The Wolfe (2 page)

“You are most definitely
not a male child, Jordan Mary Joseph,” he said, almost seductively. “How old
are you?”

“I have seen twenty
years,” she replied, flattered and disarmed by his statement.

“Then you are married
with children,” he stated. “Was your husband on the battlefield?”

“I have no husband,”
Jordan said flatly. At twenty, she was embarrassed that she had not yet wed; it
was a sore subject and one she certainly did not wish to discuss with him.

“No husband?” he
repeated, evidently shocked. “Why not?”

She frowned. “Ye ask too
many questions, English.”

He did not reply. He lay
back against the tree again, closing his eyes. His strength was draining and
Jordan guessed that he would be dead was swiftly approaching.

As she gazed at him, she
began to feel pity for the knight. He was perhaps ten years older than her,
still a young man.  He was very big with enormous hands and big, muscular legs,
and his facial features, although surrounded by mail and a helm, were chiseled
and handsome. She was coming to feel sorry that his life would soon be over
soon from a wound sustained in a senseless, meaningless skirmish.

A thought occurred to
her; she knew that she could make his last hours more comfortable with what she
carried in her satchel. The healing items were meant for her own people but she
simply could not leave the knight and not help him. It was her soft heart
tugging at her, concern for another. She hoped her Scot ancestors moldering in
the ground would forgive her treasonous act.

“English,” she said
softly. “Would ye let me tend yer wound?”

One eye opened in mild
surprise. She could see suspicion in the mysterious depths.

“Why?” he whispered. “So
you may finish what your clansman started?”

“Nay,” she answered,
although she didn’t blame his distrust. “So that I may make yer last hours a
bit more bearable.” When he did not reply, she frowned at him. “I promise I
wunna intentionally hurt ye. Ye can bleed to death or ye can let me help ye;
‘tis all the same to me.”

After an eternal pause,
he reached up with effort and tore the helmet from his head, revealing dark wet
hair plastered to his pasty head. Clumsily, he began to remove his armor.

Jordan closed the
distance between them with small, rapid steps and knelt beside him. His hands
were heavy and unwieldy and she batted them away, finishing the job of the
removal herself. She fumbled a bit with his cuisses, or thigh armor, because
the wound was along the edge of the armor where it met his breeches. A
vulnerable point, she noticed. She felt a little apprehensive being so close to
an English warrior and deliberately avoided his gaze. She could feel his eyes
on her, watching every move she made. Her palms began to sweat as she stripped
off the remainder of the protective gear.

 As Jordan bent over her
work, her pink tongue between her teeth in concentration, the knight studied
the fine porcelain features and the huge round eyes of the most amazing green
color. He could see it even in the moonlight. Her eyebrows arched
ever-so-delicately and her lashes were long and dense. She had stopped biting
her tongue long enough for him to see that her lips were soft and sensuous.

Her hair licked at him as
she moved and the scent of lavender was unmistakable. Her hair was dark blond,
straight and silky. Every time she threw the satiny mass over her shoulder to
keep it out of her way, he was greeted by the perfume of the purple buds and
found it utterly captivating. Even as he stared at her, he could not believe
this woman was a Scot; she embodied everything he had always believed they were
not.  In fact, it took him a moment to realize that she was physically perfect.
If God himself had come to him and asked him to describe his perfect mate, he
would have described Jordan feature for feature. It was an odd realization.

Unaware of the knight’s thoughts,
Jordan glanced up and met his gaze and was faced with the most fascinating
shade of hazel she had ever seen. Yet for his size and his strength, and the
fact that the man was obviously a seasoned knight, they were the kindest eyes
she had ever encountered. Unnerved, she tore her eyes away and continued her good
deed with draining concentration. The man intimidated her in too many ways to
comprehend.

The armor off, Jordan could see the
wound in his thigh was substantial. He had packed linen rags on it in an
attempt to stop the bleeding, but he had quickly become too weak to do much
more. It was a deep, long gash that ran nearly the entire length of his long
thigh. She tore his breeches away in an attempt to have a clear field to tend
the wound, noticing that his legs were as thick as tree trunks.

Jordan picked bits of material and
mail from the wound, wiping at the clotted blood and dirt that had invaded the
area. The further involved she became, the more she could see that the gash was
all the way to the bone.

Jordan retrieved her bag and began
to pull out her aids; whisky, silk thread and needle, and strips of boiled linen.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the open
whisky bottle at him and keeping her eyes on the wound. “Drink this.”

He accepted the bottle from her and
he took several long swallows. She took it back from him and set it beside her,
pausing with a furrowed brow and thinking that even if he survived the wound,
he would surely loose the leg. She did not know that he was still watching her
face intently, marveling at the incredible beauty of it.

The knight, in fact, did not make it
a habit of gawking at women. Outside of an occasional whore, he had never had a
remotely serious relationship with a woman, although there had been many a
female who had tried to woo him. He had a great deal of respect for the
opposite sex, but Northwood Castle was his life and a wife did not fit into his
plans.

“Will I live, Lady Jordan?” he asked
after a moment. “Or should I prepare my greeting for St. Peter?”

She sighed and picked up the whisky
bottle. Reluctantly, she met his eyes for a brief moment to convey a silent
apology before dousing the entire length of the wound with the burning alcohol.

The knight’s only reaction was to
snap his head away from her so that she could not see his face. Not a sound was
uttered nor a twitch of the muscle seen.
Remarkable
, she thought. She
had never seen anyone take the pain of a whisky burn so well.

Some women preferred to wash the whisky
away with water before closing the wound, but not Jordan. The liquor itself did
incredibly well in helping heal wounds and preventing infection, so she left it
on and took her threaded needle and began to sew up the laceration. She worked
quickly, knowing the pain was unbearable and was continually amazed that the
soldier had yet to utter one word. She had seen men scream and faint in similar
situations.

When she was finally finished, she laid
a strip of clean linen the length of the wound and bound him twice about the
thigh to hold it in place, once at the top of his leg and once near the knee. She
worked so fast that she knew she was not doing a very good job, just wanting to
be done with her charitable act hurriedly lest she be discovered.  She was
increasingly concerned that her aunts and cousins would come looking for her.
She knew that jostling him about must be excruciating, yet he had not so much
as flinched.

Only when she had stopped completely
did he turn his head back to look at her, and she swallowed at the agony she
read in his eyes. She found new respect for this Englishman who bore his pain
with stoic silence. She began to hope that he would live, although she did not
know why. She furthermore wished she had done a better mending job on his leg,
taking the time she took with her own wounded.

“I dunna know what good I have done
for ye,” she said quietly.

He grasped her soft hand tightly in
his clammy one. Jordan stiffened, startled by the action and fighting the urge
to yank her hand away.

“You are an angel of mercy,” he
whispered. “I thank you for your efforts, my lady. I shall do my best not to
betray them.”

His sincerity was gripping. Gently,
she removed her hand and put her things away. The half-moon was high above and
the scattered clouds had disappeared, bathing the land in a silver glow. Jordan
felt as if she had done something good this night, albeit to the enemy and she
felt better now than she had earlier when she first descended to the stream.
Mayhap fate had led her to the stream purposely to find the soldier and tend
him. She suddenly felt like returning to the battlefield to continue with her
expected duties.

“I must return, English.” She rose
and gave him a long look. “I will forget that I saw ye here.”

She turned to leave but he stopped
her.

“My name is Sir William de Wolfe,”
he said with quiet authority. “Remember it, for I shall return one day to thank
you properly and I do not wish to be cut down while bearing a gift.”

It took a moment, but even in the
moonlight he saw her face go white and her jaw slacken.

“
Sweet Jesu’,”
she gasped.
“Surely ye’re not the English captain they call The Wolf?”

He looked at her, sensing her surge
of fear. He sighed; he did not want her to fear him. This was the one time when
he wished his reputation had not preceded him.

 “I simply said my name was de
Wolfe, not
The Wolf
,” he murmured.

She looked extremely dubious. “But
ye were in his command?”

He shrugged vaguely. “Now, back to
what I said,” he said, shifting the subject. “I will return with a proper
reward for you. Will you accept it?”

She could not be sure that the
knight wasn’t, in fact, the hated Wolf, but it was truly of no matter now.  It
was done. Perhaps she did not want to believe he was the hated and feared
devil, so she chose to believe as such. How could she live with herself if it
was discovered that she had tended to the man that had killed more kinsmen that
she could count? She knew she could not, so she forced herself to believe his
words. Furthermore, her aunt had said The Wolf was dark and devilish. This man
was uncannily beautiful in a masculine sense.

After a moment’s pause, she finally
spoke. “English, if ye survive this wound then I will gladly accept yer gift.”

He smiled weakly, deep dimples in
both cheeks and her heart fluttered strangely in her chest. He was indeed the
most handsome man she had ever seen, even if he was English. But she had the
most horrible lurking feeling that he was indeed who she feared he was. It made
her want to run.

“Luck be with ye,” she said as she
abruptly turned and trudged back up the hill.

William watched the figure in the
billowing cloak, his pain-clouded mind lingering on the silken hair and
beautiful face. He had never seen such a fine woman. Angel was certainly an apt
term. If she were to be the last person he saw on earth then he would die a
contented man.

He suspected that she did not
believe his evasive answer but, thankfully, had made no more mention of it. The
thought that she feared and hated him brought a curious tightness in his
stomach that he quickly attributed to his helpless state. He did not want to
admit that it might be regret.

He was growing weaker with each
breath. His strength was waning as he leaned back against the tree, wondering if
he would again see the light of morning. He closed his eyes for he could not
keep them open, and without realizing it, his mind drifted into unconsciousness,
safe and warm and dark.

CHAPTER TWO

April, Year of our Lord
1232

Langton Castle, 17.7km
northwest of the English border

“What a lovely day,” Caladora
exclaimed softly. “This is the first day the sun has dared show itself in
months.”

Jordan eyed her cousin from behind
her tapestry loom. “Bright the day, I shall give ye, but there is still a chill
in my bones.”

“Yer always cold, Jordan.” The
comment came from another cousin, Jemma.  The brunette-haired lass stabbed at a
pretty piece of embroidery. “Yer hands are like ice even on the warmest days.”

“Always,” Jordan concurred
regretfully.

Caladora Scott, daughter of
Nathaniel and Anne Scott, sat back to her needlework. Tall and lovely in a
fragile way, she had the luxurious red hair with highlights of gold, a color
enhanced on her older brothers Robert and Benjamin.

Jemma Scott, on the other hand, was
as short and dark as Caladora was tall and fair, but she well-proportioned and
busty. She was a very pretty girl and a possessed the true fire of a Scot; with
three older brothers, she had learned to take care of herself. Her father
Matthew was forever chiding his daughter on the true qualities of a lady, lest he
never marry her off, but her mother Lilith had given up lecturing Jemma a long
time ago.