The Kindling (8 page)

Lady Beatrix nodded. “He waits on word from King Henry. God willing, it will come soon and be what he deserves.”

Helene longed to know more, but she was fairly certain the lady had revealed as much as she would.

Lady Beatrix glanced at Helene’s right hand. “I am guessing you did not gain what you sought from him.”
 

She closed her fingers into her stinging palm. “He dangled his knowledge of the brigands’ camps but would not tell how he could be there and yet unseen.”

“If it is any consolation, methinks he did not seek to tease you, only that he was not ready to tell.”

“Then he should not have announced to all that he knew what had befallen me.”

“True, but I am sure the moment came too suddenly upon him to think it through. Sir Durand is like…the crack of thunder that follows lightning. You know ’tis coming, you just do not know when.”

Once more, Helene’s frustration welled. Here a hint, there a clue, and ever more unanswered questions. She closed her eyes, breathed deep, and looked again at the lady. “I believe I made a mistake in agreeing to come to Soaring.”

“You are most welcome here, Helene of Tippet.”

“Am I?”

Lady Beatrix sighed. “Abel is difficult now, but I am sure all will be well once he becomes accustomed to you. As for my mother, I hope you will forgive her if she seemed insensitive this eve. Though she is most l-loving, her faith has been dealt one terrible blow after another with all that our family has endured at the hands of the Lavonnes.”

And yet it seemed they had accepted Christian Lavonne. Surely there was hope in that. Of course, he was but Sir Robert’s half brother whereas she—

“So you will stay, will you not?” Lady Beatrix asked.

Would she? Could she? Helene drew a deep breath. “I shall try.”

Lady Beatrix squeezed her shoulder. “I thank you.”

Helene inclined her head. “I will do what I can for your brother. Indeed, now that night has drawn, I ought to prepare his sleeping draught.”

“I will leave you to it, then.”

Helene watched her depart. Then, ignoring the stares of the servants, she crossed to the cupboard where Cook had earlier cleared several shelves for her medicinals.

After what should have required less than the half hour she took to mix the sleeping draught and gather her pots and cloths, Helene looked around the kitchen that was now empty save for herself. It was still quite warm, her time here having caused her to perspire such that her gown’s bodice fit uncomfortably close and the hair around her temples and the back of her neck clung to her skin.

She glanced down her front and, relieved to find her discomfort was more felt than seen, lifted the tray upon which she had arranged what she would need for her audience with Sir Abel.

“This one last task and the day is done,” she whispered. “’Twill be better come the morrow.” When she would seek Sir Durand, apologize, and, hopefully, learn what he had not told.

Chapter Seven

He had begun to think she would not come again this eve, but here she was. And looking worse for what had transpired between her and Durand—the reporting of which had displeased him far more than he ought to allow.

Tendrils of hair adhering to her brow, she withheld her gaze as she carried the tray toward the bed upon which he sat upright with pillows between his back and the wall. As she lowered the tray to the bedside table, she glanced across the room to the chair and table before the brazier. “You ate well.”

He followed her gaze to the tray she had earlier delivered. “I find my appetite much improved this eve.”

“I am glad of it.” She returned her attention to her more recent offering. “I will not be long. Once I have applied the salves and you have taken the sleeping draught, I shall leave you to your evening’s rest.”

Why he wanted her eyes upon him, he did not know, but it irked him that the direct gaze she had not previously spared him was now not even indirect. “Methinks you are no better for having met Sir Durand,” he said.

He knew he had sprung upon her his knowledge of what had transpired belowstairs, but he did not expect her to react with such intensity.

Sweeping her wide-eyed, angry gaze to him, she exclaimed, “She told you!”

Abel would have laughed if not that she seemed so genuinely offended. “Of course she did. Why would she not?”

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Though ‘tis true I did not ask that it be held in confidence, Lady Beatrix had no cause to run to you and tell that I struck him.”

She had struck Durand? In Beatrix’s presence?

It was Abel’s turn to overreact. But he did not, for as a boy he had learned his lessons well at Wulfen Castle and knew that one did not reveal the extent of one’s knowledge—if at all—before gaining all that could be had from an opponent who was less likely to hold close that with which he believed the other was well acquainted. Fortunately, if Helene did not rise to the bait, he could always learn from his sister what their mother had not been privy to beyond Durand’s appearance in the hall and Helene’s pursuit of him.

Turning over words that would best draw out the tale of what the knave had done to cause her to strike him—and God help Durand if he had behaved inappropriately which, considering his past, was possible—he stared at Helene.

She set her chin higher. “It is no concern of yours.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Regardless, ‘tis understandable why you were moved to act as you did.”

For a moment, the light that brightened her eyes made it seem she would agree, but then she lowered her lids. “Nay, it is not understandable. I should not have done it, but…” Her eyes sprang open, and there was that fiery light again. “He, a man of the sword, followed the brigands camp to camp, witnessed my beatings, and yet refuses to say why he but watched—why he did naught.”

Now
her assault upon Durand was understandable.

Color flooding her cheeks that Abel wished he did not find enticing, she continued, “All he tells is that he had his reasons.”

Despite his dislike of the man whom he had once called ‘friend,’ Abel forced himself to acknowledge that the knight had been instrumental in ending the terror the brigands had worked upon the barony of Abingdale—so much that, had he not risked death by revealing himself to Baron Lavonne, Beatrix and many others would now be dead.

Helene’s shoulders rose and fell as she drew deep breaths as if to calm herself, and her hands that had grasped at and bunched her skirts released them. She stepped nearer until all that separated her from Abel was the edge of the mattress. “Yet
you
tried to aid me.” Her voice was nearly level again. “And without even a sword at your side.”

Recalling their meeting in the wood, he tasted again the bile of helplessness upon which he had nearly choked when he had seen the reason she had refused to flee with him. “I failed you,” he said.

“It could not be helped.”

He knew that, had repeated it over and again each time guilt rode his back, but still he felt the weight of the choices he had made that had caused her to fall victim to Sir Robert’s fists.

“Think no more on it,” she said.

Piqued that she should read him so well, he determined to turn their conversation back to the person with whom it had begun. “I cannot speak for Sir Durand and his reason for not aiding you during your captivity, but you should know it was he who freed the Wulfrith knight held by that miscreant, Sir Robert, and that when my brother’s knight made it to Broehne Castle, he revealed the location of the camp where you and Aldous Lavonne were left to die.”

Her eyes widened.

“In the end, Sir Durand did aid you—and revealed Sir Robert’s plan to attack Castle Soaring.” And that was all he could stomach to tell of the knight’s fine qualities, for they had been self serving. “Now, I am sure you would like to be done with your ministrations and seek your bed.”

After a long moment, during which she surely struggled to suppress whatever new questions had arisen, she turned to the tray.

She spoke no further word, hurriedly cleaning his wounds and applying her salves with hands and fingers that Abel tried to imagine belonging to a kindly crone. He even closed his eyes the better to convince himself of it. But, as was becoming habit with Helene, he failed.

‘Tis only desire. A faint and passing attraction.

“Still you will deny me your back?” she asked, breath feathering his face as she smoothed the pleasingly scented ointment into his cheek and down his jaw.

He raised his lids and, when she finally set her gaze to his, said. “I could not rest as comfortably as I do if that injury was not sufficiently healed.”

“It would seem, but I would not be doing my duty if I did not verify it.”

“Then verify.” He leaned forward, putting his face so near hers that she jerked back as if for fear he meant to force an intimacy upon her. As he shifted on the mattress to give her access to his back, Abel wondered if he could have resisted a taste of her mouth had she not put space between him and temptation. And what of her? Would she have let him kiss her? Would she have returned his kiss?

“Is it your upper back or lower?” she asked.

“Upper—right side.”

Rather than lift the hem of his tunic as she had done to tend his lower torso, her hands came around, and she loosened the strings that closed the neck of his tunic—far more quickly than the time it had taken him to tie them.

She lowered the tunic past his shoulder and, as she bent near and gently probed the flesh, he felt the brush of her hair across his skin.

He struggled against stiffening, certain she would feel his body’s response to her touch and think more of his desire than she ought to.

“The bruise must have been unsightly for your skin to remain so yellowed,” she said, “but methinks you are right.” She lifted her hands from him and drew the tunic back over his shoulder. “It has healed well enough that it requires no tending. Only praise.”

That last word stirring Abel’s bitterness, he looked over his shoulder. “Praise?”

“Aye.” She straightened. “You have much for which to thank the Lord. Had you been struck nearer the spine, you might have been forever rendered incapable of walking.”

Determined that he would not engage again in talk of God, he shifted back around and leaned into the pillows. “I hardly walk now, Helene of Tippet.”

“Something else we must needs remedy, but we shall soon enough.”

Remembering the other remedy she sought—to deliver him a mirror that he might become acquainted with his new face, he thought how distant the first remedy was from the latter. Ever he had been satisfied with his looks, had even felt pride in them, but looks were nothing compared to how well a man commanded his body. A scarred face would not be the death of him, but a leg unable to match the strength and surety of its mate…

“You ought to tie your tunic closed,” she said and returned to the tray.

Abel considered the ties that straggled across his chest. “Will you not do it?” He looked to where she stood in profile before the table. “After all, ’twas you who undid me.”

Hand hovering over the goblet, color seeping into her lightly freckled cheeks, she looked sidelong at him. “I am sure you can do it yourself. However, if my presence so greatly unnerves you that you require aid, then, by all means, wait until I am gone to undertake the most difficult task of knotting a bow.”

Insufferable woman! But though he knew what she sought, her arrow having struck his pride, he gave it to her. Eyes on her face, he lifted his hands and, the left awkwardly compensating for what the right could no longer do, looped the strings and finished them with a sloppy bow.

He expected her to compliment him, perhaps even exclaim over his accomplishment, but she spared him the condescension—and herself his anger—by turning back to the goblet.

“Lastly, your sleeping draught.” She held it out to him.

He took it and glanced below the rim. As hoped, the contents were blood red rather than milky white. “Well done,” he said. “There is no worthier sleeping draught than one delivered by way of wine.”

“Most fortunate for you, it also aids in a good night’s sleep.”

“Still…” He put his head back and, yielding to the temptation to loose an arrow upon her as she had done him—even if she sent one straight back—said, “…mayhap I ought not to indulge.”

“For what reason?”

He lowered his gaze over her. “It strikes me that, should you come to me again in the dark, early hours, it would be of certain benefit if I were fully present.”

Once again, her face flushed, and it was some moments before her pressed lips eased sufficiently to allow words past them. “Be assured, Sir Abel, I had but one purpose in seeking your chamber whilst you slept, and it was well and truly met.”

“Then you are no longer drawn to me as a woman is drawn to a man she finds pleasing?”

He saw the startle in her eyes and sensed the birth of a lie. But then she sighed. “When I said that you are unlike others who require my services, it is because I am drawn to you—as well you know, Sir Abel. What you saw upon my face when you and Baron Lavonne came for the old baron and me was true though I knew naught could come of it.”

Due to the disparity in their ranks?

“And less so now, Sir Abel.”

Because of what he had become—rather, no longer was, as evidenced by the Wulfrith dagger’s place of dishonor at the bottom of a chest of garments.

She jutted her chin. “Drink so that we might put this night behind us.”

Feeling the day’s every hour, he drained the goblet and handed it to her.

She took it, set it alongside her pots, then lifted the tray and carried it across the room to the other tray that held the remains of his meal. With her back to him, she combined the contents of the two trays and fit the emptied one beneath the burdened one. Next, she fed the brazier.

Not until she took the trays and crossed to the door did Abel remember what needed to be told for Beatrix’s sake. The healer would not like it. Indeed, if not that her hands were full, she might strike him as she had done Durand.