Those hazel eyes looked up at her without a sign of recognition, and she almost laughed aloud with relief. He didn’t remember last night. He didn’t remember those mortifying confessions she’d made while under the influence of that fairy juice.
Not that she wasn’t grateful to the fairies for their remedy. Last night, she’d almost fainted with a combination of joy and dismay when he’d looked up at her, and when she realized his fever had broken, she’d cried as pitifully as Wharton did right now. But why didn’t that silly rhyme tell of the effect of dragon’s blood on the unwary nurse?
She hadn’t thought of her fascinated scrutiny of Hugh in the throes of passion for years. Seeing him like that had embarrassed her then. The pretending she’d done afterward embarrassed her now, and she found herself saying in an overbearing tone, “We’re awake and cranky, no doubt, but I wager we feel better, don’t we?”
“You ripped out my guts.”
He sounded hoarse, and reluctantly she knelt and lifted his head onto her knee. She didn’t like being so close. The weight of his head, his heat, the silk of his hair reminded her too much of last night. Pretending normality, she placed a cup to his lips. “I didn’t rip out your guts. I sewed them back in.”
He drank greedily and gasped when he finished. “I’m hungry. Why have you been starving me?” he asked.
Remembering all the times she and Wharton had coaxed broth into his mouth and down his throat, she wanted to hit him. He acted like a typical man who’d been ill. Angry at those who’d saved him, impatient with his own weakness, aware only of himself.
Yet he wasn’t typical at all. His gaze lingered on her breasts as if he recalled touching her, then his eyes lifted to her face. He observed her—an uncomfortable feeling when one has bared one’s miserable soul. Placing him back on the rag pillow as rapidly as she could, Edlyn said, “You were wounded. We thought you would die.”
For the first time since he’d recovered consciousness, he seemed aware of his injury. His hands curled, his fingers searched, and he touched the edges of the mat as if that would help develop substantial recollections. “Wharton brought me to an abbey.” His gaze swept the room. “I’ve been hidden in the dispensary.”
“That’s right,” she said, trying to encourage him.
Again he looked at her. “You’re the healer.” His forehead crinkled as he groped among his fevered memories. Then it smoothed, and with a great effort he stretched out his fingers and touched her skirt. “You’re…Edlyn.”
Holy Mother, he remembered! But did he remember from that first day when Wharton had brought him in? Or did he remember from last night? Her mind buzzed and fretted, and she made a production of examining the bandage over his wound.
“You’re Edlyn from George’s Cross,” he insisted.
It would hurt him when she removed the bandage, she thought. Regardless of her care, it would hurt.
Then she felt a small tug on her skirt and looked up to see him still watching her.
“At George’s Cross,” he repeated, “you were the daughter of a baron.”
He wanted an answer, and she nodded reluctantly. “And you were the son of a baron.”
“You learned a lady’s duties under the instruction of Lady Alisoun.”
Her mouth quirked. He seemed lost in harmless old reminiscences. “You learned a knight’s duties under Sir David.”
“You were a proper girl, gentle and kind, as befitting a ward of Lady Alisoun’s.”
He didn’t recall her confession of the night before, or he wouldn’t have said that. She hurried to speak and cover her relief. “You were the best warrior in all of George’s Cross, as befitting a student of Sir David’s.”
He closed his eyes as if the effort of reminiscing had tired him. “We were children together.”
Children together? Is that all he remembered? Curiously, that angered her, and she shot him a glance of such scorn it should have cauterized his wound. But actually, it helped to be so angry, for someone had to peel that bandage off his wound and Wharton had proved unable to deliberately hurt his master, even for his master’s own good. “Prepare yourself,” she said.
He opened his eyes again and realized what would happen, then nodded weakly.
She eased the clinging linen off the forming scab.
He arched his back as if she’d burned him. Wharton handed her the jar of ointment she’d used every day to combat the infection, and she hurried to spread it with her fingers. Deep sighs of relief shuddered through him, and she was glad. Glad he’d returned to consciousness. Glad she had the skill to relieve the pain of recovery.
When she had bandaged him, he looked at her deeply, and she bore the examination proudly. She wanted him to realize the girl she had been had grown up, gained skills, and saved his life. He opened his mouth to speak, and she straightened her spine.
“You look the same,” he said. “Pretty as ever.”
“Wharton.” Hugh laid on his side on the pallet and in a rich voice spoke persuasively to his servant. “You’ll need to leave before the sun rises much higher in the sky, or someone here might recognize you.”
Like a she-wolf guarding her pup, Wharton squatted beside Hugh. Setting his jaw, he looked annoyed. “I don’t like leaving ye here day after day in th’ hands o’ that woman.”
From her place at the long table, Edlyn looked at the ceiling as if her much-needed forbearance would appear through the thatch. That woman, Wharton called her. She’d saved his master and protected his own life, and he resented her more bitterly than ever before. It was, she suspected, because Hugh so clearly wanted to spend his time alone with her.
She didn’t want it, Hugh did, and so she tried time and again to tell Wharton, but Wharton wouldn’t listen. As far as Wharton was concerned, his master was perfect, so the fault must lie in her.
Hugh indicated nothing but courteous regard for his servant when he said, “Lady Edlyn has taken good care of me, Wharton, and as you well know, I will need you here and awake tonight to help me.”
“To help you what?” Edlyn asked idly.
Wharton began, “T’ help him—”
“—In case I’m stricken with illness,” Hugh finished with glib assurance.
Edlyn looked from Wharton’s angry, guilty face to Hugh’s smooth one and wondered what they were hiding.
“Guess I’d best be leaving then.” Wharton rose and shook out his legs. “I’ll be tramping about in th’ woods.”
“And gathering information?” Hugh asked.
“From any chance-met traveler,” Wharton agreed.
Again they were sharing a secret, keeping something from her, but she didn’t care. She’d dealt with little boy intrigue before.
Nodding and bowing, Wharton backed away from the long prone figure behind the oven. Then with a sneer at her, he slammed out.
Hugh scarcely waited until Wharton had cleared the door before he began his attack. “Your duke didn’t live very long.”
Edlyn stared at her hands as they sorted dark green leaves into brown wooden boxes. “Two years,” she answered, hoping that would satisfy his curiosity but knowing it would not.
“Two years. Not long at all.”
She could feel Hugh’s gaze; it made the muscles in her back contract as if she were braced for the stab of a knife. Funny that she suspected Hugh, seemingly so calm, of being more dangerous than the volatile Wharton.
“Was he a good husband?”
“He was a dear.” Edlyn didn’t know if it was the dragon’s blood or pure bloody determination, but once Hugh began to heal, he healed rapidly. He wanted to rise, insisting he needed exercise. Knowing it was too soon, she refused to let him but wished him gone nevertheless. Healing, he was a presence in the dispensary—rather like a lump in her throat that strangled her but was impossible to dislodge.
“A handsome man, and true?” he asked.
She gave a crack of laughter, then submitted to temptation and walked to his side. She told him she had
to attend to her duties, but she would be glad to listen to him as he talked. But he didn’t talk. He continued his interrogation, and occasionally, with her mind on the mixture of herbs before her, she said too much.
Now she stood, hands on her hips, and looked down at him, relishing the inherent domination of her position. “I was less than a gnat for you when we lived at George’s Cross, was I not?”
If it affected him that she stood while he reclined, he hid his chagrin well. Instead, he watched her with those fathomless eyes and said, “I remember you well.”
“Do you?” Never in the last days had he given any indication he remembered that confession she had given while under the influence of that wretched dragon’s blood, and her early panic had eased. Now she squatted and looked him in the eye. “Then you are a foolish man. I married a duke so old the ceremony and the celebration after brought him to his knees with a pain in the head and a paralysis of his body. He was kind to me, but he never even completed the role of husband.”
“He never bedded you?” Again he showed no emotion.
She hung her hands over her up-thrust knees. “He attempted to, and we told his family he had succeeded. He didn’t wish to have his inability revealed, and I feared they would strip me of my dower portion when he died.”
“Did they?”
She smiled, a mere curving of the lips. “They tried.”
Her duke’s treacherous children had tried to throw her out without a pence, and when she’d fought for her dower, they tried to have her killed. It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been pretty. But she’d won the money and the lands stipulated in her marriage contract and ascertained the thread of steel in her backbone at the same time.
Now Hugh looked at her as if he saw into her past, at the struggle she’d been forced to face at the age of seventeen, and she recognized the balance between them had shifted. He’d been lying behind this oven for just one day less than a fortnight, and for the first time since he had woken to find himself in her care, they spoke not as patient and caretaker, but as man and woman.
With a faint gasp, she turned her head away and stood, then fled back to her herbs.
Behind her, she heard him say, “Marriage to your duke proved to be a prosperous union for you.”
Plunging the pestle into the mortar filled with dry leaves, she ground them into dust. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how frightened she had been. Or else he didn’t care. God grant him the delicacy to allow this conversation to die.
An imbecilic hope, for he immediately asked, “Do you plan to take your vows as so many noble widows do?”
She dropped the pestle into the mortar. It clattered on the smooth stone bowl and a poof of green dust spun through the air. To cover her clumsiness, she crossed to the oven. She shook the long-stemmed plants she had placed there to dry. The faded leaves rattled, and a few of the yellow buds fell off. With an exclamation of satisfaction, she whisked them over to her table.
She shouldn’t answer, but she already knew his methods. If she didn’t reply now, he would ask the question again later, and still later, until he’d worn down her resistance. So she said simply, “No vows.”
“Why not?”
“They won’t have me.” It was a plain statement of fact.
“Who keeps you from it? Is it that woman who comes every day to badger you? Or her wretched servant who watches when she should not?”
For a man who remained hidden under rags whenever she had a visitor, he saw remarkably well. “Lady Blanche has no influence here, although she would like to have.” Edlyn sighed. “No, ’tis I who have too many duties to fulfill in this world ere I could ever enter the cloister.”
“If God calls, surely earthly duties must be dismissed.”
“God has not called.”
She heard him say something, she didn’t know what, then he covered his eyes with his arm. Because he was tiring? Or to hide his expression from her? She watched him suspiciously.
“How long has it been since the death of your duke?” he asked.
“I was fifteen when I wed him. I was seventeen when he died. And that was eleven years ago.”
“What a tight-lipped, suspicious woman you have grown to be!” He lifted his arm, and she saw the exasperation he usually concealed. “You tell me nothing.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I wish to know.”
“As if that matters!”
He ignored that, and using bluntness as he would a broadsword, he slashed at her discretion. “How many other husbands have you had in those eleven years?”
Incensed that he believed he had the right to pry, determined to put him in his place, she answered him as bluntly as he had asked. “One.”
He struggled to sit up.
She watched, her chin thrust forward.
“Where is he now?” he demanded.
“He’s dead.”
He must have expected that, for he placed his next query without pause. “What was his name?”
“You’ll know it, I’m sure. He was no doubt a comrade of yours.” She turned back to her work and flung words over her shoulder. “His name was Robin, earl of Jagger.”
“Robin…earl of Jagger?” His voice was hoarse with anguish and fury. “Are you taunting me?”
She stopped work and frowned at him. The raw distress in his voice echoed in her ears, and she fetched her bottle of tonic. It would, she thought, ease the rasp in his throat, but as she knelt beside him, she knew she lied to herself. He hadn’t reacted as she’d expected at all, and she wanted to know what he meant. “You’ve talked too much.” Pouring the putrid thick brown potion into a cup, she shoved it into his hand. “Do you need me to hold you while you drink?”
As offensively as possible, he said, “I need you to vow you’ll keep your silence until I am well away from here.”
She reared, stunned by his attack. “I’ve kept it this long! Do you think I would tell the nuns what I’ve done? That I’ve kept a man alive in the dispensary without their knowledge?” Her gaze raked him from head to toe. “And such a man. A warrior.”
“What’s wrong with a warrior?”
“My husband was a warrior. A great warrior. I can’t believe I’ve risked everything—shelter, food, a safe place to…” She inhaled and leaned close enough for her breath to touch his face. “I risked my security…for another warrior.”
He watched her warily, as if they were talking at cross-purposes and he were as confused as she. Picking his words with care, he said, “Robin, earl of Jagger, died last year in the service of Simon de Montfort.”
“Die? He didn’t die.” Her cheeks burned, and hot tears filled her eyes. “He was captured by the earl of Roxford, dragged through the streets like a common criminal, and executed.”
“As a traitor to the royal prince.”
She met his gaze boldly, but her hand crept to her heart. “’Tis a fate you might avoid.”
“Avoid?” He frowned. “You think I’m a traitor to the crown?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I am not!”
She’d heard that before, and she answered him with just as much conviction. “Aye, that’s what Robin said, too. He said he was no traitor, but a defender of the rights of the barons against the king’s tyranny.” Her mouth curled in contempt. “Prince Edward didn’t see it that way. Simon de Montfort captured the king last year, and he drags him around like a pawn in his dangerous game. He uses the king’s power to make decrees, and Prince Edward would do anything to free his father. So when the prince’s commander sent Robin to London, Robin hanged by his neck until he was dead. The prince confiscated all of Robin’s lands and wealth. And as a lesson to others who might rebel against him, the prince threw Robin’s wife and his children into the dirt to live or die as best they could.”
5
Hugh enunciated his words as if Edlyn were hard of hearing. “I am not a rebel against the king.”
“Of course you’re not.” She sm
irked, just for the pleasure of aggravating him. “That’s why Wharton was frightened you would be discovered. That’s why you’re content to hide here until the other soldiers are gone.” She gave up on sarcasm and went right to the point. “You’re afraid Prince Edward’s troops will discover you and take you to be executed.” She took a quivering breath. “Like Robin.”
“That is not true.”
“Then why don’t you call for your companions? Why don’t you consent to go to the hospital where the nuns could care for you?”
“I can’t be seen lying helplessly. There are assassins—”
Who did he think he was? The commander of the royal troops? She covered her mouth to contain her laughter.
Solemn-faced, he studied her. “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you? There’s no talking to you, is there?”
She shook her head nay.
“Very well. But Edlyn, countess of Jagger, you should be shy of judging all men by the same stick.”
He was sulking! The man she thought so impervious had his lips pressed tightly together, and Edlyn experienced a surge of triumph. All men were the same—little boys who demanded respect while failing to earn it. Treating him just as she would Parkin or Allyn, she drew him onto her knee and said, “Here. Drink this.”
His hand rose to push the mug away, then he paused. “Would you like to know the other reason why I refuse to go to your hospital?”
“If you wish to tell me,” she acquiesced gracefully.
“Because I always knew you were the only one who could cure me.”
He laid his hand over hers, pressing her palm into the smooth side of the horn cup. The calluses on his palm scraped her, and he rubbed his fingers in small circles over her skin.
His voice deepened with sincerity. “Even when death pressed close, I heard your voice talking and felt your strength flow into me.”
“Heard me?” She almost choked.
“That’s why I have been drinking vile things, wearing mashed weeds on my wound, eating pap, and hiding myself in a pile of rags whenever anyone comes close to the dispensary.” He brought her hand, and the cup, to his mouth and drank. “Because you tell me to.”
A Knight to Remember: Good Knights #2 Page 5