of awareness over his own skin before he forced himself to back away. “Does the cloak help?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
One of the guards brought them a trencher of bread and cheese and a wineskin. Anna picked at the food, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. She looked troubled, tired, and her face had not lost its pallor.
What could he do for her? he wondered, for her uneasiness weighed heavily upon him.
“Mistress Anna, don’t feel you must stay here on my account,” he said. “You’re weary, and dawn will arrive before you’ve had a chance to get much rest. Come, let me escort you to your tent.”
Her eyes grew round. “I don’t wish to be alone.”
“I’ll guard you myself. No harm will come to either of us, I promise you. Who would be mad enough to attack me?” he added with a grin, patting the hilt of his dagger.
Her answering smile was faint, but beautiful. He rose and helped her to her feet. “William,” he called, “Mistress Anna is retiring to her tent.”
The captain turned, set aside an ale horn and joined them, bending to kindle a torch in the leaping flames. “Get some rest, lass. ‘Tis the best thing for you.”
William went into the tent first, sword at the ready, and lit a lamp. “Come, lass,” he said, opening a bundle of furs and spreading them on the ground. “You look ready to swoon. Sit you down before you fall.”
Swen held back the door flap and led her into the tent. “I told her I would stand guard,” he said. “She is concerned that her attacker might return with more men.”
“Aye, ‘tis a good idea. There’s not enough of us left to sleep in shifts. We’ll all stay awake for what’s left of the night.” He gazed at Anna, curled up in the furs. “All except you. You might as well sleep, if you can.”
She nodded, though Swen didn’t believe for a moment that she’d rest. He could see too many questions in her amber eyes. But she’d stay put in the tent.
He’d see to it himself, if need be.
“Good night, milady.” He raised her hand to his lips. As he turned to leave her, an image suddenly filled his mind, a picture so vivid and real he felt it like a blow to the heart.
Swen drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly as he willed his feet to carry him a short distance from the tent. He slid his knife from its sheath and leaned back against a tree, letting the knife’s familiar weight soothe him.
He knew now why Anna de Limoges seemed so familiar to him, an awareness he felt deep within his being.
He’d seen her before—many times before.
In his dreams.
By the time the sun began its slow climb into the sky, they’d tended the wounded, bundled the dead onto the pack animals and set off upon the last leg of the journey to the village of Murat.
Anna pulled her cloak high about her chin against the morning chill and fought to remain upright in the saddle. She hadn’t slept at all. Every time she closed her eyes, a confusing melange of images and feelings whirled through her brain.
And no matter how she tried, she could not regain her usual clearheadedness.
Her gaze strayed once again to the broad back of Swen Siwardson as he rode beside William at the head of their motley party. Mayhap she should blame him for her lack of sleep, for she’d felt his presence outside the thin walls of her tent all night.
She had no words for the sensation he evoked. It reminded her of the warmth radiating from a fire, more intense when he was near, lessening with distance.
It was as if some invisible cord bound them together.
He drew her toward him with no effort that she could see, yet like the flames, he tempted her nearer, pulled her toward the heart of the fire.
Anna closed her eyes and sought to clear her mind. Her puzzling reaction to this newcomer in their midst was naught but an aberration. She’d never met his like before, ’twas nothing more than that.
For the remainder of their brief journey, she sought to focus her vision on the brightly garbed trees, to keep her mind fixed with grim determination upon the tasks awaiting her return to the workshop.
Yet it seemed, for the first time in her life, she’d encountered a distraction that made the lure of her craft pale in comparison.
Siwardson’s face appeared before her mind’s eye, his ice-blue gaze intense.
And try though she might, she could not erase the image from her brain.
They reached Murat much sooner than Swen had expected. By his estimation, they’d traveled little more than a league or two from where they’d made camp. But given last night’s attack, he understood why William had stopped. If they’d sought to finish their journey by moonlight, they’d have made an even easier target.
Though Anna had ridden in silence behind him, every time her gaze lit upon him, he felt it as clearly as if she’d reached out and trailed her fingertips along his spine. He’d swear her eyes’ caress had the weight and substance of a physical touch.
He shifted in the saddle. If she did not cease her no-doubt unwitting assault soon, he suspected he’d embarrass them both with his body’s enthusiastic reaction when he dismounted.
Swen looked about as they rode out of the trees. The village stood in the midst of a wide clearing, surrounded by a crude wooden palisade. The expanse between the wall and the forest was filled with tilled fields, most already harvested from the look of them, with a few rough-hewn animal pens along either side of the gate into the village.
As soon as William led them into the open, the workers toiling in the fields abandoned their tasks and began to hurry toward them, shouting greetings as they made their way across the uneven ground. But their cries of welcome turned to wails of alarm once the injured guards and the packhorses with their grievous burden came fully into view.
A woman, skirts kilted to her knees, ran ahead of the others. “Ned?” she called, her voice aquiver. Eyes frantic, she scanned the cluster of horses as they drew near.
“Damnation,” William muttered. Grim-faced, he halted his mount and leapt from the saddle into her path.
“Where’s my Ned?” she demanded, though she gave William no chance to reply. Despite his attempts to hold her back, she squirmed past him. Her gaze lit upon a worn pair of boots sticking out from beneath the blanket-wrapped body atop one of the packhorses. “William, ‘tis not…”
William turned to her. “I’m sorry, Mistress Trudy.”
“Nay!” Sobbing, she clasped the guard’s feet to her chest with one hand and tugged at the blanket with the other.
“Here now, you don’t want to do that.” William grabbed for her, but she pulled free of his hold. Wrapping her arms about the body, she laid her face against the horse’s coarse coat and began to wail.
Anna gathered up the trailing hem of her cloak and pushed it aside. “Trudy, nay,” she cried as she grasped the high pommel of her saddle to dismount.
Swen slid from his mount to help Anna down, but before he could reach her, her feet became entangled in her skirts and she began to slip sideways.
Heart pounding wildly, he lunged for her, capturing her against his chest as she fell. She rested in his hold for a moment, a warm and welcome burden, then squirmed free in a flurry of fabric.
“Have a care, mistress.” Reluctant to let her go, he steadied her on her feet.
“Thank