Joining (12 page)

She nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. His scowl grew darker. Her smile got brighter. Mayhap it was not wise, to provoke him, even subtly, but she simply could not resist the opportunity.

He tried again to get his stallion to move back, less harshly, but still without success. Finally he ordered her, “Release your hold on him.”

“I am not holding him,” she replied calmly. “Mayhap if you apologized for hurting him, and showed him that you care about him, he might obey you.”

To that Wulfric growled, dismounted, and led
the stallion some distance away on foot. Milisant managed to keep from chuckling as she watched his difficulty, but she did call out, “Do not forget the apology.”

He ignored her—at least, he did not glance back at her to reply. He did say a few words to his horse, though, which she was unable to hear. Likely threats and dire warnings about not embarrassing him again.

After a few more minutes, he remounted and tried once again to approach her. He just made sure he kept his distance this time, and kept his stallion turned partially away, so the animal would have trouble noticing her.

This worked, and the knight was able to relax somewhat. Which was why Milisant knew, to the second, when he realized that she was looking down on him, even at the extra distance between them.

Due to the huge size of the destrier, Wulfric’s greater height still did not put them at eye level. It was close, but not quite enough. And it was so very obvious that he did not like having to look up at her, even if only a few inches.

Perversely, Milisant straightened up in her saddle, adding a few more inches. Wulfric, seeing this, made a sound of disgust and turned his stallion about to leave her.

Then she gasped in pain.

It was completely involuntary. She certainly would never have drawn him back to her intentionally. It was merely her surprise at hearing the arrow as it neared her, then feeling the sting of it on her upper arm. It only nicked her, continued on to embed in a nearby tree, yet she
was still staring incredulously at the blood appearing on her cloak as Wulfric turned back to her.

His reaction to seeing the blood was a bit faster than her own. He had her off of Stomper and buried in the cocoon of his chest, arms, and cloak within seconds. His shout of “To arms!” swiftly followed, to bring his knights to him.

She was trying, in vain, to find an opening in the voluminous cloak wrapped about her, so she could at least get her head out of it. No luck. And then the stallion was galloping away, so she gave up trying.

She was feeling a bit dizzy as well, and her efforts had made that worse. And she was also noticing that the sting on her arm was getting increasingly more painful with each jarring bounce of that wild ride back to the castle.

By the time the drawbridge was reached, Milisant had lost all feeling. For the first time in her life, she fainted, not because of the pain, which she could withstand better than most, but from blood loss. Since she was hidden under Wulfric’s cloak, neither of them could see just how much blood she had continued to lose.

Fifteen

“What is taking
the castle leech so long?” Wulfric asked.

“Mayhap the fact that I did not send for him,” Jhone said quietly in answer.

“That should have been the first thing you did when you arrived. See to it now.”

Milisant tried to open her eyes to see them, knew they were standing nearby, but simply could not muster the strength. Her senses were still spinning dizzily. There was a ringing in her ears that made hearing difficult. She needed to sleep, she knew, to regain her strength, but the burning sting on her arm kept her from succumbing.

“Do you bring him, I will bar the door,” Jhone told the knight. “He can do naught for Mili that I cannot do. Faugh, look at her! She has lost so much blood already, she cannot afford to lose any more.”

“Nonsense—”

“Think what you like, but it has been our experience, my sister’s and mine, that leeching
may do fine for certain illnesses and infections to draw out the poisons, but for simple injuries and clean wounds, we have never seen them improve the condition. More like, the bloodsucking they do worsens it. Besides, my sister hates leeches and would not thank you for being responsible for bringing them, when she is too weak to tear them off of her.”

“I do not seek her thanks, merely her recovery,” Wulfric said stiffly.

“Then leave me be to tend to her. Do you wish to be helpful, tell my father that it is a simple wound and Mili should be fine after a few days of rest.”

A moment of silent indecision, then, “You will inform me if aught changes with her condition?”

“Certainly.”

“I wish to see her when she awakens.”

“As soon as she agrees to see you.”

There was a snort, then the order, “I do not ask for
her
permission. Summon me.”

The door closed behind him rather loudly, proof of how annoyed Jhone had just made him. Milisant still could not manage to get her eyes open, to make sure he was gone. But she did manage to part her lips.

“Do not … summon him,” she whispered.

Jhone’s gentle hand came immediately to her brow, and her voice was soothing by her ear. “Shhh, you intend to sleep for nigh a week. He would not be so churlish as to disturb your sleep.”

“Would … he … not?”

Jhone
tsked.
“I will see that he does not. Now,
brace yourself. ’Tis lucky you did not wake for the stitching, but I still need bandage you.” “How many?”

“It took six stitches,” Jhone said, understanding the question. “I was careful to leave no puckers.”

Milisant would have smiled if it would not have cost so much effort. Jhone would hover over her until she was well, she did not doubt.

She was almost asleep when it occurred to her to ask, “Did they find him?”

Again Jhone did not need to ask who. “Nay, not yet. Papa was directing the search when I left the clearing. He is furious, Mili, and rightly so, that one of our hunters could be so careless.”

“’Twas no hunter … or accident,” Milisant said as the last of her strength gave out. She slurred the rest. “Someone wants to see me dead.”

“Wulfric has placed guards outside the door—nay, do not look alarmed. ’Tis not to keep you in, but to keep everyone else out.” Jhone was whispering, as if those guards could hear her and would be reporting every word. “He took to heart what you said.”

Milisant sat up in bed, where she had spent the last three days. They were beneficial. If not for the pain on her arm, she was feeling almost normal.

“What I said? What did I say?”

“What you told me the day it happened,” Jhone explained. “That it was no accident, that arrow hitting you. I repeated this to Papa—while Wulfric was present. They both agree with
you. ’Twas too soon after that first attack for the second to be unrelated.”

“’Twas not just that—I had not even thought of that yet. ’Twas that I know our own hunters, as well as those from our neighbors. None of these men are careless. And none of them would dare to hunt anywhere nearby when Papa was hunting in the area. And Papa’s party was impossible to miss hearing or seeing that day.”

Jhone wrung her hands before she exclaimed, “I hate this! Verily, I have never despised aught so much as this threat to you.
Why
would anyone want to do you harm, Mili? You have no enemies.”

“Nay, but
he
likely does. And how better to hurt him than to keep him from collecting the fortune that comes with me to the marriage?”

“I cannot credit that. ’Tis too complicated,” Jhone said, shaking her head. “Much easier to just kill the enemy directly, yet no attempts have been made against Wulfric—well, at least none that we know of.”

“These attacks happened with his arrival, Jhone. If I do not believe that they come from an enemy of his, then that leaves me only one other thing to believe, that Wulfric has arranged for them himself.”

Jhone gasped. “You
cannot
think that!”

Milisant lifted a brow. “Can I not? After he admitted to me that he loves another? After he admitted that he spoke with his father to get released from this joining, yet he had no more luck than I did? To eliminate me would get him what he wants, would it not?”

“Lord Guy is an honorable man. I have to
believe that his son was raised to be just as honorable. ’Tis absurd to think he would resort to murder.”

Milisant shrugged. “Stranger things have been done for love. But I am inclined to agree with you, which is why I think that it is the doing of an enemy of his. We need just find out who.”

Jhone nodded, then gave her a pensive look. “There is more.”

“More?”

“He
is convinced that he cannot protect you here. Dunburh is large, with too many mercenaries, he said. Men for hire are not known for the greatest of loyalties, are actually known to take the highest offer.”

“You speak of betrayals?”

“Not me, him. I am merely repeating what he told Papa. Shefford, on the other hand, is manned by knights whose allegiance is owed to the earl. There are no mercenaries there, and those household knights who make their living there have been loyal to Shefford for many years.”

“In other words, he trusts all the men-at-arms there, but here they come and go frequently. Thus here we have men aplenty who might take a bribe or payment—to do murder.” Milisant snorted. “And did Papa believe that reasoning?”

“He did not discount it totally. But he did agree that we get a lot of strangers here, since it is well known that Dunburh is a good place to find work. The gist of it is—we leave for Shefford on the morrow.”

“What?! I was given extra time. Papa cannot
change his mind about that now, just because—”

“You will still have the time, you will just have it there rather than here.”

Milisant frowned, not very appeased, and still not liking it that ’twas his idea. “You said ‘we’?”

Jhone grinned. “I told Papa you were not well enough yet to travel without me. So he agreed you would not go unless I accompany you.”

Milisant gripped Jhone’s hand as she said, “Thank you,” then added in a conspiratorial whisper, “But pretend to be ill as well. Then we can both stay home.”

Jhone
tsked
at the suggestion. “What difference, here or there? You will still have the allotted time.”

“Shefford is his domain. I will not be comfortable in his domain.”

“Methinks you will not be comfortable wherever he is, so again, what difference?”

“True,” Milisant conceded, then sighed. “On the morrow—should you not be packing?”

Sixteen

“What the devil
are those?”

Milisant followed Wulfric’s gaze to the servants coming forth with four cages in different sizes. They were all gathered in the bailey, where it had ended up taking two baggage wains to accommodate all that the twins deemed necessary for the journey. Milisant’s pets were the last thing to be loaded.

She was very proud of the wooden cages she had made when she was a child. She had made them for her fostering at Fulbray Castle, as she had refused to leave her pets behind then. She was not about to leave them behind now.

To answer his question, Milisant said, “My pets travel more comfortably in their cages, at least some of them do.”

His dark blue eyes swung back to her where she sat on the end of the baggage wain that she would be riding in. “You keep
four
pets?”

“Well, nay, there are more than that, but only those four do I cage.”

He looked back at the cages that had gotten
close enough now for him to see inside them. “An owl?
Why
would you make a pet of an owl?”

“I did not, actually. ’Twas more that Hoots made me his owner. He followed me home and raised havoc in the bailey until I agreed to keep him.”

“Until you agreed—” He broke off repeating that, deciding it was not worth pursuing, and still staring at the cages, said next, “Think you I will not feed you, that you must bring along your own dinner?”

She followed his gaze again and this time gasped. “Do
not
even think it. Aggie has been with me since she was a chick. She is
not
for eating.”