we now know why you were sent here, don’t you think ’twould be best if you were guarded? Surely you realize that your own life is at risk should Lord Taurin arrive.”
“Then why didn’t Lord Adrien insist I stay in the keep?”
Kenneth took her upper arm and continued to guide her up the short path toward her door. “No doubt he won’t have you that close to his wife.”
She steeled her spine and yanked back her arm. “I would never hurt Lady Ediva!”
He took her arm again, this time at the elbow. “Of course not. You aren’t that foolish.”
She pursed her lips into a thin, tight line, not willing to engage him in an argument if Rowena lingered behind her closed door. She knew Kenneth’s type. Hidden strength came with those wiry muscles, so different from her clan of shorter, thicker Saxons. And she had no strength tonight to do anything save trudge to her door.
Still, her foolish tongue belied her fatigue. “You’ll find it a waste of time to guard me. If you’re hoping I’ll slip away tonight, you’ll be hoping in vain. I’m dead on my feet and I plan to do nothing but sleep.”
“Good. It has been a long day for both of us.”
She stalked up to the door, hoping her long cloak would block the thin light seeping under it. “Since you are so set on guarding me and there’s only one way in and out of my home, I suggest you spend the night out here. I’m not the sort of woman who allows men in her home overnight.”
“And I am not the sort of man to be enticed inside, woman, certainly not by so sly a female as you.”
She shot him a blistering glare. “You have a lot of—”
A short, harsh clunk sounded within the hut. Before Clara could draw her next breath, Kenneth had shoved her behind him.
She heard his sword scrape free of its leather scabbard just as Kenneth’s booted foot connected with the door.
Clara gasped. Kenneth was prepared to kill whoever was inside!
Kenneth charged into the hut, a single thought slicing through his mind. Protect Clara. And he would do so even if it cost him his life—
A downward shot of dun-colored clothing met his glare and he stabbed at it in the dimly lit hut. A whimper, weak and childlike, reached up to him as his sword snagged a scrap of wool and tore it free from a small body. Another soft cry rent the air in front of him.
A child? Immediately, Kenneth pulled back and lowered his sword, accidentally elbowing Clara. Her fingers curled around his lower arm as if to hold him still. The cowering soul in front of them whimpered again.
“Wait!” Clara whispered in his ear as she leaned forward, so close he could feel her sharp gasp brush his neck. “Brindi?”
Kenneth blinked. The sister? He focused on the heap of pale clothes cornered in front of him, scarcely visible in the low lamp flame the intruder had kindled. The bundle moved and he saw how small it was. ’Twas indeed a child! He blew out his breath, trying to will his heart to stop racing at the horror that could have happened.
He’d nearly killed the little girl.
Clara shoved past him and dropped at her sister’s huddled form. The small girl lifted her head as her whisper penetrated the hut. “Aye, Clara, ’tis me.”
As Clara drew her sister to standing, Kenneth sheathed his sword and hastily turned up the wick on the old lamp on the table. The thin light strengthened to fill the room.
“How did you get here?” Clara exclaimed as she gave the girl a hard hug. “I sent you home to Mama!”
Brindi kept her head buried in her sister’s cloak, and Kenneth could barely hear her answer. “Mama sent me to you. She was always angry at me, saying I ate too much. I didn’t want to be there anymore.”
Clara set her away from her to search her face. “When did she send you?”
The girl shrugged. “A few days ago.”
“A few days ago! Have you been walking here since?”
“Nay, she sent me to Colchester.”
“Didn’t you remind Mama where I was sent?”
“Aye, but she kept forgetting. I hid in your old home, but the guild masters found me and told Lord Eudo. I said I didn’t want to go home to Mama. She’s too old now. But he said I was too young to live alone and I must go to you.”
Clara glanced over at Kenneth.
“Lord Eudo’s courier delivered her to the keep,” he explained. “She was supposed to stay in the kitchen with the cook. Obviously, the child disobeys as easily as her sister.”
Clara shot him a scathing glare, which he deflected immediately. Aye, her mother had pushed her own child out of her home, and his threatening her with a sword after the ordeal she’d already endured was harsh, but, he argued with himself irritably, if she’d stayed in the keep’s kitchen as she’d been told to do, he wouldn’t have nearly killed her just now.
“You knew Brindi was here and you didn’t tell me?” Clara’s voice was a mere breath of shock.
He stiffened. “You were in the dungeon. I would have seen she was cared for. I’m not a beast.”
“But you knew she was at the keep all the time we were walking here? That she was brought here like a sack of grain?”
“Aye.” He tightened his jaw. “In Lord Eudo’s letter, he warned his brother that the guild masters feared a confrontation with Lord Taurin—”
Clara’s brows shot up as she interrupted him to ask, “You know him?”
“Nay, I have not met him. But I read the missive that explains how Lord Eudo discovered the truth about why you were sent here.” He shook his head. “You brought trouble to your people with your own stubbornness and refusal to reveal a slave girl’s location. I suspect that once the townsfolk discovered Brindi, they feared the same of her and shipped her off to Lord Eudo. I don’t blame them a jot.”
Clara pulled her sister closer and covered the child’s ears. Then, with a glower at him, she set Brindi down on one of the two benches, the child’s back to him. She kept her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “What do you know about Rowena?” she asked Kenneth over her sister’s head.
So that was the slave’s name? ’Twas a good start to finding her location. He kept his face impassive. “I know enough. You have no right to interfere with a Norman lord’s personal affairs. And you certainly do not have any right to send fear through the town of Colchester or bring trouble to Dunmow.”
“If I caused any fear, ’twas for good reason. And I have every right to help save a person’s life.”
“The girl and her child would not have been hurt!”
She let out a laugh.
