Free What A Scoundrel Wants by Carrie Lofty Page B

do not limit my pursuits.”
    “Enough, please,” said Dryden. “Tell me what happened on the roadside. I care to know your perspective, Scarlet.”
    “If you mislike my answer, must we fight again?”
    “Only if you killed my father.”
    “That I did not do.”
    Meg commanded her eyes to miraculously resume their usefulness. She wanted to see their expressions, any clue as to how these men might be maneuvered. But the blackness remained. She found herself lulled by the rasping cadence of Scarlet’s words as he described the roadside ambush. She shuddered, recalling that cold wash of fear. Helplessness and disorientation threatened to overcome her once again, and renewed gratitude left her flustered. She did not enjoy being beholden to this man.
    “We fled into the woods to evade their pursuit,” he said.
    Holding her breath, clutching the new walking stick Jacob had provided, she waited for what Scarlet might say about their night together. But Dryden interjected, his grief-stricken tone as raw as an open sore. “Forgive me, please. I should have been the man to protect you.”
    The details of Scarlet’s face—smooth skin and rough stubble, hollows and lines and firm lips—made her fingertips itch.
    Yes , y ou should have been there. Maybe then I wouldn’t be feeling such a fool.

    “My apologies, Will.”
    He turned to find David Fuller standing with him at the edge of the glade. The man pushed a tattered hood away from his face, looking sheepish and a little fearful. Although stout of body and built for hard labor, he had grown thin. A fresh scar stood in pale pink relief on his left cheek.
    “Let the past lie,” Will found himself saying. Pity, not vengeance, had taken hold of his tongue. “What are you doing here, Fuller?”
    “We’ve been driven out of Nottingham by another blasted sheriff.”
    Walk away. Walk away.
    He had managed that simple act of self-preservation regardless of Meg’s pleas, and he could do it again. These ragged, lost people were not his concern, allies though they had once been. They were nothing but a hindrance, a danger to his plans and his duty to Marian.
    But curiosity and some nastier impulse made him ask another question. “What has Finch done to you?”
    “You worked for the man.” Wariness hunched the peasant’s shoulders, but Will recognized resentment as well. “D’you mean to say you’ve no notion of what’s happened?”
    “Apparently not.”
    “He sides with the Normans on every dispute,” Fuller said. Dark circles rested beneath watery gray eyes that would not hold still. “Unless you live within the shadow of the castle or speak French, you may’s well be outlawed. He imprisons everyone caught bartering or using chits instead of gold. No gold means no taxes, and he wants every penny.”
    “But to live here?” He moved a critical gaze over the clearing. The outcast peasants gathered around a half dozen cook fires and meager shelters, preparing to sup. A pair of women removed dried clothes from where they hung in the trees. “How dreadful could it have been?”
    Fuller looked across the same scene, but he managed a tight smile. “Not everyone shares your loathing of the woods.”
    “Many hated it worse but said naught.”
    “But of those who groused, none did so louder than you.”
    “I would do now, Fuller, but no one has the good sense to listen.”
    When the older man laughed, Will checked his humor. Indulging an old feeling of camaraderie with a peasant who would have hanged him did naught to advance his purposes.
    “We took our chances coming back to the woods, like last time,” Fuller said. “Surely you can understand the appeal.”
    “We both know why it worked last time, and he’s in France.”
    “Then we’ll do it for ourselves.”
    Will shook his head. “That thief, Hugo—he’s not the man to lead you.”
    Those watery eyes narrowed. “No one else seems game for the task.”
    Although the years had taken a physical toll on