Sing Me Home (6 page)

“A gift, you say? Truth be told, yesterday you came up a bit short.”

Colin paused for a moment—a second’s hesitation—watching her with a gleam in his eye. She took some pleasure in knowing that the laughter now rolling around them was finally at
his
expense.

“Lady.” He bowed before her. “You surprise me.”

“Has no lass found the heart to tell you this before?”

“None with so angelic a face.”

“Then I’ll be more blunt.” She remembered something one of the milkmaids had laughed about after slipping behind a haystack with a day-laborer. Maura only had the vaguest idea of what it meant. “I can’t help but notice that your beard—” she said, scraping a finger across his clean-shaven jaw, “—is little more than fuzz.”

“Is it not a fine thing for a man to be free of thatch?”

“A lass can judge by the thickness of the hay whether the pitchfork is any good.” The crowd laughed and she felt a trill of satisfaction.

“Remember,” he countered, “grass does not grow thick on a well-beaten path.”

“If the path is so well beaten, then perhaps your pitchfork is like a spindle—worn out by the using.”

“Rather,” he countered, “it grows smooth and hard and well-polished.”

“And thin and short. And like all old spindles,” she said, flinging her hand in the air, “it’s best tossed out for a new one.”

In the laughter that ensued, Maura turned her back to him, intending to escape, but his fingers curled around her arm again and he brought her up short. The next thing she knew, he’d swung her into his arms, thrust her hips against his, and forced her head back so she had no choice but to stare up at his face, inches from hers.

There, it was happening again—that strange sliding feeling deep in her belly, as if the world was slipping away beneath her. The laughter of the crowd faded to a rumbling in the distance. The sun shone bright on his head, sheening his black hair—more like a halo than the horns he deserved. And she couldn’t help staring at that face, at those smiling lips with the sharp, white scar that cut across the lower edge, glowing white now with how wide he was grinning. She watched that grin while they breathed in the same air, and she once again smelled that exotic and unfamiliar fragrance—oranges, cardamom—the one that made the back of her knees soften.

He’s going to kiss me.

She waited for it to happen, staring into those intense blue eyes, and for a moment she felt like she was a child at Christmastide, aching for the moment the feast wound down so the waferer would come out to disperse his honey-dipped sweets that melted in one’s mouth. But when his lips finally descended, he didn’t aim for her own swollen, waiting lips. His mouth fell upon her earlobe instead.

Once there, he sucked it in.

Had lightning flashed down from the sky, she doubted it could thrust more rippling exhilaration through her than the feel of his hot mouth upon her ear. She clawed her fingers into his tunic as his tongue rolled rough and he drew in more. Seized by spasms of sensation, she didn’t realize that Nutmeg had clambered out of his basket until she felt the bite of his tiny paws on her shoulder.

“Nutmeg,” she mumbled. “Nutmeg!”

Colin pulled back. The crowd barked in surprise. Nutmeg squealed at the noise. With a chirr and a flurry of whiskers, the squirrel ripped threads down her back as he lunged for the paving stones. Frozen by his hard landing, he twitched his whiskers, and then tore through the legs of the scattering onlookers to some distant, quieter place.

“By God’s Nails, woman,” Colin said in a booming voice, “what sort of rats have you been lying with?”

The laughter was deafening. But she couldn’t speak—she could barely think—so she focused on Nutmeg, her terrified pet heading off to places unknown. Tearing away from Colin, Maura scanned the square. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a furry blur dart into an alleyway. She headed after Nutmeg while slapping her ear, trying to rub away the tingling sensation Colin caused in more hollows than her ear.

He was only play-acting, she told herself, as she raced mindlessly after Nutmeg. She was a fool to think his kiss meant anything more than that.

Far down the alleyway, she glimpsed a gray tail hanging from the thatch of a roof. “Nutmeg?”

The squirrel poked a black nose over the edge, chirring down at her.

“Come, Nutmeg.” She riffled in her pocket where a few spring seeds remained from the squirrel’s hurried breakfast. “You’ll find few enough trees here, and most of them already occupied.”

The squirrel sniffed the air, then shot away when a woman threw open shutters just beneath his perch. Maura saw him leap onto the next roof. She followed him, house to house, trying to entice her pet down.

“He’ll come down sooner or later.”

She turned to see Colin striding down an alleyway in pursuit, squinting up at the squirrel cowering in the thatch.

“You!” She couldn’t look at those blue eyes, still ashamed at her body’s reaction to the touch of his tongue. “You scared Nutmeg near to death with your antics.”

“Even the most skittish creatures always come around.” He had the audacity to grin at her.

“Does everything you say have a double meaning?”

“Not everything. Sometimes I speak the truth.”

“Stop, just stop,” she said. “I went to church this morning, Colin. I met a cleric. Do you know what he did?”

“He turned you away.”

She flattened her hand on a wall, cut down at the knees by his knowledge.

Colin shrugged. “A church is the one place our kind isn’t always greeted with open arms.”

“I’m
not
a minstrel.”

He raised a brow. “In that square, you played the part as if you were born to it.”

“I played the part,” she argued, “because I foolishly wanted to give back to you the teasing you forced upon me. Vengeance is a sin, too. Another I won’t be able to confess until I find a pardoner willing to hear me.” She crossed her arms. “It’s sure you have no concern for the state of your soul.”

“Ah, Maura.” His laugh was gentle. “I lost my soul a long time ago.”

She opened her mouth but no sound came out, because she didn’t know how to respond to such a blasphemy. Her entire existence had been focused on the protection of her immortal soul—filling her days with prayers, confession, absolution, grace, especially to avoid the kind of sin that had crept into her dreams last night.

“Here.” Colin tugged the tippet of his hood over his shoulder and reached into its length. “I followed you to give you this.”

He pulled out a battered leather pouch, crisscrossed with patches. He reached out, uncurled her hand, and settled the pouch in it. A few coins spilled out. English coins, stamped with the visage of King Edward I. They gleamed dirty in the midday sun.

“Your first earnings as a minstrel.” Colin raised one strong brow. “Like it or not, you’re one of us now.”

Chapter Five

“
E
very last penny!” Arnaud gripped the donkey’s bit and yanked the beast around the mud. “Gone, every last gleaming coin—flung to the breeze by our little Abbess. As if English farthings come so cheaply and so easily!”

I’ll ignore him. I’ll ignore him,
Maura told herself, in rhythm with her walk. Since they’d left the town, and she’d announced what she’d done with her earnings, the heat of Arnaud’s black gaze had bored a hole into her back. Well, she felt no shame in what she’d done with the money Colin had given her, though her stomach gurgled on nothing more than last night’s sour ale—all the breakfast the troupe could afford.

She glanced at Colin to gauge his opinion, but that minstrel was concentrating on keeping the second donkey out of the mud.

“Stop tugging so hard, Arnaud.” Colin gently gripped the frayed harness as he coaxed the second beast clear. “If you yank him, he’ll buck, or stop altogether.”

“Let him buck—or stop—what does it matter?” Arnaud swung his free arm to the road stretched before them. “We’ll earn as much playing to the birds and the squirrels as we did playing to those tight-fisted Englishmen. No—” Arnaud interjected as Colin opened his mouth to speak “—you know the rules. We are to share
all
earnings equally. You had no authority to give all those coins to her so she could piss them away.”

She flinched. “I didn’t piss them away.”

“She gave it all to a pardoner, no less. Did you hear that, Colin? She gave our hard-earned pay to a
pardoner!”

“That money,” she said, “was better spent than any you ever earned.”

Arnaud raised his face to the skies. “She thinks those coins actually went to the
church.”

“That pardoner,” she argued, “came from the hospital of Roncesvalles, in Spain—”

“A Spanish hospital, of course!” Arnaud’s gaze searched the heavens. “Surely, a Spanish hospital would send a pardoner all the way to this godforsaken island to raise funds.”

The comment struck hard but she ignored it. A holy man was a holy man. “That pardoner had the authority to forgive sins unconfessed—including yours.”

Arnaud flushed an unhealthy shade of red. “Colin, do you hear what this wench is saying?”

Colin lifted his head long enough for her to see the laughter he was trying to suppress.

Aye, he would laugh at her. She supposed he had expected her to spend that coin on trifles—ribbons and braid and the like—or on oatcakes and meat. The fact that she’d promptly dumped every last farthing in the hands of a traveling pardoner meant nothing to him. Colin had no care for coins, for wealth, certainly not for comfort—the ugly blue lump on his forehead and the cut across his chin from last night’s fight proved that. But those coins meant pardon for the sinfulness of her straying thoughts. Better to have forgiveness for her soul than a little more meat in her belly.

“It wasn’t all for me.” Maura eyed Arnaud in rueful challenge. “With the way you all drank and sang and sinned without end in that town last night, you should be grateful that prayers are being said for your souls.”

“Oui,
such a generous pardoner, such a strong man, such authority!”

“Enough, Arnaud.” Colin grunted as the donkey finally pulled a hoof out of the mud. “Leave the lass be.”

“Are you defending her?”

Colin shrugged and then winced at the motion. Aye, he should wince, she thought. That cow-herder had thrown Colin over his shoulder as if the minstrel were nothing but a newborn calf. Still, Colin had fought with a ferocity that had shocked her. His teasing and laughter turned bitter when he stood across a village square eyeing a competitor. And he took each hammering blow of his opponent’s fists with a bark of amusement, as if he welcomed the hand that would make mincemeat of his face.

She’d never seen a man welcome pain with such enthusiasm.

“Since it was my mistake, I’ll give those coins back to you.” Colin staggered away from the donkey, shook his arm, and caught the purse that fell from his sleeve. He launched it toward Arnaud. “Go ahead, divide it among the troupe.”

Arnaud snatched the pouch from the air. “This is your wrestling money.”

“That it is.”

“You’re missing the point,” Arnaud insisted. “The Abbess shouldn’t have given her own earnings away. She must follow the rules, or she can’t be in the troupe at all. Wait.” Arnaud eyeballed the pouch more closely. “This is the pouch you gave
her
.”

“That it is.”

Arnaud raised a brow. “You stole this back from the pardoner.”

“The Abbess’s pardoner has a weakness for gambling.” Colin touched the lump on his forehead. “A weakness Maguire was more than happy to exploit.”

Maura shuffled to a stop. Surely a pardoner wouldn’t hang about a tavern, talking to the likes of the Mudman. Surely a pardoner wouldn’t take the gift she’d given and gamble it away on a fight.

Her thoughts tripped over one another. The pardoner had known all the prayers in Latin. He had a pouch full of parchments with waxed seals, and a relic from St. Michael in a silk bag hanging from his neck. How could it be that a man would proclaim himself a servant of God and then take that coin for his own sinful purposes?

“Hah!” Arnaud slapped the Mudman on the back. “That’s my man, Maguire, taking back what’s rightfully ours.”