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

by Rosamund Winchester

  “Yes,” he answered, his voice strangled. “I meant every word.”

  She tore off another piece of bread, this time, flicking out her tongue to lick it, before slowly placing it on her tongue. Her eyes glittered with dark desire as she began to chew. Once she was done, she sighed. “And…did ye mean what ye said downstairs…about my not spending the night alone?”

  There it was, the real question she’d wanted to ask. She was scared, anxious, and yet just as hungry as he was for another taste of the pleasure they had shared.

  He reached out and took the bread from her hands, placing it on the tray. Then, he took her trembling hands in his and squeezed.

  “Look at me,” he said, when she ducked her head to hide her face from him. “Look at me, Bell Heather.”

  Slowly, she did as bid, meeting his gaze sharply, as if annoyed by his command.

  “I want you more than I have wanted anything in my life. I cannot express what this feeling is, what this wanting and need is. I can only pray that you feel it, too.”

  Hesitantly, she nodded. “Aye, I feel it,” she whispered, her voice husky.

  He drew her closer, cupping her cheek with his hand. Leaning in, he brushed his lips over hers. She held her breath, the whole of her shuddering, and then she leaned forward and returned his delicate kiss.

  He groaned. He wanted to deepen the kiss and ravish her then and there, but he knew they really did need to eat. They’d come a long way and had little in the way of sustenance on the journey. If she didn’t eat, she wouldn’t be at her full strength tomorrow.

  “As much as I would love to kiss you—and make love to you—we should eat,” he forced out, leaning back to put some distance between them.

  She seemed stunned, like a mouse just dropped from the sky by an owl.

  “Come, eat,” he coaxed. “It looks like mutton and parsnips.” He hated parsnips, but he would eat them, if only to put something beside his foot in his mouth.

  Bell Heather picked up the bread again, but then put it back down, more than likely deciding against taunting him again. Finally, she tore a piece off the hunk of mutton. The juice of the meat ran down her thumb, trailing a line of grease down her wrist. She bent and licked the drop, following the trail, before sucking her thumb into her mouth.

  The sight nearly undid him. “Bell Heather, you cannot continue like this. I am doing all I can to remain civil, when all I really want to do it strip that gown from your body and dine on you.”

  Her eyes widened and her lips parted, the pink in her cheeks only enhanced the flaring of emerald fire in her gaze.

  “Please,” he croaked. “Have mercy on me. I still need to see to my men, and I cannot be in two places at once. After supping with you, I must go back downstairs and speak with the men. There is much anxiety about tomorrow, and I want to make sure they have their orders.” Their final orders from me…

  Her shoulders dipped, for but a moment, before she pulled them back again.

  “I do not know what ye mean. I am only eating.” She stuck the mutton in her mouth and chewed vigorously. Tristin followed suit, and they ate in silence for long, aching minutes.

  Finally, he wiped his hands on the provided linen and sat back, taking in her face, her form, and the way she held both rigidly.

  “Tell me about Clarendon,” he intoned, hoping she took his tone as a challenge. He much preferred her fire to her melancholy.

  She took the linen from Tristin’s lap and wiped her own hands, then she too sat back, and looked at him. Her gaze swept over him, from crossed ankles to mussed black hair.

  Did she like what she saw?

  “Why do ye want to know about Clarendon?” she asked, wariness leaking from her words.

  He smiled to assuage her fear. “Because you are from Clarendon. I want to know more about the village where my Bell was born.”

  She started at the use of “my” but she didn’t say anything about it.

  “Well… Clarendon has always been my home. It was where my parents met, where they married, and where my father built the cottage where I still live.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. “He built your cottage?”

  A wistful smile brightened her face, and his breath caught. “Aye. My mother said he was always building something, though, he rarely did a good job of it.” She chuckled. “Once, my mother told me my father had tried to build a barn for a villager who was hoping to buy two horses and needed a place to stable them. The timbers were so poorly secured that, when he threw the door open to show off his work, the whole thing fell in.”

  Tristin barked a laugh and Bell Heather’s smile grew.

  I would have you smile for always…

  “I suppose I am more like my father than I first thought… It took me four tries to repair the garden fence, and it still falls apart when the wood swells from the rain.”

  “Still, that is more than I have ever built with my own hands,” Tristin remarked, marveling at the woman sitting across from him. Not only had she had to live on her own after losing her parents, she had thrived, building a life and reputation among the villagers. He could remember the looks on their faces when they realized he meant to take their beloved apothecary.

  Guilt filled him, pricking at his heart. He deserved every bit of poison those people wished upon him. He only hoped he’d have the chance to make it up to them. His gaze landed on Bell Heather again. To all of them.

  “Your mother, she was the apothecary before you?” he asked, desperately trying to keep her engaged. He didn’t want her to think on tomorrow, or the uncertainty of today.

  She nodded, smiling again. He let out a relieved sigh. “Aye. She taught me most of what I know.”

  “Are there recipes for the things you make?” Keep her talking…

  Bell Heather laughed then shook her head. “Nay. Only what one apothecary passes down to another…and a lot of mistakes and successes.”

  “So, there is no apothecary book?” He knew his father’s apothecary kept a library of books on herbs and medicaments.

  She shook her head again. “Nay. And even if there was, I could not read it,” she said, as if imparting her illiteracy was an everyday occurrence.

  “You do not read?” he asked, surprised. “How does a woman of your intelligence learn so much without reading?” And she was intelligent; clever, witty, wise… She was the perfect match for him in every way, and it had taken an evil man and his diabolical plan to bring them together.

  Damn, but he hated to appreciate anything Willem Mason had done.

  Shrugging, Bell Heather replied, “As Maude would say, very little of life’s lessons are written in the pages of a book. Ye must live to learn.”

  He nodded, not surprised at the old woman’s wisdom. “I must admit that most of what I have learned, I learned on the battlefield.” Killing, maiming, torturing, decapitating cleanly with a single swing. His stomach roiled, his food eager to revisit his mouth. “Little of which is appropriate for sharing with those who are not born for it.”

  “I cannot imagine it is,” she remarked, thoughtfully. She stared down at her hands, more tense than he’d ever seen her. “Do ye regret it…” her voice trailed off to a whisper before she lifted her eyes to peer at him through the fan of her lashes.

  Did he regret what? Becoming a knight? Swearing allegiance to the Homme du Sang? Willingly forcing her from her village and into the most danger of her life? Making love to her? Wanting her more than his next breath?

  “Nay, I do not,” he answered simply.

  The answer didn’t seem to appease her, because her face crumpled into a frown.

  “My father is a demanding man. He wanted every one of his children to leave a mark that would bring great pride and honor to the LaDeux name.”

  She lifted her face to look at him completely. “And did ye…leave yer mark?”

  The question burned its way through Tristin’s thoughts. When he’d been dispatched to Cieldon that first day, three years, ago,
he’d been determined to make his father proud. To dispel the idea that his father’s son was a feckless womanizer. He’d taken up the charge as commander of the Homme du Sang because he felt it was the only way to truly find a place of honor in his father’s eyes again. And in God’s. But over the years, through each mission, he felt less and less like what he was doing was what he should have been doing. Yes, he still believed that the Homme du Sang were meant to do bad things for good reasons. But now, sitting across from a woman who was abused by the law of the church and manipulated for nefarious purposes, he wondered how many of his previous missions had been as false. How many innocent people he’d captured or killed based on testimony from men who only wanted the fearsome Men of Blood to do their dirty deeds for them. Suddenly, Tristin felt the weight of his every decision press down on his shoulders, crushing him.

  He heaved a sigh, dragging his fingers through his hair. “I do not know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bell Heather watched the flames dance in the hearth and thought back on the conversation she’d had with Tristin. For a man who meant to deliver her to her own fate in the morning, he seemed truly interested in her life. No matter how many times her heartbeat spelled his name, her mind could not forget that he was a man of honor, a man who would do whatever he needed to do to keep his word. Aye, he’d promised to protect her, but foremost, he’d promised to bring her to Cieldon for her trial. And so, he would.

  Sighing, she stood and stared down at what remained of the meal she’d shared with him.

  “Ack!” she scoffed. What a fool she’d been to try and entice a man like Tristin with pieces of bread and lamb fat. Then again, the look in his eyes and the bulge in his lap had told her she succeeded in her seduction, though she didn’t get what she wanted; him inside her, holding her, pleasuring her.

  One last time.

  A knock on the door startled her, but she walked to it despite her trepidation. Was it Tristin? She held her breath and opened the door to find the same sour-faced woman who’d brought the tray.

  She walked into the room and glanced down at the tray. “’spose twas good,” she muttered then pick up the tray, balancing it on her ample hip. “Ye can break yer fast downstairs in the common room in the mornin’,” she added as she swept passed Bell Heather and out the door again, her jaundiced eye glaring at Bell Heather over her shoulder before she disappeared down the corridor.

  Closing the door, she wondered at the woman’s disagreeable disposition. Maude would have hissed and spat, telling the woman to grow a heart, and Bell Heather would not have been shocked at all. She smiled, her memories of Maude were fond ones, but she refused to let the joy of knowing the woman, descend into misery.

  She’d chosen to go with Tristin, arrogantly believing she could free herself by simply explaining away the falsehood. She wasn’t a witch, she knew it, everyone in Clarendon knew it, but that wouldn’t matter this far from Clarendon. Here, she was on her own.

  Nay…she had Tristin. “I will vouch for you,” he’d vowed, and she believed he would, even if it ruined everything he’d built with those men downstairs. The men who risked their lives to protect her, to save her. They deserved better than to lose their fearless leader because of some ill-conceived vow made to appease his father. But it wasn’t entirely Tristin’s fault. He wouldn’t have broken his vow if she hadn’t been there to break it with him. She had been his bane since the waterfall, but she couldn’t feel bad about it.

  Now, sporting her own sour-face, she locked the door, grabbed her bag off the floor, and flung it on the bed.

  She ignored the bed, and what might happen there once Tristin returned, and opened her bag. She dug out her bar of soap and walked to the bureau where a basin of water sat atop it.

  “This is a long time in coming…” she muttered as she removed the gown Tristin had given her. She paused with the fabric at her hips, and couldn’t help but recall how astonished he’d looked upon seeing her in it. She never thought to see a man so enthralled, and it had sucked the breath right from her body. Even then, Tristin had shown how much he wanted her…but that wasn’t enough to throw away the Homme du Sang.

  Finishing disrobing, she made a lather with the soap and washed as quickly as she could, paying special attention to the place between her legs. She could remember the feel of Tristin there, and the heat of his seed, and the hotness of her own want for him. It had been overwhelming; the feeling of being claimed by him.

  Shuddering, she completed her simple bath and dried off with the scrap of linen from beside the basin. Finally, she smelled of heather instead of horse and travel. Determined to look her best for Tristin, she returned to her bag, pulling out the dress she’d been wearing the day she’d been “arrested.”

  Was that only three days ago? Impossible; it felt like a lifetime had passed.

  The long tunic dress was caked in dried sweat and snared with briars. If she tried to please Tristin while wearing that, he’d wrinkle his nose at her. Nay, she couldn’t wear that. She flushed. And she couldn’t stand before the door naked, waiting for him, either.

  So what… Something in the bag shimmered in the candle light. She reached in and pulled out an extremely thin tunic. She gasped. She’d never seen anything so beautiful…so wicked…in all her life. It appeared to be made of fairy threads, it was sheer, she could see her hands right through it. The bodice was covered in a lace pattern of roses, the buds perfectly positioned over where her nipples would press against it. It was utterly sinful! She loved it.

  “How… Elric!” She blushed, heat suffusing her body. Leave it to Elric to slip something this ridiculous into her bag. He must have picked it up in Hixon where he obtained the gown. And where did a man find such things? And why would he give it to her? It was almost as if he were expecting her to seduce his commander. Her flush deepened and she groaned, closing her eyes against the humiliation.

  “That blackguard,” she grumbled, then looked down at the tunic again, a smile slowly lifting the corners of her mouth. “That thoughtful, bothersome, darling, blackguard.”

  The man might have been averse to her “bespelling” his captain when they first met, but now… The racy tunic represented a sort of blessing upon the union between her and Tristin.

  What kind of person would she be if she didn’t accept such a thoughtful gift? She smirked, holding the tunic up to her chest. She could see her breasts, the dark pink around her nipples, and the thatch of dark curls betwixt her thighs. It was what Tristin would see when he returned.

  A thrill fluttered through her as she silken fabric brushed over her sensitized skin. So soft, luxurious…the perfect gift for a woman who would die on the morrow.

  Grief snatched at her moment of joy, grinding it beneath its heel.

  She growled, throwing back her shoulders. “Nay! I will not let tomorrow destroy today.” She couldn’t. Tonight was the last night she would have with Tristin, and she meant for it to be the most amazing night of her life.

  ***

  “Nay!” The round of angry outbursts nearly leveled the room, and the angry faces burned with indignation.

  “You cannot renounce your vow, Captain, what are you thinking?” Pierre growled, standing at full height and baring his teeth. “You cannot give up all you have accomplished for one woman.”

  Tristin growled in return, narrowing his eyes at a man he respected as his own brother. “You will watch how you speak of Bell Heather. The decision to leave the Homme du Sang has nothing to do with her, she merely expedited it.” He suspected that he had lost heart in the order long ago, but he’d remained because that’s where his brothers were, his family in honor. But he had a chance at a new family, one of his own. One he could build with the woman awaiting him upstairs. He gazed about the room, at the men he’d fought with for the last three years, and his heart wrenched.

  “Believe me, it is like tearing my heart from my chest to leave you, but…it is time for me to create a life away from the blood and the s
ervitude. I want to be my own man, a man who builds cottages and pig pens. A man who is worthy of Bell Heather’s love.”

  There was silence as the men scanned his face, taking in the determination in his stance and the contentment in his expression. Because he was content. For the first time in his life, he was truly excited about what his future held; Bell Heather.

  “You really that sodden?” Pierre asked, letting his broad shoulders droop in acceptance.

  Tristin offered him an appreciative smile. “Yes,” he answered.

  Ioan and Leon stepped forward, extending their hands. “Then we are happy for you, Captain,” Leon said, giving a smile of his own.

  One by one, his men, his brothers, his best friends, came to give their congratulations and their condolences.

  “So, what’s to become of us?” Robert inquired.

  “I have given the choice to Elric,” he replied.

  All eyes turned to Elric, who stood, leaning against the wall in the corner. He looked to be about as involved in the goings-on as a man in a seamstress shop.

  Robert inclined his head. “What say you, Elric?”

  After a moment, Elric heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh. He pushed away from the wall and flicked his gaze over each man, finally coming to a halt on Tristin. Elric’s golden eyes were dark, burnished, intent. “I suppose I cannot turn down my captain’s final order. It would be bad form. Aye, Tristin, I will take command.” At his words, an eruption of good natured laughter filled the room—far better than the angry bellows from before.

  “I suppose someone should send word to Bear,” Aster remarked, and the others nodded.

  “I will leave that to Elric. It can be his first issued command,” Tristin said, grinning at his scowling friend.

  “Oh, aye, you would make my first order as commander be to tell the largest of us that you have chosen a life of cottages and pig shite,” Elric grumbled, crossing his arms.

  Laughter burst from Tristin’s chest, and joy lit him from within.