The Kindling (5 page)

As she straightened, she caught the eye of the man who was bound to a nearby tree—Sir Mark, a captured Wulfrith knight whose wounds she had tended.

As much as she wished to release him that they might escape together, there was no hope in it, and so she turned opposite and moved as quickly as her muted chains allowed to the rear of the tent. When no alarm sounded, she set the basin on the ground and began to pick her way through the wood, using the cover of trees and shrubs whenever possible.

Once out of sight of camp, she was able to move with a bit more speed, and it was not long before she reached the stream. Hope flooded her. This time on the morrow, she could be reunited with her son.

She smiled, only to have the expression dashed from her mouth when a hand clamped over it. Next her waist was grabbed and, as she cried out against the calloused palm and began to struggle, she was turned and pushed back against a tree.

Though she knew her best defense was to drive her knee into her assailant’s groin, he prevented her from doing so by pressing his stinking, coarsely clothed body hard against hers.

Her hood having fallen back, she thrust her chin up and searched the face above hers, expecting it to belong to one of the brigands. It did not. But that did not make her fear him any less, for though his uses for her would surely prove far different from Sir Robert’s, he would use her, so terribly perhaps that her child would be left motherless. Summoning all her strength, she arched and twisted.

“Be still!” he growled.

She jerked her chin and, finding the fleshy part of his hand at the base of his fingers, bit hard.

He wrenched his hand away. And she screamed.

As he sought to once more quiet her with his bloodied hand, she snarled, “I will not let you ravish me, cur!”

His hand landed upon her mouth again, and though she strained to deliver a second bite, he cupped his palm such that only air fell prey to her teeth.

“I am not what I look, Helene of Tippet,” he rasped.

Her name on his lips made her startle, the words preceding it made her grow still, as did the accent that revealed he was more versed in Norman French than the English of the commoners.

“I am Sir Abel of the Wulfriths,” he said.

She knew the name, for her liege, Baron Lavonne, was to wed into that family, and his misbegotten brother, Sir Robert, vowed he would not rest until he had killed as many of them as he could lay hands to.

“I but intend to return you to your son,” Sir Abel said, continuing to pin her against the tree.

She exhaled into the hand of the man whose face had been spared no filth though, now that she looked nearer upon it, she saw it was clean shaven—even handsome.

Slowly, he lifted his hand from her mouth.

“You speak of my John?” she addressed him in Norman French.

She saw his flicker of surprise and knew it was because commoners were not expected to know the language of the nobility. “Aye,” he said, “John, the same who thinks to make of me his wet nurse.”

“He is well?”

“Well enough. Now we must—” He raised his crimson-smeared hand in a gesture meant to quiet her, turned his head, and listened. “They come.” He stepped back, grabbed her arm, and pulled her forward.

Helene longed to cry. Instead, she yanked her arm free and stumbled back against the tree. “I cannot go with you.”

He stared at her, and she felt sick at her stomach over the anger that rose on his face, evidence that he mistook her refusal for something it was not. But there was no time to explain why she must stay, and even if there was, something told her this knight would not leave her behind. Thus, he would be the first of the Wulfriths to die upon the edge of Sir Robert’s sword.

“You choose that vile Aldous Lavonne over your own son?” he demanded.

She raised her chin. “Go now, else I shall scream again, and they will know all the sooner where to find you.”

His eyes narrowed, but when the shouts of the brigands revealed how near they were, he said, “God forgive you, Helene of Tippet,” and swung away.

Feeling the burn of tears, she slid her back down the tree and crouched there to await the brigands’ arrival. However, she could not let the knight go without begging a boon. “Sir Abel!”

At the stream’s bank, he turned fully around, and she guessed he thought she had changed her mind. She could not—even had he boasted a sword upon his belt.

“Tell my boy I love him,” she said.

His flush of anger deepened. “I am no carrier of lies.” He turned his back on her.

With the voices and the pound of feet growing louder, he splashed through the stream to the opposite side, and she did not take her eyes from him as he wove himself into the wood, going from sight a moment before a brigand shouted, “I see her!”

They approached from both sides, seven in all, and for the first time she considered the great number of men and horses and hounds it was thought necessary to bring one small fox to ground.

A brigand by the name of Hogarth, hair and beard wiry with age, reached her first and dragged her to her feet. “Sir Robert is none too happy with you, girlie. What was it made you scream?”

She seamed her lips.

He shook her. “Was it man or beast, woman?”

For fear her silence would tell more than a lie, she said, “I fell.”

He narrowed his lids, then turned his head and considered the wood that Sir Abel had gone into.

Finally, he looked back at her. “How’d you get out of ‘em?”

When she refused him an answer, he whipped up her skirts, revealing the wrapped chain that would have prevented Sir Abel’s escape had she gone with him. “Well, you are the clever one. Look here, boys, she wrapped it up nice and quiet.” He snorted. “Pity you could not run.”

The others shared his mirth, after which Hogarth motioned the biggest of the brigands forward.

God preserve me,
Helene beseeched as she was tossed over a thick shoulder and carried back toward the camp. And the beating that awaited her.

Chapter Five

Certain the two hours she had made Sir Abel wait to break his fast would see him in a good appetite, Helene balanced upon her hip the tray she had intercepted from a serving girl who had been so offended that she had sought Lord D’Arci’s intervention. Fortunately, he had readily given Helene leave to take the girl’s task upon herself.

She worked the handle, pushed the door inward, then resettled the tray between both hands and stepped into the chamber. “I have brought your—”

“They are slain,” Abel Wulfrith’s voice reached her a moment before her eyes found him. “Pray, leave them be.”

Her
words, whispered to him in the shadowed depths of this room when she had tried to free him from whatever demons had taken hold of his dreams.

“Is that not what you said,
Helene of Tippet
?” His grim smile did nothing to soften his scarred and bearded face.

As she stared at him where he sat in a chair near the brazier, bare legs stretched out before him as if he intended to stay a while, she realized she had halted just over the threshold—and that her hands holding the tray had begun to tremble, causing the contents to chatter amongst themselves.

He glanced at the tray, then pressed, “Is it not?”

Do not let him unsettle you.
But she was unsettled, for if he remembered her words, he might recall what had followed.
Dear Lord, I am bared enough as it is. Pray, grant me his ignorance.

She stepped forward and set the tray on the small table that had been placed to his left as if to make it easier for him to reach.

“You have not answered me, Helene.”

Her name on his lips—
just
her name without note of her village—further unnerved her, but she braved his seeking gaze below hers and said, “You have remembered.”

“I have, though at the time, I surely thought you but a reprieve come unto my dream.”

Reprieve. The word ought not to move her heart, but it did. “I pray,” she said, “that you do not take offense at what was only an attempt to assure a man whose sleep was troubled that, at whatever place he found himself, it was not real.”

His lids narrowed. “But it was real—of ills and evils once lived.”

She forced a smile. “The good of it is that they no longer live.”

“Slain, you said.”

If only she had heeded the voice that had warned her they were his demons, not hers. “Aye, and best left in your past that you might better live in this day and move toward the morrow.”

He scowled. “What do you think the morrow holds for me?”

She swept a hand in the space before him. “More than this. Indeed, whatever you determine to make of it.”

Moving so quickly she had no moment to react, he captured her wrist and pulled her forward. With her awkwardly bent over him, much as she had been before dawn when he lay upon the bed, he pressed her hand to his face and, eyes holding her startled gaze, said, “I also remember this.”

Though not easily given to tears, she felt their sting.

“And this.” He dragged her hand down his neck to the center of his tunic-clothed chest where his heart beat hard.

Though this time it was his uninjured hand that bound her to him, she was reluctant to put up a struggle that, considering his firm grip, would more likely see her sprawled across him than freed.

She swallowed. “Aye, there was that too. Now, if you are satisfied with punishing me for pitying your plight, release me.”
 

His nostrils flared. “
Was
it pity?”

She had known he would not like the word, but he was not so disgusted that she gained her release. She shrugged. “If there is one thing at which men in my profession excel beyond women, ‘tis their ability to disallow sympathy to move them.” It was not exactly true, but it sounded better than admitting he affected her in a much different way than those she usually aided.

He searched her face. “I am not sure I believe you,” he said, then let her go.

She straightened. “Now that we are finished with that”—she hoped he did not catch the shake in her voice—“’tis time you ate.”

He glanced at the platter upon which bread, cheese, and an apple sat. “I am not accustomed to breaking my fast so far into morn.”

“Ah, then you should be most hungry.”

“I am not.”

“Regardless, ‘tis something with which to occupy you whilst I treat your injuries.”

“To distract me, you mean.”

“If that is what you require.”

A muscle in his jaw jerked, but whatever his thoughts, he let them pass, picked a chunk of cheese from the platter, and popped it in his mouth.

Helene turned her attention to the pots on the tray alongside the platter. “I am pleased you took my advice to change into a clean tunic.”

“And donned braies.” His hand brushed hers as he retrieved a piece of bread. “Though I did eschew hose since you would only be made to remove them.”

Which would have been more unsettling than merely looking upon his bare legs. “I thank you for the consideration, Sir Abel.”

“I am generous that way.” There was a lightness in his tone she had not heard before—and knew not to like.

She glanced at him, and he was waiting with a crooked smile that stood out amid his whiskers. She nearly shuddered at this unexpected glimpse of the man who had come for her a second time when it seemed she might die alone but for Aldous Lavonne’s rapidly expiring person.

“I am generous in another way as well,” he murmured.

Abandoning hope that he would allow her to do her duty without further resistance, Helene returned her attention to the pots and picked through them though she knew well the one she sought.

He reached again to the platter—or so she thought until he touched a finger to her palm and lingeringly drew it toward her wrist. “I am told you are a widow.”

Had she doubted before, she did not doubt now that he knew she had a care for him beyond that of her duties as a healer.

Suppressing the urge to snatch her hand away, she looked to his finger that tested her pulse. “My husband is dead, and ‘tis true I have been long without a man’s arms around me, but until you are once more a man in full, Sir Abel, you would do well to keep your hands and arms to yourself.”

He did not immediately retreat, but when he did, it was the apple to which he turned his attention. As he carried it to his mouth, she saw he had thrown off the smile. But still he looked satisfied.

Resentful, she said, “I am not here to play games, nor will I allow you to toy with my emotions, Sir Abel. Persist though you may, your only hope of gaining my absence is to convince your brother to send me away. And I do not believe he will. Thus, I shall keep my word no matter how you vex me by way of apathy, anger, and playing at seduction.”

He bit into the apple and thoroughly chewed the mouthful before swallowing. “You are sure I am merely playing at it?”

Curse him!
The epithet that confined itself to her thoughts made her wince, for she was not disposed toward cursing anyone. In fact, when stirred in that direction, she made the effort to pray for those who roused such a response from her as Sister Clare had taught her to do. More often than not, prayer calmed her, and she believed those she prayed for must also benefit. But, again, this patient was different and, though she had said she would not let him work her emotions, that was precisely what she was allowing him to do. If she truly was to see him returned to health, she would have to attend to her feelings as vigorously as his injuries.

“Naught to say?” he asked.

She moistened her lips. “Like most men, I do not think you would be averse to spending time between the sheets with a willing woman, but that is certainly not your intent here, Sir Abel.”

He seemed in no hurry to respond and, when he did, he prefaced his words with a sigh. “Not at this moment.”

Determining it best not to hold his words up to the light, Helene returned her attention to the tray.

“Did you meet Sir Durand?” he asked.

She dipped one of several cloths in the basin of herbed water. “I did not. Lord D’Arci told that, of late, the knight often absents himself from the castle during the day.”