“Aye. We can hide here.”
“Knights do not cower in—”
“Please. You cannot prevail against so many.”
“But…”
“I am so afraid.”
Simon could hear the terror in her voice and feel her trembling, though he could not see her face. “All right.”
Inside the stable it was pitch-dark. “We’ll be safer up in the loft,” whispered the woman. “There should be a ladder. Ah, here. Let me go first.”
Simon followed her up, one hand on the hem of her skirts. He reached the top and fell forward into the loft. His body came up against hers as they hit the straw.
“Thank you. I-if you had not come…” She shuddered
Simon drew her close. She was small and slender “You should have run off while we were fighting.”
“I could not leave you, not when he was besting you.”
“Bah, I could have taken him with a few blows had I not drunk half the ale in Durleigh.”
“Aye. You are so strong.” Her hands were on his chest, kneading. “Hold me,” she whispered
“I am.”
“Tighter. Hold me tighter.” She pressed against him, her breasts teasing him through the layers of their clothes.
“I will not let anything happen to you,” Simon murmured. Her hair smelled so good, like roses and woman. He buried his face in it and rolled so he covered her with his body. “How perfectly we are matched.”
“I knew it would be thus.”
Simon nodded, his mind too dizzy with ale and desire. “I have to touch you.” Her breasts were small and firm; her sigh when he caressed them tore at his control. He could think of only one thing, being inside her. He tore at the laces of his hose and levered himself over her.
“Simon,” she whispered, drawing him to her.
He groaned and sank into the most perfect bliss he had ever known, hot and tight and welcoming, her body closed around his. It was like coming home.
A sharp pounding shattered the dream.
Simon groaned and sat up, his breathing rough, his body hard as tempered stone.
“Open, I say.” The coarse voice came from below his window.
It took Simon a moment to recall he was not in the hayloft with his perfect lover, but in the room he’d taken last night at the Royal Oak. Moaning, he flopped back on the pillow and threw an arm over his eyes.
The dream again. He had had it the first time on the night before leaving for the Holy Land, waking hot, sweaty and half-dressed in a stable loft. The dream had reoccurred so many times since, that every aspect of it was engraved on his heart. Yet he could not see the woman’s face, or decide whether the encounter had been real or a figment of his alesoaked brain.
How odd that he, who had ever been cautious in his dealings with women, should dream that he had coupled with her only a short while after meeting her. Odder still, he had spent these past years searching for a flesh and blood woman who matched him as perfectly as his dream lover.
A fist collided with the door below. “Open, I say…”
Hinges creaked in protest. “What the hell is going on?” Simon recognized the voice of Warin Selwyne, the tavern owner.
“I am looking for a knight. Simon of Blackstone, they believe he’s called.”
“Who believes? And what do ye want him for, Bardolf?”
“None of yer business. My orders are to find him and bring him for questioning.”
Simon was already out of bed, his first thought that something had happened to Nicholas or Guy. When he’d arrived at the inn, he’d found a note from Guy saying he had followed Lord Edmund to London. Nicholas had not been at the inn, either, but one of the maids recalled seeing him go off with a comely woman soon after he’d arrived.
“What is this about?” Warin grumbled.
“Sheriffs business. Will ye tell me if he’s here, or do I have to come in and look for meself?”
Simon opened the hide shutters and looked down on the confrontation between Warin and a large man with lank brown hair and ill-fitting clothes. Behind him lounged two more thugs.
“I am Simon of Blackstone,” Simon called.
Bardolf tilted his head back, displaying an ugly face and close-set eyes. “Ye’re to come with me.”
“What for?”
“Questioning in the death of Bishop Thurstan. And don’t think to try to run out. I’ve got men watching the front.”
“Death?” Simon exclaimed. “He is dead?”
Archdeacon Crispin Norville sat behind Bishop Thurstan’s desk, a thin, austere man who managed to look down his beak of a nose at Simon standing before him. Flanking the archdeacon were Brother Oliver Deeks, and Prior Walter de Folke of York.
The archdeacon had already judged him guilty, Simon thought, dread piercing his earlier shock.
“Brother Oliver says you burst in upon the bishop last eve. What business did you have with him?” the archdeacon demanded.
Conscious of Bardolf lurking in the doorway, Simon chose his words with care. “I wanted to tell him that six of his Crusaders had returned.” Bardolf had hinted there was something suspicious about Thurstan’s death, but the under-sheriff had refused to say what. “Is it true the bishop is dead?”
The archdeacon waved away the question, his long fingers naked of rings. “Why did you not make an appointment?”
Simon’s nape prickled. As an orphan bastard, he had learned early on to sense trouble, and this luxurious room fairly reeked of it. “I understood that the bishop was upset by reports we had all died, and I was anxious to alleviate his grief.”
“Hmm.” The archdeacon steepled his soft, slender hands. He had sharp brown eyes and the manner of one who liked power. He and the manipulative Thurstan must have butted heads. “You came directly here, then, the moment you arrived.”
“I did.” Three years Simon had burned to confront Thurstan. He could not have waited a moment more. Now the answers to his questions would forever go unanswered. Thurstan was dead, and he could not begin to say how he felt about that. Later, when this interview
