Thief

by Linda Windsor

“Stay out o’ this, Cymri,” Wada snarled. “You don’t know what you heard.”

  “Ah, but I do,” Caden said. “I heard you threaten to burn this young lady’s home to the ground, the same as you did to her parents’ … with them in it.”

  “I could have killed him.” Hoarse fury lodged in Sorcha’s throat.

  “Not in front of a street full of witnesses,” Caden reminded her lowly.

  It was true. A dozen or so people drew closer, once they saw the big blond stranger was in control of the situation.

  “I’ll not forget this, missy.” Wada struggled to his feet and knocked the dirt off his clothing with his big hands.

  “Neither will I,” Sorcha promised. Never while she drew breath. She’d always wondered, suspected. Wada’s presence often left her parents’ faces marked with concern and anger. Then came the fire—

  Caden drew her from the suffocating vision. “In the meanwhile, sir, you’d best hope a fire doesn’t start in this warehouse, for three of us heard your threat, and every man and woman here will now know the source.”

  “Arson is a hangin’ offense,” a woman cried out.

  The ruckus had brought Tilda out of her house, armed with a broom and mad as a hornet.

  “Arson ain’t got nothin’ to do with this,” Wada averred. “I said yer father learned his lesson the hard way ’cause ’e got in debt over ’is head,” he mocked, smug with his quick answer. “I don’t know nothin’ about no fire.”

  But he did. Sorcha knew exactly what he’d meant.

  Caden stood on her sword, but the dagger she kept lashed to her thigh could be just as deadly. Although the witnesses who held her back from a murderous offense would serve her purpose just as well.

  “Take up your money bag and bear witness before all standing here that my debt to Athelstan is paid in full, including the toll,” she demanded.

  Wada reached down and hefted the bag in his hand. “Feels about right.”

  “Count it, Wada!” Her voice wavered along the line she walked between rage and nervous collapse. “Gemma, fetch our scale please. He’ll count it now in front of witnesses.”

  As Caden watched the moneylender’s thug pour a mixed bag of coins and rings onto a barrel top, his disgust with the man grew. Caden had seen his type before, the bully preying on the helpless … though Sorcha had proven she was not as helpless as one would think. She’d even drawn a trickle of blood.

  Impressed, he reached down and picked up the weapon. It was well balanced. Too short to Caden’s notion of a sword, and too long to count as a knife, but deadly either way.

  And it was clear Wada knew just how close he’d come to journeying to the Other Side. He was so rattled that the simple task of separating the gold from the silver and copper to weigh on the small scale Gemma had placed on a nearby barrel top proved cumbersome for his shaking hands.

  “I’ll be needin’ a knife.” Wada lifted a string of mixed precious metal coins and medallions held together by a thin leather thong.

  Recognition punched Caden in the stomach. He’d won that money over the throwboard from a spice merchant in Din Edyn—one of those men who didn’t trust a purse for their treasure but wore it around their neck. Outrage charged in like a bull, trampling Caden’s incredulity. He’d throttle the wench—nay, both of them!

  Instead he slapped the flat of the sword down on the barrelhead, stopping Wada from reaching for the dagger tucked in his boot. “Use this.”

  Wada cut the thong easily on the sharp blade. As the coins slid off, clinking into a pile, Caden shot a festering gaze at Sorcha. Too caught up in her own emotions, she didn’t notice. But her dwarf companion did. And the look Gemma returned was a silent plea.

  A plea! By all that was holy, Caden had been robbed by two wenches. Not even two full-grown ones. Worse, Sorcha had set him up so that the others in the tavern had thought he had made ungentlemanly advances toward her, earning him a knot on the back of the head as well. Her timing had been perfect. But then the singer, dancer, swordsman, and thief was a consummate actress as well.

  Hadn’t she frolicked on the beach as if learning a simple dance was her greatest worry … without so much as a pang of guilt? And he’d thought it was his charm breaking through her stiff resistance to her mother’s wishes. The same charm he intended to use to find out more about Rhianon.

  You’ve met your match.

  The dawning staggered Caden for a moment. Until the dwarf woman clasped her hands, reaching for him with desperate dark eyes. As if the pagan mite even knew there was a God.

  The last of the coins separated, Wada piled the copper on the scale and announced the weight, standing back for the man closest to him to verify. While Sorcha returned it to the pouch, the observer verified the weighing of the silver and the small bit of gold as well.

  “It’s all there,” Sorcha announced for all to hear. “Twice what we borrowed to purchase a season’s goods and make a home for ourselves after my family’s tavern house mysteriously”—the word dripped with sarcasm—“burned to the ground. But then Athelstan is as much a thief as a moneylender, and Wada is worse.”

  “Watch what ye say, missy,” Wada warned her. “Them what sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.” He snatched the purse from her and tied the drawstring into a knot. “But yer debt’s paid and we’re done, fair and clear afore all present.”

  At the consensus of nods, the villain straightened, thrusting out more belly than chest. “Then good day to ye … and,” he added, bowing to Sorcha, “especially to you, missy.”

  Sorcha’s hand fisted the material of her skirt, answering with a glare that should have turned the man to ashes. Caden would bet the contents of Wada’s bag that there was a dagger strapped to a slim, milky-white thigh beneath the common wool bunched in her fingers. And the strange thing was, though part of him was inclined to wring her lovely neck, another part admired her for her spirit.

  Well, let her brandish hidden steel or try to work her wiles on him. No matter. Caden was all the wiser … now.

  “He knows,” Gemma whispered to Sorcha as she led the way into the house after the crowd dispersed.

  Sorcha gave her friend a quizzical look. “Who knows what?”

  While watching Wada measure out his payment, her head had begun to ache, as if all the blood in her body hammered at her brain. Sheer will alone kept her knees from buckling.

  Caden slammed the door behind him, causing her to jump. “I know,” he thundered, “that it was you two who stole my purse last night, that’s who and what.”

  His gaze was as cold as the steel of the blade he still held in his hand.

  While Sorcha could try to deny the fierce accusation there, that would require wit, the last of which had withered away under this verbal assault. She’d been plagued by pain such as this only once before. After the fire. It lasted a week with its peaks and valleys, laying her low in a dark room where she lost what little she ate before it nourished her.

  Summoning every ounce of her strength, Sorcha marched over to the cupboard and opened a red-ware jar where Gemma had hidden Caden’s purse. She took it out and tossed it at him.

  “There’s half of it. ’Tis all we have.” She was spent, emotionally and physically. “We’ll try to pay you back before you leave Din Guardi.”

  “By stealing another man’s purse?” Caden sneered.

  “Only if song doesn’t provide enough. And if that will not do,” she said, her candor bare of any emotion that might cause her head to crack like a jarred egg, “then take off my head with my sword and put me out of my misery.”

  “It’s come again?” Alarmed, Gemma hustled to her side.

  Blinking affirmation more than nodding, she gave in to Gemma’s press to sit at the table.

  “Is this another game of yours?” Caden’s challenge rumbled from her pain-dazed head to her churning belly and back with each footfall he made toward the table.

  “A basin, Gemma,” Sorcha beseeched. The room started to swirl, dra
wing her toward the beams overhead. She wasn’t going to be sick after all. She was going to be swept up in the whirlwind she’d sown.

  At least it was a whirlwind without pain.

  Chapter Ten

  Sorcha rolled from the bench to the floor at Caden’s feet like a crumpled doll. So fast, he hadn’t time to register what was happening. He knelt beside her and touched her neck, where a pulse fluttered to his relief. Though she was pale as ash and cold and clammy to the touch.

  “Help me get her to bed,” Gemma snapped, as if this were somehow his fault.

  But Caden obeyed. He gathered the unconscious woman up in his arms and struggled to his feet. Rhianon had been light as a feather, as though she had the hollow bone structure of a bird. But this one was as solid as she was tall. With a grunt, Caden straightened and adjusted his grip. A soft moan came from her pale lips.

  Mumbling an apology for jostling her so, he carried Sorcha to a cot nestled against the wall next to a narrow ladder leading to a loft.

  “I give you my word, I will explain what I can as soon as I give her something for her head,” Gemma called to him from the cupboard, where she searched through an assortment of jars and bags. “I hope I still have some of the powder the healing woman made.”

  Could that be Rhianon? Witches sometimes healed, he argued against the part of him that scoffed at the very idea of Rhianon doing something good.

  “Does this healing woman have a name?”

  “Does it really matter?” Gemma shot him an exasperated glance.

  Yes, it did, but Caden held his peace. Actually, he was stunned. With all that had happened this day, Caden had nearly forgotten Rhianon. After fighting the memories that haunted him night and day for the last four years, he’d been free … for a while. Still, he determined he’d hear more of what Rhianon was about and if—how—Sorcha fit into her plans.

  “She suffers like this often?” he asked, focusing on the latter.

  “Only once before. For better than a week after her parents died, it wouldn’t let up,” Gemma replied. “Ach, here it is. I’m thinking Wada brought this malady back.”

  Uncertain what else to do, Caden unfolded a blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it over the sleeping beauty. Even though deathly pale, that was how Sorcha looked at the moment. Lovely, fragile … and innocent.

  Deceptive even now.

  “Athelstan doubled the toll we owed when we didn’t have enough to pay him a month ago,” Gemma told him as she mixed the powder into a tea. “We’d hoped to make enough last night to pay it off—”

  A timid knock on the door cut her off.

  “Ebyn!” Caden had forgotten the lad. When they’d heard the confrontation between Wada and Sorcha, Caden had ordered Ebyn to stay put beside the warehouse in case things turned violent. Caden hurried to the door and opened it to see the boy shivering in the shadows cast by the setting sun.

  “Come in, laddie, come in.”

  Ebyn was more concerned about Sorcha than warming himself by the fire. Caden assured him that Wada wouldn’t be bothering them anymore and set about fixing some hot tea for the laddie while Gemma tried to get Sorcha to drink the medicinal concoction.

  While Ebyn eagerly sipped his honey-laden brew, he plagued Caden with questions about the oysters, the creatures that had lived in the shells on the beach. Caden answered as best he could, but his attention was fixed on Sorcha. She took the medicine but kept her eyes closed, as if even the dim light in the room seemed to plague her. She looked dreadful now that she’d regained consciousness. Misery creased her brow.

  “I’ll take the harp and pipe to the tavern tonight,” Gemma told her gently when Sorcha had drained the cup. “You stay here and let Ebyn take care of you.”

  Sorcha cast a half-lidded look in Caden’s direction.

  “If he was going to kill us, he’d have done so by now,” Gemma assured her.

  “Though I would have some answers,” Caden injected. “When you’re up to it.” He stretched his long legs beneath the board. “I’m in no hurry to leave till I get them.”

  Gemma gathered up Sorcha’s harp bag and her pipe and carried them over to the table, placing them there before settling opposite Caden on a bench smoothed by use.

  “I’ve not much time, but you’ve shown yourself to be a fair man, Caden of Lothian. You well deserve a few answers.” She folded her small arms in front of her with a look direct as a spear thrust. By the way she shifted her tongue from one cheek to the other, she took measure of him and the words she was about to speak.

  “Taking your purse was as unfair as anything I’ve ever done,” she said at last. “But as you have seen, we were desperate. And when I took it, I thought that the money you sported in front of me was this inheritance you spoke of.”

  The memory of the woman’s greedy gaze lighting upon his purse came to Caden’s mind. Were he not so distracted by Sorcha, he would have been more cautious.

  “’Twasn’t till later that I learned otherwise, and by then, you were out cold as fish. So it was, in essence,” she reasoned, “a great misunderstanding all the way about.”

  “I think misunderstanding is a poor word for it, milady.”

  Gemma glanced to the bed where Sorcha either slept or listened to every word. “Be that as it may,” she said, rising, “I must go, if we have a chance of making it up to you. I won’t earn as much as Sorcha, but some is better than nothing. All I’m asking is that you let her rest. The medicine should make her sleep.”

  So first he made tea for a child, and now he was a nursemaid. Some plan God had for him, he thought, recalling Father Martin’s promise of plans for him to prosper.

  “I’ll do it,” he agreed slowly, “but I’m not going anywhere.”

  Staying here in Ebyn’s company by a warm hearth wouldn’t be so bad. It was still quieter than up in the town proper. Too many tensions betwixt Saxon and Lothian and among the Saxons themselves.

  “I give you my word,” Caden promised Gemma, who checked Sorcha once again before leaving, “I’ll not bother the lassie. Monster that I am, I can see plain that she’s sick.”

  The dwarf’s no-nonsense demeanor softened. “And no wonder, after what she’s faced this day. Barely scraping enough together to keep Wada at bay … threatened by her future son-in-law and his trollop …”

  Ah hah! The man who was with Rhianon. A trollop, eh?

  “… finding she has to take up residence in the royal court on the morrow, and crowning it all, finally finding out what really happened to her parents.”

  A tell in Gemma’s voice pulled Caden back from her opinion of Rhianon. “You knew, didn’t you? About what happened to her folks?”

  “I knew a storm took two of Wulfram’s ships, so he had to borrow from Athelstan to cover the loss,” she told him. “When time to pay came, Wulfram was short. But the moneylender tried his underhanded ways with the wrong man. Wulfram threatened to go to the king himself if Athelstan doubled the toll like he did to us.” She snorted in disdain. “The slippery eel didn’t realize he’d crossed someone with Hussa’s ear.”

  “Why didn’t Wulfram ask the king for help in the first place?” Caden asked.

  “Pride. We Saxons are a stubborn lot.” Gemma heaved a sigh and took up her instruments of trade. “And now I must be off. Send the boy if you need me.”

  “I will.” Caden shot Ebyn a wink.

  “And Caden,” Gemma said, poised in the open door.

  “Aye?” he replied.

  “You’re no monster.” She paused a moment in thought. “I’ve yet to make out just what you are. But I will,” she promised. With that she was gone.

  Caden might have taken the compliment at face value, though with Gemma it was hard to tell what was tucked in and around it. But her regard came second to the bits of information she’d given him.

  After he’d fed Ebyn and tired the boy out playing a peg game, Caden sent the lad up to the loft to bed and settled on a bench, his back to the wall. Of all the k
ingdoms in Albion, how was it that he wound up in the same one as Rhianon? He wondered about the child she’d carried. Was it lost, or was it calling a Saxon Father? The only thing that Caden knew for certain was that as long as his not-so-late wife breathed, there would be trouble.

  Glancing down, Caden found he’d clasped his hands until they were bloodless. One word filled Caden’s mind. Abba.

  “Papa!”

  Sorcha’s gasp brought Caden to his feet and into the present. On the cot, she tossed her head from side to side, as though wrestling with the horror she watched behind closed eyelids.

  Caden sat on the edge of the cot and shook her gently. “’Tis a dream, lassie, a nightmare.” He could well imagine what he drew her from. A tavern consumed in fire. Perhaps the cries of her adoptive parents burning alive. He shook her again, glad to spare her. Wishing he’d had someone to draw him out of his night terrors. “Wake up. There’s no fire. You’re safe in your own bed.”

  When that didn’t work, Caden gathered Sorcha into his arms. “Wake up, lassie. Wake up. I’ll not stop shaking you till you look at me.”

  Suddenly Sorcha opened her eyes, wide and glazed with panic. As they came to focus on Caden’s face, the shock faded, washed away by a swelling tide. She blinked, her dark lashes dipping into it, fanning tears down her pale cheeks. Not knowing quite what to do, Caden pulled her face against him so that his tunic absorbed them.

  “I h … hurt.”

  The sob shook Caden as well. He knew the hurt and the fear that made her tremble so.

  Ever so gently he stroked the wild tendrils of copper curls away from her face, over the contour of her head, and down to the nape of her neck. Again. And again. As though to coax the pain splitting her forehead into furrows away. With each stroke, he could feel the tension coiled in her body release notch by notch.

  Until he thought she slept again. Ever so gently, he lowered her head back and eased his hand from between Sorcha and the pillow. Turning her head slightly, she found it with her cheek and brushed against it.

  “Such tender hands,” she sighed through parted lips that held Caden’s gaze glued.