My Lady Jane(32)

She lowered her gaze to the knitting on her lap, hiding her flush behind a veil of hair. He was attractive. She was married to him. She could look. She should look.

As long as he didn’t know about it. The last thing she needed was for his ego to get any bigger.

They rode in silence while she knitted, but when at last she held up her work, the scarf was far from scarf-like. The tragedy of wool was short, and skinny in the wrong places. It almost resembled some sort of fat rodent.

“What is it, may I ask?” Gifford asked, squinting at her handiwork.

“None of your business.” She lowered her work and began unknitting an entire row of stitches one at a time, erasing their tangled existence with much more finesse than she’d created them. (She had a lot of practice unknitting things. She could unknit entire wardrobes. You’d imagine that lots of practice unknitting would mean lots of practice—and improvement—knitting, but your imagination forgot to account for Jane.)

Jane tried again, this time making sure to count the knits and purls, and pull every ply through the stitch. By the end of the row, the scarf had grown fat and twelve stray plies stuck out in little loops. “I think you’re getting better.” Gifford leaned one elbow on her books. “I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be, but it looks more like something than it did a few minutes ago.”

She scowled and jabbed his elbow with the point of her free needle. “No touching my books, remember?”

Gifford withdrew, and Jane put aside her knitting.

“So there is something you aren’t good at,” Gifford mused. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to continue something she’s not immediately perfect at, so why knitting?”

“Practice makes perfect,” she answered primly. “And I wanted to make something for Edward. He gets cold sometimes now. . . .”

Gifford was frowning. “I take it you and the king are close,” he said quietly.

“Yes. Quite.”

“But how close are we talking, here? Old-childhood-chums close, or former-paramours close, or still-can’t-live-without-each-other . . .”

Jane had no idea what he was going on about. Fortunately, the sound of screaming ahead saved her from having to figure it out.

“What is that?” Jane thudded the heel of her palm on the side of the carriage. “Driver, halt!”

“Screams mean danger, my lady.” Gifford reached for her, but the book wall prevented him from getting very far, and then the carriage had stopped moving and Jane was out the door, into the night.

She picked up the hem of her dress and ran toward the sound, stumbling over the rutted dirt road, which ran on a hill above a long stretch of farmland.

“My lady!” called the driver, echoed shortly by Gifford.

But Jane didn’t stop running until she was well ahead of the carriage, and standing on a prominence overlooking a wide field where, on the far side, a single cow lowed in bovine terror.

The moon was high and full enough to illuminate the events unfolding on the outskirts of the field below: a handful of people brandished sticks and pitchforks and various other farming tools, attempting to block the path of a pack of wolves.

“Jane, what are you doing?” Gifford caught up with her, and he saw what she saw. “God’s teeth.”

“Gifford, you must do something.”

“Do what?” His face was drawn and pale in the moonlight. His eyes hadn’t shifted from the wolves below.

“Save those people. The wolves are trying to attack their cow!” Most of the people below were adults, both men and women, but a few couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve. “The wolves will go through the people to get to the cow.”

“And how do you propose I make this daring rescue? Shall I hurl books at the wolves? Throw myself in front of the cow to save it?” He looked at her askance as one of the children screamed and began to flee from the wolves. The pack leader yipped, and two of its pack mates leapt toward the child, who crumpled into a ball to protect his head and neck as the wolves nipped at his arms. A man broke the blockade and ran to help the child, and the wolves took advantage of the chaos. A couple of wolves lunged toward the whole group, forcing them to defend themselves while the rest of the pack moved around and began a steady lope toward the mooing cow.

“If you won’t help them, I will!” Jane scrambled back toward the road and scanned for a place with a shallow enough incline to descend, but there was nothing easy, aside from a series of protruding rocks she could climb down.

Gifford was running after her, and the driver looked uncertain whether to leave behind the carriage.

Jane reached the outcroppings of rocks and stretched to find footing on the first one. Below, the wolves had reached the cow on the far side of the field. The cow’s scream rang across the night. A man shouted, “This is what you get, if you mess with the likes of us!” Jane realized then that this man was not one of the farmers, but a better-dressed fellow who was running alongside the wolves. And there were three more men with him, armed with swords and bows.

Why were there people with the wolves? It made no sense.

Tears blurred Jane’s vision as her foot finally touched the first rock, and she crab-crawled downward. But before she made it very far, two strong hands plucked her up by her underarms, and lifted her away from her mission.