Page 42 of The Maiden

“Let’s teach her another kind of lesson,” said a man, laughing.

Jura held a knife in each hand under her concealing garment as the men, about twenty of them, advanced on her.

“Here, now,” came a deep voice from behind the crowd. He spoke Lanconian but it was an accent Jura hadn’t heard before, very country sounding. A bentover, burly man with greasy black hair and a patch over one eye, wearing many layers of rags, pushed his way forward. “Don’t hurt me daughter,” he said, and moved toward Jura.

Instinctively, she drew back from him.

“Follow me, or they’ll kill you,” he said into her ear, and Jura recognized Rowan’s voice.

She was so astonished she followed him without question and the men were drunk enough and had just had enough excitement that they were sated, so they allowed Jura to follow the bent old man out of the tavern.

“You!” Jura hissed as soon as they were outside. “I have come to take you back to safety.”

“Safety!” Rowan spat at her. “What do you know of safety? I just saved your virtue and probably your life.”

“I could have protected myself.”

Rowan cursed in reply. “Do you have a horse? We must ride quickly and get away from this place. Or did you leave your horse in the open so one of these vandals stole it? God’s teeth but you stink.”

“My horse is well hidden.”

“Good, then get on it and ride northwest for one hour then stop. I will meet you there.”

“You cannot go back in there. You must return to the Irials and—”

“Go!” he commanded. “Someone comes and I’m not finished here.”

Jura slipped into the darkness, found her horse, and began to ride. It was against her better judgment to leave him alone back there but she knew within her heart how much fear she had felt when the men had touched her. And, also, she had been surprised at Rowan’s disguise and the way he had blended into the crowd. In an hour she reached a bend in the river and she knew this was where she was to meet him.

She fed her horse, tethered it in a dark growth of bush, and pulled off the stinking Ulten gown, then climbed a tree and waited for Rowan. He didn’t take long in getting there. She watched him dismount then stand still and look around. He turned and looked up at the tree although she knew he couldn’t see her.

“Come down,” he said.

Jura swung down a branch and dropped right in front of him.

The patch over his eye was flipped up to his forehead. “All right, what are you doing here?”

“I told you, I came to take you to safety.”

“You? Take me to safety? Tomorrow morning you are to return to the Irials.”

“And what do you plan to do?”

“I am going to find Brita and talk to her.”

“And how do you plan to find her?” Jura asked.

“If you hadn’t interfered tonight, I might have found out where she was. Those two guards were drunk enough and might have been ready after their fight but I had to leave to save your dirty neck. You still stink even without that thing you were wearing.”

Jura leaned against the tree and began to unlace her boots. “If the Irials had guessed you rode alone into Vatell land, they would have attacked.”

“What are you doing?”

“Undressing. I’m going to take a bath. Your solitary mission could have started a war.” She slipped out of the trousers.

Rowan stared at her with eyes so wide she could see the whites of them in the moonlight. “I wanted no argument,” he said tightly. “I did what I had to do. Oh God.” He said this last as Jura removed the last of her clothes and stood nude in the moonlight, her high-breasted figure gleaming and magnificently structured. “Jura, you torture me,” he whispered, his hands going behind his back to grope for the tree to support himself.

“I am your wife,” she said softly, then cocked her head. “Someone comes,” she said, and flung her body against his. “Hide me from their sight.”