Behold the Dawn (16 page)

They chewed in silence, and she could feel his eyes on her as they ate. She was almost glad Annan hadn’t let him build a fire. The darkness gave her an anonymity she would probably never again have once the lad saw her by daylight. She rather doubted this Glasgow wretch had ever seen a noblewoman in such an intimate setting.

He smacked his lips with finality and slapped crumbs from his legs. “So I see Annan finally found this Earl of Keaton he’s been looking for?”

She lifted her head. A queer flutter, half fear, half something else, prickled in the back of her brain. “He was looking for us?”

“Aye. He wanted to warn the earl about something that Baptist fellow had told him. Ever met the Baptist? Ask me and I’ll tell you there’s a loose rock clattering round in
his
skull.”

“I—” Her mouth opened, but she found she had no words. Annan had been looking for Lord William? Was it possible his very presence at Acre’s siege, wounds and all, was because he had come to extricate William from the straits into which Mairead had plunged him?

Aye, it was possible. He did rather seem to have a knack for hauling less fortunate people out of harm’s way, herself among them. But the idea was a far cry from the gold-seeking tourneyer he proclaimed himself to be.

“So—” Marek leaned forward, an elbow propped on either knee. “Where is the earl?”

“He’s—” The last thing she needed was to give this wide-jawed servant news of her plight. “He’s still in Acre.”

“Ah…” The lad let the word linger long enough to indicate he was rather hoping for a bit more of the details. When she didn’t speak, he started a new tack. “Um. And how was it then that you came to be with Master Annan?”

She smiled. The lad’s manners were rough, yes, and he was decidedly incorrigible. But at least she would hear no muttered platitudes from this boy. Not that she’d had to deal with any from Annan over the last few days anyway.

“Apparently,” she said, brushing the last of the crumbs from the shawl and rising to her feet, “my lord trusted your master.”

“Well, that’s something.”

She gave him a sharp look. “You don’t trust him?”

“Of course, lady.” He stood. “He saved me life, remember? I’d be dead or in the mud of the streets weren’t for him.”

“Then why say that like you did?”

“Because, I told you, he’s a troll. He minds his own business, and I’ve yet to meet the man who knew him well enough to trust him. ‘Cept maybe that Baptist person.”

The lines in her forehead cleared. “The Baptist trusts Annan?” The same Baptist who Annan swore was a deluded fool?

“Well,
maybe
he trusts him.” Marek shrugged and turned half away, as though he’d spoken too much. “Trusted him enough to tell Annan your earl was in trouble anyhow.”

She pressed her lips together and took a step forward. “Did Annan come here because he knew Lord William was in trouble?”

“He didn’t come to gain absolution.”

Mairead bit her lip. Annan had all but said he wished the Baptist dead, and yet the Baptist trusted him enough to inform him of his plans and his concerns?

“How do you know the Baptist?” she asked.

“I don’t. Never knew he was more’n a name ‘fore we ran afoul of this rather disagreeable count person in Bari.”

“But your master knows him. How?” She took another step.

He turned back to face her. The night sky was just bright enough that she could see wrinkles of thought between his brows. He couldn’t possibly be able to understand her intensity. He wouldn’t be able to understand how the Baptist and everything he did was entwined so inextricably with her life, with her every breath.

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Marek said. “I don’t think he even hears half my questions, and I was ailing on the voyage over anyway.”

“You must know something.”

“All I ken is that neither of them like that bishop too much. I sweated myself half dead the whole time we was in Acre, thinking Annan was going to kill him.”

Mairead’s nostrils flared, filling all her senses with the damp night. “But he didn’t kill him.”

“He’d’ve gone straight to Hell for sure. He hasn’t taken the Crusading oath, you know.”

“The Baptist trusts him…” She shook her head and looked down to the shawl dragging in the sand at her feet. If the Baptist trusted Annan, then perhaps she had misjudged him. Never had she known the Baptist’s judgment to be wrong, and Lord William had lived by his faith in the man ‘til the day he died.

Marek tilted his head to look her in the face. “You know, lady,
you
could ask the master about this Baptist bloke.”

She gave half a smile. “He’d bite my head off.”

“Oh, he’d bite
my
head off. Wouldn’t think twice about it. But not yours.”

She flicked her gaze up to his face and let the smile reach both corners of her mouth. “Is that so?”

The flash of white through the darkness told her he was grinning. “Well, you have rather a better chance than I do at least. And anyway he barks harder than he bites.”

The smile faded. “I’ve seen his bite.”

Marek chuckled and leaned a little closer. “But—and on this I stake my meager life—he doesn’t bite ladies.”

On the other side of the river, across from the shoddy camp where Marcus Annan brooded on the outskirts and Lady Mairead and the lad murmured together, Gethin the Baptist lay on his stomach. Fist-sized stones pressed into the flesh of his belly and grated against his bones. The night burned cold on the bare skin of his legs and the back of his tonsured head; he could feel the gooseflesh pricking his chapped skin into tiny ridges.

For hours, he had lain here, cold and alone, the wind drowning even the whispers of the rodents in the brush. He had been watching them—all of them—from the moment Annan and the countess had appeared, and his heart had throbbed with the knowledge of his successful hunt.

Had he so desired, he could have slipped silently into the waters of the Orontes and crossed over, unknown to them, in but a few moments. The sharp cold in his bones would have been more than worth the shock, maybe even fear, he would find on their faces.

But it was not yet time. He would wait a while longer, until he could discover Annan’s plans. Why did Marcus Annan run from Acre, choosing instead to escort the widow of the dead earl to sanctuary?

He pursed his lips, his heavy brows pinching over his eyes. If Annan had been swayed by the countess’s beauty, it was a step from the well-beaten path of solitude that had trailed him for the last sixteen years. And if he shielded her out of some sense of honor…

Gethin’s exhale rasped. If that were the reason, it would be ironic indeed—that Annan would run from God-given duty in pursuit of some pale mockery of his own construction.

Another gust of wind brushed the nape of his neck and slithered down his back. He drew a careful breath, trying to calm the angry energy that had burned in him for so long.

All was silent now across the river, save the vague munching of the horses in the shrubbery. The lady and the lad had bedded down. Annan still stood, arms crossed over his chest, his silhouette black against the deep blue of the night sky. Perhaps he was contemplating the even darker blackness of his soul.

Soon, very soon, Gethin would find the means to force Marcus Annan—that blaspheming façade of a man—to face his duty, to forsake his lies, to join his quest for justice…

Soon.

Chapter XI

TWO DAYS AFTER finding Marek, Annan guided the gray courser away from the dwindling waters of the Orontes River. The port where the river debouched into the sea lay too far into Saracen territory to risk searching for a ship. Their best chance of gaining passage to Venice would still be found in Constantinople, which was yet a week’s ride to the northwest.

They had been riding in the shadows of dusk for some twenty minutes, looking for a place to rest, when first he caught sight of the shadow on the horizon behind them.

His chest seized, his arm jerking a few inches closer to the sword strapped against the pommel.

Mairead, the tired lines in her face only inches from his, frowned and turned to look for herself. “What?”

He let his breath out carefully. “Nothing.”

It probably
was
nothing, an overreaction caused by a lingering sunspot in his vision. But he didn’t like it. Too many days had passed without anyone crossing their path. Sooner or later, someone was going to ride over the horizon. And then there would be trouble.

“It was nothing,” he repeated.

“What was it? You saw something?”

“I saw a spot, lady.”

He caught her frown out of the corner of his eye as he turned back, but it wasn’t mingled with fear—and for that he was grateful. Over the past few days her mistrust of him seemed to have abated. Whether due to Marek’s jovial influence or merely some inner strength of her own, he didn’t know.

He twisted in his saddle to look at Marek riding some half-dozen paces behind the courser. “We’ll stop in this dell to the right here.”

Marek stood in his stirrups to look, then scowled. “T’ain’t no boughs to make her ladyship a couch.”

“She’ll sleep on the ground—”

“I’ll sleep on the ground,” Mairead said.

Annan twisted to look at her. Marek had made her a bed every night since he had met her. Annan had thought she would resent his refusal to accommodate that courtesy, unavoidable though it was.

A smile lurked at the corners of her mouth. “Were it not unwise, I believe you’d provide me both boughs for a bed
and
a fire.”

He squinted at her. “You believe that, do you?” Inwardly, he cursed the reflex that turned the question into a challenge.

But again she surprised him. The smile ripened on her lips. “I’ve heard tell that you have rather more respect for the weaker vessel than you’d like to show.” Her expression was almost teasing, but he sensed the hesitation hidden in her gaze. She was testing him, taking a chance, making an effort to reach past the shields they had both erected.

He swallowed and made himself speak softly, almost a whisper, to keep the growl from his voice. “Is that so?”

“Aye.”

“Well—” He glanced over to where Marek was leading his horse into the dell, talking his usual gibberish to the animal. “Marek never did learn mouths were made on hinges so they could be shut every now and then.”

“Did no one ever tell you mouths were made on hinges so they might be
opened
every now and then?”

“Marek’s mentioned it once or twice.”

A few paces away from Marek’s palfrey, Annan drew the courser to a halt and dismounted. For the first time, Mairead kept her place on the pillion and waited for him to help her down. He lifted her carefully—not wanting to jar this sudden burst of good humor. If he could keep her fear at arm’s length for the rest of their journey, he would ask nothing more.

He set her on the ground. “What else did Marek tell you?”

“That you’re a troll.”

“Ah.” He shot another glance to where Marek was whistling one of his
troubadour
songs as he unsaddled his mount. “Well, if the lad possesses no other virtue, at least he’s truthful.”

Mairead sobered, and he wondered if the admission had been a mistake.

“He also told me you came to Acre to help Lord William.”

Annan’s back stiffened. “Is that what he thinks?”

Her eyes looked huge in the gathering darkness, and he could see the tears misting on their surfaces. “Didn’t you?” Something in her voice—some note of pleading hope—tore at him.

He couldn’t very well tell her that he didn’t know
why
he had come to Acre—that it had been a mere impulse. That he had found Lord William only by some strange twist of fate. That he could hardly have helped him even had he found him earlier. What
could
he tell her?

“Had I been able, I would have saved him for you.”

A tear broke free of her lashes and slid down her cheek. She forced a smile. “If that is true, then I have misjudged you.” Another tear dropped down the other cheek, sliding all the way past her chin.

He knew he should turn and go, should leave. He could do nothing for his own grief… how could he heal hers? Better to leave her to cry her silent tears alone.

But he stayed, his eyes on the tear track shining against her pale cheek. “He deserved to be mourned. He was a man deserving of a love that would remember him.”

She wiped the tear aside and looked away. “It is not love that remembers him. It is just a woman.” She walked a few paces behind the horse and wrapped her arms round her body.

Annan went to the courser and laid a hand on the animal’s neck. The horse, already half asleep, cocked a hip and grunted.

“What did you name him?” He managed to keep his voice low, but the growl surfaced anyway.

She turned halfway around, one hand reaching to smooth aside another tear. “What?”

“The courser—what did you name him?”

Her eyebrow arched despite the tremble in her lip. “You’re certain you want to know?”

When he didn’t respond, she turned all the way around. “I named him Airn.”

“Airn.” He tugged the girth loose and let it drop.

“Aye. You approve?”

“Better than what Marek would have come up with.”

Marek, squatting next to his palfrey with a hoof in his lap, peered beneath the horse’s belly. “What’s that?”

“I said the lady names horses better than do you.”

Marek snorted. “And how would you ken?”

Annan pulled the saddle from the courser’s back and set it on end. A cool wind whispered past, blowing the sun-warmed homespun of his loose tunic against his back. He tossed another glance at the horizon, but it was too dark now to see anything out of place.

Mairead drifted to the horse’s head and pulled his forehead against her chest. “You think someone is following us, don’t you?”

“Just being careful.” If indeed someone were back there, they would find out in time enough.

For a moment, everything was silent, even the horses. Annan rubbed the courser’s back with the heel of his hand and listened to the insistent whisperings of the wind. A shiver danced across his shoulder blades, and he leaned closer to the horse, reaching one arm over its back to rub the other side.