The Redeeming (30 page)

Helene felt the smile drop from her mouth, and though she counseled her tongue to silence, she heard herself say, “My name is not ‘woman.’ It is Helene. After all this time, why do you not call me by it?”

He did not answer for a long moment and, truly, she did not expect him to. Thus, she was jolted when he rasped, “Once I knew a Helene.” His voice caught as if tears moved behind it. “Though it was a long time ago, the name belongs to her alone.”

Helene released a breath she had not realized she held. “Why?”

Again, he was slow to answer. “I did not know it then…I still am not certain now…but methinks I must have loved her.”

Helene felt a warm shiver move through her. “But was not your wife’s name Mary?”

He sighed. “Aye, and methinks I loved her too—or nearly so.”

This was not the bitter and wrathful Aldous Lavonne whose verbal abuses Helene had tolerated since being given care of him months ago. It was as if something good had turned inside him. If so, why? Because death drew near? Because of memories of a time when something like love had filled the places that hate had more recently filled? Because of her small kindnesses?

He gripped her hand tighter. “Aye, you are my Abishag,” he muttered so low it took her a moment to piece the words together. “But I am no David.”

She waited.

“No matter the evil done him, no matter his sin, always he returned to God.” His body shook, but it seemed more from emotion than chill. “I cannot.”

Helene returned the grip on her hand. “I believe you can, my lord.”

His back stiffened. “You are wrong.”

She knew she risked much but rose onto an elbow and peered over his shoulder at his terrible, puckered profile. “I am told that once you were a godly man, Aldous Lavonne, that though you struggled to reconcile with God after the fire, still you did.”

His eyes were open, but he did not look around. “Aye.” He grunted. “And know you how God rewarded me?”

Geoffrey again. How she wearied of him elevating his departed son to a place he had not deserved. He was not worthy of such mourning. She herself had witnessed the young baron’s cruelties—and nearly suffered a terrible one herself a year after birthing John when Geoffrey happened upon her gathering herbs. Fortunately, no sooner had he tossed her to the ground than her husband appeared and, wisely, scraped and bowed and thanked the baron for aiding his clumsy wife.

“Guess my reward, Woman!” Aldous demanded, and she was almost sorry for giving him the heat that afforded him the strength to speak such.

She lowered herself and once more pressed her front to his back. “Though I am not certain ‘tis how God works His wonders, I would say your reward was given to you by way of your son, Christian.”

He jerked, but before he could rebuke her, she continued, “For he is nearly as loved by your people as you are, my lord.” As Aldous
had
been loved. Now the old baron was feared nearly as much as Robert.

She heard him swallow—a raspy, choking sound. “’Tis true? The people love Christian?” Something like wonder was in his voice.

“Aye.”

“What of respect?”

“They respect him as well. And, methinks, one day he will be as deeply respected as you.”

“But Robert…”

“What?”

Though he gave a shake of his head, she guessed what he would not voice—that his illegitimate son told a different tale about his privileged legitimate brother.

“You do not tell it in words,” he finally spoke again, “but methinks you are saying the people did not love Geoffrey.”

She had not expected to land here, but here she was. “I regret, my lord, that they did not, for they did not see you in him.”

“As they see me in Christian.”

“They do. He is an honorable man.”

Through his back, she heard the long, slow rattle of air as he filled his lungs. “He has wed a Wulfrith.”

“That he might put an end to the warring between your families, my lord. For that, your people are grateful. Now if only…” Nay, she need not say that all that was left was to bring an end to the warring between the Lavonnes. Aldous might be terribly infirm, but he knew.

He was quiet a long time, but when she thought he must have drifted into sleep, he said, “’Tis nearly over. Soon you will return to your son and Christian will stand unopposed.”

Despite being so overheated that her garments clung, she shivered over the certainty with which he spoke.

Lord, let it be so. Preserve me that I may hold my son again. Be with Christian Lavonne that he may triumph over Robert and knit this barony back together.

She exhaled her breath against Aldous’s back and heard him sigh as if the heat of it gave him relief. “What of you, my lord?”

A short laugh yanked at his body, and though there was bitterness in it, it did not seem as stark as before. “I die.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, closed her mouth, and nodded. “You do, my lord, but not yet. Not yet.”

R
obert roared, and Aldous found no comfort in it, for it likely meant his misbegotten son would soon subject his father to the rigors of another retreat.

The cart that carried him over rock and branch-strewn ground would jar his brittle bones and stir up bile such that his belly would not rest until its contents were expelled. The warm breezes of August that ought to be a balm upon his thickly scarred flesh would chill him through. And if the sun was out, it would pierce him…blind him…make his head ache as if to split open.

He turned his face out of the thick fur that failed to warm him as the healer had done earlier in the day. “What has happened?” His voice was so threadbare it struggled to reach his own ears.

The woman whose damp gown clung so close that it could not be said she was as immune to the warming fire as he, turned from the cave’s opening. As she crossed to his side, the sound of her chains pained his ears.

“The Wulfrith knight has escaped, my lord.” She knelt and tucked the blankets more securely around him.

Aldous winced, though not because of his own discomfort or that Robert had fallen short again. Nay, it was because of the healer’s face that he preferred not to look near upon. His son had been displeased by her escape attempt all those days past, as had Aldous who would not have survived this long without her, but had he been able to stop Robert from thrashing her then—and once more since—he would have. He hoped she would be lovely again.

“How did he escape?” he asked.

“I do not know but, certes, he is gone.” She sat back on her heels. “I have made you broth. You must eat.”

“And have it slosh about my belly when…” He replenished his breath. “…Robert tosses me in the back of that accursed cart?”

She glanced at the cave’s opening. “Night is near upon us. Surely he will not—”

“Unless Wulfrith’s man is soon recaptured, the camp will be dismantled, for the miscreant will return with…”

“Christian,” she said softly, sorrow reflected in her eyes, one of which had also known Robert’s fist.

Aldous fought the emotion that seemed determined to leap from her to him, but its claws caught on the edge of his heart and hoisted itself over. “Christian,” the name whispered from him. “My son.”

She laid the back of a hand to his forehead, and he nearly whimpered. In all the years since the fire had left him a scarred shell of a man, she was the only one who touched him with gentleness and compassion, as if she truly worried over his suffering. Not that Christian had not tried.

“Aye, your son,” she murmured.

He returned her to focus. “I will try to eat.”

As she rose and turned away, once more rousing the links beneath her skirts, Robert threw a shadow through the cave’s opening. Face shot with color, he strode forward. “The Wulfrith knight has escaped.”

Aldous opened his mouth, but it was a phlegm-laden cough that broke from him, and it was some moments before he could clear his throat sufficiently to speak. “How?”

“There is a traitor amongst us.” Though the healer stepped out of Robert’s path, he seized her arm and dragged her to him. Gripping her chin, he forced her face up. “Was it you? Did you sever his ropes?”

Aldous glimpsed the whites of her eyes that told she feared his son would finish what he had begun. “Though I tended him early this morn, I did naught but cleanse and bandage his wounds,” she said. “Ask your man, Wexley. He was there throughout.”

Robert yanked her onto her toes. “Be it so, someone aided him, and who more likely than our reluctant healer, hmm?”

“I did naught!”

Robert slapped her, and she cried out.

Aldous moaned low in his throat for fear of what his son’s unfolding ire might next visit upon her.

“You listened in where you should not have, eh, wench?”

She hunched her shoulders against further attack. “I do not know of what you speak.”

Once more, her captor drew back a hand.

“Of what do you speak, Robert?” Aldous managed.

His son peered over the healer’s head. “As I have found no advantage in keeping Sir Mark alive, I determined there would be an execution this eve. I vow, ‘tis no coincidence the man escapes the very day the decision is made.”

It might be coincidence, it might not. What Aldous did know was that he balked at once more being a silent accomplice to his son’s brutality against the healer. “’Twas not the woman. She has not been”—he coughed—“outside the cave all day without one of your men close at her heels.”

In the silence of Robert’s seething, Aldous knew his misbegotten son saw the truth of it, but that did not mean the healer was safe.

Robert crudely raked his gaze over her as if tempted to carnal urgings that Aldous would be powerless to avert. At last, he shoved her aside. “Make haste in preparing my father to travel. We depart ere nightfall.”

Aldous was ashamed of the whimper that slipped out the sides of his mouth and sounded as if made by a lad barely out of fouling cloths. He had been foolish and filled with ungodly vengeance to crow with satisfaction when Robert had taken him from Broehne all those weeks ago. For what? For what?! All he wanted now—
Just one thing, Lord, if you would spill your grace upon one so unworthy
—was to die in peace.

“Pray, hear me, Sir Robert,” the healer said. “Your father should not be moved.”

Aldous brought her back to focus where she stood three feet from Robert. As if she was not painfully intimate with the consequences of displeasing him, she raised her lovely and far too vulnerable chin. “Do you subject the baron to another retreat, death will come all the sooner for him.”

Robert took a step toward her and thrust his lower jaw forward. “All the sooner?”

Her shoulders rose as if in preparation to defend her head and face. “I have told you, his condition worsens each day he is out of doors, and travel makes it worse. If your father is to be moved again…” Her eyelashes fluttered, but she held before Robert’s darkening countenance. “…let his last journey be to Broehne that he might mark his final days amid the peace and comfort due him.”

Aldous revised his thoughts of moments earlier. There was not one thing he wanted. There were two. Mayhap three. The second was to see the healer restored to her child. The third…

As much as he had refused to acknowledge his longing to see his youngest son and heir again, he felt the need move within him.

Robert laughed, causing the woman to startle where she stood. The sound did not surprise Aldous, though, for he knew it for the cruel and bitter thing that often presaged violence.

“Do you hear that, Father? The wench believes your battle is done and pretends she has a care for your wellbeing.”

Distance was what the healer needed between herself and the angry man who would never be baron. With effort, Aldous extricated a hand from the covers and beckoned. “Come, my son.” His body convulsed with the exposure to air that felt like a dip in the coldest stream. “I would speak with you.”

Robert shot the healer a warning look and crossed to his father. When Aldous reached to him, his son hesitated, but then he dropped to his haunches. “What is it?”

Aldous had never been much for showing affection, especially these last years when he had felt too little to show, but he was strangely desperate to disarm his son’s anger. Thus, he settled his crippled hand over Robert’s and wished to God he had made room to feel more for this son than obligation. Had he, the end that came swift and sure might be different from this. “I fear the healer is right. I can venture no farther on this journey with you. Even now, death’s breath fouls my nostrils.”

Robert’s hand bunched beneath his father’s. “You wish me to return you to Broehne?”

Aldous longed for the comfort of home, but would the admission bring Robert’s anger to a boil? He steeled himself. “I do wish it, my son.”

A muscle in his jaw convulsing, Robert put between his teeth, “’Tis Christian that draws you. Tell me it is not so.”

“I…would see him again. He is, after all, my heir and—”

Robert jerked his hand free. “
I
am your first born!”