Page 17 of Heart of the Hunter (Band of Bastards #3)
F ew people could infuriate Hunter as thoroughly as Anora did.
“ Curiosity? ”
She lied to him, and he knew it. And she knew he knew it. Yet she stared at him with serene and earnest eyes and expected him to swallow it as though she hadn’t just put herself in grave danger by stalking around in the night in the castle of a sadistic cur who reveled in the humiliation of women.
A heartbeat before, when she’d looked at him with the eyes of a woman ready to take on the world to get what she wanted, he’d almost pulled her off her bench and onto his lap.
Her confession that she just wanted to take care of herself without having to rely on anyone else was something he understood.
But it was a lonely place to be; he knew that from experience.
Loneliness was the reason people built walls around themselves, in the belief that it made them stronger. And he’d seen another layer of Anora’s wall built before his eyes when she’d refused to trust him and chose to lie to him instead.
He recognized the withdrawing inward and closing down, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
Others had tried to break down his walls for as long as he could remember, but no one had succeeded.
Anora was the only person he’d ever had the desire to allow past his barriers, but he quashed that notion immediately. Nothing good could come of it.
“You have no idea the peril you put yourself in at Castle Whyte, or what could have happened to you if you were discovered.” It made his stomach churn to think about what the guards would have done had he not interfered.
“I was prepared if anyone stopped me or asked questions.” She flipped her long, slender fingers in the air as though she thought being captured to be a trivial matter.
“Your preparations have proven to be lacking thus far,” he drawled, “but tell me what you planned to do if caught.”
She scowled at him and held her head high, baring her long neck and looking as regal as a queen.
“ If I were discovered, I planned to say I had come to the castle looking for the baron to get his counsel on a private matter. Once I explained our families’ long history of friendship, and that I trusted the baron because of it, I don’t believe anyone would have dared to detain me.
I can feign innocence and helplessness when it serves my purpose.
And as much as I do not care for the baron, I am willing to use our lifelong acquaintance to my advantage. ”
He released a long, exasperated breath through his nostrils. There were so many flaws in her plan, but he decided to start with the most obvious. “Then what was the purpose of dressing as a man?”
“It is safer to travel as a man, easier to get through the gates with very little notice, and easier to move without hindrance. I knew the baron to be away from the castle, and if I’d shown up in a gown requesting his audience, they would have turned me away.
” She spoke as though her reasons were obvious and sound.
In truth, there was some sense to what she said, save that most men did not move as gracefully as she did.
Or fill out their tunics with the same curves and hollows.
Or have a face with such delicate features and lips so pink.
“You are na?ve if you think that ruse would have worked, that they would have taken your explanation and let you go. The guards in the forest were proof of that. You were moments away from…” He couldn’t say it out loud without shuttering.
“And you greatly misjudge your vulnerability if you think the baron would have offered any protection after he found out you were sneaking around his castle dressed like that.” Men like the baron would not care that she was the daughter of an old friend and respected merchant.
He would see it as his right to do what he willed with her because she put herself in the position of being alone in his chambers.
“It was because of you that I ended up in that situation.” She pushed to her feet, planted her hands on her hips, and stared down at him where he sat on the stool. “It was your idea to take the most difficult route out of the castle.”
He pushed to his own feet to stand over her, but she was taller than most women—and many men—and his height did not intimidate her in the least. He had wanted to force her to tip her head back to look at him, but she almost looked him square in the eye and needed only to lift her gaze slightly to meet his.
He reached for her wrist and pulled it forward as she looked at him wide-eyed, then dropped the pouch of keys into her outstretched hand.
“I think you forgot about these. Had I not gone back for them, we would have been gone before the guards found you.”
She looked down at the pouch in her hand, then closed her fingers over the leather and met his gaze with a slight tip of her head to the side. “Again, that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t made me go down into that tunnel with the rats.”
He felt his eyes bulge at her dismissal of the seriousness of her predicament. “What was your plan for escape? Walk out the front gate?”
“There’s no need to shout at me.”
It took him a moment to realize he’d stepped forward to stand toe to toe with her.
Both of them were breathing heavily, their exasperation at a breaking point.
Her eyes flashed and her cheeks were stained red, but she did not back away from his looming presence.
She looked as spitting mad as he felt, but he would wager that in this moment she felt more compelled to slap his face than be kissed senseless—which was his overwhelming urge at the moment. Pull yourself together, man!
“Why are you shaking your head at me?” she snapped when he shook it to clear his mind of the impulse to pull her against his chest to find out if she would resist. Never had he been rough with a woman, or forced his attentions on one, but every time he was near Anora it took all his willpower not to pull her into him to taste her lips.
He gritted his teeth and flexed his fingers to bring his focus back to where it belonged, which was saving the daft woman from herself.
If he didn’t convince her to quit sneaking around in the dark in places where she didn’t belong, he’d go mad with worry.
From what he knew of the baron, the friendship between their fathers would not stop him from violating and demeaning Anora if he found her alone in his chamber in the dead of night.
Hunter wanted to hurt the baron badly the first time he had seen the marks the man left on the harlots in the brothel in Shrewsbury, and he wanted to kill the man when cruelty toward the women became part of his routine.
There was a time when Hunter would have found the man in the night and buried a knife in his chest in a dark alley for his deeds.
But once he’d become a member of Hawk’s elite force, he’d been forced to be more cautious about committing a crime for which the courts would see him hanged.
Men did not deem whores as deserving of justice.
Even if Hunter murdered a man who maimed or killed a prostitute, he would still be at fault for taking the man’s life and be the one to suffer the consequence.
Thought it was a risk he was more than willing to take, Hawk had convinced him there were better ways to administer punishment to men like the baron.
But if the baron, or any of his guards, harmed even one strand of hair on Anora’s beautiful head, he would tear the man limb from limb. And he would feel no remorse, even if the king had his head removed and put on a stake at the tower in London.
“What was your plan for getting out of the castle, Anora?” He’d managed to regain some of his composure. Enough to take a step back from her and lower his voice below a shout. “Wait. First tell me, how did you gain entrance into the castle?”
“I walked in the front gate,” she said over her shoulder as she returned to the bench. Hunter watched her every move as she folded her long legs under her before covering them with his blanket again.
He waited for her to say more, but she just stared at him with a smug grin and innocent eyes.
He’d spent less time questioning men who were trained to resist interrogation.
She was waiting for him to respond, he knew that, but he wasn’t going to let her bait him into losing his control over the idiocy of her actions.
Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest, clenched his teeth, and continued to look down at her while he waited for her to explain.
They remained locked in an unblinking stare until Anora finally rolled her eyes and relented. “I carried a basket of eggs and muttered ‘For the kitchen’ in a grumpy tone.” She shrugged. “And I was in. Then I ducked into secluded alcove and waited until nightfall.”
The sagacity of the direct and simple approach was often overlooked, and as much as he wanted to fault her it, he couldn’t.
That didn’t stop him from glaring at her with immense disapproval or wanting to shake her until she saw the folly in what she tried to do.
Her instincts may have been good, but her skills were lacking, and both were necessary to anyone who deigned to stealth around where they were not meant to be.
“Did you think to walk back out the front gate after you were finished digging around in the baron’s chambers? ”
She blushed and her fingers plucked at the blanket in her lap. “Aye. I intended to claim I fell asleep in the kitchen after helping cook and had to return to the farm to help with the chickens before sunup.”
His jaw almost dropped open in disbelief. She couldn’t be so foolish as to think the guards would believe that story. It was a sure way to land herself in the castle’s dungeon.