had come to a road, Lizette realized. Keldra sat on the ground and tried to catch her breath, while Garreth trotted up beside Finn.
After looking up and down the road, Finn glanced at the panting Keldra, then addressed Lizette. “I think it’s safe enough to use the road a ways.”
Thank God—but if he was expecting her to thank him, he was going to be disappointed. He’d been silent and sullen, brooding and grim since his return, although it was his own fault if he was annoyed that she’d spoken to Garreth. If he’d been less mysterious and more forthcoming, she wouldn’t have had to ask questions of his friend.
“It can’t be so very far now,” she said to Keldra to encourage the girl.
“I hope not, my lady, or my legs are going to give out entirely.”
“Mine aren’t much better,” Lizette confessed as she helped her maid to stand, and that wasn’t a lie.
If they had to keep walking at such a brisk pace for much longer, she’d have to ask Finn to let them rest again, and she didn’t want to do that. She would hate to imply that she couldn’t keep up with him.
As they started for the road, Finn ordered young Garreth to help Keldra. He looked as if he’d like to refuse; however, she could tell from the set of Finn’s shoulders that he wouldn’t welcome a refusal and so, obviously, could Garreth.
Then the Irishman said, “My lady, I would have a word with you.”
It was a command, not a request, which did nothing to assuage her ill humor. “So, you deign to speak to me now?”
He gave her a sour look as he started down the road, expecting her to follow as if she were his trained hound. Unfortunately, since she had absolutely no idea where she was, she had no choice but to follow him.
“During the rest of the remaining time together we may share, if you have questions, ask them of me,” he said. “Leave Garreth in peace.”
“I didn’t think I was upsetting him,” she countered, “and your secretive manner left me no choice. Is it really so surprising that I’d want to know about you? I’ve put our lives in your hands.”
Scowling, Finn stepped over a puddle in the rutted road. “Very well, my lady. Ask me what questions you will, and I’ll do my best to answer.”
Now that he was willing to respond, she wasn’t sure what to say. She would start, she decided, with his half brother. “What has your half brother done that’s more shameful than stealing?”
The Irishman’s jaw clenched and his strides lengthened a little, as if he’d like to hurry away from her. She wasn’t about to let that happen, so she quickened her pace. “You said you would answer my questions,” she reminded him.
Before he could, a pheasant, roused from the verge of the road, flew up into the sky in a flurry of wings, and they both checked their steps. In the next moment, an arrow caught the bird, sending it plummeting into the bushes ahead of them.
“Good shot, Garreth!” the Irishman exclaimed. “No need to worry about our supper tonight.”
“Aye!” Garreth replied as he jogged down the road toward his fallen catch, leaving Keldra and the others behind.
“While Garreth’s getting the bird, we’ll rest a bit,” Finn said. He gestured at a nearby stump. “Keldra, you sit here. Garreth won’t be long.”
He turned an inscrutable gaze onto Lizette. “If you’ll walk over there with me, my lady, I’ll answer your questions in private.”
Lizette told herself it was proper that he speak so formally. That denoted respect, and a necessary change from his casual insolence. After all, he was an outlaw and a thief. She was a lady and the king’s ward.
The Irishman led her a little farther down the road and pointed at another stump for her to sit upon, out of earshot of Keldra, although not out of sight.
Finn leaned his weight on one leg, crossed his arms over his broad chest, fixed his steadfast brown eyes on her and said, “Ryder and I had the same bitter, broken mother, but different fathers. For the past ten years, Ryder’s been in a monastery in the north, studying, or so the plan was, to be a priest.
“Lately he decided against the priesthood. Celibacy, apparently, was not for him.”
If Ryder looked anything like Finn, Lizette thought, celibacy would be a waste.
Embarrassed by that thought, she immediately lowered her head so Finn wouldn’t see her blushing, even as she tried to stifle her wayward imagination and the vision of Finn in a bed, smiling and waiting for … some woman.
“So Ryder left the monastery and came looking for me. He thought being an outlaw an exciting life. He managed, by a miracle, to find me and when he did, he quickly learned the folly of his notions. Life as an outlaw is not adventurous, or even comfortable—sleeping rough, eating when and where you can, hiding, always on the move, never at home, never at peace, wondering every day if your luck’s going to run out and you’ll be caught and hanged.”
Although she’d always craved an adventurous life, at least she’d had a home—a place to lay her head, and where she could always be sure of food and a certain respect, if not happiness. “I’m not surprised you wanted something else for your brother. Yet surely there were alternatives other than the priesthood and thievery.”
“Aye, and so I told him,” Finn replied. “But he’s young, like Garreth, and he resented my advice and my refusals to let him try his hand at robbery. He took to finding solace in drink and picking fights to prove he could defend himself, that he was as tough as his brother and worthy of respect. One night, he laid into some of Wimarc’s men—too many, as any man of sense could have told him, but Ryder was drunk and I was with a woman.”
Lizette swallowed hard and stared at the toes of her boots. Of course he must go with women. Between his handsome face, magnificent body and the romance of being outside the law, he probably had to beat them off with a stick. She shouldn’t think the less of him for that. He was a very masculine man, after all, and men had their needs …
“Disgusted you, have I?”
Disgusted? No. Rendered envious of the women who enjoyed his nocturnal company, yes—although she wouldn’t say so. “It’s a little disconcerting to hear a man admit he was with a woman.”
“I’m no priest,” Finn replied. His gaze seemed to grow even more penetrating. “How do you know I wasn’t with my wife?”
Wife? Lizette thought, stunned. “I didn’t think outlaws married.”
“Oh, they do—common law, same as peasants.” He smiled as if enjoying her discomfort. “Not that I have.”
“But you said—”
“I said, how do you know I wasn’t with my wife? You assumed I was with a whore, didn’t you?”
He was right, so she didn’t reply.
“I may not be married, but I don’t use whores. I know what that life did to my mother.”
It
