Love Above All (11 page)

She longed to demand what he proposed to do
about the harm wrought upon her maiden’s heart. She stopped herself
just in time, before the words could leave her tongue. She didn’t
think Quentin was capable of understanding how a girl’s heart could
become fixed on a man who was then free to torment that heart
however he pleased.

“Norman!” she exclaimed. At the moment, it
was the worst oath she could muster.

“No wonder your brothers tossed you into the
river,” he snarled at her.

While Fionna sought a suitable response to
that cold-blooded remark, Quentin rolled over to face the fire,
keeping his back to her and thus signaling an end to their quarrel.
Fionna took a few deep breaths to calm herself. Having no other
place to spend the night, she lay down beside him with her back
toward him. She grabbed the edge of Quentin’s cloak and hauled it
across herself, not caring if she left him uncovered. He made no
protest.

She could not sleep. She kept thinking about
the groom and the maidservant in her father’s stable, who had
clearly been enjoying themselves. Then she considered the way her
mother and her sister-in-law each dreaded the attentions of an
uncaring husband. She pitied both ladies, for neither of them had
ever experienced the kind of magic Quentin’s hands had worked on
all of her senses.

It was a magic she dearly wanted to repeat,
though after the harsh words she and Quentin had exchanged she
feared he would never again want to touch her so intimately, much
less treat her to the kind of vigorous, exciting thrusts the groom
had expended on his willing lass.

“Must I tie you hand and foot?” Quentin asked
as they were gathering up their possessions in preparation for
leaving the hut. “Or will you agree to ride where I am determined
to go?”

“Oh, my noble Norman lord, are you saying
you’ll trust the word of a foolish Scottish lass?” Fionna snapped
at him. She was infuriated beyond reason by his apparent calmness
while she was torn between the notion of running away from him a
second time and the hope that if she stayed, he’d embrace her again
and tell her he cared about her. The longing she felt to have his
arms around her was terrifying.

“If you give me your word of honor not to
cause further trouble, I will accept it,” he said. “Before you
answer me, however, let me offer a warning. If you attempt to leave
me again, I will beat you. If you try to flee after that, I’ll be
forced to kill you.”

“You would never kill a woman!”

“Can you be certain I won’t? Thanks to your
unbridled impulsiveness the completion of a very important mission
for my king has been delayed and Cadwallon must make my report for
me. Why should I allow you to bedevil me any longer?”

His demeanor was so stern, his tone so
cutting, that Fionna experienced a twinge of fear. Still, she
wasn’t going to submit to his wishes without a final protest.

“I never asked you to keep me with you,” she
reminded him. “You insisted, even after I refused.”

“If you care nothing for your own life,” he
said, “think of the lives of all those who will die if war erupts
between England and Scotland.”

“I heard you tell Lord Walter in Carlisle
that a war is most unlikely,” she exclaimed.

“Don’t imagine you know everything that’s
happening,” Quentin warned. “There are always secret plans, and
spies—” He stopped then, almost as if he thought he’d said too
much.

His remarks shook Fionna’s confidence. Aside
from her brothers’ often-expressed, bitter resentment against the
Norman encroachers, she knew little of the long conflict between
the two countries. She wondered how much, if anything, Quentin knew
about Murdoch and Gillemore’s scheme to create a violent incident
that they devoutly hoped would start the war Quentin was apparently
working to avoid. She was still angry with Quentin, but she hoped
the agreement he had made with King Alexander would bring an end to
the schemes of men on both sides of the border who wanted war. Then
she thought about the spy her brothers had mentioned, the man Colum
was taking to France, to sell to King Louis. She couldn’t do
anything to help that man, but she could help Quentin.

“I will go with you,” she said to him. “I
promise to cause no more problems, so long as you hold to your
promise to help Janet as soon as possible.”

“Agreed.” He responded so quickly that Fionna
decided he had been certain of her compliance before he demanded
it.

“You needn’t try to frighten me with threats
of a beating or murder,” she said, putting haughty irritation into
her voice. “I can no longer be frightened, and I can reason as well
as a man.”

“Can you, indeed?” He drawled the words,
making them into an insult to the reasoning powers she claimed to
possess.

Refusing to bicker with him any longer,
Fionna flounced out of the hut with her saddle and saddlebag slung
over one arm. Quentin followed close behind. In the little shed he
concentrated on saddling his horse, ignoring Fionna and letting her
deal with her own horse. When they were ready to leave she expected
him to offer to help her mount, as he always did at the start of a
day’s ride. This time he ignored her. He swung into his saddle and
sat there, waiting in undisguised impatience until she was on
horseback, too.

“After you,” he said, pointing in the
direction he wanted her to go. “Stay just ahead of me.”

“So I’ll be the first one attacked if there
are bandits in these woods?” She tried to speak the words in
imitation of his cool fury, but she sounded more peevish than
arrogant.

“Do you really think I’m going to allow you
out of my sight?” he asked. “You will ride before me, not after
me.”

“I gave you my word not to cause
trouble.”

Quentin didn’t answer that. He just looked at
her with raised brows and an unreadable expression in his eyes,
until Fionna kicked her horse’s sides and set off in the direction
Quentin had indicated. He stayed right behind her, close enough to
catch her easily if she tried to break away from him.

With new understanding after the passionate
interlude they had shared, Fionna realized his ire was only partly
because she had led him on a chase for two days, thus delaying the
end of his mission. She was sure Quentin was also frustrated as a
result of his forbearance after he’d been aroused into wanting to
use her as a man uses a woman.

When Fionna’s brothers were angry for any
reason at all, they shouted dreadful oaths, or struck out with
their fists. Either way, noise and physical action characterized
the rages of Murdoch and Gillemore. In Fionna’s view, Quentin’s
anger was all the more deadly for being quiet and contained. It was
Quentin’s icy self-control that unnerved her, for it was the same
self-control that had kept her a virgin when she had been all too
willing to give herself to him. She wasn’t sure whether she was
relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t taken advantage of her
naive eagerness, and she couldn’t help speculating on what Quentin
would be like if he ever relinquished his self-control and allowed
himself to be ruled by passion.

In fact, as they rode silently through the
forest she found it impossible to keep her thoughts away from
Quentin, and what they had done in the hut. The rhythmic motion of
her horse between her thighs affected her newly awakened senses
until she was ready to weep with longing. Her aching awareness of
Quentin directly behind her, watching her every move, was enough to
make her grind her teeth to keep herself from pleading with him to
put his arms around her, so she could experience once more his
tenderness and strength, and know the soaring delight only he could
give her.

She told herself she was being ridiculous.
Quentin despised her. She was nothing but trouble to him, and his
arousal when she lay in his arms was no more than a man’s easily
stirred lust.

Quentin called a halt at midday so they could
eat and relieve themselves. He watched Fionna with cold disapproval
when she knelt beside a pool to splash water on her face and
throat. She was so upset by the way he was staring at her that her
hands began to shake and she dribbled water all over the bodice of
her dress.

“You spend your days in damp clothing,”
Quentin said, looking rather pointedly at the fabric clinging to
her breasts. “You will develop an inflammation of the lungs, as my
men do when they grow careless about keeping warm and dry.”

“I promise you, if I were dying of lung
fever, still I would not delay your very important mission any more
than I have already done,” she snarled at him.

“Get back on your horse,” he ordered in a
cold and indifferent tone.

She obeyed him, but she moved slowly and
deliberately, wanting to irritate him. She couldn’t understand how
she could be so angry with Quentin, and yet want to be in his arms,
with his mouth on hers and his hands roving over her body.

By midafternoon she could no longer stand the
prolonged silence between them. If Quentin would not talk to her,
she would talk to him until she forced him to respond.

“This is a barren countryside,” she remarked
as they rode past a ruined farmhouse with a tree growing through
the remains of its roof. “I haven’t seen a village, or even an
inhabited house all day.”

“Few people live in this part of Cumbria,” he
said. “You are looking at the results of a war.”

Fionna digested that information for a few
moments before asking, “Where will we sleep tonight?”

“Probably, under a tree. It’s how I slept the
first night of my search for you.”

They rode a little farther, until Fionna
tried again to break the strained silence. This time she chose
provocation.

“Normans were responsible for all this
destruction, weren’t they?” she asked, sweeping out an arm to
encompass the wilderness through which they were passing. “If any
more of them move into Scotland, they’ll do the same there. That is
what my brothers fear. Seeing this desolation, I can’t blame
Murdoch and Gillemore for trying to stop the invasion by whatever
means they can find, or by any incident they can create.”

“The king of the Scots invited his Norman
friends to settle in the lowlands,” Quentin said. “There is no
invasion, only peaceful settlement on lands granted by the
king.”

“The intruders are seizing Scottish land from
honest Scots,” Fionna declared, using the argument she had heard so
often from her brothers. “Then they refuse to allow free hunting or
fishing on the land they claim to own – as if anyone could own
birds on the wing or the fish living in a stream! The Normans think
they own the people, too. And that, my lord Quentin, is contrary to
Scottish custom. Free Scots will not be made into serfs!” That last
statement was Murdoch’s rallying cry to his friends.

At first Quentin did not respond to her
remarks, but a little while later he asked, “What did you mean when
you said your brothers will try to stop the Normans by any
means?”

“I heard them talking,” she responded, glad
of a subject that would keep her mind off her longing for the man
who rode so near to her, yet kept himself so distant from her in
mind and heart. “My brothers want to stir up trouble along the
border.”

“There is always trouble along the border,”
Quentin said.

“They are hoping if they can cause enough
trouble, King Alexander will command his Norman friends to return
to England.”

“He won’t. The Normans who live in Scotland
are there to stay. Men like de Brus and FitzAlan cannot be
intimidated by a pack of bare-legged savages.”

Fionna bit her lip, refusing to be drawn into
an argument on the subject. Personally, she thought her brothers
were savages, but she wasn’t going to admit it to any Norman.

Another long silence fell between them until
Quentin said, “So that’s why they tried to kill you. It was because
you discovered what they were planning. It was nothing to do with
your sister. Do you even have a sister?”

“Of course, I have!” She turned in her saddle
to glare at him. “How dare you suggest I’ve lied to you?”

“The story you’ve told me could be an
elaborate scheme to draw me back into Scotland,” Quentin said.
“Perhaps your brothers never tried to kill you at all. Perhaps you
are working with them.”

“I am not!” She pulled hard on the reins,
stopping her horse until Quentin drew abreast of her. She was
afraid if she told him the whole truth he’d insist on riding back
across the border all alone, to face down Murdoch and Gillemore and
their friends. If he did, they’d kill him without mercy. Quentin
would surely kill a few Scots before he died. Then her brothers
would see to it the incident was inflamed and embellished until the
war Quentin wanted to avoid was waged over his body.

Fionna wanted to know Quentin was safe in
England. She wanted her sister to be safe, too. She was taken aback
by the order in which she listed those desires to herself. When had
Quentin superseded Janet in her thoughts? She took a calming breath
and spoke with quiet insistence.

“Janet is a pawn. She’s to be Colum’s reward
for the work he has done for Murdoch. I’ve told you this already.
Quentin, please believe me. Janet’s life may depend on us. I’m
desperate to find her, to see and touch her, and be sure she’s
safe. Why else would I have fled from your protection?”

Quentin regarded her somberly, wondering if
he dared trust anything she said, or if she really was her
brothers’ agent. All he knew for certain was that Fionna’s physical
reaction to his lovemaking was unfeigned. And she truly was a
virgin. But once, in Anjou, while on a secret mission for King
Henry, Quentin had known a youthful nun, also assuredly a virgin
after spending all of her short life in a convent, who could lie
with a straight, pure face while holding a rosary in one hand and
with her other hand resting on the holy altar of her abbey church.
If a nun could l