HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  Fia’s smile at his joke was genuine, if a bit sad. So many people’s lives did not go as planned.

  When he leaned forward, she startled, thinking he meant to embrace her, but he only held out his hand to return her treasure.

  “I am glad you have a token from Heric,” he said. “Try to go back to sleep.”

  The glass gave her some of Rowan’s welcome warmth, a tiny seed of betrayal hidden in her palm.

  Chapter Eight

  “We will arrive in Metz tomorrow,” Rowan said as he helped her off the cob.

  “That’s a pity,” she said. “My legs have just now become accustomed to endless hours on horseback.”

  Rowan smiled at the second joke she’d made in eighteen days. Fia almost wished they could continue this way, wandering in the wilderness between realities where she could pretend she need not despise him.

  They fell into their evening routine. He found wood and filled their water bladders while she started a fire, an unusually difficult challenge in a steady breeze that promised a storm. They sat with their backs to the wind, out of the smoke, as they ate the second rabbit he had snared last night and cooked on a spit at dawn. She took only a meaty leg while he devoured the rest. She handed him the last of the bread. He turned his back when she walked into the brush.

  On the surface, all was well, but her mind churned like the wind in the trees. The temptation to renew their friendship — friendship only — teased at her constantly. This, with the betrayer who’d stolen away her dreams. She should not want his conversation or kindness or, worse yet, his touch.

  She dug through her past to the moment when all her expectations had been torn away, remembered it with welcome clarity, though at the time she hadn’t known it was Rowan’s fault. Papa had come to her when she sat alone in the yard, absently grinding grain while she dreamed of her wedding. It would be on a Friday and Victor would stand next to her, lean and pale, his confident smile making her toes — decorously enclosed in shoes for this occasion — curl with suppressed joy.

  Papa dragging a stool across the yard interrupted her misty fantasies. He faced her, thick forearms braced on the absurdly skinny, wool ensconced thighs that jutted out from beneath his short tunic. Her tremulous smile made him frown and study his permanently dirty hands, folded between his knees.

  “Victor has spoken to me,” he said gruffly.

  Her nod could only be described as heartbreakingly, naively eager.

  Her first warning was her father’s steady look from under his bushy brows. “I know you have hopes of marrying him.” He watched her as if he would measure the depth, width, and height of those boundless hopes.

  “He has been courting me for nearly a year,” she said, confused.

  He licked his lips.

  “We love each other,” she blurted.

  “So he said.”

  A chill washed over her. Something was going wrong.

  “He asked my permission to take you to wife. I said no.”

  “What?” she cried. The wooden pestle in her hand dropped, dashing bits of wheat from the mortar into the dirt of the yard.

  “He is not a good man for you.”

  She blinked at him, stunned. “He is the only man for me. I won’t have another.”

  Papa shook his head. His eyes drooped with misery. “There are things you don’t know, things a woman should never know…you must trust me with this decision. He is not a good man for you.”

  “Why? Why did you let us go on for a year when you had no intention of allowing us to become betrothed?”

  “I’ve only just learned…something about him. I won’t speak of it.”

  “Learned from who?” she demanded. When his jaw set, she continued. “Whoever it is, is lying! Victor is perfect and —”

  “He is not perfect!” Her father had never shouted at her like that, before or since. He unclenched his fists. “I’m sorry it went on for so long, child, but it ends now. No more talk of love or marriage between you.” An uncharacteristic shiver passed through him. “Ever.”

  That night had been awash in tears. At first she had railed against Papa, but soon she marked Rowan as the source of the trouble. She vowed with as much conviction as she’d have brought to her wedding to always hate him, and she used every opportunity to make him feel the searing heat of that hatred.

  Now, amid this journey of mercy, she had to nurture her loathing. It should exude from her as naturally as the sweat from her skin, yet she must remind herself hour-by-hour to keep him at the safe distance one allowed a poisonous snake.

  A difficult challenge, since a poisonous snake didn’t rescue you from being hopelessly stranded in a strange city or make sure you had water and meat every day or revive a childhood friendship that spanned some of the happiest years of your life.

  She sat on her bedding in the circle of firelight, the popping of the wind-driven sparks the only sound in a silence that felt both comfortable and forced at the same time. She owed him courtesy, yet tomorrow they would arrive in Metz with so much still unsaid.

  She asked, “What will you do once you are rid of me?”

  “I will make sure your family is well-situated, then try to rejoin the army, I suppose.”

  “It must be the middle of July. Is there any point in trying to find the army?”

  “The king might think there is,” he said wryly.

  She poked at the fire with a long stick, making embers flame anew. “I am indebted to you.”

  “No.”

  “You are the last person in the world I want to be indebted to.”

  He groaned. “I know. Let us sit quietly and pretend we are strangers, then.”

  “This may be my last opportunity to speak to you freely.”

  He set his jaw and studied her. “I wish you wouldn’t, and I can’t imagine you have anything new to say, yet Fia the Defiant has returned. I can tell by the infernal spark in your eyes that nothing will stop you.”

  She flinched at the old nickname. Rowan had made it up, but Victor had been the one who seized on it. It somehow amused him to call her that, as if he didn’t find her defiant at all. The memory brought him back clear in her mind, with his piercing blue eyes, and hands smaller than Rowan’s. Everything about him had been smaller, more approachable, easier to deal with than Rowan. Even his social station hadn’t flown quite so high. Her emotions with Victor had been exciting but manageable, whereas Rowan always sent her flying in one direction or another, as if his calmness was a hard surface she flung herself against and naturally bounced away from. It was why Victor had suited her, and why his absence and Rowan’s presence made her so volatile.

  She tossed the stick on the fire. “I am indebted to you yet I can’t ever forgive you,” she stated baldly, unable to contain her confusion any longer, certain she could not carry it the rest of her life.

  He lay back in the cushiony forest floor and folded his hands behind his head. “You owe me nothing. Whatever burden of debt you feel, let me relieve you of it.”

  “But that does not fix the root problem.”

  “Which is?” he asked on an exhausted sigh.

  “You were our friend and you betrayed us.”

  “I can allow for an interpretation where I betrayed Victor, but never you.”

  She snorted.

  “How did I betray you?” he challenged.

  “You were jealous, you were angry with me for choosing him over you. You thought him beneath you, that I should have fallen to you by default, and you had your revenge by somehow turning Papa against him.” The truth spilled out of her in an uninterrupted tirade, leaving her breathless by the end.

  “Is that what I did?” he asked mildly. “You know Heric was not an unjust man. If you cannot trust me, you should at least trust his wisdom.”

  “His wisdom was fed by your lies.”

  He sat up abruptly. Anger burned his face to sharp, flat planes. “I told no lies when I spok
e to your father. We both acted in your best interest. Victor was my friend, but at his heart lay a cruelty he hid well. When he had you in his power he would have begun to hurt you. How could I live with myself if I ever saw you injured or somehow came to know you were unhappy in the marriage?” He picked up a pebble and hurled it away, where it hit a tree trunk with a sharp thwack.

  She clung to the part of what he said she could easily argue against. “I could never have been unhappy with him. You do not understand love. You certainly did not understand Victor. You betrayed us! You forced him away from me in the hopes I would turn to you instead.”

  “I harbored no such dreams about you,” he said as he rose to turn away from her. The wind whipped his hair forward, hiding his face from her. “You made clear your feelings were sisterly at best. As a dutiful brother I would have accepted another as your husband. The poorest tenant in all of Lotharingia would have had my blessing if he was a good man with admirable intentions for you.”

  “I never asked you to act as my brother, and if you’d been the friend you claim to be, you’d have recognized that Victor and I belonged together. That we deserved a chance to be happy. You stole that chance away and I will never forgive you!”

  “So you’ve said before. Many times. I’ve accepted your hatred of me even if it has been a bitter draught to swallow. Perhaps some day you will accept I did not imagine what I saw in Victor, and that a true friend would never allow someone he cared about — sister, friend, or even any innocent woman he passed on the street — to be put within the man’s reach.”

  “Within his reach?” she cried. “You speak as if he were an animal I should have been afraid of, like a bear or wolf. Are we even talking about the same person?”

  He turned back to her, obsidian eyes cutting through the nighttime gloom and smoke. “His tendencies were not mindless like a predator’s, making him even more despicable and dangerous in my opinion.” He spoke over her sputtered protest. “You may want to think of him as two people, or one man with two entirely different sides. That is what I had to do.”

  She sat back, stunned into silence at his vehemence. She resisted what he said yet sensed these were the most unguarded words he’d spoken to her in the numerous arguments they’d had over that long winter two years ago.

  In truth, though, she had been the only one arguing back then. He had quietly resisted her anger, never drawn past his wall of reserve. He’d never said anything specific against Victor before, never allowed the heat of temper to creep into his words. Tonight, emotion was sneaking past the wall, and it wasn’t the banner of jealousy that showed, it was fury.

  A single streak of lightning flashed across the sky, silhouetting the trees like skeletons.

  She had no idea what to say, and he saved her the worry by walking into the darkness to check the horses, agitated by the weather.

  He stayed away for a very long time, and though there was lightning and thunder, rain never fell.

  Chapter Nine

  Their arrival in Metz was as tearful and agonizing as Rowan anticipated. Julius shouted Fia’s name loudly enough to bring not only Abril and Stella running but curious neighbors to the street as well. The family swelled with joy at the sight of Fia, but three sets of eyes searched all around them only seconds later.

  Rowan explained as gently and concisely as he could that Heric would not return, that he hadn’t stayed behind to work in Paris or wasn’t following them at a slower pace. Abril especially struggled to manage the battling emotions of joy at her child’s return and despair at the loss of her husband. She clung to Fia as if she’d never let go while wailing Heric’s name.

  Eventually, one by one, the neighbors dispersed and the family calmed, with Julius being the first to disappear into the house, then Stella while Rowan began to unpack the horses.

  When he carried the bundle of tools toward the forge, thinking mother and daughter might need a moment alone, Abril followed him, and so did Fia.

  Rowan placed the tools where they belonged, in a pointless ritual that somehow felt as though he’d laid his mentor’s body to rest, here, where it should be.

  Abril spent a moment touching each tool, openly weeping, while Fia looked across the paltry yard. After several minutes, Abril calmed again and turned to her daughter.

  “The special spata,” Abril said as she twisted her roughened, red hands in front of her. “Remember the blade that the Lord of Metz left to be repaired for a fine price?”

  Fia sighed. “We will give it back to him when he returns from the army. He will understand.”

  Rowan kept his own counsel, certain Metz would understand but also certain Abril was thinking about the income while Fia was not.

  “But perhaps your father…perhaps he did enough that Julius could finish it?” Abril’s voice broke in the middle of the question.

  “It is still in three pieces. Papa told me during our journey he wasn’t sure even he could remake it.”

  Abril sat down with a thud on the stool. She stared at the filthy ends of her toes. “How did he die?”

  “It is not important.”

  After a moment of silence, Abril lifted her head to show a face tortured by angry grief. “I was his wife. I have a right to know.”

  Fia covered her eyes with a shaking hand, and it was all Rowan could do to stop himself from carrying her out of the forge and taking her away, forever.

  Abril choked out a sob. “Was it so bad, then?”

  With a deep breath, Fia collected herself. She knelt before her mother. “No. I only hesitate because it is not pleasant to talk about, for me. But for him, it was quick. A flash of a Northman’s axe, a few short minutes, only long enough for him to tell me to bury him in Paris and that he loved you very much.”

  Abril gathered Fia into a tight hug and cried on her shoulder before asking the next question. “Was he seen to, or wasn’t there time for a proper burial?”

  Rowan wished he could take this pain for Fia, the pain of seeing things that could never be spoken of. As if hearing his thoughts she looked up at him in agony, then just as quickly turned away to talk softly to her mother.

  “I…I cleaned him in cool water and dressed him. The priest was there to speak over him.”

  “Oh, a priest. That is such a comfort to me.”

  “I know.”

  “The grave is blessed and peaceful then,” Abril said, relieved.

  “He is with the other townspeople who died that day, but I trust…I feel certain he will have thick green grass and…wildflowers above him soon.”

  Abril collapsed into sobs again, and Fia bore her weight along with the weight of the lies. Rowan hesitated, then walked over to place a hand on Fia’s shoulder, offering what strength he could. She was trembling so hard he was surprised Abril wasn’t shaken right out of her embrace. He squeezed enough to steady her.

  With a flurry of sniffling, Abril sat back to take Fia’s face in her hands. “How did you escape? With a murdering Northman there and your father mortally injured?”

  “Uh, the blond devil was wounded, too. And bent more on thieving than….”

  Than what? Raping? Collecting slaves? Rowan’s blood chilled as he thought again of how vulnerable Fia had been then and in the weeks following.

  “Heric died protecting you,” Abril said with a watery smile.

  Fia blinked. “Of course. I should have said that first.”

  “He wounded him enough to drive him off,” Abril said as her back stiffened. She let go of Fia as she nodded, finally able to find some sense, some justification for their loss. “He was a good father. A good husband.”

  “He said the same about you, that you were a good wife and mother.”

  Abril ran her hand over her veil and swiped at the wetness on her cheeks. “Yet what would your papa think of me now, sitting here when there is dinner to be made for Rowan, the hero who brought you back to me. And I have a message for you as well, sir. The boy who bro
ught it said it was from your father.”

  Rowan offered his hand to help her rise.

  She grabbed it more tightly than necessary and clutched him in an impulsive hug. “I thank you for bringing my girl back to me. We owe you so much.”

  He pulled away to hold her calloused fingers. “I have told Fia as I tell you, there is no debt. I only wish Heric could have returned safely as well. He will be missed”

  As Abril disappeared into the house, Fia pulled her knees up and laid her forehead on them.

  Rowan squatted beside her. All his instincts again cried out to hold her, but the chasm from last night’s argument yawned between them, so he settled for rubbing her back. Each knob of her spine stood out against his palm.

  “You need to eat more, now that you are safe at home.”

  An odd choke erupted from her throat and she clutched his forearm with a fearsome grip. With some scuffling adjustment he settled her sideways between his legs, her head fitted beneath his chin. She wasn’t weeping. She merely sat, hands curled against his chest, accepting his comfort for once.

  “You did not tell me the part about Heric wounding the man,” he said quietly.

  “He didn’t. I mean, he hit him with the flat of a rough spata, but while he was attacking Papa I clubbed him on the head with a hammer. It addled him enough to drive him off, though he took most of the blades.”

  He cursed lowly. “’Tis a miracle he didn’t kill you.”

  “I didn’t even think about that. I ran to Papa while that…that murderer was stealing our things.”

  “You did well, both then, and now, with your mother.”

  “It doesn’t feel like I did. But, thank you.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “It is very difficult for me, liking you again.”

  He stilled. “I know.”

  “But you don’t seem to be giving me much choice in the matter.”

  He smiled, and the cloth of her veil made a scratching sound against the whiskers of his chin. She stirred and pulled away from him. He let her go as he always did.