Captured by Her Enemy Knight
Auteur
Nicole Locke
Lezers
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Hoofdstukken
20
Chapter One
It was the stink of the port that she hated the most. A cross between a hacked cadaver whose entrails had been exposed too long to a blistering sun, the vigorously repeated discharge of urine and the crisp, salted sea air that carried a promise of a better life somewhere else.
Those promises were a lie. Cressida Howe knew there was nothing better. Which served her well most days. Today wasn’t that day.
Today she needed fortune or fate to give her some grain of luck. She knew they wouldn’t, however, and not because she’d stopped praying, but because six months ago she’d prevented an obsessive mercenary from completing his intended murder.
A person whom he ordered she kill, but she hadn’t. Not that she had failed. She never failed. She’d simply...disobeyed orders. And now that exacting mercenary wanted her punished.
Evading his wrath wasn’t an option because he was hired by the Warstones, the most bloodthirsty of families; thus, he had unlimited resources and unlimited hate. He was also her father. Her only family.
Weaving her way through the throng of commerce and vagrants, she balanced between the uneven planks of the walkway, all the while keeping her hood sufficiently tucked to hide any chance of recognition.
Her being a woman wasn’t why she feared discovery. If any dared attack they’d realise their fatal mistake soon enough. No, what she had to hide above all else was who she was.
The Archer. The sole weapon and creation of her father, Sir Richard Howe... The Englishman. Years of training with every weapon save a sword. But she didn’t need that iron when she held her bow and a quiver of arrows, especially the ones she had carved herself in the hours spent alone. Which were more frequent as she went from being a child to a woman and her father’s commitment to hiding her intensified. Until her face wasn’t seen by anyone unless he chose it.
Everything was as he chose it. She was raised to be a weapon without thought, without questioning the rights and wrongs of what he ordered. She obeyed him at all costs.
Thus, it was shocking to both of them when she’d disobeyed him, shooting the arrow that stopped him killing his target. The look on his face... Her utter wretchedness could not have been worse than when God banished the angels from heaven.
And banished she was, for he left her behind. He was everything to her: life, death, survival. Her only contact with him now was through messages. He gave her tasks to do. It had been that way for months. Her loyalty to him in question, she obeyed his every command now.
Except...except the last message, the last task, came with a terrible rumour—that her father had kidnapped a child to raise. It had to be a lie, one she meant to discover the truth of for herself, so, between tasks, she’d followed her father’s trail here to the docks. To find him, to confront him and demand to be taken back.
Until then, she needed to find a sufficient hiding place for the day. One from which she could freely observe, but not be seen. Fortunately, she knew just where to observe the ships and the people. It was the same place she went yesterday and the day before that and the day before that because for a sennight she’d been climbing one of the port’s last remaining copse of trees.
She didn’t know why the trees survived the copious amounts of building around the docks. Perhaps it was for shade, perhaps for a landmark, but for now she would take advantage of it.
First circling her tree to test the crowd and determine if she was being followed, she waited one heartbeat more to be satisfied no one watched before climbing quickly to a secure branch, one where she could wait in relative comfort. It was half-hidden with foliage, low enough to jump from and not break her legs, but high enough to see passengers boarding and disembarking from the merchant ships to France. Dover was a Cinque Port, one which was required to provide ships and crew to the King should he need it. When she had arrived, she’d spent much time scanning each of the faces around her. But it had been like this for days and now she was exhausted.
So very tired of the games, of the travel. Of hiding and, when she couldn’t hide, she was tired of fighting. Her father was punishing her. First with exile, then with mercenaries who attacked and whom she couldn’t kill. She knew this to be the truth for the messages the mercenaries carried told her so.
But the mercenaries were also the ones who had told her the terrible rumour.
Cressida settled on the branch, leaned her back against the truck and closed her eyes. She was so tired. As no ships were leaving, there was no urgency yet. Over the years, she’d learned to rest when she could. Soon enough there would be a battle. She expected more mercenaries to find her, to fight, spar and to disperse once again.
As for death? She didn’t worry about her own life, for that had been forfeit upon her very birth, but she did worry about her father no longer loving her. It was something she must remedy. If she didn’t have him, she would be a weapon alone.
Her fear was that he’d already crossed the water to France before she could get here. It couldn’t be. She was younger and the better rider. She merely had to wait and watch some more.
She closed her eyes again. There were no ships sailing right now, no entourage that looked to be her father’s, she’d rest only a moment...
The lethal clamp of a calloused hand on her ankle broke her rest. Asleep? Cressida kicked to free herself and reached for a weapon. Her bow and quiver hanging from a branch above were useless. Her daggers were caught under her cloak and unreachable. The manacled fingers only gripped tighter.
A man’s hand, a warrior’s. Her eyes snapped to her captor.
‘All this time, I never thought you’d make a mistake. I never thought I’d catch you.’
Achingly familiar thick, long brown hair, and the bluest of eyes gleaming with victory. A jawline cut from the side of cliffs covered in lush stubble. Broad shoulders, thick, pronounced arms, all his features entirely too close because Eldric of Hawksmoor was a giant among men.
No matter how near or far, she always knew who he was.
‘You,’ she croaked.
A very unfamiliar sardonic twist to his lips as he answered, ‘Me.’
Cressida gripped the branch over her head, anchored her body and slammed her free foot to the side of his head.
A grunt, a grip loosened and she scrambled to a higher branch. He dived for her other foot and she jerked it out of his way, only to lose her grip. Lurching too far to the left, he leapt to get under her.
Clenching her right fist with her left palm, she jammed her elbow into his neck, he staggered back, but her balance was off. Grasping for her bow, then quiver, she fell to the hard-packed earth.
No breath. One moment, two, she curled in a ball and rolled as the warrior vaulted down from the tree.
With his fingertips brushing her cloak, she bounded to her feet. He leaned forward to snatch her and she gripped his outstretched wrist. Without letting go, she kicked him in the ribs two times. Relishing his lost breath, she spun into the crowd.
Trapped by people. Darting left, she hesitated and it cost her. Eldric grasped her cloak and yanked.
She dropped on her back, her breath lost again upon impact. No moment to recover as she rolled to avoid the slam of his fist. He hit the dirt, but she felt the scrape of his knuckles.
Too close. His hand caught in her cloak and ripped the hood away. He pulled back for another punch and jerked, his fist spasming before her nose.
‘A woman,’ he rasped.
Wide blue eyes, parted lips. His shock was as visceral to her as much as to him. No one saw her like this. A female. A weapon; utterly exposed and vulnerable.
Cressida slammed her head into his nose.
‘God’s bones!’ He reared back.
She pulled her own fist back to hit him again, he caught it and jammed it down to the side of her head. She struck with her left and he pinned his legs on either side of her thighs to restrain that limb above her head as well.
His eyes watering, nose bleeding, hair tangled and plastered to his brow, Eldric of Hawksmoor, the only man who could, the only man who shouldn’t, had caught and trapped her.
Eldric’s ringing ears, his pounding bruised ribs and his throbbing throat were marked cues this wasn’t a dream or nightmare. The pain was substantial enough to know with certainty he was awake.
Awake and staring down at the palest of wide blue eyes and the lushest of white-gold hair in multiple plaits that didn’t tame the loose curls framing the rest of her dramatic features.
Her skin wasn’t as pale as her other colouring, but instead spoke of time spent in the sun, though spring had barely begun. Her cheeks were rounded, her lips a full, soft-rose colour.
The rest of her... Everything about her woman’s form lying flush on her back, his hands wrapped around her wrists, was stunning. She was small, her bones fine, but strong, the curve of breasts, the indent of hips, all wrapped in warrior’s garb. Inside her dark clothing were sewn multiple straps holding several daggers that dug into his legs. Her boot blade was lying in the dirt beside them. Spilled around them was a quiver and bow that had fallen along with her from the branch above.
A woman, but also a merciless killer. It was a marked clue he wasn’t dreaming because he could never have imagined this. The woman pinned beneath him was the very enemy he’d been pursuing for months. She was the warrior, the Archer, who had killed his comrades.
She also seemed...familiar to him, though that had to be because of his shock. He’d only ever seen her from a distance fully garbed, covered and hidden in tree foliage. She could not be familiar; else he would have known her gender...he would have—Eldric shook his head.
The Archer struggled beneath him; her wide eyes remaining on his, as if she was as stunned for being caught as he was for realising her identity. The ringing in his ears grew louder. The murmurings of the crowd slapped against the words repeating inside his head.
The Archer was a woman. The Archer who killed his friends was a stunningly beautiful woman.
The words became almost a chant until she bucked to free herself and he jammed his weight against her. The rush of breath and her sudden stillness centred his conflicting thoughts.
For years, he’d fought for King Edward’s causes and earned his distinction to become a knight, then a spy. In the battles since the King’s campaign against Scotland began, he’d fought valiantly and for what was right. Then, in a battle, an arrow had slashed across his right arm and struck the friend who watched his back. More fighting, another arrow slash and Michael was felled. Among the men fighting and fallen he had tried to find the one who dared shoot an arrow among those clashing with swords, but he saw no one and called for a retreat.
Another battle, another slash to the same arm. The scenario was all too acutely familiar. He swung his gaze until he saw a figure in a tree. Sword out to anyone who dared approach, but the cry of pain and Philip falling held him back.
Blinded by wrath, bound by duty, determined to pursue a cowardly murderer and frantic to share words with a dying friend, Eldric knelt while Philip died in his arms. By the time he looked to the trees again, the Archer was gone. After that day, Eldric was no longer merely King Edward’s knight. He was a man with a vow, a quest: to seize this killer and deliver justice for his friends.
The Archer was his prey and now his captive. He had her in his very grip. Vengeance for him; justice met when the King executed her at the Tower. He seethed with the very need to fulfil his vow.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she gasped.
Her eyes widened more; her lips parted. Yes, this was right. She would beg for his mercy and he would give none. She deserved no man’s pity. ‘Say it again. Tell me.’
A pinched crease in the middle of her brow. ‘I can’t breathe.’
The Archer was...a woman. He was a warrior knight, trained to protect. He eased his weight and released his hands. God’s toes, what had he become? What—?
A fist flew into his crunched nose. He saw nothing but blackness and stars, felt her twist out from under him. Through debilitating pain, he opened a clenched eye and snatched her fleeing leg. Her arms full of her dropped weaponry, she smacked hard to the ground.
A grunt, a rush of breath. She didn’t move. Partially dragging himself until she was trapped in his arms again, he flipped her over.
She was limp; her eyes closed. Dead? He put a hand on her chest. She breathed, but she wouldn’t wake.
The murmurings of the crowd, of people staring and walking by, intruded into his world. He scooped up the woman, held her to his chest and faced them all. For a moment, a declaration began in his chest, a thumping of something primal, a claiming, before he clutched her closer and shoved his way through the crowd.
