Unbidden (The Evolution Series) (10 page)

His hands itched to feel the indentation at her waist again
. He sighed. Time was his ally, yet the days or weeks stretching before him until she was his wife began to feel interminable.

Pretending to stare at the fire, he caught a glimpse of her stockinged feet and thin ankles as she slid into her blankets, leaving her short, sturdy boots by her bedding
. She lay on her back and closed her eyes with a satisfied yawn. Magnus curled up next to her. Her hand absently reached out to stroke his back. Oh, to be laid so low as to be jealous of one’s dog, David thought as he reluctantly moved to his own bed.

Some time later, when the fire had burned low and all appeared to be asleep
, a tremendous snore rent the quiet. David watched Rochelle prop herself on one elbow to peer around the poorly lit camp. “’Tis only Theo,” David whispered, effectively freezing her in profile to him. The glint of her eyes showed as she shifted them to bring him in view. “He snores like that almost every night.”  As if on cue, another blare sounded. “I, on the other hand, do not snore at all. I am a profoundly considerate sleeping partner.”

Rochelle frowned
. “Why would I care?” she retorted before she turned over with her back to him.

David smiled.

Chapter Nine

The second day of travel dawned with much more promise. The sun filtered through the trees from a clear blue sky. A light coating of dew blanketed the clearing and their bedding, but was already drying as the journeyers ate a morning meal of bread and dried fruit.

When ready to set off, David again lifted Rochelle onto Denes’s back
, just as he had each time she’d mounted or dismounted yesterday, wordlessly reaching for her when she was ready. She almost enjoyed it, especially the feel of his shoulders beneath her palms. Curiosity had gotten the best of her since last night, when David had sat up from his blankets in a short sleeved under-tunic, the loosely laced ‘V’ at his throat gapping to show the top of his smooth chest. So, this morning she couldn’t help but press her thumbs lightly into the padding of muscle when David hoisted her up to her saddle. Perhaps she wasn’t as subtle as she thought, since he paused for a second with her dangling in midair as she tested his firmness like a ripe peach, before he settled her on Denes.

The sun shone between the nearly leafless tree limbs, providing a continuous play of light and shade. David rode with her again, asking general questions about Alda
. Although initially cautious with her answers, she soon warmed to the topics of raising crops and caring for her tenants. He seemed genuinely interested, so she found it surprising when he broke off from her in the afternoon, dropping to the back of the group by himself. At dinner, he was rudely silent, after which he took his blankets some distance from the fire to sleep.

While she certainly didn’t seek his attentions, Rochelle couldn’t help but be a little miffed at his sudden abandonment
. The clear night soon became quite chilly. She herself rose once to feed wood onto the fire. Men were apparently immune to both the cold and Theo’s trumpeting snores.

In the morning, David roused slowly
. As he helped her onto her horse, she sensed bands of tension radiating from his neck across his shoulders. Even though she barely knew the man, her instincts told her something was wrong. “Is something amiss?” she asked quietly as he handed her the reins.

“Of course not,” he
replied through clenched teeth. He turned away.

Rochelle reminded herself that she welcomed his indifference. She enjoyed the solitude, riding in the dappling sun while purposefully forgetting about him
. He drew her attention after several hours when he moved forward to dig through the cart, reaching across the side while still mounted. Marian offered to help. He shook his head curtly, rummaging among the parcels until he pulled out a leather helm such as one would wear in a battle. Settling it on his head, he rode to the front of the group.

Rochelle wasn’t sure what to make of it
. Marian looked back at her with the same question in her eyes. Rochelle could only shrug. She guided Denes up to Theo, who was staring at David’s back with a worried frown.

“Why is he wearing that hat?” Rochelle asked softly.

He hesitated. “Oh, uh, he does that occasionally, when the sun is bright.”

“
I see,” Rochelle answered. She didn’t, really. She watched David’s back. While he still sat admirably in the saddle, his shoulders hunched and his head sagged as though he were weathering a great storm. His face, when she’d seen it at the cart, had been carved in stiff, unmoving planes. When a flushed bird caused Woden to sidestep slightly, David’s entire body tightened against the jarring.

“He is in pain,” Rochelle hissed to Theo
. “We must stop.”

“No!” Theo whispered harshly
. “He will not stop, and he will not admit to these other men he is in pain. Just leave him alone.”  Theo belied the severity of his words by giving her a sad shake of his head.

“Did he have an accident yesterday?  What happened?”

“I cannot tell you,” Theo replied flatly.

“You mean you
will
not tell me,” Rochelle corrected.

She watched
David for another quarter hour. She cursed male pride while trying to deduce a way to get him some relief, without drawing any attention to him. Finally she hit upon something. “Oh Theophilus,” she called breathlessly, “I feel quite faint all the sudden. Do you think we could make our first stop a little early today?”

“Certainly,” he nearly shouted, obviously relieved
. “Ladies need a break!  We will have to stop early!”

Without a backward glance, David guided Woden off the road
. He slid sloppily from the saddle, then staggered into the trees. Rochelle leaped from her own horse to dig frantically in the jumbled mess of the cart. “My healing kit, Mother, my healing kit,” she said urgently, never taking her eyes off David’s receding back. Marian thrust a parcel into her hand. Rochelle grabbed a skin of water and hurried off, Magnus trotting at her heels.

She could barely spy David as she struggled through branches that clung to her cloak
. She slid on damp fallen leaves and tripped several times on roots as she tried to keep him in sight. When she lost him completely, she had no choice but to continue in the direction she’d last seen him.

She came upon him in a small glade, only noticing him because she nearly tripped over the helm he’d cast to the ground
. He lay on his back under an evergreen tree where the ground was soft and shaded, his head near the trunk, legs bent and hands pressed to his temples. Without opening his eyes, he said in a gravelly voice, “Go away, Theo.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” she replied
. “You obviously need help.”

He groaned, his feet working at the soil in further expression of his agony
. The balls of his palms ground at his temples as though he wished he could push right through his skull.

She put her things aside and knelt next to him
. “Is it your head?” she asked quietly.

“
Yes
,” he gritted out.

“I have a remedy we can try,” she said encouragingly
. Not waiting for a reply, she set to her task. First, she wet a clean cloth with water and sprinkled some dried lavender into its folds. With whispered words of reassurance, she laid this across his eyes. Next, she built a small fire to heat a metal cup of water. She added a small cloth bag with a blend of herbs to the hot water, letting it steep. David had already settled a little. “Would you feel better with your head propped up a bit?” she whispered.

“Probably.”

She pulled off her cloak to fold it into a thin pillow. “Let me lift your head,” she said as she tucked the makeshift pillow under it. He grimaced at the motion. She turned back to the cup, dunking the bag a few times while blowing on the water to cool it. Casting the herbs aside, she carried it to him, settling herself by his head. She lifted the lavender cloth away from his eyes. “Can you drink this?  It is warm, but not too hot. It will taste a little strange, mostly of cloves.”

He dutifully drank
, then resituated his head on the cloak, moving to rub his head again. She gently pushed his hands down and began rubbing his temples with her fingertips. “I am going to move my fingers around. Just tell me if I make it worse.”

“Not possible,” he moaned.

Keeping her fingers at his temples, she began stroking across his eyebrows with her thumbs. She moved the pressure slowly up his forehead. When her thumb encountered a slight depression near his hairline, she stopped, pushing his hair back with curiosity. David made a soft sound of protest. A scar, still pink and shiny, ran from high on his forehead back into his hair. She could follow the indentation the length of her finger before it ended. It must be the head wound Doeg had mentioned.

Curious as she was, it wouldn’t do to quiz him when he was in such pain and had obviously hoped to keep the injury a secret
. She resumed stroking his forehead, moving her fingers back across his skull. She thought he was going to sleep when he abruptly rolled to his side to empty the liquid in his stomach on the hem of her tunic. With a moan of misery, he rolled to his back again.

“Not to worry,” she whispered, wiping his mouth and face with the damp cloth
. “My fault, I should have known you would not be able to keep it in. We will try it again in a minute.”  She pushed his hair back again, frowning at the scar for a moment. She rose, quickly pulled the soiled tunic over her head to rinse the hem, then draped it over a bush. Her undergarment was thick, heavy linen, revealing nothing more than a tunic, besides which she didn’t think David had any interest in what she was or wasn’t wearing at present.

She returned to her healing kit to set another dose of headache remedy steeping before infusing some spearmint and chamomile into hot water
. She stirred some honey into the tea. Magnus rose from David’s side and yipped softly. Movement at the edge of the glade drew her attention. Marian lurked there, her eyebrows sailing skyward at the state of her daughter’s clothing. Rochelle rushed over, whispering,  “He has a terrible headache, Mother, but he hopes to keep it a secret. Tell everyone I am ill, or, oh, it does not matter what. He just needs some time.”

Marian nodded before fading back into the woods
. Sometimes having a slightly disconnected mother was advantageous.

Rochelle returned to David with the mint tea. “Take this to settle your stomach.” 

He tried to push it away. “No, sick again.”

“This will help
. Trust me.”

He sipped it down slowly
. Rochelle resumed rubbing his head, concentrating on his brow. He had thick, brown eyebrows and slight creases at the corner of his eyes, more from weather than smiling, she guessed. After nearly a quarter hour, she urged the headache curative on him.

Her neck and back were aching from bending over him, so she moved where she could lean on the tree
. She eased his head into her lap to continue her ministrations to his forehead and temples. Her eyes and fingers kept returning to that scar. To the eye, it was thin and straight, as if a blade had simply sliced the skin. But when you felt it, it was dented too. She shuddered, picturing a spata like his crashing down with enough force to make a depression like that. What kind of life did this man lead?

As if roused by her troubled thoughts, he rolled to his side, his cheek cushioned on her upper legs
, his face nearly nestled against her belly. She held her hands up, frozen. He slipped one hand under her thigh like a bed pillow, except he curled his fingers around and up, slightly between her legs. Even through the thick fabric of her under tunic, it was incredibly intimate. His other hand rested loosely near her hip. All of this was much more sexual than when he was lying on his back, ill and helpless. As she stared at him, his face relaxed into the mask of slumber. He had never even opened his eyes.

She couldn’t very well wake him and make him move when he was just beginning to recover
. She placed her hands carefully on the ground and leaned her head against the tree trunk, thinking about his ailment.

Several years ago
, she had discovered a woman on her estate who suffered from debilitating headaches, sometimes for days. Together, over many months, they had determined various factors that triggered the onset, and also remedies that eased, if not cured, the symptoms. Rochelle methodically recalled every small thing they had learned together, and dozed off while deep in thought about how else she might help the man now sleeping with his face in her lap.

It felt like only a few minutes later that a slight motion woke her
. David’s eyes were open, with a contentment she had not seen in them before. His free hand had moved to the curve of her hip, his thumb lightly tracing the short distance from her ribs to her waist, up and down, with just enough pressure that she could feel it through the fabric. His eyes watched that thumb with almost childlike wonderment, as though he’d discovered something new and marvelous in his world.

“Is your headache better?” Rochelle asked quietly.

“Not gone, but bearable,” he answered, never changing the motion of his thumb or the focus of those warm brown eyes. “No one has ever been able to help me before.”

“Have they tried?” she asked.

“Yes,” he sighed. “I have been to many healers. I have been bled. I have purged. I have eaten things I do not even want to think about, given up wine and ale. I have put strange things in my shoes and under my pillow at night. I thought I had tried everything.”  His eyes shifted up to hers.

She smiled down at him softly in spite of herself.

“How did you know what to do?”

“I have a tenant with the same affliction, although she does not have this outward sign of the root cause.”  Rochelle delicately traced the scar.

“There are days like this when I wish the bastard had finished the job.”  He turned his eyes back to her torso, his hand moving slightly so the thumb found the curve under her breast. While obviously erotic, she didn’t feel his actions were an overt seduction. This easy intimacy was in some way comforting to him. It relaxed him.

“What happened?  How did you get such a scar?”

“A Breton broadsword. He meant to cleave my skull in two, but I blocked him at the last second and managed to skewer him on my way down.”