GREENWOOD

by Sue Wilson

  "Stop!"

  Consciousness broke over him with a suddenness he felt, and heard. He had cried out; his own voice still rang shamefully in his ears. He lay very still, staring at the ribbed vaulting in the ceiling and trying to calm his strident breathing. Already the nightmare was dissolving, receding into the grayness of distant memory, but the pain was vivid, raw, and real. His hand moved to his side, and he moaned.

  "Sh-h-h." Someone hushed his cry with a whisper, pressed a cup of something cold to his parched lips, held his head up to drink. The healing woman.

  Her smaller hand closed over his, cool against his skin, and pulled his fingers away from the scalding pain along his side. "Be still," she whispered with gentle insistence. "All is well, my lord."

  "The hell it is." As he remembered, she was a liar. He wrenched his hand from hers and flung his arm across his face. "How is it possible to feel like this and still be alive?" he grumbled, thinking his complaint as good a disguise as any to mask the horror of his dream and the ignominy of having called out like a coward. "Did you drag me back from the gates of hell just to let me feel this torment?"

  "Is that where you've been?"

  The Sheriff lifted his arm away from his face and peered at Thea from beneath its shadow. "To hell and back, if you must know."

  He watched as the herb woman silently dipped a wadding of sheep's wool into the basin of water and wrung it out. When her hand approached him, he blocked her with his arm. "This is all you can do for me? A compress across my brow?" He snatched the wool from her hand and glared at it as if it personally offended him with its inefficacy. Straining, he rose up on one elbow, and met her hand against his chest, fingers splayed.

  "We've done it your way, my lord," she said. "Rides cross country when you should not have moved, cups of my brew sent sailing across the room because the aroma offended you-"

  He considered the stubborn set of her mouth and the firm, unyielding pressure of her hand, and lay back down.

  "-Antics the likes of which I have never seen." She reached for the damp sheet tangled about him and pulled it away. "You are consumed with fever, and lest you think it so minor an aggravation you can ignore my suggestions or chase it away with your foul humor, then I should warn you: I have seen fever take more lives than a wayward arrow."

  She regarded him with a fierce stubbornness and held out her hand for the wool. After a moment, he dropped it into her palm.

  "Lack of sleep does not become you, Thea," he muttered. "You instructed me to rest. I rested. I do not need to be awakened by pain and a shrewish woman."

  "What I observed could hardly be called rest," she said, wiping his forehead and the planes of his cheeks. "You've done naught but toss and turn for hours."

  "It is not morn?"

  "Vigils are done, my lord, but the night is not."

  He looked at the lit taper on the bedside table. It had burned but half its measured length and now sputtered accusingly at him.

  "Stop fighting the fever. It is the only way to escape its hold. Sleep with it, through it."

  "This is the way I sleep, if I sleep," he said gruffly, irritated that he felt compelled to explain his personal habits to the healer merely to avoid one of her noxious potions.

  "Restlessly?" she asked.

  The Sheriff sneered at her choice of words. What did she know of the dreams?

  "Tell me, my lord," she was saying, "if, by nature, you are not sleeping at this late hour, what occupies your time?"

  "Trying to find new ways to flush the outlaws from Sherwood." He glared at her malevolently. "Wondering where the silver will come from to make up for the deficit in the treasury. Attempting to second-guess which scheme my steward has devised to make this dungeon an even less fit place to live than it already is. Contemplating the dilemma of serving both Crown and Church, something I fear I am not as adept at as our dearly departed sovereign."

  He felt the cool, wet glide of the wool against the side of his neck and across his shoulder, a soothing distraction.

  She betrayed no emotion, but brought the rag and its wetness beneath his bearded chin to his throat and wiped down the length of his breastbone. When she spoke, her voice was carefully neutral. "Do you believe King Richard's Crusades are a useless quest?"

  "Not to him, certainly. The man's made himself a saint in his own time, won the enduring hearts of his people." The Sheriff frowned as he added, "And bankrupted his country. Who does he thinks finances his spirited adventures among the Saracens if not his vassals? Or maybe he has been so long from English soil he has forgotten the effects heavy taxation wreaks on the populace. And now, to ransom him back-with what, I pray you?"

  "These are dangerous words, my lord."

  "They are truth. And I am a fool to discuss politics with a peasant. If they come for me, Thea-" His voice dropped to a deep timbre as if he were sharing some intimate secret with her. "Tell them it was the fever, and I was quite delirious."

  "Which you very nearly are. Or must be, to be an officer of the Crown and say such things aloud. Such motives do not make Richard a criminal."

  "He is as much an outlaw as the woodsmen you claim do not exist."

  Thea wiped down the length of his arm slowly, methodically, overly focused on her task. Her cheeks flamed, as palpable as the seething fever that rose from his skin as she bathed him. "I have gathered forest plants for years, my lord, and have yet to come upon them or their supposed hideaway."

  "That is a poor refutation of their existence, woman. They have eluded Gisborne and the best of my men. They have, in fact, eluded me. But exist they do. I know their names and their crimes and, on any given day, the bounty on their thieving heads."

  He looked at Thea darkly. "And Gisborne says you do, as well."

  She fingered the damp swab of wool, carefully avoiding him. "We've already discussed my opinion of your cousin, my lord."

  "That is no answer."

  Dark blue eyes flashed at him. "Is this an interrogation?"

  The Sheriff closed his mouth over a reflexive denial and raised a brow at the indignant tone that had crept into the healer's voice. He had heard that tone before; it was nearly always defensive.

  "Not yet," he answered smoothly.

  He met her eyes and the defiant set of her lips, knowing he had abraded her with his words. A curious thrill stirred in him, and a faint smile played about the corner of his lips as he stretched one arm lazily behind him, pillowing his head. His voice fell to a muted whisper as he arched his back slightly.

  "Do continue."

  ~*~

  Thea begged her common sense to intervene. After all, here she was at his side, thinking to do no more than cool his fevered body, and he was turning it into an opportunity to air his thinly veiled suspicions. And this latest petition-

  Do continue, indeed, she thought, refusing to be intimidated by his questions or the feline grace of his movements. The man should die of self-indulgence!

  She shifted her weight away from him, a difficult task on the plump, feather-stuffed mattress that wanted to swallow them both.

  "Damn you, Sheriff. I am not one of your wenches you can order to-to bathe you."

  She moved to lay the sheep's wool aside, but he captured her hand in a lightning-quick movement. Before she could stop him, he wrested the wadding of wool from her fingers. His eyes held her immobile as he leaned forward slightly, dunked the wool into the basin of water, and brought it up again, streaming.

  "Then permit me," he said.

  Without warning, he laid the wool against her temple, wiped across the curve of her cheek, and drew it down to the slight cleft in her chin.

  She could not breathe. She'd heard of elixirs that wrought paralysis, and for a moment she wondered if he had somehow transformed simple water into such witch's brew, charmed with the black, magical curse of his voice ringing in her ears.

  He held the dripping wool beneath her chin, examining the trail the water had cut through the dust of the day's journey. D
roplets trickled down her neck, wetting her kirtle and the valley between her breasts.

  Thea sat frozen, suspended by his actions and his stark, evaluative gaze. He dabbed at her slightly upturned nose and the shallow indentation below it. When he reached her lips, he put the wool aside, dipped his fingers into the water, and traced their soft fullness with dripping fingertips.

  The water pooled between her lips, cool, wet, the first imitation of drink she had had in hours, and though she suspected it was another of his manipulative gestures, she was quite unable to prevent herself from opening her lips slightly and taking the wetness into her mouth. Unable to move, she exhaled shakily against the length of his index finger.

  His eyes widened, clearly unprepared for and astonished at her response. "You are...quite beautiful," he said, his voice for once devoid of artifice. "Beneath the peasant grime, when finally you are at a loss for words..."

  The remark did not sting as it should have, not nearly as much as the trail of wetness he had drawn across her face and mouth. Its coolness had evaporated almost as soon as it touched her skin; what remained was fiery, liquid warmth. She felt her thoughts dissolve in it; her reservations drown in it. Every safe refuge and escape streamed away from her.

  "My lord-"

  "Sh-h-h."

  How much effort it had taken to utter that futile protest, how easily he had wiped it aside, his thumb stroking her lower lip. He moved his wet fingers through her hair, beneath her heavy braids to the back of her neck, and pulled her to him. In truth, she did not think to stop him.

  A savage hiss of pain escaped him, and his fingers tightened in her hair. "Damn you!" He released a ragged breath, so close that Thea felt its warmth against her slightly parted lips. "You're not here to kill me with your plants, after all, but to ply me with some fatal passion."

  His hand dropped to her shoulder where its heat seared through her, then to his wounded side. He gestured helplessly toward the bandage, staring at his trembling fingers as if they did not belong to him.

  Suddenly, the hypnotic trance broke around her, reality descending like icy shock over the warmth that lapped at her body. "You are ill, my lord," she said, and wondered silently, if Nottingham had forgotten or denied that truth, how could she?

  His features were drawn, whether from the soreness of his injury or the frustration of their broken embrace, she could not tell. His brows drew together and his lips whitened into a grim line as she eased him back against the array of pillows. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles shook in an uncontrollable palsy.

  Had she chilled him overmuch with the bath, or was this just the way of the fever? The Sheriff could swear at her, but she had already cursed herself a thousand times for forgetting his illness, for letting him make her forget. For letting him make her remember.

  "You'll find your strength in a day or two, my lord, and no maiden in Nottingham will be safe," she tried to reassure him in a voice that was none too steady. Forcing a small smile, she settled a fur wrap around him.

  His hand on her skirt detained her. "And you, Thea?" he murmured. "If saved for the moment, what of later?"

  Slowly she turned around, watching as the fever glazed his eyes with unfathomable meaning. She pried his hand from her skirt and returned it to his side, saying nothing.

  Between the threat of interrogation and the assault of his touch, she faced a very present jeopardy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Chamomile...elder...mugwort...nettle...

  Fever. Of all the possible consequences of the Sheriff's surgery, it was the one Thea most dreaded. She knew the herbs to brew to make the fever abate somewhat, knew that the fire must be kept blazing, that he must be bathed, then dried and kept warm.

  St. John's wort...tansy...thyme...valerian. Yes, valerian to calm him. If only he would sleep and not frenzy so.

  Beyond that, she knew little, save that fever had claimed her husband on the third day. And this was the third day the Sheriff's fever had consumed him, despite her every effort.

  She wiped perspiration from her forehead and brushed one long braid back behind her shoulder.

  Brand. Impossible that she not think of him now, although in truth it had not been the fever that had been his death sentence. Brand had been lost to her from the moment the giant outlaw from Hathersage had, in stealth and by night, borne her husband's broken body home from the forest. John Little, a towering oak of a man, his plain face full of sympathy as if he, too, knew she could do naught to save her husband. Brand lay limp but alive in John's massive arms. Pierced twice, once below the lung, again through the belly, he had lived on, horribly, through futile surgery and three days of delirium. Thea could not touch the Sheriff's fevered face or put her arms around his shaking shoulders without remembering, but she did both, burying whatever private terror she felt.

  Brand was gone, and if John had gently reminded her of that just days ago, this man declared it. Now, to Thea's amazement, it was not the haunting memory of Brand's death that filled her with trepidation, but a baffling sentiment that stirred even greater qualms within her because she had been so sure it had died with her husband.

  She found it increasingly difficult to observe Nottingham's body, much less minister to it, with anything resembling objective disinterest, yet the fever demanded it and his wound required it. She did what was necessary, resolving not to let her glance linger on the tautly molded muscles of his chest and shoulders.

  No pretense to virginal innocence prevented her from appreciating the definition of his narrow waist or the thin braies, laced low over slim hips, or the lean-muscled tension in his thighs. She had seen the smooth, fluid lines of his muscles in repose, but she also knew how quickly tension could coil within him, how unexpectedly he could strike. The unpredictability of his movements, and of the moment in which he would abandon tightly held control for undisciplined wildness, forced her into a state of ever-readiness that kept the sting of excitement pouring through her veins.

  When she bathed him, she could not help but recall his reciprocal touch and her readiness to yield to him at that touch. Now she approached him only when he slept, and then with uncertainty. Would his eyes open, and at what moment? In the next instant, would her sore wrist find itself clamped in his vice-like grip? And if he discerned her fear or any other concealed feeling, would he use the occasion to badger her, cajole her, ridicule her, or pull her beneath him?

  Most frightening of all, would she resist him with another witty line, offer some nominal resistance, or surrender herself to him with the wanton abandon he elicited within her? For the first time since Brand's death, Thea did not know her own mind.

  It brought her untold distress that the man who imparted to her such torment of conscience was a man she should hate without question. A man whose soldiers had killed Brand.

  Nottingham toyed with her, of course, playing a superb game of cat and mouse. It was a game that exhausted her, but upon which he expended little effort and less thought. Likely as not, his carefully worded innuendoes meant nothing to him.

  Perhaps the Sheriff engaged in such sexual challenges merely to amuse himself, to provide a stimulating distraction, not unlike chess or dice. Perhaps he only wished to distract her.

  She would have to remind him that such distraction could be a serious liability for someone he had commissioned to cut and sew his hide.

  She would do well to remember the same thing for her own sake.

  Determinedly, Thea turned her back on the negligent openness with which the Sheriff lay sprawled on the bed and walked to the opposite side of the room where two arched windows rose between the arrow loops. She pushed aside the shutters and sat on the cushioned seat beneath the windows, her elbows on the ledge, her chin resting in her palm, as the night air cooled her face. She breathed deeply, drinking in the impressive view of the courtyard below and miles of countryside beyond.

  In the distance, the orange glow of far-off campfires and the pale, golden lights from clusters of cottages ri
valed the endless stream of stars across the night sky. She imagined she could see Sherwood, as well, a solid darkness against the spangled horizon.

  Incongruous, she thought. The man lived in nothing more than an ugly, military garrison, with arrow loops and murder holes and an armed guard at his door-but this. Odd as it seemed, the spectacular view of the Sheriff's dominion seemed no less a part of the man than the battlements used to defend it.

  She shook her head and sighed. Vanity to attempt to comprehend any man, least of all one with such a complex and contrary nature. What mattered was not that she understand him, which was undoubtedly impossible anyway, but that she finish the job she had begun in her cottage and see him through recovery.

  Making sense of her response to him was even less necessary, and entertaining desirous thoughts about him clearly hazardous. Not for the first time, Thea reminded herself who he was, who she was, and why anything but cold and swift distance from him was the most perilous of risks.

  When she turned back around, he was awake and observing her quietly from beneath heavy-lidded, dark-lashed eyes. The intense, acutely focused stare she had grown used to was gone, a glazed, febrile look in its stead. Florid splotches reddened the ivory of his face and chest. Strands of raven hair were plastered to his forehead, while the tousled waves that fell away from his face clung wetly to his neck.

  The effort he had expended to combat whatever menace had overtaken his body had emptied him of strength. Having exhausted himself from an outpouring of fever and personal venom, he was strangely subdued. For the first time, lines of worry creased his brow and he did not bother to hide them or disguise his weariness.