The Kindling (3 page)

Only then did Abel become aware of other footfalls. Forgetting the injury to his leg, he turned so quickly he lurched and had to grab the sill to avoid further humiliation.

“What is this?” he demanded, causing the maid who approached the brazier with burdened arms to falter and the other to nearly lose her grip on the broom poised to sweep away the aged rushes.

“’Tis chill in here,” Garr said where he had positioned himself to the right of the threshold, arms crossed over his chest.

“Is it?” Abel snapped, though now he did feel the cold where he stood before the window from which he had thrown back the shutters.

“Worse, it stinks.” Garr hitched an eyebrow. “I was not told your sense of smell was also afflicted.”

Abel narrowed his eyes. When his displeasure but caused his brother to raise the other eyebrow, he gritted his teeth and glanced at the maid who attempted to kindle the fire in the brazier that had burned so hot on the night past; next, the woman whose efficiency with the broom was no match for Abel’s impatience.

“This can be done later, Garr.” He knew it was disrespectful to address his brother by his Christian name rather than “Wulfrith” in the presence of non-family members, but he did not care.

“Nay, it cannot.” Garr lowered his gaze over Abel and paused on his bare legs. “’Tis good to see you willingly out of bed, but it would be better to see you fully clothed.”

Though Abel knew the lower portion of the injury to his leg was visible beneath the tunic’s hem, he did not turn away.

Garr jerked his chin toward the chest against the wall. “If ‘tis too much for you, I could ask one of these young women to raise the lid and search out clean braies and hose. And tunic, of course, for that one might best be burned.”

Feeling his upper lip peel back, Abel rejoined it with the lower. He knew he was being baited, that Garr believed anger was better than brooding.

When finally he could speak again without presenting as outraged or, worse, petulant, he said, “I thank you, Brother, but I can attend to my own needs.” Unfortunately, he could make no move to do so without casting more light upon his infirmity and arousing pity, the scent of which might ignite the smoldering within and far surpass the speed with which the maid coaxed the brazier to life.

Thus, Abel stared at Garr and Garr stared back, and all the while Abel tried not to envy or resent his brother whose own battle wounds, once healed, had no ill effect upon his ability to take up sword and defend family and home. Beneath his garments, Garr might be abundantly scarred, but he was as able as ever and worthy of the coveted Wulfrith dagger he wore upon his belt. Abel Wulfrith was not, and the self pity that ran through him burned like bile full up in his throat.

He swallowed hard. With much consideration of the leg that would betray him again given the chance, he turned back to the window and tried not to think on his own jeweled dagger that he distantly remembered having knocked to the floor during those first days when he had risen to consciousness long enough to take notice of his losses. Was it his sister, Beatrix, who had laid the sheathed dagger upon his chest, who had sought to assure him he would be back at arms before long?

Abel closed his eyes and, when he opened them again, determinedly set them on the inner bailey below. The rousing of day had stirred it to life, and he found this unremarkable scene that he had not witnessed in far too many weeks strangely fascinating. Unlike his life, the lives of those whose legs quickly traversed the beaten dirt ground had not come to a halt, and he wondered how many times others had looked upon him as he now looked upon the castle folk, oblivious to the suffering of the unseen observer. Oblivious to a life lost.

Abel did not know how much time passed in the space between his brother’s entrance and the hand that gripped his shoulder, but some part of him had been aware of the broom’s shush and scrape, the brazier’s warmth that radiated upon his back even as the risen sun breathed upon his face, the scent of fresh rushes and the herbs scattered over them, the slosh of water, the creak of the bed, and the rustle of sheets. More, he was aware of his legs, the uninjured one that cramped from long supporting most of his weight, the lame one that throbbed and ached at being forced to remain upright.

“’Tis done,” Garr said. “Now you must only decide whether to bathe yourself or allow the healer to assist you.”

Abel snorted. “As already told, I can attend—”

A chill spread across his every pore. Garr could not possibly mean
her.
He would not have brought her here—unless their sister, Gaenor, who had recently wed Baron Christian Lavonne and believed she saw more than there was to see, had told their older brother of the healer and her son.

Holding his feet tight to the floor lest his leg further shamed him, Abel looked around. “Of what do you speak?”

Garr squeezed Abel’s shoulder and stepped to the side. “Helene from the village of Tippet has come.”

Chapter Three

She stood inside the chamber to the right of the open doorway, hands clasped at her waist, chin up, dark red hair woven into a fat plait draped over one shoulder.

The chill left Abel, and though he knew the color that rose up his neck was mostly born of anger at having his wishes ignored, he knew it also bore shades of shame.

The last time he had seen—and held—this woman, he had been a man in full. One whose hands knew well the ridges and furrows of a sword hilt. One with two legs solid beneath him. One who had thought it a worthy challenge to face not one but two opponents at once. One whose countenance many a woman had found pleasing.

He was no longer any of those, and yet the one who stood a half dozen strides from him did not wince or look away, as if accustomed to what her eyes beheld—so accustomed that no pity shone from her. And it was the lack of that detestable emotion that permitted him to contain the anger that might otherwise have burst from him.

“I shall leave you to decide,” Garr said and strode from the chamber.

Helene, all five feet and few of her, was the first to speak, though she did so only after his brother’s footsteps receded. “How shall I best assist you, Sir Abel?”

Her effortless Norman-French surprised him, though not as much as it had that first time when she had eschewed the language of the commoner in favor of his own. More, he was unsettled by how familiar her voice sounded though it was some time since last he had heard it.

Keenly—painfully—aware of his every move, he turned to fully face her. “You are not needed.”

She glanced at his injured hand that, until that moment, he had not realized was attempting to form a fist. “Would it not be better said that I am not wanted?”

Though tempted to shout down the implication that he was incapable of caring for himself, he controlled his emotions and, feeling the strain upon his hand, eased his fingers. “Regardless, you may go.”

“That I may, for it was my decision to grant your brother’s request.”

“Why did you?” He did not mean to ask, and yet the question rose so swiftly he could not check it.

“I am in your debt.”

She surely referred to her son, John, whom she had been forced to leave behind weeks—or was it months?—past, although Abel had initially believed she had abandoned him. “Your boy but followed me around like a puppy,” he said, “and I did little more than toss him scraps. For that, you owe me naught.”

Her breath caught. Though he knew it was cruel to equate her child with a dog, he determined that if it offended her sufficiently that she was all the sooner gone, it would serve.

She stared at him and, when no response was forthcoming, he gave what he hoped was the final push. “However, if you insist upon being in my debt, I vow your absence will be payment enough, for I am most eager to see your back.”

She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. “Ah, but then Lord D’Arci would have to continue tending you when it is the business of Castle Soaring to which he ought to turn his attention.”

Abel narrowed his gaze on her. “Just as I do not require your services, I no longer require his. Now leave.”

Still she came, the coarse, heavy material of her homespun gown rustling almost obscenely upon one so slight and comely. As she neared, she slowly raised her chin to hold her gaze to his, and he noted the shadows beneath her dark blue eyes that told she had either not slept well or been ill. Regardless, she was more lovely than he remembered and looked younger than the twenty and few years he had guessed her to be when first they had met. Of course, as Sir Robert’s captive, her days had surely been hard.

She halted before him and, when she reached forward and lifted his crippled hand, he was so stunned by her boldness that, before he could wrench free, she turned his palm up and bent her head to it. Worse, his traitorous fingers curled toward hers as if they remembered them though never had he held her hand. For that, he was almost glad his range of motion was so limited.

She probed the flesh on either side of the scar and looked up. “It heals well.”

Though her smile was one of approval, he was unsettled by his body’s response to the bowing of her lips. He pulled his hand free and, unable to put space between them without limp or loss of balance, said, “The physician did all that he could.”

She lowered her arms to her sides. “Then Lord D’Arci has told you that hand will not hold a sword again? That you will only impede its healing by forcing it to do what can no longer be done?”

As if her smile had never been, Abel’s left hand made the fist his right could not, his knuckles aching for something to drive against. “I need none to tell me that.”

Her gaze flicked to his clenched hand, but when she once more lifted her eyes to his, the wariness there was so fleeting as to have been imagined. “Know this, Abel Wulfrith,” she said, a surprisingly hard edge to her voice, “do you raise a hand to me, I shall defend my person with all that I have. And, I vow, I will not be the only one bloodied and bruised.”

He stiffened. Did she truly believe him capable of beating a woman? Ever he had defended the weak and vulnerable, using his blade and fists only against those who preyed upon others—or nearly so, for he had done his wife no harm when he had wrested from her the dagger with which she had sought his death. And yet this woman thought—

He recalled the ill that had befallen Helene when he had misjudged and failed her the day they had first met. Though he had not witnessed the beating given to her by Sir Robert, the leader of the brigands who had stolen her from her home, he had seen the remnants of that violence upon her face, neck, and wrists on the day of the night he had wielded a sword against those same miscreants. Of course Helene of Tippet did not trust him. Likely, she did not trust any man.

He forced his hands at his sides to relax. “I have never hit a woman, and I never shall.”

She delved his face, then slowly inclined her head. “It seems we shall be at peace with one another, then.”

He frowned and, in so doing, was made all the more aware of his scarred face that he had yet to look upon though the ridge of its sweeping path told that it was unsightly. “Were you to remain at Castle Soaring, that would be desirable, but you shall be gone from here this day.”

“Only if you yourself deliver me beyond these walls.” She ran her gaze down him and up again. “Most unfortunate for you, Sir Abel, in your current state of apathy and self pity, that is something of which you are incapable.”

Only remembrance of that glimpse of wariness in her eyes held him from once more manifesting his anger by forming a fist. “Go,” he rumbled.

“I shall—
after
I have cleaned and examined your injuries that I might determine how best to tend you.” She pointed her chin toward the bed. “Can you reach it unaided?”

In that moment, Abel wanted nothing more than to carry her across the chamber and deposit her in the passageway. But as well she knew—and boasted—that simple act was beyond him. And it made him feel more helpless than before.

“You think I will meekly lie down at your command,
Helene of Tippet
?” The laughter that barked from him was so coarse it felt torn from his throat. “That I shall willingly bare myself to you?”

She parted her lips as if to answer, hesitated, then said, “Like it or nay that I am a woman, healing is my gift and profession. However, if you fear I will be horrified by what is beneath your tunic, know that already I have seen it.”

Abel was certain her meaning was different from the way it sounded, that she referred to similar wounds upon others she had tended. And yet, that was not what he saw in her eyes.

Containing the impulse to step nearer, he asked low, “What say you?”

“Whilst you slept ere the dawn, I did come and look upon your leg. And your face.”

She had been here? In the dark of his alone? When the sleeping draught had held him down? When it had fed him dreams across which he had bled?

Memories rushed past the door thrown open by this woman’s revelation, but though he tried to blind his mind’s eye to the bloodletting at Soaring when he had fallen to brigands, next the bloodletting in his own bed when he had fallen to his wife, images flashed before him, even those only imagined—the blade at his throat he did not see…the path it traced from the great vein in his neck to the ribs that caged his slowly beating heart…the twitching of Rosamund’s lips that so rarely bowed…the darkness all around her…the pain…

And then light.

Abel felt something then, heard something, saw something—pieces of a heretofore forgotten dream or, rather, what he had thought was a dream. Helene of Tippet
had
been here. His hand
had
known her hand, his ears her voice, his eyes her eyes. And, as on that night many years past, sleep had made him vulnerable to a woman who had come to him in the dark.

Abel could not remember the last time he had thrown something against a wall, but surely he had not been beyond five years of age, for his father would not have tolerated such loss of control. Though he was now well beyond his twentieth year, in that moment, the longing to break something upon the walls of his chamber was almost overwhelming. And the woman before him must have felt it, for wariness once again made an appearance upon her face. Still, she did not retreat, though he wished her to. Not that he feared he would do her harm, for he had spoken true that he would never strike a woman. He simply wanted her gone.