The Bride Hunt (10 page)

A
nvrai’s reply did not bode well for the girl in the bed. Isabel knew naught of infants or how they came to be born. ’Twas not something one learned at the Abbey de St. Marie.

She released Anvrai’s arm and watched him stalk through the door of the cottage. He should have been pleased to find shelter even though ’twas occupied, but something about the place made him restless and uneasy.

Isabel did not blame him. ’Twas filthy, with dust upon every surface, and rank with an odor that defied description. She wrinkled her nose and leaned toward the young girl in the bed. “What is your name?”

“Mathilde—Tillie.”

“I am Isabel de St. Marie. How do you come to be here?”

“The Scots stole me from Haut Whysile last Christmastide. They killed the lord and his la—” Her belly hardened, and she moaned in pain, and there was naught Isabel could do to ease her suffering. Tillie was younger—
years younger
—than Kathryn, and Isabel shuddered to think of her sister being held, being raped and impregnated by some barbarian Scot. Would Kathryn find a way to escape Tillie’s fate the way Isabel had?

She could not think of her sister, not while Tillie was in such dire need.

The cottage door opened, and Anvrai returned. His shoulders and hair were damp with rain. He picked up a three-legged stool and set it beside the bed for Isabel to sit upon, then stood towering over both of them. “Where is the Scot—the man who brought you here?” His voice was impatient and gruff.

Tillie’s eyes grew huge in her small, freckled face.

Isabel pushed back the bright red hair from her forehead. “Do not fear Sir Anvrai. He is not as fierce as he seems.”

Tillie’s throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed before answering. “Dead.”

“Was he the only one?”

“Aye. No one else is here—” Another pain struck her, and she squeezed Isabel’s hands so tightly that Isabel nearly cried out. When Tillie finally released her, Isabel blinked away tears that had formed in her eyes.

“Forgive me for hurting you,” Tillie said to Isabel. “It’s just that when the pains come…I was so afraid before you came.”

Isabel nodded. “I’m here now.” She turned to Anvrai, and placed her hand upon his arm. “We’ll help you through this.”

When another pain had come and gone, Isabel asked Anvrai to go out and collect some water.

He seemed relieved to have a task to occupy him, though Isabel felt a moment’s panic when he left the cottage. Anvrai always seemed to know what to do, and she had come to rely upon him.

She glanced at Roger, who had taken a seat at the rough table on the other side of the room. “Will you see if there are any clean cloths about?”

“Isabel, you should take your rest.”

She frowned. “Not while this child has need of me.”

“Child? This
child
played the whore for a Scottish barbarian, did she not?”

Clearly, Roger did not understand what had happened to Tillie, or he would not speak in such a disparaging way.

“I have need of clean cloths, Roger. Will you find some, please?”

Roger grumbled, but as Tillie’s labor progressed, he gathered every cloth he found in the cupboards and set them on a low table beside the bed. Soon Anvrai returned with water he’d collected in the cook pot. He poured some of it into a bowl and handed it to Isabel, then started a fire to heat the rest—and the cottage.

Isabel took one of the cloths Roger had found, soaked it in cool water, and placed it upon Tillie’s forehead as she rested between the pains. Then she went to the hearth where Anvrai arranged the logs on the fire. “Tell me what I should do for Tillie. She has so much pain.”

“’Tis women’s business,” he replied. “You will manage.”

He left her abruptly and went outside again. Uneasily, Isabel took a seat beside Tillie and gave what comfort she could as the girl’s labor progressed. She offered her sips of water and rubbed her back when the pains came. And though that seemed wholly inadequate, it was the only thing Isabel could do to soothe her.

Hours passed, and night fell. Roger made his
bed on the floor near the fire and drifted off to sleep just as the gentle rain turned into a downpour. Anvrai returned and started to prepare the food he’d caught. Then he took a seat on one of the two chairs in the cottage, leaned back, and dozed, offering Isabel no assistance.

“Tillie,” she whispered, “it seems that between us, we must get this bairn born.”

Something happened then. The bed filled with a gush of water, and Tillie’s pains became even worse. They came more frequently and were so intense she woke Roger with her cries of agony. “It’s coming!”

Tillie’s cry eliminated any possibility of sleep, of remaining uninvolved in the birth of her bairn. When Anvrai looked into Isabel’s terrified eyes, he knew he had no choice but to offer his assistance. “’Tis the bag of waters.” He would never forget his mother’s two pregnancies that had ended with the birth of stillborn infants.

He’d been certain his mother would die when she’d screamed in pain, but the servants had reassured him and his sister, Beatrice, telling them just enough about the birthing process to keep them quiet. But those two bairns—his tiny brothers—had been born dead. He swallowed the bile that rose in his
throat. He had not thought of those losses in years, yet the memories paled when he recalled the heinous murders of his mother and Beatrice. He gritted his teeth and turned his attention to the girl in the bed.

“Once the waters flow, the bairn will come,” he said.

Isabel gave him a grateful glance that almost made up for his horrible memories. When she looked at him, he could hardly think of the tiny bairns cradled in his mother’s arms, or her tears each time his father took one away for burial.

“Did you hear, Tillie?” asked Isabel. “’Tis almost finished!”

The girl’s attention was fully focused on the lower part of her body. She made a low sound in her throat and rolled from her side to her back. Reluctantly, Anvrai took hold of her ankles and pushed them back, bending her knees as he’d seen the midwife do to his mother. He’d been so young then, he had barely been noticed hovering about his mother’s bedchamber, worrying with each scream that the birth would kill her.

“You should push now,” he said. “Push the bairn out.”

Isabel looked up at him. “You
do
know what to do.”

“Barely. Lady Isabel, take my place here.”

He took Isabel’s arm and guided her into position beside Tillie’s legs. “Nature will take its course now.” He started to retreat, but Isabel stopped him again. “Don’t go,” she pleaded, and he found he could not refuse her. He clenched his jaw and went to stand at Tillie’s head.

“Lift her gown and watch for the bairn’s head,” he said, resigned to staying.

Isabel did as she was instructed while Anvrai spoke quietly to the girl. He held her shoulders and told her to push when the next pain came. That was how the infant would come out—as Tillie bore down with each pain, the infant would be squeezed out. ’Twas a miracle any bairn—or mother—survived.

“Breathe slowly now,” Anvrai said. “Or you will faint.”

The girl whimpered, but as the pain built again, she grunted and pushed.

“’Tis here, Tillie! Keep on!” Isabel placed her hands under the infant’s head, and as Tillie pushed again, the bairn turned, and its shoulders slid out. Anvrai watched carefully, but he could not yet tell if it was alive. “Once more!”

The girl lay back for a moment and caught her breath before raising herself up on her elbows to push again. Anvrai supported her
back, and she pushed again. A moment later, the child was fully born.

“’Tis a girl,” Isabel said softly, her voice hoarse with emotion. Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. “’Tis wondrous.”

Anvrai felt a strange thickening in his throat, but he swallowed it away and observed Isabel and the new bairn as Tillie fell back on the bed in exhaustion. Anvrai could hardly breathe as he watched her new bairn’s tiny fingers opening and closing, the perfect little feet kicking. Yet she seemed to be struggling for air with her arms and legs flailing in distress. Anvrai reached for the child, but she suddenly let out a loud wail, and he let out the breath he’d been holding.

The bairn seemed healthy, with its lusty cry and pink cheeks; but Anvrai could not trust that all would be well, not even as Isabel washed her with warm water and he tied and cut the cord that connected her to her young mother. Isabel wrapped the infant in a soft woolen blanket and handed her to Tillie.

“Here’s your child, Tillie.”

Anvrai did not know how Isabel could fail to understand the fragile boundary between life and death. This birth might have ended disastrously, yet Isabel’s face seemed lit from within,
and so beautiful Anvrai could almost forget the tragedies in his past.

“Look at the nails of her fingers,” Isabel said, gently straightening and separating the bairn’s fingers. Something inside Anvrai’s chest swelled, almost painfully. “And her tiny mouth. Her lips are like the soft petals of a flower.”

As were Isabel’s. Anvrai let his gaze drop to her lips and thought of kissing her, of tasting the sweet depths of her mouth. Madness, but he could not seem to help himself.

“What will you call her?” Isabel asked. She felt Anvrai’s gaze upon her and shivered with an awareness and an attraction that drew her to him, making her step closer until she felt the warmth of his body. She felt the urge to lean into him, to feel the hard planes of his body against the softness of hers.

Her senses were filled with Sir Anvrai. He’d been so kind and gentle with Tillie and her bairn that Isabel could hardly reconcile this man with the stern knight who’d gotten them out of the Scottish village and safely to their cave refuge. He could not possibly be the same man who’d been so gruff with Roger when he’d been ill.

“I don’t know what to call her,” Tillie replied to a question Isabel barely remembered asking. The girl suddenly winced with pain. “’Tis another one!”

“No,” Anvrai said, clearing his throat. “Just the afterbirth, and then ’twill be finished.”

With care, he took the infant from Tillie and handed her back to Isabel. Her hands intertwined with his as she took the bairn from him, and she was struck once again by his tender touch, in spite of the roughness of his hands. His face seemed to lose its hard edge, and the scars were not as terrible as they’d once seemed. Her heart, already full from witnessing the birth of Tillie’s bairn, felt it would burst when Anvrai touched her.

She took a shaky breath and walked toward the fire with the infant upon her shoulder.

’Twas far too close in the cottage. Though there was a chimney to channel the smoke from the room, some of it hovered just below the rough ceiling. The partridges roasted on a spit over the fire, with grease hissing and crackling when it dripped onto the hearth.

Roger slept soundly, in spite of all that had just happened. Isabel nuzzled the infant’s forehead and forced an outward calm in spite of her raw emotions. There was no longer any rea
son to feel nervous and agitated, but the evening’s events had taken their toll.

Fresh air and room to breathe would surely help. With the infant warmly wrapped, Isabel opened the cottage door and peered out. A light rain still fell, but Isabel felt drawn to the peaceful quiet outside. She returned to Tillie and placed the bairn in her arms. The infant immediately turned to suckle.

As one tiny hand curled against her mother’s soft breast, Isabel felt her own breasts tighten and her womb quicken. Yet
she
had not given birth,
she
suckled no bairn at her breast.

Alarmed by her unbridled emotions, Isabel blinked away tears and hurried to the cottage door. She let herself out and walked ’round to the back, where she could stand under the eaves, sheltered from the rain. She hugged herself to keep warm and fought the foolish tears that had been threatening to fall ever since their arrival at Tillie’s cottage.

The birth had gone well, yet Isabel wept, and the mist dampened her hair and clothes in spite of the overhang. She shivered as she shed tears for her father and mother, and Kathryn, and for her own narrow escape from Tillie’s fate.

“Isabel.”

Her throat tightened, keeping her from answering. She looked up at Anvrai and tried to keep her chin from quivering.

Anvrai took hold of her shoulders, then pulled her into his arms. Her tears fell freely, soaking the front of his tunic while his shoulders were surely being soaked by the rain. But he did not seem to notice as he held her, caressing her back as she wept. She heard his voice, deep and rich as it resonated through her chest, but did not really hear his words.

He felt big and solid against her, and she remembered that first day at the cave when she’d seen the dense muscles of his arms and shoulders and wondered at the power in his narrow hips, in that potent male part of him nested securely between his legs. She felt firmly rooted in his arms, as though her emotions would not overpower her as long as he held her.

Isabel slid her hands up, felt the thick sinews and muscles of his chest. Boldly, she slipped her hands inside his tunic and felt his bare skin, knifing her fingers into the crisp hair of his chest.

“You are so hard,” she whispered.

He made an inarticulate sound when Isabel touched his flat, brown nipples.

Only they weren’t flat. They’d hardened into tips like her own.

Awareness flooded through her. Hot and liquid, it shimmered through her, making her legs wobble, and the most sensitive parts of her body burn. She looked up at Anvrai and found his head tipped toward hers, his lips only inches away. Closing the distance between them, she touched her mouth to his.

Anvrai filled her senses. His rainwater scent surrounded her, and his taste filled her mouth. She felt the strength of his arms ’round her waist, and the pounding of his heart in her own breast.

He shifted slightly and deepened the kiss, and Isabel opened her lips, welcoming his invasion. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and slid his hand down to her hips, pressing her closer to his groin, fitting them together as they were made to be joined.