by Tamara Leigh
Foul! There was naught she wanted from this man, no matter what he—
His hand slid across her forearm and upper arm, tripping sensation across her skin, and when he probed the pained flesh around her injury, her awareness of him hardly diminished.
He sent word of your capture, she reminded herself, but it was futile. Changing her grip on the dagger, she attempted to send her mind wandering so it would not settle too long on Michael.
“It is not deep,” he said. “If it requires a half dozen stitches, it will be much.” He looked up. “I am sorry, Beatrix. I would not have seen you harmed like this.”
He sounded so sincere—
For his own end, she countered, dragging to mind the hurtful things he had said. “How would you see me harmed, Lord D’Arci?”
“I would not,” he growled.
“Why?”
“Because I was wrong.”
With her own eyes, she saw the words come off his lips, with her own heart, she felt relief that she knew she ought to reject. “You meant it—that I am not the same as…Edithe?”
Did she only imagine it, or did he draw nearer? “You are unlike any woman I have known.” The hand he lifted to her face was not imagined, nor the thrill when his calloused fingers caressed her skin. And Beatrix nearly let him kiss her, nearly met his mouth.
She pushed his hand aside. “I want no more of you, Michael D’Arci. Tend my wound if you will, then be gone.”
Only when his face hardened did she realize his features had softened during their exchange. Could she call that softening back to more closely look upon it, her gullible self would do so. Fortunately, each new hurt he visited on her made her more prudent. She would not fall his way again.
He released her arm, straightened, and stepped back.
Beatrix clasped a hand over her injury, and neither spoke again until Squire Percival’s return.
“What of Sir Justin?” Michael asked as he accepted his physician’s bag.
“He was just returning to consciousness when I found him, my lord. By note of his wrath, he shall recover sufficiently.”
Michael looked up from spreading his instruments and medicinals on the coverlet. “Where does Sir Justin await me?”
“The kitchen, my lord. I did not think it wise for him and Sir Piers to share the solar.”
“Well thought, Squire. And of those in the hall?”
“Quiet, my lord.”
“Good. Leave us.”
As Squire Percival’s footsteps receded, Beatrix looked to the vial that Michael chose, then the needle he lifted for threading.
“It will hurt some,” he murmured.
With a curt laugh, she said, “Hurt is something to which I seem to have grown…accustomed.”
He met her gaze past the needle, and when he spoke, there was regret in his voice. “So you have.”
He lowered to his knees before her, lifted her arm, and began to minister as he had done when she had sustained her head injury. This time, though, she was conscious. This time, she felt every brush of his blunt fingers, breathed the masculine scent of him, and gazed upon his bowed head. And time and again she had to remind herself of the ills he had cast on her no matter what he now believed—or, at least, professed to believe.
Though the pungent salve he applied made the pain tolerable, for those endless minutes she was grateful for his presence that diverted her thoughts from the needle’s tug and tuck.
“’Tis done,” he finally said.
She eased her hand on the dagger and looked from his face that was level with hers to the linen wound around her arm. The bleeding was staunched, no crimson penetrating the weave.
“I thank you,” she breathed.
He nodded. “Now I would examine your head injury.”
“For what?”
“A good physician keeps himself apprised of his patient’s progress.”
A laugh parted her lips. “And now you wish to be a good physician? After all these weeks?”
“Will you allow it?”
“I assure you, ’tis…well-healed. Only a scar remains to remind me of its getting.”
“Will you allow it, Beatrix?”
Something in his eyes slipped through a soft place in her hardened heart, and she said, “I will.”
He pushed his fingers through her hair and lifted it away.
Beatrix stared at the wall as he traced the ridge with a calloused finger.
“It seems a long time ago,” he murmured.
Years. Many years. Indeed, it was as if this life and that had not even crossed paths. All had changed.
“I know you cannot forgive me now,” Michael said, “but I pray that one day you will.”
Though she longed to believe his sincerity, in that direction lay a fool’s quest—one already visited in believing he would not reveal her to Baron Lavonne. “If you knew how to pray, Lord D’Arci, I might…believe you. Now, are you done?”
His eyes shuttered. “I am.” He stepped back and swept his instruments into his bag.
Aching deeper than her injury, Beatrix watched him stride across the room with a hitch that bespoke the strain of his clash with Sir Durand. “You will keep your word?” she called as he reached the threshold.
He turned and looked to the dagger in her fist. “You will honor it?”
And yield up her best defense should he or Sir Durand speak false? “As best I can.”
From the flare of his nostrils, he understood she would not give up the dagger. “I cannot fault you,” he said and pulled the door closed.
Beatrix listened to his tread on the stairs. Too soon, silence fell, bestowing a gift she did not wish to open. But open it she did, rendering up the quiet that was necessary for reflection.
Though she shook her head, it all rushed back—every moment, every word, every expression and emotion. Such sincerity Michael had shown, and how she wished to clasp it to her. How she wished to believe he believed, to care that he cared. But the pinprick of doubt pricked deep, warning of untold pain if she went the way she had gone before.
“I shall not,” she told herself. She would have a trial, regardless that Michael and Sir Durand wished otherwise.
She stood and crossed to the corner where she had lain in wait when her brother’s man first came within. Unfortunately, her throbbing arm weighted less heavily upon her than fatigue and, though she struggled against sleep, she began to dream dreams she should not.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You love her.”
Abruptly, as if run through with Sir Durand’s sword that had yet to be sheathed, Michael halted his progress across the solar.
With his back to the fire, legs spread, Sir Durand raised an eyebrow. Though the expression smoothed the hard edges of his face, it remained humorless—almost bitter—and Michael realized there was much beneath the surface of the knight’s words. But though Sir Durand might have such feelings for Beatrix, Michael did not. It was guilt that rode him. And desire. Naught to do with the heart, though Canute had also suggested it a quarter hour past.
Before returning to the solar, Michael had sought the stables where his old friend awaited his lord and Beatrix for the ride east. The change of plans and news that Baron Wulfrith’s man had come for Beatrix had chafed Canute, but there was no mistaking his relief, for Canute knew as well as Michael that if they took Beatrix from Soaring, they would not likely return—could not return. Thus, he had encouraged Michael to allow Sir Durand to fulfill the task set him by Baron Wulfrith. And been disheartened when Michael refused.
Silently cursing his uneven gait, Michael continued to the foot of the bed, dropped his physician’s bag atop the chest, and retrieved the staff he had earlier set against the bedpost.
He turned. “You trespass in believing you know me, Sir Durand, just as you trespassed in deceiving my stepmother in order to steal into my home.”
“A necessity that requires no apology.”
A grim smiled tugged at Michael’s mout
h. “Forsooth, I did not expect one.”
The knight smiled his own tight smile. “’Tis good we are of a mind.”
“Hardly, for I shall not allow you to take Beatrix from Soaring.”
The man’s brow rippled. “’Tis the answer you seek. If I carry her away, no suspicion will be cast upon you. Thus, your lordship will remain secure.”
If not for the rub in his chest that would have been of interest to Sir Durand with regards to Michael’s feelings for Beatrix, Michael would not have faulted him for suggesting such. After all, a month past it would have been the answer to the question of Beatrix.
Michael stepped his staff forward. At a distance that would grant him space in which to draw his sword, he halted. “I gave Beatrix my word. I shall keep it.”
The knight’s hand turned restless on his sword hilt. “There are some things for which a man can be forgiven for breaking his word.”
“Not this. As I shall keep my word, so shall you keep yours.”
“Then you wish her to go to trial? To meet her death?”
“’Tis not what I wish, but what she needs—”
“Needs!” The tip of Sir Durand’s sword came up off the floor.
Michael pulled several inches of cold steel from his sheath. “I may yet be somewhat infirm, but if blood is to be shed, yours will flow as readily as mine.”
“I will not allow her to die.”
“As I will not. Though I shall keep my word that I will not obstruct her trial, if she is found guilty, there my word ends.”
“What say you?”
Though Michael’s plan was not fully formed, the end result was all that needed to be told—for now. “With your aid, if necessary, I shall deliver Beatrix to Soaring. Or out of England to France, if needs be.”
The man’s sword tip lowered. “’Tis easier done now.”
“If she were willing.”
“And if still she is not willing when she stands before the noose?”
Michael set his shoulders back. “That is what a gag is for, Sir Durand.”
The knight nearly smiled. “Ah.”
“Are we agreed?”
“I will aid you, D’Arci, but this I vow—with you or nay, I shall allow no harm to befall Beatrix.”
The knight’s emphasis on her Christian name, coupled with an easy lack of her title, bode a familiarity that first pricked, then jabbed, an emotion with which Michael was becoming grudgingly acquainted. What man eschewed a lady’s title in speaking of her unless she were dear to him? Even he—
It was then he realized he had also dropped the title of “lady” and could not remember when last his thoughts had dwelt upon her as anything other than Beatrix. And there was another thing: Sir Durand had been deliberate in his familiar use of her name, meaning he wished to return to that which he had spoken of when Michael first entered the solar. But love was a place Michael had never been and would not now go.
He returned the inches of blade to its scabbard. “You shall remain Sir Piers.”
The knight sheathed his own sword. “So I shall.” After a long moment, he said. “If she loved me as she appears to love you, I would take her to wife.”
Beatrix loved him? Impossible. Obviously, Sir Durand knew little of women, especially those wrongly scorned and falsely accused. No woman could love so great to forgive such ill. “This time you trespass upon Lady Beatrix,” Michael growled. “She feels naught for me but contempt.”
“I fear not.” Sir Durand pivoted toward the door. “And that is most unfortunate.”
Michael bit back the rejoinder that should not be spoken to a man’s back. “Cur,” he growled as the door closed behind the knight. He crossed to a chair, dropped into it, and thrummed his fingers on the arms.
Wise though Sir Durand affected to be, he was wrong about Beatrix’s feelings. Michael would make amends, and that was all. Once Beatrix was gone from his life, all would be well. And lost. But for what did a man need a home when he was a man alone?
Still, as he swept his gaze around the solar, he missed what he had never thought to miss, and now, what would likely never be: a true-hearted wife to share his bed and children to mark the passing of days. Indeed, unless he beget an illegitimate child, the name of D’Arci would never be sown from his loins.
He stared disbelievingly at her barren bed, but then her breath came to him and he followed it to a corner where she sat with her chin on her chest. Fair hair touched by torchlight from the landing outside the room, the hand that held the dagger lax in her lap, she slept—as Michael had been unable to do these past hours.
How long had she clung to wakefulness before losing the opposite battle he had waged?
He glanced at the window that dawn had yet to light and reconsidered his vow to allow her to go to trial. She was vulnerable enough for him to make a lie of it, and he wished to, but his word was all she asked—and wanted—of him. If he took that from her, there would be nothing to hold her to him, and she would hate him all the more.
He bent, eased the hilt from her chill fingers, and slid the dagger beneath his belt. A hand behind Beatrix’s back, one under her knees, he lifted her slight figure. Careful not to jostle her injury, he turned and, in one surprisingly smooth stride, reached the mattress. But rather than set her from him, he stared at her. It was not the first time he had considered how much he liked the feel of her, but this time he did so willingly. As if she belonged in his arms, she fit perfectly, and he realized that what he held in that moment he would not likely hold again.
Eager to distance himself from his inner unrest, he lowered Beatrix to the mattress. After confirming her bandage remained dry, he turned the coverlet over her and pulled the dagger from his belt. He would leave it as proof of his vow. Setting it on the squat bedside table, he looked one last time at Beatrix.
He thought her lashes fluttered and frowned at the momentary cessation of her breath. “It is upon the table do you require it,” he murmured and walked around the bed.
As the door groaned closed, Beatrix lifted her lids and caught sight of the dagger before the light from the landing swept from the room.
He had kept his word. Thus far.
Having awakened to find her hand emptied of salvation, she had barely had time to close her eyes before Michael turned from the table to the bed. Panic had thrummed through her, born of certainty that he intended to use her lapse to take back his word.
Not this eve, though. The next? With the arrival of the new day, only two nights remained before the sheriff arrived to deliver her to Lavonne.
She shivered. It was as she wished, but the prospect of standing at trial twisted her into a tighter knot. Clenching her teeth against chattering, she dragged the coverlet nearer and tried to think elsewhere.
Numb to all but the heat wafting across the chamber, Aldous Lavonne stared at the brazier’s glow and remembered. How many years ago? Six? Seven? Regardless, it seemed much nearer. So near he heard his shouts, then screams. And the pain!
That was not mere remembrance. Providing he remained completely still, it was tolerable. But something so slight as a deep breath could leave him panting for relief from the fire within that no amount of water could quench.
Hearing mutterings somewhere near, he looked around. They did not come from the chamber woman who slept on a pallet alongside his bed. It was his own voice. The voice of a madman? It was not the first time he had put the question to himself.
He clenched his hands. What a fool he had been to enter the burning mill. What a fool to try to save men and women of common birth. After thrice bringing the ungrateful wretches out of the inferno, God’s reward was to place a wall of fire before him. There had been no way out but through the flames. No other way to save himself—if one could call “saved” a body almost completely consumed by fire. Still, despite his bitterness, he had clawed his way back to God. Until Geoffrey was murdered. Until this ravaged body was further besieged by a stroke. But the Wulfriths were as much at fault as pitil
ess God who sat on His throne without a care for his loyal servants.
Vaguely aware that his thoughts were not following a straight path, Aldous reflected on Eve who had been the downfall of all mankind. And for her greed and treachery, men paid the price, honorable men like Geoffrey who had died for Wulfrith’s whore, Annyn Bretanne; men like Sir Simon who had died for Wulfrith’s whore sister, Lady Beatrix.
Thoughts stumbling out of the dark corridor down which they had wandered, Aldous coughed and moaned at the strain upon his body. When he finally settled, he lifted an edge of the coverlet and dragged it across his spittle-flecked mouth, then returned to that dark corridor where Lady Annyn and Lady Beatrix slithered.
He seethed in the knowledge that the sisters of Eve who embraced the serpent and led men to their deaths had yet to pay a price for their sins. But even if Wulfrith’s wife—who should have been Geoffrey’s!—escaped retribution, his sister would not.
Harking back to the tidings that Michael D’Arci had released Lady Beatrix from the tower and provided her with lady’s garments, Aldous spat across the bed. When Robert’s squire, Giffard, had told of it, it had enraged Aldous, but it had hardly compared to his rage over Robert’s speculation that D’Arci had fallen under the spell of the Wulfrith whore.
Though it was hard to believe any man would look the way of such a witless creature as Lady Beatrix was said to be, it seemed D’Arci had fallen prey.
“Pity,” Aldous breathed. Pity that so fine a physician would likely pay the same price that Geoffrey and Simon had paid. Of course, once Lady Beatrix met her deserved end, Aldous would have no further need of D’Arci’s services, for then he could finally release his hold on this accursed life.
Aldous curled his scarred lips and easily justified what he had set into motion by placing the blame on Lady Beatrix who was the same as all women—disloyal, perfidious, deceitful.
Aye, punishment would be given where punishment was due. And royal justice be spat upon! The king’s man, recently arrived at Broehne to oversee the trial, had stood at the end of Aldous’s bed and arrogantly advised that the best end to Sir Simon’s murderer was absolution.