“I beg yer pardon, m’ lady. I forgot it in th’ rush o’ battle.”
Wharton’s weighted sarcasm made her blithe. “It’ll not be easy to find one that’s long enough for him, but I’ll look in the infirmary.” She skipped out of the door before Wharton could stop her, and for the first time since she’d seen that broken latch, the tension that blocked her throat eased.
What had she done in her lifetime to deserve trials such as these? She had hoped the worst was over; she had prayed for tranquillity and a release from the unrelenting grief. Lately, she’d thought God had heard her prayers. Obviously, that had been nothing but false hope.
She stepped from the herb garden and into the large open square on which all the abbey buildings stood. From here she could see the nuns’ dormitory, the infirmary, the barns, and the visitors’ dormitory where she slept. In the center, both spiritually and physically, the church stood, towering over everything, embracing all within its reach.
A flock of the abbey’s sheep nibbled on the grass beside the great stone steps that led up to the sanctuary, and one of the less noble nuns fed three grunting pigs the scraps from the kitchen.
On the far side of the church, across the road and with its own small square, the monks lived and worked as an addendum to the abbey. To the nuns went the traveling nobles and the ill; to the monks went the vagrants and the lepers. Everyone had his place.
Everyone, that was, except Edlyn. She didn’t need Lady Blanche to point that out. She felt the deficit every day, and as she walked across the square, she wished she belonged somewhere. Anywhere. She’d been mistress of her own home for too many years to easily adjust to living under another’s jurisdiction, regardless—
“Lady Edlyn.”
Edlyn spun around at the beloved voice.
“You were far away.” The abbess tucked her hand into the crook of Edlyn’s arm and urged her to walk on toward the infirmary. “Won’t you come back to us? We treasure your gentle wisdom.”
Lady Corliss smiled at Edlyn, and Edlyn’s spasm of guilt almost bent her in half. Lady Corliss didn’t deserve such a betrayal. This lady, so tall, so regal, always sought Edlyn out, always spoke of Edlyn’s expertise with an admiration that soothed the sting in Edlyn’s soul.
“You look so troubled, my dear. Is there something with which I could help you?”
Aye, Edlyn wanted to say. Tell me what to do about a wounded warrior and his hostile manservant.
“If you’re troubled about refusing Lady Blanche the syrup of poppies, pray do not. You were right, and so I told her when she came to me.” Lowering her chin, Lady Corliss looked at Edlyn from below gray brows. “I know you think I don’t see the way Lady Blanche treats you, but I do, and I have taken steps to correct it. She didn’t appreciate my reprimand, of course, and swears she’ll prove your perfidy, but as I told her, Lady Edlyn is an innocent soul, much wronged.”
Edlyn’s guilt gained weight as Lady Corliss spoke. “Not so innocent,” she muttered.
“Your little sins cannot justify the great iniquities that have plagued you.” Lifting her hand, fingers together, Lady Corliss indicated the church. “Of course, who am I to decide? Nevertheless, I have prayed that your burdens be eased and the world shown the truth of your kind and honest ways, and lately I have sensed God’s own grace smiling on you.”
Lady Corliss had been praying, Edlyn had been praying, and their combined prayers had produced a wounded knight hidden in her dispensary. She had sworn not to tell, but Lady Corliss led an abbey of twenty-two noble nuns and their servants with a mixture of diplomacy and insight. What harm would it do to tell her? Edlyn wanted to so badly. “What if…what if I sinned horribly? Would the Lord’s displeasure manifest itself on the whole abbey?” Edlyn waited breathlessly for the reply.
“You’re not a child, Lady Edlyn. You know the Lord doesn’t work like that. He gives to some, takes from others, for no reason we earthly beings can easily comprehend. Yet if one thinks very hard, sometimes one can discern God’s plans.” With a satisfied smile, Lady Corliss said, “Think on it. When Lord Jagger died, may he rest in peace, the income you used to found the abbey and nurse it through its early years ceased abruptly. We had to prove ourselves able to provide food, clothing, medicines. And, praise God and all the saints, we were able to do so. What happened to you was a tragedy, but for us it was a welcome revelation.” She squeezed Edlyn’s arm. “You’ll see. Somehow everything is for the good.”
Edlyn bent her head and scuffled her feet in the dirt. “But this is not like that.”
“Would you feel better if you told me?”
“I have sworn to keep it secret.”
“Then you must do what you think is right. You have a conscience. You’ll make the right choice.” The infirmary door stood before them, and Lady Corliss said, “Enough of that. What is your mission now?”
Do what she thought was right. Edlyn stumbled as she said, “I need a…gown.”
“What kind of gown?”
“Like we use for the sick men.”
Lady Corliss didn’t hesitate. “Wait here.” She disappeared into the infirmary and came back with a gown of rough brown weave. “Here. Now go and do God’s work.”
Edlyn walked away, and when she looked back, Lady Corliss waved, then walked toward the church.
“She’s probably praying for me again,” Edlyn muttered. She should have felt even guiltier. Instead, she felt relieved.
She didn’t want to return to the dispensary, but she couldn’t allow herself to consider. She just marched down the garden path and into the hut to find Wharton glaring like the toad he was.
“Where have ye been? Th’ master’s in pain!”
“Is the patient stripped and washed?” she asked.
“Washed?” Wharton sounded scandalized. “In his condition?”
Edlyn stepped around the oven and smothered a gasp. Hugh had been stripped completely, and if anything, he looked longer and meaner than he did in armor. The bruising and the thin film of mud formed from dust and sweat made him look as if he were Adam himself, created from the clay of Eden.
“Wash him.” She thrust the gown at Wharton. “Then put him in this. I’ll prepare something to help the pain.”
She didn’t stop to see if he did as she instructed, but her skin remained whole and without dagger wounds. Pushing a stool over to the table, she stepped up and rummaged around on the top shelf close to the thatch. From behind the other vessels, she brought out a small corked glass bottle and allowed herself a grin. From the bottles on the table, she plucked three, then in a cup she mixed their contents to her satisfaction.
“He’s washed an’ in that pitiful excuse fer a gown.”
Wharton might have been more surly, but Edlyn didn’t know how that could be possible.
“Good.” Cup in hand, she climbed over the woodpile to Hugh’s side. “Mayhap, Wharton, you should bring in more wood. A large pile would help disguise Sir Hugh.”
“’Tis Lord Hugh now,” Wharton said proudly.
With only the faintest hint of sarcasm in her tone, she said, “Of course. I should have realized a warrior as great as Hugh de Florisoun would have won a title by now.”
“He’s th’ earl o’—”
“That’s enough.” Hugh still maintained enough authority to silence his servant in mid-sentence. “Bring the wood.”
“What if someone sees me?” Wharton asked.
“Tell them you’re a mendicant at the abbey. ’Tis impossible to recall all who come and go here.” Edlyn knelt beside the fallen hero. “And leave the door open so I can see what damage you did when you moved your master.”
“I had t’ hide him!” Wharton opened the door.
Edlyn wasn’t in the mood to be fair, but Hugh reassured him.
“Did well, too.” Hugh’s voice sounded fainter now. He waited until Wharton’s footsteps faded, then said, “Hauling wood hurts his dignity as my man.”
“His dignity could use some adju
stment.” Now that Edlyn could see the gown, she admitted Wharton might have a reason for being disgruntled about it. The sleeves hung only to Hugh’s elbows and the hem struck him at the knee. Edlyn would have to lift the hem to examine the wound, and she should have just done it when Hugh lay naked. It would have been less intimate than this undressing. But she hadn’t thought of that then; she had only wanted to get him covered.
“Don’t be alarmed. I’m going to look.” She kept her voice steady and soothing.
“Don’t you be alarmed,” Hugh answered.
But when Edlyn jerked her gaze to his face, his eyes were closed.
He had handsome features: strong and full of masculine beauty that had always made women pant after him like bitches in heat.
She snorted. She’d already had that disease, and like someone who had suffered from smallpox and lived to tell about it, she couldn’t get it again—and she was only stalling. She had to check that bandage.
Lifting the gown, she focused on that one thing. Hugh’s move onto the pallet had loosened the linen strips, and she adjusted them to fit tightly once more. She lowered the gown and allowed herself a small smirk of self-congratulations. That hadn’t bothered her a bit. Her hands were hardly shaking.
She lifted his head and placed it on her bent knees. “Drink.”
He drank, but a bit of the precious liquid oozed out of the corner of his mouth and he choked a bit as he swallowed.
She would have to hold him higher next time.
Taking the rags, she started folding them. He watched her steadily as she worked, and when he spoke, she flinched at his curiosity.
“Edlyn, why are you living in a nunnery?”
“Maybe I’ve taken vows.” She kept her gaze on her hands as she folded.
He laughed softly, then closed his eyes as a spasm of pain struck. “I don’t think so.”
Offended, she said, “What? You don’t think I’m virtuous enough?”
“I think those two vipers”—he gasped for air—“who visited made your status clear.”
“I don’t think you ought to talk anymore.”
His fingers tangled in the skirt of her cotte. “Then tell me.”
He was starting to drift but fighting against it, and she subdued her instinctive rebuff. She did, after all, hold the power in this situation. “Lady Blanche and Adda might have been twins, so alike are they in temperament and appearance.”
He struggled to open his eyes. “Don’t care about them.”
“Lady Blanche’s mother was singularly unappreciative when presented with her husband’s child by her maid so soon before Lady Blanche’s birth.”
“Tell me…you.”
“I think Lady Blanche drank bitterness from her mother’s tit, and Adda absorbed it from the moment she was put in Lady Blanche’s service.”
“When I’m better…”
“Both girls were placed in the nunnery at the age of seven to get rid of them.”
“Edlyn…”
“And they move from abbey to abbey as they make themselves unwelcome.”
Hugh’s faint snore stopped her. She slid the folded rags beneath his head, but he didn’t move, and she grinned in open triumph.
Wharton’s voice sounded from behind her. “He’s going t’ wake someday, ye know, an’ he’ll get those answers he wants.”
Gathering the bottle and the cup, she faced Wharton and his armload of wood. “Not from me, he won’t.”
Wharton knelt to place the logs on the pile. “He always gets what he wants.”
“Then it’s time he learned differently.” Stepping well away from Wharton, she returned the bottle to its hiding place and put the stool away again. “I have work to do.”
“How long will it take him t’ get well?”
Edlyn realized that wasn’t what he wanted to ask. He really wanted to know if Hugh would get well, and she didn’t know the answer to that. She had prescribed the most effective medicine she knew. “Pray for him. Perhaps in a fortnight he’ll be well enough to sit up.”
“Pray fer him.” Wharton’s despair sounded clear. “Isn’t there more I can do?”
“Let him sleep.” She stared at the long log of a man in the rough brown garment. “When his fever rises, bathe him with cool water.”
“That’ll kill him.”
“Not as long as he rests by the oven, it won’t. It’ll keep the fever from going too high.” She frowned at the filthy clothing Wharton had stripped from Hugh. “I’ll have to hide this. It’s clearly a warrior’s aketon, and a large warrior at that.” Picking up the pieces, she wondered what to do with them, then stuffed them behind the large jars of oil and wine on the floor. “He probably won’t wake until tonight, and then you should give him a drop from the bottle you saw me hide.” She pointed her finger at him sternly. “But only a drop, or he’ll drift away and never return.”
Terror made Wharton’s eyes bulge. “Ye do it.”
“I can’t. I sleep in the guest house, and there’s a monk who questions all who come and go in the night.”
“That monk’ll do as he’s told.”
“Nay.” She tried to soothe Wharton’s alarm. “You take good care of your master. This, too, you can do.”
“Ye.”
When Hugh woke, he was aware of only two things. He was hot. And he had to be silent.
A beast gnawed at his side, cutting its teeth against his ribs and seeking the softer meat of his intestines. Its warm breath seared him and he wanted to push it away, but he dared not move. He had to be silent. Everything depended on his silence. Wharton’s safety. His own safety. Edlyn’s safety…Edlyn.
Edlyn? Consciousness nudged at him. He hadn’t thought of Edlyn in years, and she certainly couldn’t be here now. Not in a nunnery. Not working like a common peasant. He was delirious. He had to be.
“Drink this.”
His dream Edlyn knelt beside him. She lifted his head and pressed it against her bosom, then placed a cup to his lips. He drank greedily, then turned and nuzzled her breasts.
She put him down rather hastily, jarring his aching head. He heard Wharton’s voice harp and scold and opened his eyes to reprimand him.
He didn’t see Wharton. He saw his dream Edlyn leaning over his side, forcing the ravenous beast to cease its dinner. But it might turn and rend her, so he said, “Careful.”
He said it clearly, but she didn’t seem to understand. “What?” She leaned close to his face. “Did you say something?”
Her breasts. He remembered resting against them, and now he could see them. Her shift had been negligently tied, and her wrap gaped at the neck. She looked as if she’d just been roused from bed.
He would take her back. Reaching out, he cupped her breast through the material. “Mine.”
His dream Edlyn disappeared from view then, and he closed his eyes. She must be quite a woman, because just laying his claim on her wearied him. Then she started working on his side again, and energy surged through him. He woke to touch her, but when he reached out, he touched coarse material and heard Wharton’s raspy voice. “Master, what do ye require?”
Sleep. He required sleep, so he could dream of Edlyn again.
3
“How are you going to get me back into the dormitory?” Edlyn desperately needed privacy to regather the shreds of her composure.
Hugh had tried to suckle on her like a baby, and while she could delude herself that his action had been nothing more than a sick man’s attempt to return to the comforts of childhood, nothing could change that elemental gesture of ownership he had made afterward.
“Mine.” He had cupped her breast through her wrap and her shift and said, “Mine.” And it hadn’t been a tentative touch, either. He had grasped her firmly and rubbed his thumb across her nipple with such certainty she’d had to reassure herself she was decently covered.
“I don’t want ye t’ go back.” Oblivious to her discomfort, Wharton stood with his feet apart and firmly planted on the dispen
sary floor. “I want ye here if he needs ye.”
“I am not mistress of this abbey,” she said. “I must conform to the rules or be banished. Before the sun rises, I am to join with any other guests and together we make our way to the church for Mass.”
“Your soul’ll not miss Mass one day.”
“This is an abbey. They don’t see it that way, and anyway, that’s not the point.” Exhaustion and frustration made her slow. “I must be seen coming from my chamber, or as the only full-time resident not bound by holy vows, I must explain my absence. And since no one saw me leave, it will be difficult to explain.”
“What do ye do that they’re so suspicious?” Wharton demanded. “Have ye a lover ye visit?”
Unwittingly, her gaze went to Hugh, and she jerked it back to Wharton when he laughed.
“As ye wish, m’ lady. Ye’ll see, that monk’s still snoring at his station an’ we’ll slip right past him.”
She hoped so. She prayed so. Abbeys were obsessed with two things: salvation and sin. Nocturnal wanderings would automatically be assumed to be sin. She would be required to explain her actions, and how could she do that?
As she followed Wharton through the garden and across the abbey yard to the guest quarters, she kept her head down and her hood up, and with every step she trembled with fear. She’d been out in the wide world for a brief time, living hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal would come from or whether the next place she begged at would be her last.
So many cruelties. So many horrors. They had scarred her. She had to get back into her room without discovery.
“Keep close behind me.”
Wharton spoke softly, so softly she wondered if he comprehended her fear.
“Take off yer shoes.” He paused in the overhang of the guest quarters while she did as he instructed. “If th’ sleepy one wakes, I’ll distract him while ye slip past me an’ down th’ hallway t’ yer room.”
She didn’t like the way that sounded, and she didn’t trust Wharton. “Don’t hurt him,” she warned.
“I don’t hurt ol’ monks,” Wharton answered scornfully.
A Knight to Remember: Good Knights #2 Page 3