Mystic Warrior

by Patricia Rice

  “That is not possible,” the innkeeper protested in an accusatory tone that insinuated Lissandra had brought this on herself. “I run a decent inn. Such things do not happen here!”

  Perhaps she was to blame, if being female was all that was required to be accosted by strangers. Lissandra considered twisting the pompous innkeeper’s nose, but Murdoch took care of the offensive man for her. His rapier was under the innkeeper’s chin before any could notice he’d even removed it from his belt.

  “You will apologize profusely to my wife for the assault on her person under your roof,” he said in a tone of cold command that would curdle the blood of any who truly knew him.

  The innkeeper stammered, and Murdoch’s grim expression grew more fierce. A knife appeared in his other hand, pressing to the man’s belly.

  “I apologize, madame, monsieur,” the innkeeper whispered, stepping backward until he bumped into the soldiers behind him.

  “I did nothing, nothing, I say!” her assailant cried. “Make her release me!”

  In a swirl and flash of silver, Murdoch spun to neatly slice her attacker’s shirt from his back and trousers from their binding. Releasing the man’s wrist, Lissandra swallowed an inappropriate laugh at the sight of his fat white rump before turning her attention to the astonished soldiers. She appreciated that Murdoch did not draw blood, but she could find more productive uses for the belligerent instincts of the men with him. She mentally nudged their thoughts into more suitable patterns.

  The soldiers looked from her to the burly sailor on the floor. “The lady does not appear to need help,” the clean-shaven officer said snidely, no doubt wondering whether he’d be able to bring such a large man to his knees—and keep him there.

  “I don’t recognize him,” the mustached officer decided, lifting her attacker by his neckcloth—the only whole garment left on him. “We’d better take him in for questioning.”

  The younger soldier looked confused, glancing from Murdoch to their new prisoner. With his fury discharged, Murdoch jovially pounded the man’s back and shoved him after his companion. “I will be down directly to press charges,” he said in his impeccable French. “It is a scandal and a shame the way these foreigners think they can assault our women. I wager he’s the émigré spy you’ve been looking for. My wife is the honey that ever catches flies.”

  The innkeeper’s gaze darted nervously from Lissandra to Murdoch to their ill patient wrapped in blankets in the chamber behind them. She ought to feel sympathy for his confusion, but he was broadcasting concern only for himself, and she wasn’t feeling generous.

  Returning to the small parlor, Lissandra pressed a reassuring finger to Amelie’s nose to make the terrified child smile in trembling relief, then knelt to cradle Pierre Durand’s head so she could help him drink the herbal tea she’d prepared. “All is well. We’ll take you home now.”

  Still struggling with his volatile emotions, Murdoch offered the innkeeper a coin to quiet his protests and sent him away.

  “I think I’ve reduced the infection and balanced his energies so that it will be safe for him to travel in the cart,” Lissandra said, hoping she could distract Murdoch from his desire to fling her on a ship and sail away. “And Amelie mostly needs nourishment. A few good meals and a bath, and she’ll be fine.”

  She thought it was a good sign that Murdoch had conceded to fetch the cart and take them back to Trystan’s house. He wouldn’t renege on that agreement, although she assumed the soldiers who had tagged behind him were an ominous portent.

  Instead of speaking his thoughts, Murdoch turned to the child. “I think, back at the house, I saw some pretty gowns lying around, looking lonely,” he said in an almost genial tone, while he lifted Durand from the floor. “I believe they might be just your size.”

  If Murdoch hadn’t already stolen her heart, Lissandra would have handed it to him there and then. The promise of pretty clothes easily diverted the child’s attention while his voice covered up Durand’s moan of pain.

  Murdoch had always been kind to Lissandra as a child, but she had assumed that was part of their rapport. No matter how tense their relationship became over the years, they’d always danced around each other like two expert swordsmen feinting without actually fighting.

  Perhaps, if they were ever to get beyond their polite surfaces to the truth, it was time to quit parrying and engage weapons.

  They tucked Pierre in the back of Trystan’s cart as best as they could and listened to Amelie’s happy chatter while they drove out of town.

  They blended their illusions to disguise the cart without discussing it. Murdoch touched his brown fingers to Lissandra’s when they passed the puzzled young soldier on the outskirts of the village, letting her know she need do no more.

  And they both simmered in different kinds of frustration as they returned to Trystan’s comfortable house, which they’d thought never to see again.

  “Baths first,” she murmured after Murdoch unhitched the horse and lifted their unconscious patient from the cart. “They have fleas.”

  “I’ll not have you bathing a stranger,” he grumbled in a low tone. Even though they spoke in their language, he tried not to disturb the child, who was warily studying her new surroundings.

  Lissandra was not unfamiliar or uncomfortable with naked men, and Murdoch knew it. He was simply being jealously stubborn. “Male anatomy does not differ with name or familiarity of the individual,” she argued. “Pierre cannot travel until we remove the infection and he regains his strength. The heat of the bath is the best way I know.”

  “Then add your herbs and incense and leave me with him,” Murdoch insisted while she opened the kitchen door to let him pass with his unconscious burden.

  “You are being deliberately thickheaded about this. The infection is in his lungs. I must find it and apply my energies there.”

  “And exhaust yourself in the process. I have some of your ability. Let me use it.” Murdoch’s jaw was rigid with obstinacy.

  She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Murdoch was being his usual domineering self, expecting everyone to obey his commands. She’d never seen anyone win against him, except her parents. And occasionally Ian. She certainly never had.

  “If you can’t Heal him, our departure will be delayed,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll Heal him.” Now that he had his way, he strode through the house as if he owned it.

  Swatting the thickheaded man with a brick might help, but she had better things to do. Carrying her bag in one hand, taking Amelie’s in the other, she made a game of racing the child down the stairs to the bath.

  “Amelie is sound asleep in the nursery. How does your friend fare?” Lis stopped in the doorway of the bathing room, looking to Murdoch like an ethereal goddess.

  The scene at the inn had certainly proved she wasn’t delicate. His heart had almost stopped in his chest when he’d seen the size of her assailant. And she had brought the man down with no more than a supercilious lift of an eyebrow and a flick of her wrist.

  Murdoch could tell when she was annoyed with him. Lis thought Healing was her territory, but he’d been in this world long enough to know men here did not accept female physicians. Her temper aggravated his, sparking flares inside him just by her existence. He was equally annoyed that she had been right—she could have healed Durand faster. And they’d lost the opportunity to leave tonight.

  “Pierre is breathing easier,” was all he said.

  “Can you tell if the infection is gone?” She stayed in the shadows, not reacting to his irritation. He’d lit only one candle, so she was nearly invisible to his eyes, but not to his other senses. She smelled of lavender, and the air hummed with her feminine desire—another reason his nerves were on edge. He reacted like a tomcat to a female in heat.

  He growled under his breath but tried not to disturb the shoemaker, who had drifted into sleep. “I sense a hot spot on the left side.”

  “Maybe if he is stronger tomorrow nig
ht, you can cure him then.”

  “We are not staying another night.” He placed his hands on Durand’s shoulders and tried to focus his mind again on the sensation he only dimly recognized. He’d learned to use the spin of his sword to gather his energies. Without it, his scattered abilities were of little more use than pebbles flung into a pond. He was afraid that if he heaved a stone, he’d inundate them all.

  “Concentrate your energy on your thumbs,” she suggested. “Perhaps just the left one. Pour all your strength through that point and see if you can direct it better.”

  “Go to bed,” he ordered. “I can do this.”

  “It is not what you’re trained to do.”

  “I wasn’t trained to cook, but I’d starve if I didn’t. Now go away; you’re distracting me.”

  To his intense annoyance, she obeyed, slipping silently away as she often did when confronted with his damnable temper, leaving him alone with his ugly thoughts and frustrations. He could conceal his anger from the rest of the world, but not Lis. He jammed his thumb against the pressure point above Durand’s shoulder blades, focused all his energy into it, and nearly sizzled his patient’s lungs.

  Durand woke, coughing and gulping the incense-laden air.

  “With due respect, monsieur, you’re no physician,” Durand told him.

  “True, but you’ll feel better shortly. It is time you got some sleep. Let me help you out.”

  Their patient was recovered sufficiently to don a robe and limp from the cellar up to the servant’s room behind the kitchen. To ask him to climb another flight of stairs to the guest chambers would have meant trying his strength.

  Gratitude and bewilderment rolled off Durand in waves, but Murdoch brusquely settled him into bed, set a small fire in the grate even though the night was warm, and left him sleeping.

  He hadn’t tried to Heal anyone since adolescence, perhaps because he had seen no purpose in competing with Lis’s superior ability.

  He didn’t like some of the insights he had gained since her arrival.

  Insight didn’t ease the need to gnash his teeth as he sensed the evening tide ebbing. They should be on a ship right this minute, sailing away from this dangerous land.

  He didn’t know why the soldiers had been waiting for him at the inn, but it would be only a matter of time before they came looking again.

  Seventeen

  Lissandra checked on the sleeping child in the nursery a half dozen times, even though she would have known instantly had Amelie awakened. She needed an outlet for her restless energy, and walking the floor had grown tiresome.

  Returning to her own chamber, she prepared for bed, beating the dirt from the gown she’d worn that day. She didn’t take off the fine linen she’d worn under the gown. At home, she slept nude, but Aelynn was a tropical climate. The weather here was too uncertain, even in summer. Or so she told herself.

  Mostly, she felt too vulnerable to be naked while Murdoch was building up a cloud of anger, frustration, and sexual hunger that would surely burst like a volcano should they meet in the hall. And she kept walking the hall.

  Too many thoughts and fears and desires raced through her for her to settle down. She paced the floor of the room she’d taken after giving Amelie the nursery.

  She knew when Murdoch led Pierre up the stairs from the bath. She should go down and help them. Normally, she would have.

  But she feared . . . What did she fear? Not Murdoch, not really. He might back off and slam the door, or ride off into the night, or do any of a number of things to put distance between them. But he wouldn’t lay a hand to her.

  And she wanted him to.

  She feared herself.

  She heard Murdoch climbing to the second story and froze, trying not to make a sound, knowing it was useless. Murdoch could hear her breathing if he put his mind to it.

  He opened her door and walked in.

  He filled the doorway, looking as if his head would brush the low ceiling if he held it any higher. He’d shed his coat and waistcoat. The unfastened neckties of his wet linen framed the brown column of his throat. She couldn’t mistake the breadth and strength of the muscles of his shoulders or the tautness of his flat abdomen.

  His eyes held her pinned. They flared with fires of lust, and she felt their heat all the way down to her toes.

  “I am riding into town to find a ship willing to take us on the morning tide.”

  “Fine, then,” she said with icy pride. “Ride off and leave me behind again.” Embarrassed at her retreat into childish behavior, as if she were still a needy adolescent and he the adult, she hugged herself and glanced away. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Murdoch knew better than to make love to her. So he was putting distance between them. She understood. She simply expected more than he could give. Foolish of her.

  “I’m not leaving you.” He held his temper by curling his fingers into fists. “I’ll be back before dawn.”

  “Maybe it’s better if you don’t come back.” She couldn’t contain her frustration any longer. She threw the challenge that preyed on her mind.

  “Do you think I have a choice?” he asked, visibly controlling his temper. “You’re the one who always treats me as if I’m a dangerous poison you wish to experiment with.” Without further explanation, he turned on his heel and walked away.

  “I won’t let you run out on me again!” The tensions of the day had melted the icy shield that had confined her, until it could no longer withstand her pent-up rage and despair. Lissandra raced after him. “I will no longer tolerate your disappearing every time we disagree.” The fury spilled from her tongue.

  He took the back stairs two at a time. “You’re a fine one to talk,” he called back at her. “You’re the expert at avoidance. Why argue when you could hide behind your mother’s skirts? Who will hide you now?”

  “Do you think I like avoiding argument?” she cried, wishing she could catch up with him and hit him over the head. Hard. But he was walking too fast, crossing the kitchen and heading for the door more swiftly than she could dodge tables and chairs to follow. “What choice do you leave me? I can risk you raising a cyclone, or I can watch you sail away!”

  When he didn’t reply but slammed out of the kitchen, she threw the door open and raced into the windy night after him. Her hair tore loose of its pins to slap her in the face.

  “You want a confrontation?” she cried over the pounding of the surf on the rocks below. “Why don’t you tell me the truth about how my father died?”

  Murdoch whirled around, his normally composed features contorted into a mask of anguish. “You think I don’t regret that night? I have nightmares recalling how you looked at me when you ran to him and wailed your grief. If only I could wipe that scene from my mind!”

  Lightning flashed. Lissandra glanced at it warily, and Murdoch said something acerbic that the wind carried away. Swinging around again, he hastened down the rocky path to the beach rather than to the stable—where he might set the straw on fire with his fury.

  Tears filled her eyes, and she raced after him. “How was I supposed to look on you?” she cried. “I saw everything! I told Mother I didn’t, but I did. I saw the two of you talking, yelling. Then he pounded you on the shoulder, and you raised your arms in a rage while he walked away. And I knew you were going to leave, that he’d driven you off again.”

  She stumbled over her feet in the dark, searching for the path Murdoch followed so easily. She might as well be shouting into the wind. She should turn back, forget she’d ever found him. . . .

  She wouldn’t repeat the pattern of the past. Not this time. No more hiding or walking away from a fight—even if Murdoch blew France to the moon.

  She flung a rock at his back, and although it merely glanced off his sore shoulder and thunked on the path, it made him turn and look. A bolt of lightning cracked across the black night sky. “You called down lightning then, too!” she shouted. “Just like now. Can you deny that?”

  “No.” He tu
rned his back on her again and continued down the path. “I deny nothing. You have every right to scorn me.”

  Perversely, now that he’d agreed with her, she didn’t want to scorn him. “That’s giving up!” she screamed after him. “I thought you a better man than that! I thought you a man who would fight for what he believes! Instead, I discover you prefer running away.”

  He disappeared around a boulder. She was terrified he would disappear entirely, and ran down the pebbly path as quickly as she dared, slipping and sliding on her sandals, the gravel tearing at her feet. She nearly ran into him at the bottom.

  He grabbed her shoulders and shook her before she could catch her breath. “Do you want me to make the skies weep?” he asked in a voice that pierced her heart for all that wasn’t said. “Don’t you think I loved Luther as much as you did? He was the only father I ever knew, and I killed him!”

  Stunned, Lissandra fell against Murdoch’s chest and wrapped her arms around him; whether in consolation or despair, she couldn’t say. She simply knew she had to hang on while the wind whipped their clothes and hair and the surf pounded at their feet.

  “If you loved him, how could you fight with him?” She was weeping into his shoulder. She beat him with her fist when he tried to smooth her hair.

  He settled for holding her closer. His voice was inside her heart as much as in her ear when he replied, “It was an accident. He’d just granted my fondest wish, and then he announced that Trystan was to be your suitor.”

  “Your fondest wish?” She shoved away, trying to read his eyes in the flashes of lightning—but as always, Murdoch’s expression remained dark, mysterious, and unreadable.

  The wind whipped his hair across his sharp cheekbones, and his lips formed a thin, forbidding line before he relented. “He’d told me that if I would stay and take a place in the Council and behave civilly, he would let me court you.”

  The words struck Lissandra with the force of an earthquake. She shoved out of his arms, fell backward, and caught herself on a black rock. She waited for the earth to quit moving before she realized Murdoch had released his unspoken grief by turning the tide high, and it shifted the sand beneath her feet.