He catalogued his surroundings with his eyes alone, his eyeballs clicking as they jerked dryly about the room. It was his cell at the monastery. The plaster overhead glinted in the candlelight. His cloak dangled from the peg on the wall. Sweet smoke drifted from a spiced candle burning at the foot of the bed. A heavy tapestry from the prior’s office hung at the window, blocking out the light. If indeed there was light. He had no idea what the hour was. All he could remember was stumbling onto the steps of the monastery sometime in the dark hours before dawn, drenched with drizzle, shaking with cold, and weak as a fledgling bird.
He tried to recall more. Why had he been traveling in the middle of the night? Where had he gone? Why did he feel as if someone had beaten him with a mace? But his head began to throb with the effort of thought. Closing his eyes, he returned to the peace of oblivion.
The dreams began sometime soon after. Pleasant dreams and troubling ones.
Fragments of fond remembrances. Romping across a summer meadow with his brothers. Studying Latin in the checkered shade of the willow. Sitting by the fire, listening to the old knights of his father’s castle recount heroic deeds.
Then came memories he wished he could bury forever. Mariana’s bed. His own pathetic staff lolling upon his stomach, unable to rise. Tears of rage and humiliation burning behind his eyes as Mariana voiced her scorn. The shattering sound of her laughter as she sent him from her sight.
And then finally, new dreams washed over the old, like paint on plaster, obscuring the deep-seated cracks and imperfections. Jasmine scented these dreams, and the hum of bees ran through them. Dreams of luminous blue eyes and fragrant herbs, of copper-bright curls and the honeyed taste of summer. Dreams of the most beautiful woman in the world, walking toward him, her arms outstretched. Cynthia…
But then a terrible shadow cut across the dream. A black chasm opened up between the two of them, spreading like the devil’s smile, growing wider, separating them. Cynthia reached for him, her eyes wide with desperation. She screamed his name. He stretched his arm forward, but the farther he reached, the more distant she became.
“Nay!” he cried out. His chest burned with longing. “Nay!”
“Hold him still, Andrew,” a nearby voice murmured.
“I’m trying, Father.”
“Nay!” Garth yelled hoarsely.
“Stephen, help him. I’ve got to get this down him.”
“Cynthia!” he wailed. “Cynthia!”
“Cynthia, Father? Who—?”
“Later, Stephen. Hold him steady now.”
Cynthia shrank away from his sight until she was a tiny bright spot across the dark abyss, no bigger than a bee’s stinger, lost between his fingers. His lungs ached with grief.
Someone clutched at his shoulders, restraining him. A noxious odor assaulted his nose. He jerked away.
“Stephen!”
“I’m trying, Father. But he seems to…”
A hand anchored his jaw, pulling his teeth apart. Something cold and vile gurgled into his mouth. Poison! His throat spasmed, and he gagged the liquid back out. Wildly, he flailed his good arm about, hoping to knock his assailants back. He contacted flesh. Then something shattered on the stones with a brittle crash.
“Garth! Can you hear me? Are you awake?”
He lifted his lids the merest fraction of an inch, just enough to make out the worried face of the prior hovering over him.
“You must swallow this concoction, Brother Garth.” He turned to the novitiate beside him. “Bring me another vial, Andrew. Quickly.”
Garth looked at the ugly green splashes staining the prior’s cassock where the first vial of God-knew-what had spilled. He looked at the fat bandage binding his arm where he’d been bled. God’s wounds—he might die from whatever it was he had, but he wouldn’t do it with a belly full of poison and a body full of holes.
With the dregs of his strength, he snagged the front of the prior’s cassock and with inborn de Ware command, yanked him down till they were nose to nose.
“Get me Cynthia Wendeville,” he demanded, the words scraping painfully across his raw throat like quicklime. “Now.”
“All right,” the prior answered, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “All right, then.”
But already Garth was drifting back toward his private world of illusions.
CHAPTER 15
Cynthia’s horse plodded along the gray road toward the village, as reluctant as she was to brave the morning cold. In the interminable gloom, the world seemed to have no beginning, no end, and her path through it, no purpose.
She wasn’t hurt, she told herself, wiping away a tear brought on certainly by the chill, nothing more. Only a fool would be hurt.
After all, Garth had made no promises to her. He hadn’t pledged his undying love. He hadn’t sworn to forsake all others for her. Hell, he hadn’t even promised to remain at Wendeville. Only a fool would take an impulsive midnight encounter as a sign of something deeper.
She wrapped the reins tightly around one fist. The leather bit into her palm.
Nay, it wasn’t hurt. It was only anger—anger at the way he’d left Roger and Elspeth without a word, anger at his abandonment of the good people of Wendeville, anger that he hadn’t even lingered long enough to tell her goodbye.
When she glimpsed his cell, clean and blank as the day he’d arrived, her heart sank. The note he left her was succinct. Under the circumstances, it said, I think it would be better for both of us if I found you a more qualified chaplain.
He’d undoubtedly fled to the monastery. At the monastery he could seclude himself behind safe stone walls and contemplate the error of his ways for months to come. By day, he could bury his nose in some dusty religious tome, and by night, punish himself for feeling the passions of an ordinary man.
The pervasive fog swirled about her. It had both her eyes watering now. She dabbed at them with the tippet of her sleeve. It wouldn’t do to let the villagers see her upset. The sick depended upon her strength and spirit, and for that she must maintain a cheerful countenance, not the melancholy face that the gloomy day painted upon her.
As her palfrey trudged forward, its steps muffled on the damp road, the thatched cottages of the village emerged one by one through the cloudy veil, like ghosts materializing from another world. She shivered. On such a day, spirits might leave their lifeless bodies and become lost in the mist. On such a day, the villagers needed the comfort of a priest more than ever. She prayed no soul would have to make that journey today, for there was no one to guide them to heaven.
The corners of her mouth turned down bitterly one last time, and she sniffed against the cold. Then she nudged her horse toward the first house, beginning another long day.
It was difficult to tell how many hours she labored. The bulky cloak of fog blanched the sun’s beacon to a vague gray haze. The day dragged lethargically on, filled with hacking coughs and trembling sweats and poor souls bent in half with pain. Nearly every household had been ravaged in some way by the dread disease. It had spread its destructive fire with frightening speed, as swiftly as a brand touched to thatch. Thank God, it had at last almost burned out.
But if it left the village, if somehow it spread…
The thought was overwhelming. The terror of her dream returned to hound her. Not enough herbs to treat the sick. Not enough time to reach them all. Not enough strength. Already she felt her power wane, the flow of energy less each time she laid hands on another victim. What would she do if the demands upon her increased?
The darkening hue of the ashen sky served as the only indication that day’s end drew near. Like the fog, the sickness hung stubbornly over the village. Of the victims she’d treated, many had improved. But several had grown worse, and there was nothing more she could do.
Wearily pulling herself onto the saddle, her bag of medicines fearfully light, she had at least one thing to be thankful for. In answer to her prayers, no one had died.
Cynthia thought about a warm
bath all the way home, one that would leach from her bones the mist seeping relentlessly into them, a nice, long, soothing bath scented with rosemary or angelica.
The moment she set foot in the great hall, she knew it was not to be. Elspeth rushed at her, flapping her arms like a distraught hen.
“Oh, my lady, something terrible has happened!”
“Now, Elspeth,” Roger scolded, striding forward to take Cynthia’s cloak. “Let Lady Cynthia at least warm herself by the fire.”
“What is it?” Cynthia asked, unable to contain her curiosity, as Roger guided her by the elbow toward the crackling tinder.
“It’s Father Garth, my lady!” Elspeth cried.
“Oh.” Cynthia let the air sigh out of her chest as she sank onto a chair before the hearth. “I know. He left last night. He’s likely gone back to the monastery. We’ll have to find another—“
“My lady—“
“A messenger came from the monastery,” Roger interrupted, knitting his gray brows. “Father Garth is…not well.”
Faint alarm registered in her breast. She searched Roger’s eyes. “What do you mean, ‘not well’?”
“He has the sickness, my lady,” Elspeth burst out, “the sickness from the village.”
Dread insinuated itself like odious, curling smoke into her thoughts. She stared, unseeing, into the flames.
“He’s asked for you,” Elspeth whispered.
Garth. He’d walked all the way to the monastery in the chill damp of night, probably already suffering from fever. Such exposure might have weakened him, left him more susceptible to the murrain’s attack, unable to effectively battle it.
Then a darker, more sinister thought followed. If Garth carried the disease…
“Bloody hell.”
He’d communicate it to the prior, his novitiates, and eventually all the monks. Despite the blazing fire thawing her bones, she shuddered.
Already she sensed the sickness encircling the monastery like a grim cloud raining death.
There was no time to waste. In spite of her fatigue, she had to get to Garth.
By the time she arrived at the monastery, the low twilight clouds had turned the colors of a bruise. Cynthia glanced at the threatening sky, unable to dismiss the bad omen. The foreboding she’d felt in the village was nothing compared to her crippling fear as she approached the door of Garth’s cell.
What if she put her hands upon Garth and felt nothing? Or worse, what if she felt his life force ebbing? What if she sensed that he was destined not to live, but to…
She clamped her lips together. She wouldn’t think of that. He needed her. He’d asked for her. And she’d do everything in her power to save him.
Squaring her shoulders, she entered the cell.
The first thing she did was calmly empty it of the half dozen monks who stood gaping at her. Women were normally not admitted to monasteries, but she didn’t have time to argue with them. They endangered their own health every moment they lingered. Pushing back her sleeves and authoritatively dropping her bag onto the bed, she informed the prior she needed to work in peace.
Only when the door closed behind him did she let her mask of cool detachment slip. She rushed to Garth’s side, peering anxiously into his face.
By the candlelight, his skin appeared as pale and transparent as vellum. Beneath damp tangles of hair, his brow was troubled, creased in a furrow of suffering. His breath came shallow and strained, scarcely budging the wool coverlet doubled over his chest. He shivered faintly, as if the marrow of his bones were made of ice. As she watched him, his eyelids rippled, and his lips moved over silent syllables of the language of dreams.
She closed her eyes. The gift was weak within her, weary with use. Still, praying for one last glimmer of her exhausted talent, just enough for Garth, she began rubbing her hands together.
His temples were hot where she placed her palms upon them, yet he shuddered as if he slept in snow. A faint vibration tickled her fingertips, and she gratefully felt the golden glow expanding, connecting her energies to his. Then she waited for a sign—the name of an herb or a vision of the specific combination of extracts that would heal his particular ills.
When the vision swirled and resolved to crystal clarity, she snatched her hands back. But it was too late. She’d seen it. The all-too-familiar black demon still slithered across her mind, breathing poisonous fog to wither everything in its path.
“Nay,” she wheezed.
The black snake. Death.
“Nay.”
Garth couldn’t die. He was young and fit. His entire life stretched out before him. It couldn’t be true.
And yet, she’d never been wrong. Garth de Ware was marked for death.
“Nay,” she insisted, twisting her fingers, as if repeating the word would somehow drive destiny away.
He couldn’t die, couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. He’d never truly lived. He’d never sworn his eternal love to a bride, never bounced a child of his own flesh and blood on his knee, never known the deep satisfaction of gazing across land that belonged to him.
Tears of dismay filled her eyes even as her chest heaved with angry breath. She doubled her fists.
He wasn’t going to die. By God, she wouldn’t let him.
She clamped her jaw and ran a shaky hand through her hair. There was no walking away—not while he needed her, not while he still breathed.
She sighed raggedly. For Garth to have any hope of survival, she’d have to joust with death itself.
From the depths of his dream, Garth groaned. The ache of spent desire rested low in his belly. But Mariana, her green eyes full of smoke, her hair splayed like splinters of charred wood against his skin, still smoldered with longing.
“Take me. Take me again,” she pleaded.
He wanted to. Lord, he wanted to. Mariana was devilishly beautiful. Her writhing body shone with sweat, accentuating each supple curve and alluring hollow. Her breasts heaved dramatically with every breath, her hard, red nipples perched like ripe cherries atop the snowy globes. The tangle of ebony curls between her legs was matted, soaked with her juices, yet the dark pink petals of her womanhood swelled for him again. His milky essence painted her breasts and belly and thighs. And still she wanted more.
She deserved more. He wanted to give her more.
But he couldn’t.
Five times he’d risen for her, joined with her, made her moan and scream with ecstasy as they rode over the brink of lust together. Another half dozen times he’d pleasured her with hands and tongue until he thought she’d surely swoon with exhaustion.
And now he was exhausted. She’d depleted him. His weary flag refused to rise even once more. Shite, he hardly had the strength to hoist a flag of surrender.
“What have you done to me, woman?” he murmured with a smile, slurring the words.
“Done? I’ve only begun,” she purred, bisecting his chest with a sharp fingernail.
This time his groan was half a chuckle. He was drunk with exhaustion. “You’ve worn me out.”
“Nonsense,” she breathed, dragging her thigh sensuously over his.
“Drained me dry.”
She pouted prettily and traced circles in the damp hair below his navel. “I’d wager your brothers wouldn’t tire so easily,” she mewled in disappointment.
He rose to the bait at once. “My brothers?” He stopped her fingers in his.
She shrugged and gave a small sigh. “But then, you aren’t quite like your brothers, er, half-brothers, are you?” Cruelty overlaid her sweet words like bitter poison dissolved in mead as she patronizingly patted his limp ballocks. “Not quite the man that Holden and Duncan are.”
She slunk from the bed then, brushing past him like a sultry current of air blowing through a chill day, then moving on.
If a man had spoken the insult, he would’ve slammed him up against the wall faster than a cat pouncing on a mouse. No one compared him unfavorably with his brothers. And since he’d earned his spurs, no
one dared call him less than a man.
But Mariana was a lady. She cared for him. Whatever she said, she said out of love and concern, or pity. He was sure of it. If Mariana believed him inferior to other men, then maybe it was true.
Suddenly, he grew painfully aware of his nakedness, of the shrunken member slumbering in its dark nest. It took all his will not to cover it with his hands, to hide the despicable thing from her sight. Shame scorched his face, burning him with a hotter fire than lust ever had, a fire that would never be extinguished.
Yet even as he watched the trailing hem of her scarlet robe slither out the door and heard the brittle jangle of her departing laughter, from the edges of sleep came refreshing solace. Someone stroked his fevered cheek with a wet cloth, gently blowing mint-scented breath across his skin to cool him.
The painful dream melted like chips of ice. His tension eased as the furrow between his brows was wiped gently away.
Briefly, he raised his sleep-heavy lids, just enough to peep through his lashes.
Tousled orange curls. Strong, graceful hands. Eyes darkened in concern and compassion.
Cynthia.
Relief swept through him.
Cynthia. Not the lust-filled dragon wench stealing through his dreams, but a real woman, kind and genuine. He sighed. With that sweet comfort, he closed his lids and sank deeper into sleep, past the land of dreams.
Cynthia held her breath. Had Garth wakened? Or was it only a figment of her desperate imagination? After two days of watching over him, grabbing what rest she could in short, fitful naps in the chair the prior had brought, she wasn’t sure.
Those two days, Garth had smoldered like a slow-burning log, alternately sweating and shivering, and breathing with the shallow gasps of a child. He’d tossed weakly on his bed, his sleep plagued by upsetting dreams, and he’d been unable to keep down even the weakest broth with eggs she’d smuggled in.
There wasn’t a part of him she didn’t know intimately now, from the rough stubble of his unshaved chin and the glossy scar traversing his chest to the fine line of hair dividing his belly and the carved hollows of his buttocks.
Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero Page 20