The Blood and The Bloom (Men of Blood Book 1)

by Rosamund Winchester

  And will she go to her death with such determination?

  Unwilling to slide beneath the troubling waters of that thought, he sliced through the rope, just between her wrists. Tristin held his breath, waiting to see what the woman would do…and when she leaned forward, submerging the raw flesh of her wrists in the water, he nearly fell to pieces when she threw back her head and moaned.

  Chapter Ten

  Her thoughts tossed about in her head, and her heart slammed against the frame of her chest.

  It was him. The man from the waterfall. The man who’d witnessed her wickedness, her nakedness. The man who’d filled her dreams with heated touches and delicious sensations, and made her wake with a yearning she’d never known before. Now, his captive, she could at least be grateful that, when he’d taken her foot into his grasp, his hands were covered in iron and leather. If his skin had touched hers…she didn’t know if she’d be able to look him in the eye—not that she wanted to.

  Bell Heather held fast, refusing to turn toward him again, though she desperately wanted to see his face again. In the deepness of the night, she saw little more than the darkness and length of his hair, the angles of his cheeks and chin, the firmness and provocativeness of his lips, and the blackness of his eyes. He’d been tall, broad-shouldered, and carried an air of danger…of excitement. But in the bright light of day…

  When he’d come around the outcropping, the sight of his face—one he’d hidden behind his visor—made her stomach flip in her belly. His eyes were as black as she’d assumed, but it was the long, black lashes around them that made her heart thud wildly. Not only that, his beautiful lips were even more beautiful now that she could make out the strength of the jaw beneath them, and the dimples that framed them. By Dagda’s Belt, the man was gorgeous!

  Though she’d only seen him for a few moments, she’d never forget his features, his large frame, his words. It was no wonder his voice had pricked her thoughts that morning. She had heard his voice before…in the dark of night. It was the same dream voice that had murmured seductive, unimaginably wicked things as his hands slid over her body…strumming her every sense until she was as taut as a lyre string.

  Nay, she’d never forget the dark man from the waterfall, but if the hardness of his features were any indication, he didn’t remember her. And it bothered her more than it ought. It should matter not if he cast her aside the moment she’d run from their encounter…but it did. She wasn’t a beauty like the ladies he danced with or courted, but he’d seen her naked. Stark naked. And still…he had no memory of her. It sliced away at her pride enough to make her angry.

  If he can forget me, I shall forget him. If it were possible.

  Sitting at the brook side, beneath his brooding glare, she sucked in a steadying breath, determined to push herself to standing and find the herbs she needed to lessen the staggering pain in her feet. Once they stopped for the night, she’d find a way to bandage them so they had a chance to heal a mite before their march began again in the morning. She’d known the march would cause blisters, she hadn’t expected the blisters to burst so soon, creating open wounds on her soles and heels that took a battering with every step. It was agony, but she’d be damned if she left him know just how much.

  Rubbing at the raw strips of flesh around her wrists, she grit her teeth. Another thing to thank him for. Gingerly tucking her feet beneath her, she sat up on her knees. When she felt him move closer—his very presence like a living thing—she tensed, raising her left hand as if she could stop him if he chose to force his aide upon her.

  “Nay. I can do it.” She sounded capable, at least.

  He stopped but said nothing, and she didn’t dare look to see if he was glaring at her or not.

  Holding her breath—knowing the next bit would hurt—she put her right foot down on the softer soil beside the brook. It was like a carpet of needles in her flesh. She nearly hissed from the pain but quickly put down her other foot to complete the task before she thought better of it. Her feet throbbed as if on fire. Pushing up, she unbent her knees, determined to stand straight and not give the knight any indication of weakness.

  Bell Heather forced herself to turn, still avoiding looking at his face, lest she give away what she knew and the agony she felt, and took a tentative step toward the line of trees on the other side of the outcropping. If she could find a willow, she’d be able to make a tea from the bark. It wouldn’t completely rid her of the pain, but it would make it bearable. Also, she’d need marigold and lavender, both of which she’d had back in her cottage. She bit back a curse at Pierre. The fool had thought she’d cast spells with the harmless herbs in her satchel. What foolishness.

  She took another step, and another, and she marveled at the anguish a few blisters could inflict upon her.

  Never show weakness. Before her mother was killed, she’d taught Bell Heather that men were a mysterious and often brutal breed of being. Her father, a gentle giant of a man, would never had raised a hand to a woman. But the men who rieved and pillaged throughout the county…they were capable of far worse. Was this knight one of the former or the latter? He could have taken what he’d wanted from her the night before, but he hadn’t—not that he’d desired her enough for her to make an impression on him. Also, if he’d had the mind to, he could have killed her.

  He still might…

  While her thoughts bound through her mind, her feet were moving of their own accord toward a patch of green just a ways down the brook side. If she could get there, maybe she’d find something, anything, she could use to make a paste.

  Before she could congratulate herself, she put her left foot down, right onto a sharp rock. Crying out, Bell Heather began to tumble, but twin bands of iron encircled her waist, holding her upright and against a wall of metal that was hot, even through the material at her back.

  Stunned, she didn’t have time to think before the man uttered, “Fool,” under his breath and swung her up into his arms, pressing her left side into his chest.

  Finally able to conjure words, she growled, “Unhand me. I have no need of yer aide, sir!” She wriggled, trying to dislodge his arms from her back and beneath her knees, but he held on, grunting low in his throat.

  “Hold still, foolish woman. You cannot walk with your feet so badly wounded. They are shredded, like a piece of butchered meat.” His deep voice rumbled through his breastplate and into her bones. She shuddered. “And I could see it pained you to move.” She grimaced, humiliated that he could see through her attempt to hide her flinching as she walked.

  “And so ye think to haul me about like a log? Nay. I will walk,” she challenged, turning to look him in the face. She realized her mistake immediately. At a distance, he was beautiful, up close, close enough to feel the heat of his breath on her skin, he was sorcery.

  A low rumble vibrated through her. She gasped. The blackguard was laughing.

  “Nay. You will ride,” he argued, his tone laced with something Bell Heather wasn’t sure she could trust. Humor.

  “Nay. I cannot ride with Pierre…” she began, unsure how to continue. She couldn’t tell him she was terrified of horses, he’d think she an idiot—or worse, a lunatic who spent too much time in the moonlight. Think of something quickly, lest he toss ye over the nearest hoofed beast. “He’s much too…angry,” she sputtered, trying hard not to gaze at the dark knight’s mouth, just a few inches from her own lips.

  There was that rumble again. “Pierre is a fierce warrior, a great and fearless knight of the Homme du Sang…but he is not angry.”

  She snorted. “If not angry, then he has eaten far too many crabapples.” Unable to not look, she flicked her gaze to the man’s face, and just caught the much-too quick curling of his lips. By Dagda’s belt! Had that been a full smile, she might have expired right there. In his arms.

  In his arms!

  “Put me down! I am not a babe to be coddled. I can walk. Just let me pick some herbs. I can make a bandage from the hem of my under tunic.
” She was thinking too quickly, her thoughts in too tight a jumble for her to notice that he was carrying her further away from where the other men were waiting. Once she realized the trees were on the wrong side, she looked up into his face. His gaze burned down into her, the black depths of his eyes as bottomless as they were stunning.

  “Where are ye taking me?” Did he mean to murder her? Defile her?

  “Nay,” he ground out, as if reading her frantic thoughts. “There is a glen just here. I thought you might find the herbs you need there.”

  Her breath caught. Oh, aye, he was going to murder her—with shock. Why did he have to be so…contrary? He was her captor, the man who was to march her to her torment and possible burning at the stake. And yet…he was holding her gently, cradling her as if she were precious, thinking on a way to help her heal. Her heart pinched as if in a vice. Nay, he only wanted her well so that she was whole when she was broken.

  Bell Heather clamped her lips shut, refusing to allow her anger to drive her fate. If he meant to help her, it was only for his own ends. She’d find the herbs, she’d bind her feet, then she’d continue marching, through the pain, all the way to her accuser—whoever that was.

  Thinking to ask him, Bell Heather glanced up at the knight through the fan of her lashes. The hard set to his face told her that she would get nothing more from him.

  So be it, then, she thought, determined to put the topic aside. For now.

  If only the sensations he’d awoken in her were as easy to dismiss. Where her body was pressed against his breastplate, sweat was gathering. It was surprising that he could hold her there at all, with as slippery as she was becoming.

  With a grunt, he stopped, bent, and unloaded her onto a large, flat rock, surrounded by several yards of verdant, grassy clearing. Trying to ignore the sudden, empty feeling within her, she scoured the ground around her for lavender. There was clumps of grass where stalks of chamomile grew, and there were patches of colorful wildflowers. But there was nothing there she could use.

  She sighed, then rubbed the bridge of her nose with a trembling hand. She was exhausted, hungry, thirsty. She’d meant to drink some from the brook, but he’d appeared before she could do it. And now she had to wonder if he meant to starve her before giving her over for torture.

  “What?” he asked. She didn’t have to look up at him to know he was scowling down at her. The tone of that single word spoke loudly of his frustration.

  And his frustration pricked at her like a needle in her bosom. She bit back hastily formed words, and instead, waved her hand as if uncaring for his vexation.

  “I wish ye would find something else to do other than stand over me, glowering like a storm cloud.”

  The air around her thrummed with tension, as if the man behind her were gathering the weight of darkness down on them. The silence was broken only by the buzzing of bees, the pounding of her heart, and the catch in her breath as she tried to draw air into her lungs.

  “I do not glower. I am merely wasting precious time nursing a thoughtless wench who would rather walk her feet bloody than don boots. Or even ride on the horse.”

  Dagda save me from my fury… Bell Heather dragged in a breath, held it, closing her eyes, and then let it out slowly, mentally counting the number of jars in her root cellar. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

  “Did you not hear me woman?” the man growled, and she could feel him step closer to her. But it wasn’t fear that vibrated through her, it was that fury she’d been trying to hold at bay. “Have your lost your hearing along with your wits?” he murmured low, a sneer envenoming his words.

  Unable to hold back the wash of anger and the rushing river of humiliation, Bell Heather jumped to her feet, ignoring the excruciating pain shooting through her feet, she rounded on the man.

  “Ye are a pig’s arse, utterly hideous, and covered in shite. I did not ask ye to come to my home, steal me away because of some faceless man and his accusations. I did not ask ye to walk me, nearly to death, without a bite of food to fill my belly, or a drop of water to quench my thirst. I did not ask ye to carry me here. I did not ask ye to wind me up and send me spinning—”

  As if the earth was pulled out from under her, she stumbled, her vision blurring, a strange ringing clanged in her ears. Before she could catch herself, the man reached out, pulling her into his embrace, just before the blackness embraced her.

  ***

  She was moving…but she wasn’t moving. The world was. And her head—and her feet—were pounding. Holding her breath, she slowly opened her eyes a crack, and then snapped them shut again. She wasn’t just moving, she was being held…on a horse…high above the ground…

  By Dagda’s Belt! If I am to die, do not let it be like this…

  “You might as well stop pretending. I know you are awake,” a deep voice said, the low vibrations from his chest into her ears making her head pound all the more. It wasn’t his voice. It was the more melodic voice of the pretty knight, the one who’d first shown his face to her. And while it was a handsome face, it couldn’t match the brooding, dark beauty of the knight who’d seduced her in her dreams.

  Enough with that, Bell Heather. Put him from yer mind, just as he put ye from his!

  Sighing, she pulled away and opened her eyes, squinting at the waning sunlight glimmering through the trees as they passed.

  “What happened?” she croaked, her throat dry from an utter lack of water—not fear. Never fear. “How long have I been tucked into ye like a suckling babe?”

  He chuckled, and she grimaced, the aching in her head as merciless as the throbbing in her feet.

  “It seems you fainted.”

  She gasped. “Never!”

  He chuckled again. “Yes, but you did. Right into Captain LaDeux’s arms.”

  Captain LaDeux? Perfect! She’d just given him a verbal peeling about his treatment of her, and then she’d fallen into his arms just like the helpless whelp he’d accused her of being.

  Groaning, she turned her head back into his chest, praying to whichever god that they would strike her down before the humiliation burned her from the inside out.

  “It seems as though the lack of food or water, and then the injury to your feet, were too much for your body to handle.”

  She grunted. “Oh, aye. It takes a woman of steel and stone to withstand such treatment,” she grumbled into his chest plate, the sound was muffled, but he heard her. He chuckled again. She wrinkled her nose, confused by his insistence to find humor in her plight.

  “I think you are stronger than you look, but you are still in need of sustenance and healing. Which is why are you being carried on Bellerophon’s back instead of being dragged behind him.”

  Like a deer carcass… She bit her lip, hard, to keep from screaming in frustration. It would do her no good. She was their captive, and it didn’t matter that the accusations made against her were false. It only mattered that someone had believed them, and now, she would be held accountable for someone else’s wrong doing.

  A bitter acid swirled in her belly, and she swallowed down the bile that rose into her throat.

  After another heartbeat, the man said, “I should apologize…”

  Bell Heather waited, feeling the need to encourage silence between them. The less he said, the more time it gave her to think, to bolster herself against whatever was coming. She’d only been a captive for a single day, and she was already fainting dead away. It didn’t bode well for when the actual torture began.

  “The captain should have made sure you were properly fed and watered… He is usually more attentive than that.”

  That surprised her. The captain didn’t seem like the kind of man who forgot anything—though, he’d certainly forgotten about her in a thrice—he had an intelligence and ruthlessness in his black eyes that spoke of focus. Deadly focus.

  “I will be sure to remedy those ills as soon as we make camp for the night.”

  Night? Bell Heather turned her face toward the sky, final
ly realizing that the sun was making its descent.

  “It is nearly dusk…” Her chest squeezed. What would become of her once the sun set, and she was forced to… “Where will ye keep me?” Would they expect her to sleep beside one of the men? Would they violate her?

  “Fear not,” Elric said, his voice gentle, “the Homme du Sang are men of honor. We would rather cut off our own hands than defile a maiden.”

  Her breath stuck in her throat, she could only give a sharp nod of acknowledgement. So, they wouldn’t rape her, only deliver her up to torture and death.

  They rode in silence until the sun was finally hidden by the hills in the distance. The waning sun gave off just enough light for her to see that they were approaching the edge of a small village. The thatched roofs and the curling smoke reminded her of Clarendon…and the people who would be sitting down to sup.

  Oh, Maude…what will become of ye? The older woman had become a regular visitor to her cottage over the last five years. No matter the weather, the darling old fool would trudge to her cottage to sit with her and provide her with company when the darkness of the night closed in around her, and the loneliness began to set in. As much as Bell Heather had complained to Maude about taking so little care with her health, she’d begun to crave those moments with the older woman. Maude was the only family she had left, and though she wasn’t blood, she held memories of Bell Heather’s mother and father that were beginning to fade from Bell Heather’s own mind.

  And now…what would she do without Maude?

  Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. I will not allow such weakness. I will not! She’d already fainted, for Druantia’s sake, the last thing she needed was to show those men another sign of vulnerability.

  Elric directed his mount toward a line of trees just outside the village when Bell Heather heard someone approach beside them.

  “We will make camp there. Glenn will meet us.” It was the captain. His deep voice did something to her that Elric’s voice did not…it made every muscle in her body clench, as if in anticipation of his touch.