by Tamara Leigh
“Nay!” Helene cried as he crashed to the ground so near his horse’s hooves that, if he was not already broken, the animal might soon see to it.
A moment later, Durand shouted a warning that drew her gaze from Abel to the horse now heading for her.
She sprang to the side and, when the great animal huffed past, resumed her course. However, when she reached Abel, he was already on his feet.
“Why are you here?” he demanded as he drove the tip of his sword into the ground.
Breathless with exertion and fear, she halted before him. “Fools!” she spat and spun around to look upon Durand so he would know he also bore that distinction.
“I was told it was what you wanted,” the mounted knight said, and it jolted her that he should look so near a smile, as if this was but a game to him. Was it a game? Only swordplay? Unfortunately, she had witnessed too little of the training of warriors, but even so, what she had seen between these two men seemed far too violent.
She shook her head. “This is not what I wanted! This is not practice!”
“’Tis a Wulfrith knight’s training,” Abel growled at her back.
She whipped around. “Training that draws blood?”
“If it can be had.”
Longing to slap him to his senses, Helene snapped, “Regardless, you are not ready for this—”
“I am past ready, and that you interfere and tell me what I am and am not ready for is the reason no women are allowed within the walls of Wulfen Castle, Helene of Tippet.”
She stared at him where he braced himself upright, and it was all she could do to keep from stepping nearer to closely examine his cuts and abrasions and whatever damage might be found beneath the bloodied rips in his sweat-stained tunic.
“I have but granted the favor you did not win,” he said. “Now leave us to it.”
“This is not my favor.”
“Leave us!”
As she continued to brave his gaze, she realized the anger there was likely as much for her gainsaying him as the humiliation of her having witnessed his loss of the saddle.
Drawing a deep breath, she turned away so he would not hear it shudder from her. Then, setting her gaze upon Durand, she stepped toward him.
“Helene!” Abel barked. “Lest you forget, ‘twas I who won the wager.”
She looked over her shoulder. “But I cannot be said to be alone with him, can I?”
As his face darkened further, she returned her attention to Durand and drew alongside his horse. “Why did you agree to this?”
He leaned down and said low, “I did it for you, the Wulfriths, and the friendship I so callously cast aside.”
“You should not have. Truly, I do not believe he is ready.”
“And I believe you are wrong. He is a Wulfrith.” He reached forward as if to give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but seemed to think better of it and returned his hand to the pommel of his saddle. “I am thinking you told him I kissed you.”
She nodded.
He sighed. “Worry not, I shall not kill him, though I believe he wishes to kill me. Now go.”
Helene stepped back and looked one last time at Abel who stood so erect and seething she could hardly believe he was the same man who had pressed his mouth to hers last eve. Setting her teeth, she turned and started back the way she had come. But this time she did not run and, throughout, kept her back to the men, not even glancing over her shoulder when she reached the top of the rise.
With the ring of Abel’s and Durand’s swords following her back to the castle, she finally stepped onto the drawbridge.
“Helene?”
She looked up at the captain of the guard where he stood on the wall above the gatehouse.
He raised his eyebrows in silent question, and she inclined her head in hopes it would serve as answer enough to whatever he asked. Then she passed into the outer bailey and determinedly turned her thoughts to the replenishment of her medicinals, for Abel would be much in need of salve when this day was done.
He had given her what she wanted—what was not hers to claim—and for it, she was angry. But surely no more than he, for it was her voice and appearance in the meadow that had caused him to suffer his greatest humiliation at Durand’s hands. Not that the knight was an unworthy opponent or had ever been, but from Abel’s greenest to his knighting and beyond, he had more often than not bested Durand. And to have been unhorsed by him—worse, in Helene’s presence!
Be proud, he heard his father speak one of many lessons that had formed Abel into a formidable knight, but not so much that pride raises your head to a height that offers the great vein in your neck to any passing sword.
What lesson had that been? Seven? Eight? Nay, it had come earlier, for as the youngest of three sons, he had ever been the last to attain the markers of manhood and, time and again, had to withstand comparisons to Garr and Everard. Thus, he had pushed himself to rival his brothers’ advanced abilities. But, as his father had warned, his failures could almost always be traced back to that intoxicating swell of pride.
Leg once more trembling from the strain of training, he halted feet from his chamber, gripped the staff tighter, and let his chin drop to his chest.
A moment later, he heard the sound of feet upon rushes and the rustle of skirts.
He jerked his head up, expecting and wanting it to be Helene, and met the wide-eyed gaze of a maid who crossed the threshold of his chamber, bedclothes overflowing her arms.
“Sir Knight!” she exclaimed.
He inclined his head. “When you are done with that, go to the kitchen and tell the healer that my injuries require tending.”
“She is not there.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“After she set out her medicinals and directed me to clean your chamber, she said she was going to the chapel.”
Likely to pray for patience in her dealings with him.
“You would have me fetch her, Sir Knight?”
“Nay, I shall do it myself.”
The maid glanced at the staff, the support of which would not be as greatly needed had he not spent two hours with Durand. Abel resented the attention paid it, as well as the words the girl did not speak in deference to his nobility.
“As you will,” she said with a bounce of her head, then hurried past.
Abel hesitated long enough to silently argue that he had far and away earned the comfort and rest afforded by his chamber, then he made his way to the chapel.
The door stood ajar and, when he opened it wider and stepped inside, he saw Helene faced him with her back to the altar where, doubtless, she had been at prayer before the thump of his staff had alerted her to his advance.
“I did not mean to interrupt,” he said, though that was not true. After all, this was his first visit to the chapel since his injury, and he had not come to pray but to speak with her. In the next moment, he nearly laughed, for it was not so long ago that he had taunted Christian Lavonne for not attending mass, concluding the baron had turned his back on God.
“Is there something you require?” she asked.
Of course she would know he had come for her, for the state of his garments and the odor wafting from him was hardly appropriate for setting one’s self at prayer. Indeed, it was disrespectful, perhaps even sacrilegious.
“When you are done here,” he said, “I am in need of your healer’s skills.” He started to turn away.
“What of prayer?”
As it had been for Baron Lavonne before he had wed Gaenor, Abel did not think he was yet ready to bow his head and submit. “I have fouled the Lord’s sanctuary enough as it is.”
“Do you think He minds?”
“’Tis hardly respectful to enter His house looking and smelling as I do.”
“Better you come foul than not at all.” She motioned to the place beside her. “There is room for you here.”
She wished him to join her at prayer? He was tempted, but it was wrong that the prospect of being at her
side should make his time with the Lord all the more appealing.
“Later,” he said and turned aside.
She let him go, and it was a half hour before she came to him. The good of it was that it allowed him time to remove much of the stench and grime by shedding his garments, cleansing his skin and the cuts gifted by Durand, and donning clean tunic and hose.
Upon entering his chamber, she faltered when she saw the chair did not hold him and, with what seemed dread, looked to the bed. The choice to lie down had not been made to cause her discomfort, but as she crossed to his side, Abel understood the wariness in her eyes that their intimacy of the night past gave her reason to feel.
He pushed up onto his elbows and shifted his legs to lower them to the floor.
“Stay,” she said. “I can as easily see to your injuries here.”
“You are certain?”
“Aye.” She halted alongside his shoulder and bent near to examine his face—so near he caught the scent of her beyond the whisper of herbs that wafted from her clothes and hands and hair. What was it, the smell he had first drawn into him that day in the wood when he had held her against a tree and wanted not to let her go?
“Hmm.” She shifted her gaze to his. “It does not appear as if any of Sir Durand’s victories will require stitches—at least, not those upon your face and neck.” She started to reach for the hem of his tunic, but he caught her wrist.
“Helene.”
Her shoulders moved with a slow, deep breath. “Abel?”
As on the night past, he stirred at hearing her speak his name unadorned, something that seemed nearly as intimate as a kiss—and considering the anger he had turned upon her in the meadow, encouraged him. “Such harsh words you did not deserve,” he said.
She briefly pressed her lips inward. “I thank you, and I pray you will forgive me for speaking what I should not have but, truly, I feared for you.” She shook her head. “If that is training, I do not know how so many boys live long enough to grow into men and be knighted.”
“’Tis that or never rise from a battlefield—ever the conquered, never the conqueror. Such is what my family’s reputation as trainers of boys into warriors is built upon. And what your own son, John, yearns for.”
Staring at Abel, Helene tamped down the temptation to pull out of his hold that would be easily enough accomplished since it was his right hand he had once more turned around her. If not that she herself knew John would take to the keen edge of a sword more readily than the stone-bitten edge of a plow and the sweat of ceaseless toil upon his brow, she would have protested. And it made her ache all the more for this man who had come to know her son so well.
Might he be the one to shape John’s future? If not, could she do it herself? Present him as Baron Lavonne’s nephew and ask her liege to provide the boy with opportunities to rise above the commoner’s life that was all John’s grandfather had bequeathed him?
“What is it, Helene?”
She tried to smile. “I am thinking of my son.”
“You miss him.”
“I do.” She gave a little shake of her head, then said, “Why did you do it, Abel? Why did you ask Sir Durand to practice with you though ’twas you who won the wager?”
He released her wrist and laid back. “As sleep was hard to come by on the night past—”
“You did not take your draught.”
“I did not and will not again, for no more will I be so addled that I am unable to rise from sleep should my life or the lives of others depend upon me being ready to draw a sword.”
Helene nodded. Though she would have advised him to continue with the draught another sennight to gain further benefit from the healing power of deep rest, she knew his mind was set on it.
As she turned to examining his torso, he said, “Last eve, in the hours ere I slept, I had much time in which to consider your wager. Though I am aggrieved to be in Sir Durand’s presence, it seemed the best solution, for who better to practice with than a Wulfrith-trained knight, and one whose skills not only push me to regain my own but whose transgressions provide all the more reason to best him?”
Having determined that the damage done by Durand’s blade was superficial though, more often than not, it would have proved deadly had the knight not heeded the depth of his sword strokes, Helene said, “Had I known what danger you face in this practice of yours, I would not have suggested it.”
“They are not wooden swords, Helene.”
Remembrance of John with his beloved “blade” fashioned by Abel rose to mind. “Certainly not,” she said and crossed to the table beside the chair to retrieve the tray she had earlier set there.
“I believe you will find that Sir Durand is not without his own share of injuries when you tend him,” Abel said, then added, “along with the others who require your services, of course.”
A reminder that she was not to be alone with the knight. Thus, Helene was not as gentle in applying her salves as usual and was grateful for the silence that fell between them, during which Abel’s lids lowered.
Quietly, she stoppered her pots, but as she bent to lift the tray, Abel said, “Bear with me, Helene.”
She looked across her shoulder and found him watching her.
“I am but trying to get where I am going faster, to make up for time lost to anger and brooding so I might all the sooner defend those who entrust themselves to me.”
Though she longed to ask if she and her son would truly be given the opportunity to entrust themselves to him, she said, “You forget that there is also a place for those you would defend to defend themselves.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you truly believe you are capable of protecting yourself and John should you ever again face what you did with that knave, Sir Robert?”
She drew herself up to her full height. “Certes, better than before.”
“With that dagger you conceal beneath your skirts?”
She did not care for his tone. “’Tis no small thing, and its edge is most keen.”
He sat up and dropped his feet to the floor. “The better to gut you if you do not know how to use it. Do you?”
How she wished she could claim proficiency, but the comfort provided by the weapon was almost wholly dependent on the threat it would present should she be forced to draw it.
“It is not enough to flash a blade before one intent on doing you harm, Helene,” Abel said as if he peered into her thoughts. “As I told you that first day you went alone to the wood with Sir Durand, the dagger can be taken from you, and then you are no better than if you carried no weapon, mayhap worse if your assailant takes it and turns it on you.”
She drew a deep breath. “Still, it is a chance I would not otherwise have.”
He put out his left hand, palm up. “Lend me your dagger.”
“For what?”
“As you are in need of instruction, it falls to me to give it.”
She took a step back. “I do not see how that is so.”
Annoyance sped across his brow. “You think Sir Durand more capable?”
“I do not. ’Tis just that—”
“Helene.” He reached nearer her.
She opened her mouth to argue but promptly closed it. He was right. Even if she could bring herself to draw it in self defense, she knew not the first thing about how to use it against another person. “Very well,” she said and closed her hand around the meat dagger’s hilt.
“Nay. I would have the one beneath your skirts.”
Again she longed to refuse, and again she yielded. Though it was no difficult thing to remove the dagger from the sheath strapped to her lower leg—she had made certain of that—neither was it easy with her skirts hitched up to her knees and Abel’s eyes upon her.
She dropped the hem and, blade pointed toward the floor, extended the dagger.
He did not take it but returned his gaze to her face that discomfort had warmed to what she was certain must be quite the shade of red. “Were you a knight in trai
ning,” he said, “that is one of the ways I would instruct you to draw a dagger but, in your case, methinks a forward grip would serve you better.”
She frowned. “I know not the difference.”
He jutted his chin at the weapon. “A reverse grip such as that is best for thrusting strokes, especially when the intent is to penetrate chain mail. Unfortunately, such a stroke can easily be blocked by an arm or another weapon. A forward grip, however…” He leaned toward her and cupped one hand around hers on the hilt and, with the other, turned the dagger so that the blade, rather than the pommel, protruded from thumb and forefinger. “This gives your blade better reach, providing more distance between you and your opponent.”
Only when he withdrew his touch did his words arrange themselves in such a way as to make sense—of sorts. “But just a bit more distance,” she noted.
“Aye, but that bit can mean the difference between life and death. Now sit beside me.”
On the bed…
“Instruction in arms only, Helene,” he read her again.
Hating how timid she must seem, she stepped forward and lowered to the mattress edge, leaving a good foot between them.
“May I?” He nodded at the dagger.
As she relinquished it, her fingers again knew the touch of his and once more her face warmed.
While he examined the dagger tip to hilt, she braced herself for his pronouncement. After all, it had been forged for a commoner—her husband, Willem—and there was no beauty about it. Indeed, it was near ugly. But it was sharp.
“The blade is dull,” Abel said.
“Of course it is not! I have cut rope with it.”
“Only with much effort, I wager.” He set his thumb to its edge and slid it down the blade. “One should not have to press hard for it to cut.” He pulled his hand away and showed there was not even a scratch.
She shrugged. “It can be sharpened.”
“It can, but see the hilt.” He opened his fingers to reveal the wooden piece that was crudely wrapped with strips of leather. “It comes away from the tang of the blade. Should you require the dagger to do more than serve as a threat, it may break free and leave you weaponless.”