The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) by Louisa Trent Page A

whore,” Spur said drily. “Apparently she is declining your courtship.”
    “Not just declining his courtship,” she said. “Insulted by it.” Showing her disdain, she swung the helm, beating her would-be suitor about the head and face until blood gushed forth from his unprotected nose.
    The very diversion Spur needed.
    As the outlaw tried to staunch the crimson flow, Spur made his move.
    Red Beard went down first—a quick stab to the heart done with the dagger secreted in Spur’s left boot, followed by a similar dispensing of another maggot, the kills done in quick succession of one another.
    As he was about to run a third man through with his sword, Spur was rudely interrupted.
    A jump from an overhanging tree branch landed the ambushing outlaw atop Spur’s back. Fortunately the sneak attack fell a smidgen short, and his cunning prisoner had the presence of mind to use the botched attempt on his life to repeat her prior tactic.
    Clunk . She let the ambusher have it with the helm.
    As this newest arrival sagged to the ground, Spur finished off two more of their attackers. Seeing no further comers, Spur sheathed his weapons, toed the crumpled corpses aside, and reclaimed his hold on his prisoner.
    Only she, evidently, failed to view herself as such. Slight of build but long of leg, she stood tall and proud before him as if she were his equal.
    He would forget for a moment that the wench was a whore. But as a peasant and a woman, and particularly as his prisoner, she was no equal of his. He was a nobleman by birth, a warrior by endeavor, and her warden on the trip to his keep—details she best not forget or by Christ’s testicles, he would…
    What?
    What would he do?
    Cut out her tongue, perchance?
    He would get no information out of her that way.
    Time to face the truth: she had him over a proverbial barrel.
    For now.
    “Here,” she said daintily and passed him his helm.
    Lest she use it against him too, he took it in both hands. “This served you well in the fight. But think of how a real weapon might have done you.”
    “Done me in, more like.” She dropped her chin. “I-I helped you kill a man.”
    “Actually, not to be picky, but ’twas two.”
    She looked up at him woefully, her expression distraught. “Two men. I helped you kill two men ?”
    “A bloody mess you made of it too,” he muttered, examining his brain-splattered helm, loathe to put the armor back on his head.
    She swiped her hands over her red-stained breasts and loins, smearing the proof of her success all over her hillocks and hollows.
    “Bathe,” she moaned to herself. “I must cleanse their blood away!” With a jerk that broke his hold on the leash, she took off at a gallop down the trail for the river, in clear view.
    Understanding rose up within him. He recalled all too well the first death brought about by his doing. Like her, he had not actually done the kill but had instead instigated the circumstance. ’Twas on a battlefield. A few years shy of her age at the time, he too had been horror-struck afterward. ’Twas not easy to hold life and death in the palm of one’s hand, to be the deciding factor in who took their next breath and who would wheeze out their last.
    He held that same awe-inspiring decision over her now.
    As Stephen’s man, ’twas his duty to see his prisoner prosecuted for her role in treason against the Crown. A death sentence. But the situation had changed. He now knew she was innocent of murdering all those villagers. Her reaction to the dead outlaws convinced Spur his prisoner did not hold any direct culpability—she had not the belly for murder.
    A soft belly for bloodletting did not make her blameless. She had consorted with a traitor to the crown, and that particular whoring would still earn her the noose. Or the chopping block.
    But not straightaway.
    Ah, the king. A bit of a procrastinator, that one. To all their detriments, there was no rushing him to judgment. Before he deemed to hear her