A Knight Most Wicked

Arabella Rowan, the distant beauty he’d met last night at Princess Anne’s reception. Only she didn’t look so immaculately groomed today. Now that she had been rolling around the ground she looked dusty and disheveled and…

Damnation.

Tristan could not believe his eyes as his vision of aloof Arabella Rowan melded with his memory of the green-eyed enchantress from the forest. They were one and the same.

Her hair, so shiny and luxurious the night before, was a formidable tangle around her head. She was covered with dust and smudged with dirt, recalling her forest appearance.

It was the wild glint in her eyes now, however, that confirmed her identity. Unlike her courtly appearance, she now exuded passion. Heat. Fear and anger radiated from her with palpable force. ’Twas clear at a glance this member of Anne’s royal party was not the noblewoman her princess believed her to be.

Arabella knew the instant he recognized her. Really recognized her. The flash of recall revealed itself in the darkening and narrowing of his eyes.

He stepped toward her. Arabella’s first response was to scramble backward but he was too quick. Huge, hard hands wrapped themselves about her waist and lifted her as though she were no more burden than a child. Setting her once again upon her feet, he released her swiftly, giving Arabella the impression the contact had disturbed him as much as it had her.

“You are unharmed, Lady Arabella?” The way he stressed “lady” sounded decidedly unpleasant, conveying his doubt that she deserved the title.

She nodded, her lack of voice betraying her discomfiture.

“The man accosted you?”

Forcing herself to converse with him out of the desire to see her attacker punished, Arabella cleared her throat and met Tristan’s hard gaze.

“He offered his assistance to find Mary. She had disappeared from my view for a moment and I became concerned she had met with harm.”

“And when you refused his help, he attacked you?”

“Yes.”

“When we depart Prague and you are in my charge, you will never wander around without a man to escort you. Do you understand?”

A strange dictate, considering she had been fine today until a man got near her. But perhaps the princess should have asked one of her guards to accompany them, since other noblewomen had disappeared recently.

Then again, perhaps Arabella should not have followed her heart’s desires and asked Mary to leave the safety of the carriage for the marketplace. Guilt pinched her hard, perhaps making her words more biting than she’d intended.

“I would hope that once I am in your charge, sir, I will not be attacked by anyone.”

“I cannot protect wayward lasses.”

Her eyes connected with his and she felt the keen edge of that remark. Tristan Carlisle thought her unworthy of the Bohemian court. He did not think she could be true nobility because he had seen her out in the oak ring, venting her fury to the heavens.

“Wayward?” His remark insulted her grandmother and her heritage as much as it insulted her.

“Arabella!” a small voice cried out moments before Mary appeared from the thick of the surrounding crowd and threw both arms around her friend. “Are you hurt?”

Anger cooling as she reassured Mary of her good health, Arabella decided it would be useless to explain herself to Tristan. He would believe what he wanted.

Heaven knows, most everyone in the Bohemian court already thought she was a wayward lady because of her unusual upbringing. What difference did it make that Tristan Carlisle agreed with their assessment?

What she regretted most about the day was that she had unwittingly broken her grandmother’s most important rule. In the course of an afternoon, she had become very much the center of attention.

After spending a fruitless afternoon trying to twist answers out of the Bohemian trader who’d grabbed Arabella, Tristan accompanied Simon back to the keep to continue their preparations for the journey home. They’d discovered the man’s name was Ivan Litsen, but had learned precious little else about his motive. The man had seemed unconcerned about his encounter with Arabella, assuring Tristan that many men of his acquaintance would have done the same had they spied a beautiful young woman unaccompanied in a crowded marketplace.

If such was the case, why had the princess allowed Arabella and Mary to ride about the city? Did Arabella have enemies at court?

“Arabella Rowan is a fair one,” Simon observed as he studied the horizon from his horse, trotting beside Tristan’s mount.

Simon had been attempting conversation ever since they’d left the alleyway across from the marketplace where they’d questioned Litsen at length and finally given the man into the keeping of the king’s guard.

“Passing fair.” He had no wish to discuss the woman with his friend, whose appetite for feminine diversion had angered more than one protective father in their rare excursions to the English king’s court.

“Are you blind? Such beauty in a lady is as rare as it is striking to the eye.”

“She is no lady.” Tristan wondered if he could be the only man at court who knew of Arabella’s peasant roots.

“I am pleased to hear it. The prospects for our journey home have just begun to improve.”

“No.” Tristan suspected he was being skillfully manipulated—tested for his own interest in Arabella—but the knowledge did not prevent a surge of possessiveness at the thought of Simon with the green-eyed beauty.

“Pardon? Did the Sultan of Silence speak?”

“She is not your type of woman, Percival, and we both know it. You merely mean to examine my reaction to the wench. Why not just ask?” Irritated to realize he indeed found himself attracted to Arabella—nay, more fascinated than attracted—Tristan had no patience for idle talk of her. Yet he listened because Simon was his brother in spirit, if not by blood.

“I thought I was the picture of subtlety.” Simon laughed. “But since you’re offering, I am curious what you think of Lady Arabella.”

“I met her in the woods on one of the last nights we made camp on the way to Prague, and she bore little resemblance to the lady-in-waiting she plays for her princess.” He had not shared the incident with Simon, preferring to remember the encounter in his mind and not pick it apart with questions. “I do not know if the other nobles are aware of a pretender in their midst, or if Princess Anne has purposely gathered as large a retinue as possible, with no regard to the breeding of her travel companions. But either way, Lady Arabella’s court facade is a falsehood.”

“Perhaps the princess knows nothing of it, and Arabella has merely used that charming body of hers to lure a nobleman to her bed in an attempt to be included in the princess’s train.”

“Leave it to you to consider the most illicit possibilities.” Although heaven knows, Tristan of all people should have been quick to consider such a scheme, after having been betrayed by a woman seeking a higher station in life than a lowly knight could afford.

“Women must use what means they possess. A lesson hard won by us both, Tris, wouldn’t you say?”

“There is more.” Briefly, Tristan explained about the knife he found after she left. “It may be just an ordinary tool for gathering herbs, but there are some who believe such weapons are ceremonial items for Gypsy wise women or…”

“You don’t mean to suggest the girl is—”

“I suggest nothing. I’m merely telling you what I found and sharing the local superstitions.”

“You do not believe such rump-fed foolishness.”

“I do not fear the girl could turn me into a hopping toad, if that is what you mean. Yet I know she is not who she pretends to be.”

They were in a more untamed land, after all. A woman brought up in the Bohemian wilderness among the old ways could be a dangerous influence on the English court, even if her only crime was that of deception.

“’Tis all mumble-minded nonsense,” Simon remarked, reining in as they approached the knights’ quarters near the main keep. “Arabella Rowan is naught but a wild beauty with unearthly green eyes, and you would call her a Gypsy witch.”

“Hardly. Mayhap I will simply call her mine, instead.” He had not thought it over before he spoke the words aloud, but the idea had a certain appeal.

“Have you lost your wits? What happened to your aversion to treacherous women?”