’re awake.” Hugh’s voice. Hugh’s now-familiar touch on her cheek. “I was getting worried.”
“How late…?” Her voice came out raspy.
Hugh snapped his fingers. “Mid-morning.” Another shadowed figure came to his side and gave him something, then withdrew. Hugh lifted her head and placed a goblet to her lips. She drank greedily, and when she had finished, he said, “You’re hoarse this morning. Too much moaning last night, I suppose.”
She planted her hand on his chest and pushed, and he sat down hard. The men at the table laughed, but Hugh laughed too. This morning, he no longer cared if his troop mocked him. He’d extracted his revenge last night.
If only she hadn’t enjoyed it quite so thoroughly.
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “It’s a misty morning, not good for anything but sleep.”
“I have to go back to the abbey.” Although how she was going to get dressed with all those men sitting around, she didn’t know.
“Why?”
He didn’t sound hostile, but that single brief word didn’t bode well for her plans. “If I am to leave this place with you, I need to pack my belongings.” Then it occurred to her she was assuming much. “That is…I am supposed to go with you?”
“You’ll go with me.” He gathered her hair in his hand and moved it off her shoulder, then covered her shoulder with his palm.
His silent gesture of possessiveness made her uneasy, and she asked pertly, “May one ask where?”
“To Roxford Castle. I am to take possession of Roxford’s lands as well as his title.”
“Roxford.” A face flashed before her. Long and thin, handsome, intelligent, and…cruel. Edmund Pembridge, now the former earl of Roxford.
Robin’s crony.
“Do you know him?”
“Nay.” She denied it, although she didn’t know why. It was, perhaps, the instinctive reaction of a woman made uncomfortable by the admiration of a man.
