Second chapter! Please leave reviews if you like it. I still recommend following it if you want to not lose track of it once it goes to M. :) Also, there will be an MA/NC-17 version on my website that I just put up, which is my name without the "tiger". This one will be edited so it doesn't get banned.
The palfrey had stopped. Christian caught flashes of its long green barding and chestnut coat through the bushes. A suspicion that the baroness was no longer riding it had been forming in the back of his mind, and it now solidified into half-certainty as the horse wandered aimlessly away.
Pressing his lips in a hard line, he nudged his mount quickly through the undergrowth. The palfrey's head came up, and it skipped to the side and sidled deeper into the forest, but Christian did not pursue. The glimpse of the empty saddle, stirrups dangling, banished the last of his hopes. The young baroness had eluded him.
Muttering a curse, Christian turned his charger back towards the field. He had a battle to win before he could spare the men to comb the forest, but he was determined find her even if it took all night. He had worked too hard to arrange her capture to let her escape so easily.
Christian had thought his plan perfect, as bloodless as any war strategy could be. He had been cultivating that thickheaded steward since his father first told Christian of his intentions against their neighbor the Earl of Rothbourne, and he was certain that the man was his. But the knights of Astlingsmeade had fought like the very devil had possessed them so that the field was blood-soaked even before Sir Giles made his move, and then somehow the bumbler had managed to lose the girl entirely. How could Christian have miscalculated so badly?
As he ducked yet another low-hanging branch, Christian fatalistically marked loosing Anastasia le Steele as just another indication that the entire campaign was ill conceived. Some of the disbelief he had felt when his father first revealed his intentions returned. If Christian had not been bound to his father by the ties of fealty and kinship both, he would have walked out on the Earl of Greyholm right then and never looked back. His father concealed ambition in rhetoric about the logical path, the noble path, but for once, Christian suspected that even the man might not even believe his own words. The entire scheme reeked of self-aggrandizement.
When Christian had confronted his father, though, the older man only spoke with hurt in his eyes of the harshness of the world and the need for the King to have faithful followers. Still, it was not lost on Christian that his father had waited to get blessing from the doddering monarch until the canny crown prince was far from England.
The girl can certainly ride, though, Christian thought, his mind abruptly returning to his fruitless chase through the woods. He hadn't gotten a clear look at the green-clad baroness before turning in pursuit, but he found that his memory wanted to attribute her with the proportions of an Amazon to go along with that skill and strength, confounding the vague image of conventional virtues that he had unconsciously created based upon the dozen ballads circulating in her praise. The figure wavered in his mind's eye as he struggled to balance such disparate traits.
Perhaps his plan to capture her had failed because he had not taken the baroness herself into account, he thought as the image dissolved. He shook his head at the irony of that possibility, then again to clear it as he emerged onto the battlefield once again.
A single glance was enough to take in the flow of the battle, and with a grim smile, he drew his sword and plunged toward his standard where it dipped and waved in the midst of the tightest knot of fighters. His momentum carried him past the first line of soldiers, and then he hacked a path through, meeting steel here, flesh there, as he strove to reach his marshal's side.
He had progressed only a few strides when his two squires joined him, and with one on each flank, they pressed past the enemy and into the calm of the inner circle of his men where his marshal was resting.
"The trap was well sprung, my lord," his marshal reported, a grin splitting his face. "I relayed the order when you left, and the enemy was caught completely unawares."
Christian nodded shortly. Knots of fighters still struggled on the battlefield, but it took no trained eye to see that the tide moved relentlessly in his favor.
Sir Stephen's glee dimmed somewhat, and he cast his lord a keen look. "The baroness?"
"Escaped." The word tasted bitter on his tongue. "I will send out patrols as soon as we mop up the field."
Sir Stephen wiped the back of his hand across his dirt-smudged face and settled his great helm on his head. "Then let us make haste." He spurred his horse back into the thick of the battle, and chuckling at his eagerness, Christian followed.