"McBride, Goldie - Wulfgar" - читать интересную книгу автора (McBride Goldie)

She wondered, if Jean-Pierre paid, if man would return her. Or would he merely use her to rob Jean-Pierre, to taunt him, and then slay her?
Such speculation was useless at this point. It seemed unlikely that he would win free of the camp with her. Jean-Pierre’s men surrounded them. Big as he was, and no matter how competent a fighter, he could not hope to best them all.
Pulling her to her feet, he produced a length of rope and bound her wrists, so tightly she couldn’t contain a moan of pain. He stopped abruptly, studying her, she knew, in the darkness. Her heart skipped several beats while she waited see what he would do and he, apparently, waited to see if she would try to sound the alarm. To her surprise, he loosened the bonds slightly. Gratitude filled her, and hope. He could not, surely, use her cruelly if he could show concern over so slight an injury?
When he’d finished binding her wrists, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. The impact of connecting with his hard shoulder knocked the wind from her. She stiffened as she fought for breath, but he did not appear to notice her distress. Turning, he tossed something onto the pallet he had pulled her from and then made his way toward the back of the tent. Emerging through the slit he’d cut in it, he paused, almost seeming to sniff the wind for the scent of the men who lay sleeping on their pallets.
After that brief hesitation, he struck off toward the tree line, moving as silently past the sleeping men as a wraith.
* * * *
"Je suis Alinor d’Arrus," Alinor told him who she was in little more than a whisper when at last her captor removed her gag. They had traveled miles it seemed through the woods before they had come at last upon a small clearing where a horse had awaited. Without a word, he had tossed her up onto the front of the saddle, climbing up behind her while she struggled frantically to maintain her balance. Settling, he caught her as she lost the battle and righted her, holding her snugly against his hard belly with one hand and gathering the reins in the other. Almost as an after thought, he had tugged the gag down so that she could breathe more freely.
He did not respond to her tentative effort of communication, except by a grunt, which allowed a good deal of room for interpretation. Alinor wondered whether he hadn’t really heard her—since she had been afraid to speak too loud for fear of angering him—if he did not understand her language, or if he was simply not of the frame of mind to allow her to draw him into any sort of conversation.
She frowned. Her mother had thought it imperative that she learn to speak at least enough words of the peasantry of England to direct the servants, but there had been little time to learn once she had located someone who claimed knowledge of the Saxon tongue.
The moon had risen above the tops of the trees before she reached a point in her mental search that she was fairly certain she had recalled the correct words to ask the questions she desperately needed answers for. With an effort, she swiveled around to look up at her captor.
Her heart seemed to jerk to a halt as she looked up at him. His face, concealed by the night as much as revealed by moonlight, was a terrifying mask of harsh planes and angles. His eyes, deep set beneath his straight, black brows, were nothing more than black pits. The first thing that leapt into her mind was ‘devil’. "Oo are you?" she gasped in a frightened whisper.
Instead of answering immediately, he pulled the horse to a halt, grasped the gag that he’d pulled down around her throat earlier, and tugged it up once more until it rubbed the underside of her nostrils.
"Wulfgar," he growled as he kicked the horse into motion once more.































Chapter Two


Alinor was too weak with fear even to feel a great deal of shock when the man pulled her gag up once more. Anger finally supplanted it, that he’d gagged her again when she had made every effort to speak quietly, but she was hardly in a position to argue the matter even if he had not made it impossible to complain.
She faced forward again, sitting stiffly erect. He allowed it all of two seconds before pulling her tightly against his chest once more. Briefly, she struggled to pull away, but her anger had not routed fear altogether and, in any case, she soon saw the gesture was useless. In a physical battle of wills, there was no contest.
Slowly, the tension she’d tried very hard to retain slipped away as weariness set in. She relaxed and, to her surprise, slept. It was still dark when she woke, but the black had given way to a deep gray and she thought it must me nearing dawn.