Chapter 18
Leaving the village, Rafe and Angelet took the south road.
They now had a destination, and Rafe said he wanted to make as much progress toward Dorset as they could.
The weather favored them at first. It was a fine spring day, the air soft and warm, and the sky clear.
Angelet delighted in the scene passing by.
Even in the worst situations, it was difficult to be downcast on a spring day.
Rafe wasn’t quite as at ease. He kept looking over his shoulder, though he tried to conceal his concern from her for most of the morning.
“Perhaps they’ve given up altogether,” Angelet suggested at last. “You’ve seen no signs of pursuit.”
“No,” Rafe said, but he sounded uncertain.
“Have you seen any signs?” she asked. “You don’t have to shield me, you know. I won’t faint…not from hearing bad news, anyway.” Was Rafe keeping information from her in some sort of attempt to keep her affliction from recurring?
“I haven’t,” he said, more firmly. “Nothing definite. But there’s a feeling I can’t shake, and when you’ve been followed as much as I have, it’s wise to heed that feeling.”
“Excuse me, but who’s been following you?” she asked.
“Never mind.”
Angelet nudged her horse with an ankle to bring her closer to where he rode. “Rafe, what aren’t you telling me? Why would someone be following you?”
He weighed his next words. “I’ve annoyed a number of people in the past few years.”
“Annoyed? You annoyed them enough to warrant being physically pursued? What did you do? Does this involve a woman?” Lord, maybe Rafe made a practice of seducing all the ladies he escorted from place to place.
Though he did once mention that he usually didn’t do this sort of work.
Still, he could have seduced some lady, and now her family was chasing him down to seek retribution.
“There’s no woman,” Rafe said. “This is entirely different.”
“Does it have to do with your competing in all those tourneys? Did you kill the wrong opponent?”
“No.”
“Is it a mistake of some kind? A misunderstanding or…”
“No, they understood perfectly what I did,” Rafe said, with a bitter laugh. “And so did I. But I did it anyway. Which is why I started competing in tourneys in the first place. It pays me and it gives me a reason to keep moving.”
“Moving away from Shropshire?” she guessed. “That’s why you didn’t want to go this way. You’re worried you’ll meet someone you wish to avoid. Who?”
“It doesn’t matter who,” he said. “And I won’t be interrogated by you. Just because you’ve seen more of me than most people, it doesn’t grant you any special rights to my past.” He nudged his horse to advance a few lengths ahead of hers.
Angelet didn’t try to catch up. The last thing she wanted was to anger the one person she was traveling with. If Rafe decided she wasn’t worth the effort, he could leave her right on the road. Who would ever know?
And in a way, he was right. Angelet and Rafe’s new intimacy didn’t come with any promises—just the opposite. The reason she accepted his offer was that it came with no hitches. The less she learned about him, the better. For both of them.
After a little while, Rafe looked over his shoulder, in that same gesture he’d done all morning, scanning the road behind them. But this time, he wheeled his horse around, and rode back. Angelet turned too, thinking he’d seen something. But there was no hint of anyone.
“What is it?” she asked.
Rafe looped around and came up to match her pace. “Nothing. But it was stupid of me to ride ahead of you when the danger is behind us.” He was once again the soldier, speaking of tactics, keeping all emotion out of his voice. “I won’t do it again.”
“I won’t ask you more about your past,” she said, hoping to soothe him. “It’s not as if I could alter it, so there’s no benefit in my knowing.”
Still, she was curious. What could Rafe possibly have done that angered someone enough to chase down and presumably drag him back to…
wherever? Granted, Rafe showed a blatant disregard for the state of his soul when it came to certain sins, namely lust. But he also displayed an incredible amount of bravery and intelligence, and he never once hesitated when he needed to protect Angelet or anyone else in their party.
And even his sinful side was actually rather chivalrous—he made his offer and then left it to her to accept it.
He flirted and teased, but never took advantage of her.
To Angelet, he seemed like a perfect knight.
“May I ask just one thing?” she said hesitantly.
“What?”
“The people who might be following you…do you think they’d hurt me?”
Rafe’s brow furrowed. Then, “No. I’d expect that they’d only want to get me. And not to kill. They’d take me back to—” He broke off, but his point was made. “You would be safe from them.”
“That’s good news, yes?”
“Yes.” Rafe fell silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I should have told you about…that complication.”
“You should have,” she agreed. “Though I suppose you knew it would have cost you the job. Otto never would have hired you and the others if he knew.”
“I was confident that whoever was after me would be deterred by the greater numbers of the escort. Overconfident,” he amended.
“Rafe, remember that those men who attacked us did mention taking me. And someone shot at me. So our first guess is still more likely.”
He nodded, but didn’t add anything.
“I truly didn’t mean to anger you,” she said. “Please don’t leave me.”
“Leave you?”
“You could. At the next town, or even here. I know that you’d prefer to be on your own, and now I understand a little better why that is.”
Rafe stared at her. “You think I’d leave you somewhere? As if you were a sack of onions?”
“Well, you could. It’s possible.”
“It’s impossible. You asked me to take you to your son, and then Anjou. I’ll do that unless one of us dies on the way.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, Angelet.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I’m supposed to do! That’s what a knight is.”
“Oh.” She smiled tremulously. “Then I’m glad I hired you to be my knight.”
He stared at her for a moment more, then laughed. “I hope so.”
They rode on, having restored their alliance.
But their luck with the weather did not hold.
A cold wind from the west started to blow in the early afternoon, bringing heavy, blue-grey clouds along.
Rafe kept a wary eye on the western horizon, and judged their few periods of rest very carefully.
He was too well-trained a soldier to ride their horses to exhaustion, but they also needed to reach some shelter before the rain came.
However, the road was taking them through a particularly desolate patch of countryside. They saw no farms or homes, and the nearest village could be around the next curve in the road…or hours away.
Angelet kept quiet for the most part. Rafe was obviously on edge, and she could offer nothing to help them on the journey. The clouds grew darker and seemed to undulate, as if a huge wind stirred them from above.
When a few fat drops of rain spattered on the ground, Rafe cursed under his breath. Angelet winced when the rain hit her face, pulling her cloak more tightly around her.
“Rafe? What should we do?” she asked.
He looked at the horses, patting the neck of Philon. “We’re going to hurry,” he announced. “Match my pace. If we find a town before the horses tire, then good. If not, it won’t matter what shape the horses are in.”
Within moments, they were moving at a steady gallop. Angelet kept pace with Rafe. The horses began to kick up mud as the road grew wetter. They raced past trees and meadows and more trees, the rain always chasing them.
But the horses, however fast, could not outrun a storm, and soon the rain pelted down more fiercely.
After they’d covered perhaps two miles, Rafe called out for her to bring her horse to a halt. He did the same. The beasts slowed to a walk, panting heavily.
Angelet sighed. There was still no sign of civilization. And the rain still came down.
“What now?” she asked.
Rafe shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to press the horses when—” He stopped talking, and tilted his head up. The rain fell onto his face and his closed eyes. But then he smiled.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Can you smell that?”
She smelled only rain and wet earth.
“Smoke,” he said. “There’s some shelter along this road and it can’t be that far. Come on. I think we’ll be out of the rain soon.”
The time couldn’t come soon enough for Angelet. The rain never let up. By the time they reached the source of the smoke, which turned out to be a little town, Angelet was sopping wet and miserable. Rafe took one look at her and abruptly told her he’d take care of everything.
Indeed, within a quarter hour, she found herself in a small, warm, dry room with—praise Mary—a crackling fire. Rafe lost no time in stripping her of her wet clothes, then wrapping her up in a thick wool blanket from the bed. He sat her directly in front of the fire.
“Better?” he asked.
“Lord, yes. This is heaven.”
“The place looks a little humble for heaven,” Rafe said, bending over to kiss her. She was already warming up from the heat of the flames, and Rafe’s mouth was cool. His stubble scratched her.
“You need to shave,” she noted.
“Is that an order?”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Rafe stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to take care of a few things, but I’ll be back shortly. Stay there and warm up.”
He left the room, and only after the door closed did Angelet realize that he was still in his dripping wet clothes. He must be freezing.
She leaned closer to the fire, letting the warmth soak into her bones. How bizarre that she was here, in a town whose name she didn’t even know. She should be at Basingwerke by now, handing off a chest of gold and an embroidered cloth in order to beg the abbey’s physicians to heal her.