The Kindling (21 page)

Helene smiled and held up the plant, roots and all. “This will make a most bitter drink, but one that, if it can be held long enough in the belly to pass through—and sometimes it cannot—will aid a woman during her monthly…” She grimaced. “
That
lesson will not serve you in any measure.”

He shrugged. “‘Tis interesting.”

They continued on, but the next half hour yielded no further bounty. If not that she was loath to return to the castle, certain Baron Lavonne would soon arrive had he not already, she would have started back.

You are being a coward.

So she was.

“If it would not lower me too much in your estimation,” Abel said, “I would rest my leg ere we venture farther.”

“Of course.” She gestured at a large, moss-mottled stone. “We can sit there.”

Shortly, they lowered to the tilted surface and Abel stretched out on his back. “’Tis cool,” he said, and she realized she had also warmed during their walk. But tempted as she was to lie back, she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.

“Tell me about your husband, Helene.”

She looked around and saw Abel had closed his eyes. “I do not understand how Willem could be of interest to you.”

“Do you not?” He opened one eye and considered her. “He was wed to you and fathered John.”

“Aye.” Though wary of speaking of her departed husband, she was also hopeful his interest meant that, in all the days that had passed, he yet sought to make a place in his life for her and her son.

“Did you love him?”

She swallowed. “I married him.”

“That does not mean your heart was his, just as my heart was not my wife’s though vows were spoken between us.”

“Then you never loved her?”

His chest rose with a deep breath, and he returned to the dark behind his lids. “I did not. ‘Twas a marriage for alliance and lands, though I had hoped…” His laugh was sharp. “’Twas your marriage we were discussing, not mine.”

“Nay, we were not discussing my marriage.”

After a long moment, he said, “No wager, but a bargain, hmm? I shall tell you what I can about Rosamund and trust that you shall then tell me about Willem.”

It was heartening that he offered to speak first, but still she hesitated, for unraveling one piece of her past might leave surrounding pieces frayed such that they would begin unraveling on their own before she was ready to reveal the large, frightening swatch at her center that bore the names of Aldous and Robert Lavonne.

“Rosamund was lovely,” Abel said, taking her silence as agreement, “and appeared to have all the grace and talent of a well-raised lady, but when I first met her—only days before our wedding—I glimpsed something in her eyes and manner that unsettled me. But always her mother or father or a maid was at her side, giving us no moment alone in which to converse that I might confirm it was not shyness that made it difficult for her to hold my gaze nor prayer that caused incoherent words to whisper from her lips.”

Helene remembered his reaction to her whispered prayers when he had come upon her working with mortar and pestle. “Her mind was not right,” she said.

“’Twas not, and though I argued that the nuptials be postponed, my concerns were waved aside. Thus, rather than break the betrothal as I should have done no matter the consequences, I spoke vows with her.”

“Was there no joy at all in your marriage?”

He lifted his lids and peered at her. “To my surprise, during those first weeks I was almost glad our families had pressed us to wed, for though she was mostly quiet and reserved, at times she was so happy and vibrant I began to believe she merely needed time to adjust to being a wife. I even thought I might come to care deeply for her, perhaps venture as far as love.”

Helene shifted around to ease the strain in her neck. “What happened?”

“The others inside her began to uncoil.”

“Others? Inside her?”

“So it seemed. ’Twas if she were possessed by demons.”

A shiver went through Helene.

“At first, they showed themselves only fleetingly, but as the weeks passed, they became bolder and appeared for longer periods of time. They could be sweet and child-like, wild and coarse, aged and decrepit, but no matter how they presented, all were easily roused to jealousy and provoked to violence that, more than once, forced me to restrain her from hurting herself and others.”

“Go on,” Helene said softly.

“The day of the night that she brought a knife to bed, she accused me of being unfaithful and said she had seen me abed with another woman.”

At Helene’s startle, Abel turned a hand around her upper arm. “I only ever laid with her, and I have always thought it must have been one of those inside her with whom she believed I was unfaithful.”

Helene nodded for him to continue.

“I felt the knife before I saw it and, if not that my squire slept outside our chamber and heard my shout, she might have finished what she had begun. Even so, the physician said it was a miracle the blade did not sever an organ and I did not bleed to death.”

Helene waited to hear the rest of it.

“While I recovered, she escaped the tower where her father had confined her following her attack upon me, a place she had been held many times before we first met. I thought she had come to try to kill me again, and perhaps she would have had I not awakened.” His brow lined more deeply. “The light in her eyes was dim, and then it went dark and, I vow, never have I seen such vacancy upon a living person’s face. ‘Twas if all of her emptied out where she stood at the foot of the bed. Then she turned the knife on herself, and there was naught I could do to stop her.”

Helene laid her hand over his on her arm. “I am sorry.”

“Aye,” he murmured, and it was some time before he said, “Your husband?”

Despite Willem’s tragic end, her life with him seemed a better place to visit than the brief marriage of Abel and Rosamund. “He was a good man, a childless widower many years older than I and deserving of love I could not give him much beyond the love of one friend for another.”

“Why did you wed him?”

“Though Tippet was without a healer, I was an outsider. More, though, many of the women whose husbands looked too long upon me feared for their marriages. Eventually, some were so determined to see me gone that they began to spin tales that I was a witch. Fearing for my life, I decided to leave, and that is when Willem offered to grant me the protection of his good name.”

“For what purpose?”

“I would have had to be blind not to know it was more than kindness he had shown me since my arrival. But when I told him that though I cared for him, I did not love him, he said it did not matter, that he would be content with but a grain of my love if that was all I had to give.” She smiled. “And a son, if possible. By the time John was born a year later, the villagers had accepted me, and I loved Willem for loving me and our son.”

“But never more than as a friend.”

“Regrettably, never more.”

Abel’s brow creased. “Why did you wed a man you did not love when you could have moved on to another village?”

Her heart jumped. Was this the time to tell him?

Be done with it!

“I…” She struggled for words she had practiced often enough but which, in that moment, were a jumbled mess unwilling to be properly ordered.

“Of course, it could not have been safe to travel alone,” Abel helped her along in a way she could not resist grabbing hold of.

“Aye. When I left the convent, I followed the road as much as possible from the cover of the wood, the only time I set foot to it for any length of time being when a large group of merchants passed by and I was able to slip amongst them until they began to go their separate ways. Too, there was also the consideration that if I went to another village, I would be no better received.”

After a long moment, Abel said, “I understand.”

Nay, he does not—and he will not!

He drew his hand from beneath hers and set it upon her cheek. “Your feelings for me are different from what you felt for your husband.”

Was that a question? She stared down at him, holding her eyes to his lest they strayed to his mouth and she yielded to the longing to kiss him. “I fear I shall regret saying this, but I feel for you what I wish I had felt for Willem.”

His nostrils flared. “As I feel for you what I never felt for Rosamund.”

Love, then? She ached for it to be so, but if it was not, surely he cared deeply for her as he had thought he might grow to care for Rosamund—and then, perhaps, love would follow.

He slid his hand to the back of her neck, the brush of his palm’s ridged scar causing her breath to catch, then drew her down to him. When her mouth was but a moment from his, he said, “You have put me back together, Helene.”

Lord, I know You would not have me do so, but I melt…

This kiss was the same as their first. And yet not. Though the hunger she had felt then was still present, it did not ripple with the desperation of something stolen that would too soon be reclaimed by its owner and forever locked away. And when his fingers slid over her scalp and urged her nearer, she curved a hand around his shoulder, unfolded her legs, and eased down against his side.

He kissed her more deeply, stealing her breath and making her wonder if she even needed breath as long as his arms were around her. Then he turned her onto her back and lifted his head.

Helene searched his bearded face above hers that was no less dear with its angry scar. “You stopped,” she whispered.

His mouth tilted. “Should I not have?”

“You should. I but wish you did not have to.”

He brushed his lips across hers, and she gasped at the rasp of his whiskers that ought to be bothersome but was not.

“I do not believe ‘twill always be so,” he said, “but unless you grant me leave to continue, as we both know we should not, we will have to be content for now.”

For now… She reached up and, though he flinched when she touched the upper ridge of his scar, he remained still as she lightly traced it down to his jaw. “Then I shall be content.”

Smiling, he laid down beside her and wove his fingers with hers.

In the minutes that followed, Helene remained at his side in body and, more determinedly, mind, refusing to let in the voice she knew she would regret not heeding and, instead, impressing upon herself every moment that the man she loved remained warm and wholly present.

Thus, her heart sank when he said, “Though I would like to remain here with you, we should search out your plants so we will not be grossly late in welcoming Baron Lavonne.”

A quarter hour later, when she began to think her basket would not boast as much as she had hoped it would, she saw a wall of stone ahead just visible beyond the vines and grasses that crawled over it.

“Perhaps over there.” She pointed, then halted when she realized Abel was no longer at her side.

He stood rigidly behind her, gaze fixed on the place she had indicated.

“What is it?” she asked.

He shifted his jaw with such effort it was as if it had grown shut. “I know that place.”

“I do not understand—”

But an instant later she did. It was surely where he had fallen to Sir Robert’s brigands, the stone rising from the ground likely forming the entrance to the cave Lady Beatrix had spoken of some days past when Helene had sat with her at the hearth. Unlike when the brigands had stolen into Castle Soaring by way of the hidden tunnel that ran from the cave to the donjon cellar, the passageway was said to have been secured by the placement of three iron gates, each requiring a separate key to unlock. Never again would Lord D’Arci’s wife be vulnerable to any who sought to harm her.

Helene crossed to Abel’s side. “I have taken too much time as it is. Let us start back.”

As she turned away, he took her arm. “Come with me.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure you wish to go there?”

“I will not give it the power to haunt me by avoiding it. Will you come?”

She peered at the place to which she might have lost him, then slid her hand into his. “I shall.”

She did not know what she expected, but certainly not a place devoid of all evidence of the butchery that was said to have befallen defenders and besiegers alike—no evidence of the blood that had seeped into the soil, nor of torn limbs and broken blades. It was gone as if it had never been, washed away by the blessed rain, and what was not washed away surely carried away by order of Lord D’Arci.

“I know ‘tis imagined,” Abel said where he halted thirty feet from the cave, “but I can smell the blood, hear the shouts and cries of those who fell and were yet falling.”

Feeling the flex of his fingers that had wielded a blade when last he was here, she looked up at him. Mouth grim, he drew her toward a massive tree that, though it yet stood, was but a brittle, rotting shell of what had surely been magnificent before pestilence had eaten through its core.

He nodded to the gnarled and humped roots that radiated out from the base like the ruined fingers of a very old man. “I thought of you as I lay bleeding. I remembered how you felt in my arms and willed myself back to before I had to leave you.” He met her gaze. “It made no sense how I could be so affected by a woman I hardly knew and with whom I had spoken so few words, but those thin memories of you kept life from slipping away.”

Helene could barely breathe. He might not have spoken the exact words, but it seemed he did love her—her, Helene of Tippet. If only that was all she was…

Abel pulled her around to stand in front of him, took the basket from the crook of her arm and set it to the ground, and turned his hands around her upper arms. “You are the reason I drew my next breath, and each one thereafter though my body warned that I would only know more pain if I did not yield to death. I fought it. For you.”

Look how far you have to fall now…

“You love me, do you not, Helene?”

That
was a question, the answer to which he seemed less certain of than when he had ventured that her feelings for him were different from what she had felt for Willem. And just as it was difficult for him to believe he had so soon come to love her, neither did it make sense to her, especially if, in the end, there was no hope for her. And that possibility hurt.