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

She sensed that the man who called himself Wulfgar was gathering himself to dismount and braced herself, but the moment he withdrew his support she began to slip sideways, lost her balance and fell off the horse.
He made a grab for her and managed to break her fall, but the jolt sent pain flooding through her just the same. This time he didn’t bother to toss her over his shoulder, he merely encircled her waist with one arm and carried her by his side as he might a bundle. Draped across one forearm, Alinor could see little in the dimness beyond the dead leaves of the forest floor.
He knelt finally and half pushed, half dragged her into a shelter of some sort. Alinor could tell nothing about his expression and thus nothing about his mood or intentions. She was not left long to worry the matter, however. As soon as he’d settled her, he bound her feet, turned and left.
Alinor stared indignantly at the opening for some moments, wondering if he would return. With surprise and a good deal of dismay, she heard him mount his horse and ride off again.
That puzzled her far more than anything else that he’d done.
She’d been given an opportunity to escape, she realized … but how much of an opportunity was it, really?
She was bound hand and foot now, weak, numb from both the cold and from being bound so long, and she was in a strange land that she knew nothing of.
It occurred to her after a little bit that he might have abandoned her for good. Perhaps he didn’t have the stomach to slay a helpless female outright and had simply decided to leave her and allow nature to take its course?
Well, she was of no mind to simply lie still and allow herself to grow weaker until she hadn’t the strength to free herself. She began working at her bindings, twisting her wrists and hands until the stickiness of blood convinced her that she’d loosened the thongs. If she had, it was still not enough, however, for, try though she might, she could not pull her hands free.
It occurred to her finally that he had not tied the gag tightly as it had been before, but had merely pulled it up to cover her mouth, and she began trying to nudge the gag down her face. She was sweating with effort by the time she’d managed it and dizzy from exhaustion. She gnawed at the thong that bound her wrist for a time but weariness finally got the best of her and she dozed.
She woke to bright day. Though she had no notion of how much time had passed, her body screamed for attention. In desperation she managed to struggle upright and began to work on the bindings around her ankles. She was nearly weeping before she managed to untie the knots with her numb fingers and struggle to her knees. With an effort, she grasped the hem of her gown and crawled on her knees through the opening.
She found that she was not in a clearing as she’d thought. The shelter was little more than a box made of branches and covered with leaves and moss, blending in so completely with its surroundings that it was almost invisible before she’d taken a half dozen steps from it. She was of no mind to go far, however, only far enough to ensure a little privacy to relieve herself.
It was not an easy task to accomplish with her hands still bound before her, but finally she managed to situate her shirts.
When she’d finished, she looked around the forest, trying to remember which way she’d come so that she could retrace her steps.
To her dismay, she realized that she’d been so filled with need that she’d paid little heed. No matter which direction she turned, she could see nothing that stood apart from anything else. Finally, deciding upon a direction, she gripped her skirts in her fist and carefully picked her way through the woods. After traveling perhaps twenty paces, she looked around again.
There was no sign of the shelter.
* * * *
A sense of triumph and anticipation sustained Wulfgar throughout the arduous pace he set himself as he crossed and re-crossed his tracks, led the men on his trail in a wide circle that doubled back upon itself, then zigzagged into nowhere. They tracked him doggedly throughout much of the day, but, as he’d expected, they reached a point of frustration at last when they realized they would not be able to retrieve the woman without help. At last, they abandoned the hunt and rode off to inform their master that they had lost his bride.
He grinned wolfishly, envisioning his enemy’s face when the news was brought to him.
When the men-at-arms had disappeared, he turned his weary mount around and wove another round-about trail to the place where he’d concealed the woman. The moment he thought of her, however, an image of her rose into his mind’s eye and he frowned.
When he’d heard his enemy had sent for a bride, he had not seen beyond the chance the gods had given him to avenge his loss—a bride for a bride. He’d imagined taking the nameless, faceless woman and violating her as that pretty faced French spawn of Satan had taken and defiled his own bride. He’d envisioned the tragedy playing itself out in reverse, where he had crushed the heart from Jean-Pierre, duc de l’Cran as his own heart had been crushed when he had discovered the lifeless body of his beloved Freda.
An outlaw now in his own land, he had returned from the great battle, nigh as dead as those he’d left behind on the fields, only to discover that the Norman devils had taken all that had once been his and crushed those who stood in their path.
And his gentle Freda, whom he had taken to wife little more than a week before he’d been called to fight, had been so cruelly used by Jean-Pierre and his men that she had taken her own life.
The burning need for revenge was all that had kept him alive in the time since.
He would let no one deprive him of tasting it at long last.
Yet, he could not banish the sense of uneasiness that had begun to creep insidiously through his mind. The woman was nameless and faceless no longer. She had told him she was Alinor of Arrus. She had gazed up at him in terror through the eyes of a frightened doe—huge in her small, pointed face, soft and full of innocence—and painfully young.
His gut clenched. Determinedly, he summoned the feel of her womanly form. Slight as she was, she was soft and rounded enough to please any man. To his relief, his body responded instantly to the memory of her soft bottom pressing against his groin, to the feel of her plump, pliant breasts resting against the arm he had held her with.
The anxiety, hardly acknowledged, that he would not be able to follow through with his plan receded. In its place, a new urgency grew. He had not lain with a woman since he had lost Freda. He would take the Norman bitch and use her to slake his lust and appease his need for revenge. She was no more to him that any other possession of the duc, an object only, and, as his possession, an extension of the duc himself.
Frustration, fear and rage filled him when he arrived back at the place where he had left the girl and discovered her gone; fear because it had leapt immediately to mind that she had fallen victim to some wild creature, or some two legged animal had stumbled upon her; frustration because he had intended to see the deed through before she could further corrupt his resolve; and rage because he had been thwarted by a mere slip of a girl.
There was no sign, however, that she had been savaged-- no blood, only the discarded binding, and signs indicating that she had crawled from the lean to. Kneeling, he searched the ground carefully and finally discerned the direction she had taken.
She had not gone far and she looked so relieved to see him that he felt his rage abandon him in a sickening rush.
"Monsieur!" Alinor gasped when Wulfgar appeared, so relieved to discover that she hadn’t been abandoned in what appeared to be an unending woodland that she had to fight the urge to burst into tears of relief. "I became lost," she added a little uneasily when she saw that he was flushed with anger.
He strode toward her, bent at the waist and pressed his face so closely to hers that they were practically nose to nose. Alinor looked back at him wide-eyed, but unflinching. "I will bind you better next time," he said through gritted teeth.
Alinor blinked, looked at him blankly, but he’d spoken far too quickly for her to grasp what he’d said. In any case, she was captivated by his eyes. They were the color of emeralds. "Monsieur!" she gasped. "You ‘ave beautiful eyes!"
He looked disconcerted for several moments. A dark flush stole up his neck to his hairline and he straightened abruptly, studying her face carefully. He could see no sign that she was being deliberately provocative—either to test his temper or in a flirtatious manner. Nor did she appear to be short on wit. Her eyes did not have that blank look of the slowwitted. They gleamed with intelligence.
After a moment, he grasped her upper arm without another word and began marching her back toward the temporary encampment.
Alinor did her best to keep up, but his stride was far longer than her own and she found she had to run to keep from being snatched off her feet. Belatedly, embarrassment set in. Her mother had beaten her many times for her thoughtless tongue—much use it had done her for she had never mastered ‘thought before speech’ and feared she never would.
It might well be the death of her.
He was angry, she realized abruptly, because he had been kind enough not to leave her bound too tightly and she had taken them off and wandered away. She’d known he would be angry if he discovered she had removed them. In point of fact, it had been her intention only to relieve herself and return and replace the bindings so that he would never know that she’d left.
She would have except that she had not been able to find her way back. She had a bad feeling, however, that even if she could explain something that complicated in his own tongue he would be no happier with it. "I did not run," she said a little breathlessly.
He didn’t so much as glance in her direction.
"I had need," she added a little desperately.
He halted abruptly, looked her over frowningly.
She gestured a little helplessly toward the woods.
Something flickered in his eyes, understanding, she thought, but in the next moment he was moving again.
They reached the tiny clearing surrounding the encampment within moments, a disconcerting indication that she had wandered all around it for hours when she had practically been upon it the entire time. She had no time to feel embarrassment for her incompetence, however.
He pushed her none too gently onto a pile of furs and followed her down, shoving a hand under her skirts. Alinor gasped, a shock running through her as his hand moved up her thigh and cupped her femininity. Something hard and long, like the root of a tree, was pressed brusingly against her thigh.
She had known this would come. She had battled all day between the certainty that she must prepare herself for this and the certainty that she would be far better off if she could simply not think of it at all.
Fear seized her, but she closed her eyes and her mind to it, bracing herself. Abruptly, her stomach, which had demanded sustenance off and on throughout the day, once again voiced complaint.
When the man stilled, she opened her eyes to look up at him.