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The Templar's Seduction
Chapter One
Two weeks later
Inglewood Forest, near Carlisle, northern England
He was going to hang at dawn.
Sir Alexander de Ashby tipped his head back against the oak to which his arms were secured and lifted his face to the afternoon sky. Squinting through the glare and trying to ignore the sting of the oozing cut on his brow, he looked to see whether this sturdy fellow had branches large enough to bear the rope that would end his miserable life once and for all.
Just then a puff of hot breeze ruffled the leaves overhead. It swirled through the treetops, dying away almost as soon as it began, but its action allowed the sun to stab into his eyes. It cut a direct path to the throbbing lump on the back of his skull—a parting gift from one of the half-dozen or so English soldiers who had beset him here a few hours ago.
The only soldier he'd left standing, damn it.
Tipping his chin back down, Alex closed his eyes and made an effort to think past the pounding in his head. He supposed the outcome of that little scuffle with the king's finest was why he'd be hanging come the morrow. He'd killed at least two of them, he knew, and the other three hadn't looked likely to get up for quite some time. But that sixth one . . .
A sharp pain suddenly streaked from his shoulders down his arms, as his bonds were yanked from behind.
"At attention, you mangy son of a mongrel bitch!"
Ah, yes, that sixth one . . .
Alex opened his eyes again to meet the hostile gaze of the one soldier who'd somehow gotten beneath his defenses. Instinctively hetightened the muscles of his stomach in preparation for the fist he expected to land there next. But this time the man didn't follow through with his usual blow. Nay, he was standing with his spine stiff as a blade, and his face, which was nicely marred with its own arrays of cuts and bruises, Alex noted with satisfaction, controlled. The soldier had shifted his gaze to a point just past Alex's shoulder, his entire demeanor professional.
In the next moment, Alex realized why.
Another man stepped into view from behind the tree. He was clearly the guard's superior, and by the quality of his clothing, he was also a man of title. Walking with slow, measured steps, he came around to face Alex. Then he just stood still. He did not speak as he perused Alex, from the tip of his scuffed boots, up his legs and torso, covered by a shirt ripped in several places, to the top of his head. As his chill blue gaze locked with Alex's own, his face remained impassive—but for the slight flare of his nostrils and the glimmer of something that filled the expressionless depths of his eyes for an instant before he mastered it.
Alex met that stare with cool insolence, allowing his lip to curl up on one side in mockery. The action was instinctive and the kind of thing that had landed him in trouble on many occasions before. But he didn't attempt to quell it. If he was being honest with himself, he knew he wouldn't have anyway, even if he'd still had something to lose.
The locked stare lasted for a count of eight or ten before the nobleman moved. Turning sharply on his heel, he stalked away a few yards to say something to the guard. Far enough that Alex couldn't make out his words. After a moment's hesitation, the younger man favored Alex with another biting glare before striding past him, his boots crunching on the accumulated twigs blanketing the forest floor.
And then the nobleman swung his gaze back to Alex and spoke directly to him.
"You seem to have cut quite a path of destruction through my men this morn, Sir—?"
"Alexander de Ashby," Alex answered without hesitation. It would serve no purpose to be hanged in anonymity, after all. There was always the chance that Damien might hear of the matter someday and have the peace of knowing what had become of him.
His jaw tightened as that thought of his younger brother swept through his mind; he forced himself to quash it, not wanting any inkling of weakness to be apparent in his expression as he faced this pompous English lord. Nay, he'd save any thoughts he might have of Damien and their difficult past for the lonely hours tonight, as he prepared for what would come at dawn.
"Sir Alexander," the nobleman intoned. His hands were laced behind him, and he rocked back a bit on his heels, tipping his head to the side and giving a brief nod.
"And you are?" Alex asked, his disrespectful tone begging for reprisal, he knew. But to hell with it. That he faced death on the morrow didn't mean he had to cower like a dog in the meantime. There was naught this lord could do to him that the French Inquisitors had not already put him through during the nearly two years they'd held him as a Templar Knight in the hell of their prisons, except to hang him, of course. But even that would be over with soon enough.
The nobleman looked taken aback at first, but he recovered to answer in a clipped voice, "I am Roger de Gravelin, the Earl of Exford."
Alex felt a tiny shock go through him. The Earl of Exford? Even absent as he'd been from England during his time of service with the Brotherhood, Alex knew that name. The Gravelins had curried favor from the king and a good deal of power in the north for their commitment to England in her long-standing battles against the Scots. Lord Exford was likely the most powerful border lord in the realm.
The Templar's Seduction. Copyright © by Mary Reed McCall. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
