Susan Wiggs - At The King's Command

The mare jerked her head to the side. The reins slipped from the gypsy’s grasp. Capria slid to a stop, wheeled, and charged back the way she had come.

“No!” The thief’s faint cry carried across the undulating downs along the river. She groped for the flying reins, but the whiplike length of leather eluded her.

Stephen took a dark pleasure in her struggle. A lesser rider would have fallen, possibly to her death, but the woman’s legs stayed tight around the horse’s girth, her feet firmly in the stirrups.

With her throat locked in terror and her hands gripping the mare’s gray mane, Juliana exhorted the horse to turn, or at the very least to stop.

But the stubborn creature only did so when it reached a large man standing beside a horse in the middle of the road. Catching the loose rein, he held out a treat in his other hand.

A crushing sense of defeat caved in on Juliana, but she gave herself not a moment for regrets. Even before the mare came to a full stop, she hit the ground running.

Her head jerked back, and she felt a tearing pain. She loosed a low, throaty scream. The villain had hold of her long braid.

She kicked out with her bare feet, bruising them against the man’s tall boots. She scratched, digging her claws into his neck, his ears, anywhere she could reach.

The fight lasted mere seconds. With perfunctory swiftness, he used the leather reins to lash her wrists together.

“Now then.” His voice was a deep rumble of anger.

“Pavlo!” Juliana screamed.

The dog lunged. A hundredweight of muscle and fur hurled itself at the unsuspecting man.

Pavlo’s yelp of pain pierced the air. Juliana blinked in amazement. Somehow, the man had grabbed Pavlo’s crimson vellat collar and twisted, choking off the dog’s windpipe.

“It would be a pity,” he said, his tone infuriatingly blasé, “to destroy so magnificent an animal. But I shall, wench, unless you command it off the attack.”

Juliana did not hesitate. Nothing, not even her own freedom, was more precious to her than Pavlo. “Let up, Pavlo,” she said in Russian. “Easy, boy.”

The dog submitted, relaxing his knotted muscles and emitting a strangled whine. The man eased his grip on the collar and then let go. “I wonder,” he said. “Is this a case for the sheriff or the palace warden?”

“No!” Juliana had learned to loathe and fear the sheriffs of England. She plunged to her knees in front of her captor, her bound hands held high in supplication. “My lord, I beg you! Do not turn me over to the sheriff!”

“Christ’s bones, woman.” His face flushed with chagrin, he gave her sleeve a tug. “Get up. I mislike begging.”

Heaving a sigh of resignation. Juliana stood. Vaguely she became aware of movement high on the walk between the two towers of the distant palace gate, but her gaze stayed riveted on her captor. He was garbed as a gentleman, in a costume of such exaggerated virility that she blushed. An abbreviated doublet allowed his white shirt to billow forth. Huge sleeves with clever slashings bloomed from the armholes. Tight particolored hose hugged his long legs, his muscular thighs, and culminated in an immense codpiece all decked with silver braid.

A large hand, surprisingly gentle, touched her under the chin and drew her gaze upward. “Nothing but trouble there,” he said, a faint note of cynical amusement in his voice.

With the fire in her cheeks intensifying, she studied his face. He was cleanshaven, an attribute that never failed to shock her, for Russian and gypsy men alike always wore full beards. Framed by a mane of wheat-colored hair, this man’s face was smooth and stark, with chiseled angles that bespoke strength—and intimidating power.

Fear fluttered in her chest. It was his eyes that discomfited her. They were unusual, of the palest, opaque blue, cold as moonstones. She peered into the icy blankness and was startled at what she saw there. A hard, tight pleasure. As if he had enjoyed the chase.

Suddenly the thought of being handed over to the sheriff did not seem so dire as tarrying in the company of this huge, forbidding lord.

But instinct told her not to show fear. She tossed her head. “You’ve got your horse back. She’s a disobedient nag anyway, so why don’t you let me go on my way?”

The man’s mouth tightened. His version of a sardonic smile, she decided.

“Disobedient?” Absently he fed the mare a morsel from a pouch that hung from his wide, ornate belt. “Nay, just greedy. Capria learned long ago that to come to my whistle meant to win a bit of marzipan.”

Before she could catch herself, Juliana mouthed the unfamiliar word.

“Almond sugar,” the man said pleasantly enough. He held out a pasty-looking morsel. “Would you like some?”

She turned up her nose in resentment. The horse snatched at the tidbit.

“Where did you learn to ride like that?” her captor asked.

Juliana hesitated, wondering which lie to tell. If she admitted she had polished her considerable skills with the gypsies, it would endanger the band, for the Romany people were rarely welcome among gentlefolk. Unexpectedly, she heard herself blurting out the truth. “I learned from my father’s riding master. In Novgorod, a kingdom of Russia north of Muscovy.”

The man lifted one tawny eyebrow. “Not only a horse thief, but a lunatic, as well. How long has it been since you escaped Bedlam?”

“Not only a bully, but a braying ass, too,” she shot back.

“Lord Wimberleigh!” A man in palace livery came pounding along the road. “You’ve collared the horse thief, then.”

“It appears that I have, Sir Bodely.”

“Well done, my lord, and you gave His Majesty a few moments of diversion in the process. Though I trow he’ll not look kindly on losing the bet.”

“Your prisoner, Sir Bodely,” Wimberleigh said with a mocking bow. He grinned at Juliana. “The palace warden’s thief taker, at your service.”

Sir Bodely’s brows beetled together. “A wench, is it? Looks gypsy to me.” With swift, jerky movements, he bound her hands with coarse rope and gave the discarded reins to Lord Wimberleigh.

From a belt overhung with an ale-swiller’s gut were the tools of the thief-taker’s trade: a black whip, manacles, and hobbles.

Wimberleigh’s gaze fixed on the savage utensils. His eyes turned flinty, and beneath his billowing sleeves, his shoulders hunched. He turned away. “I’d best be on my way, then.”

In a red haze of fury and fear, Juliana called out, “Are all great lords as cowardly as you, sir?”

His back stiffened, and he swung around to regard her with the respect he might afford a spider. “Were you addressing me?”

“You are the only cowardly lord present at the moment.”

His eyebrows slid upward. “So. You find me cowardly, do you?”

Gingerly she lifted her bound hands. “You are quick to accuse me of stealing your horse, yet you balk at staying to see me punished. What is the penalty for my crime? Hanging? Or perhaps since I failed in my endeavor, I shall merely have my nostrils slit or a hand or an ear cut off. A true man would not lack the stomach to watch.”

His squarish jaw tightened. He addressed the palace official. “Will the wench have a chance to face her accuser in a court of law?”

Juliana held her breath. The law always reads against the gypsy. Laszlo had drummed that lesson into her head. But despite the past five years, she was not a gypsy. She was of noble birth. Her kin had been great princes and rulers. She would convince the court of her true identity and soon have the insolent Wimberleigh groveling at her feet.

The brassy blare of a horn scattered her thoughts. Out of the gates came a party of mounted noblemen, their persons arrayed even more sumptuously than Lord Wimberleigh’s. Retainers swarmed around the gentlemen, boys trotting at their stirrups, a few clutching lead reins.