by Nicole Locke
‘You could have just told me about the salve, and set it down.’ She burned to feel a blush. Burned with embarrassment that he saw her scars and her disfigurement.
Why didn’t she have any modesty or at least the ability to feign it? If she did, she would have covered herself the moment he appeared.
‘I could have.’ His lips curved. Teasing. When he did this, he was all light with no shadows fleeting in the amber depths of his eyes. ‘Would it help to know I thought you still covered?’
No, not when he hinted another reason why he came around the shrubbery. To catch a glimpse of her. What she couldn’t understand, even with his words of yesterday, was why. Why would he want to see the horror that was her? ‘I think you’re mocking me again.’
‘I believe I’m mocking myself.’
‘How am I to believe that while I stand in front of you half...half-naked?’
‘Easily.’ His head tilted as if he wanted to see her from another angle. But he kept his eyes with hers and never once did he lower them, which was at least some courtesy, but he didn’t walk away.
She kept the cloth wrapped around her. ‘You’re a strange man, staying and carrying on a conversation like we are in some Great Hall, when you caught me bathing and I’m struggling to cover myself.’
‘I see nothing strange with what I do. All I see is how I’m failing every resolve I’ve ever made with you.’
‘Is it possible at all for you to give me privacy?’
‘I don’t think so. Not the way you are now.’ He adjusted his stance. ‘You’ve accomplished covering your scars, Helissent, I can only see the few on your neck, along your cheek, but hardly any others.’
She meant to cover her scars, she didn’t mean for him, for anyone, to see them in the bright light of the dawning day. Her scars were paler now than they were after the fire. She was used to them, but she knew others wouldn’t be. He couldn’t possibly be.
‘Do you need help applying the salve?’
She did, but the way he looked in her eyes, she didn’t think she could stand him applying any to her back. She shook her head.
‘No? I’m here to apply it.’
‘You are mocking me!’ She tightened the towel even more.
Rhain let out a hiss and closed his eyes. ‘Then please, Helissent, if I can’t use words to alleviate this...between you and me. You need to dress. Quickly, I think.’
‘Are there others coming?’
Opening his eyes, he let out a pained laugh. ‘You’re torturing me. There’s only me. But I am a man like any other and I’m trying to remain honorable.’
She understood what was wrong before, but now she held the towel. Now she feigned modesty at least. ‘What’s wrong?’
He sighed raggedly like he was in great pain. ‘Your scars are hidden from my eyes and most of the bounty of your chest since you clutch that towel. But the towel is not that generous.’
Gasping, she stepped back and scanned her body. Her breasts and her entire burned right side were covered, but by clutching the towel, she exposed all of her legs and the juncture between her thighs.
She couldn’t even feign modesty correctly.
Uncaring if there were eyes behind her she unfurled the towel to her front. ‘Go hide behind the trees!’ She might not care that he saw her, but he didn’t need further glances at her scars and she didn’t need to hear his mocking words.
Words that warmed her, that filled her with more longing. They hurt since she didn’t deserve it.
‘Nicholas was right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’m capable of staying away.’
It was the pained tone to his voice that suddenly riveted her. No mockery and a rasp to his voice that made her shiver.
It was the way his chest stilled as if he held his breath, then inhaled like he was trying to catch it again.
It was the way his amber eyes heated and his lids lowered as his lips parted. A softness that she wanted to call slumber, but felt much, much heavier.
The longer she stared right back, the heavier it felt to her until she couldn’t deny it. Didn’t want to.
Not when he stepped forward again. Close enough to feel the heat of him, to catch the scent of leather, of warmed sunshine, the scent that was uniquely his.
All of it reminding her of them together in the darkness of her home. When he’d leaned over her as she clutched her chemise to her chest. There, she hadn’t shown him her scars. Here, he saw almost all of them. She searched his eyes, trying to find the difference and seeing none. Could it be he wasn’t mocking her?
‘What are your thoughts?’ he whispered.
‘This is like then, isn’t it? After Rudd when you—’ she said.
His eyes dimmed as he stepped back. ‘After you were hurt, you mean. This is different than then. I could hurt you far worse than those men.’ He pointed behind him. ‘I’ll be beyond the trees. Let me know when you’re clothed.’
He turned to go.
‘Rhain,’ she said.
He looked over his shoulder, a curve to his lips, a brittle glint of light to his gaze. ‘Do you want me to look, Helissent? I would be more than happy to look.’
This was mockery, an edge to his teasing. It hurt.
She turned her back to him and hastily applied the salve before pulling on the dry fine chemise that wasn’t her own, but fit all the same. He wasn’t going to look to see and she couldn’t comprehend why she suddenly felt like showing him. She was damaged. Scarred.
She had barely got her gown over her head, when he reappeared.
‘I thought I was to call you when I was done.’
‘And I knew you were done enough.’
Heat suffused her body, but none to the surface of her skin. The only way he could have known she was dressed was if he’d watched her.
‘Your expression, Helissent. Wonder and pique. I wonder which is the truth.’
Finished tying her gown, she said, ‘What do you think?’
‘I think too many thoughts. When it comes to you, my curiosity burns bright. Like now, I wonder why I can’t make you blush.’ His eyes roved over her. ‘You make me blush.’
She wished she could, then the heat suffusing her body would surface to her skin. Instead, it roiled inside her.
‘You’ve seen me and you wish to talk of my lack of blushing?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s other matters we could be talking about, other actions that require no words at all.’
Teasing again, but his voice was laced with something deeper. She quickly tied her hose and pulled on her boots.
After wringing her hair, she picked up her worn chemise. It was damp, but dry enough to carry.
Rhain strode closer, watching Helissent’s wonder and pique increase. But it was the other flickering emotions that beckoned and tempted him.
For days he’d been plagued with awareness, days he’d wondered how it would feel to touch her again, to truly kiss her. Days wondering if she felt the same. Now it was all confirmed.
He shouldn’t have looked. A knight wouldn’t, a nobleman certainly not. His coming around the shrubbery was an accident, but he was also a dead man and maybe he was allowed some hedonistic pleasures...like her cakes dripping in honey and a glimpse of a body he’d wondered about since he wrapped her in his torn tunic.
She was as beautiful as he suspected. Long lines, the curve of her breasts, the sharp indent of her waist accentuating the feminine curves of her hips.
Her skin was pearlescent and feathered in places with light pink scars. Except along her torso. There, the scars were grooves of dark red, like claws had ravaged her.
The fact she carried them made him want her all the more. His first and only instinct was to pull her into his arms and kiss her by the bank. She was covered now and it didn
’t matter at all. He’d seen her.
Then to make it all worse...she didn’t flush, didn’t look embarrassed. Her eyes held steady with his and it called to his curiosity. ‘I’m trying to guess why you’re not shy.’
She tilted her chin up. ‘The flames took more than my appearance from me. They also took my modesty.’
She truly didn’t see her scars the way he did. His curiosity, his need to know her, now acute. His need to hold her almost unfathomable. Instead, he said, ‘Tell me.’
She shook her skirts out. ‘It’s simple. I couldn’t wear clothes. Then when I could, it took the healer months of encouraging me to get in the habit of wearing them even when winter came.’
‘Were you as stubborn then as you are now?’
‘More so.’
‘Did you not go outside?’
‘Not for a year.’ She lifted a shoulder. ‘It wasn’t all dire. Agnes’s home was in the woods, away from the village and against some small caves. They were not extensive, but they allowed me room to grow when my skin was too sensitive in the sun.’
But all in the dark. He remembered his own childhood out in the gardens with his mother, then the lists in Edward’s court. He could not remember a time without sun and yet this woman had lived without it for almost a year.
How much pain she must have suffered to remain inside for a year. He wanted to ask many more questions. No, he wanted to ask only one. How did she find the strength to go from the dark to the fire again? Instead, they quietly walked along the banks of the stream towards the camp.
It wasn’t the inconvenience of the approaching camp and his men stifling his questions and curiosity. He was concerned how much more he could withstand. What if she told him more of her childhood and of her trials at the inn?
His desire only increased the more he knew. The tightening of his body when he was near her was almost incessant now. Her tale of her childhood made him want to snarl and snap and comfort. He battled from knowing about her to wanting to know her in the Biblical sense of the word.
Aware that they walked in a silence too laden to bear, he forced his conversation to something lighter.
‘You intrigue me, Helissent of nowhere. I still could not describe the color of your hair, or your eyes. You lived in darkness most of your life, yet you are not scared of the light. What do you want when you get to York?’
* * *
She dreamed of how her food and cakes would be revered. How she could make enough money to have an inn of her own. ‘I just need to find some work and a place to live.’
Helissent didn’t know if it was easier to tell of dreams or of her past. All she knew was, though she didn’t know where this conversation was going, it was changing something inside her. She was dreaming now. That, somehow, he was changing her with his kind words and studying gaze.
He was like no one she had ever met and he treated her like she was a favored spice instead of some hideous beast.
The innkeepers had been kind, but always protective. Always aware she was damaged. Even travelers, those that didn’t back away in horror, treated her this way.
When she first returned to the village the regulars stopped touching her. She was young, but there were no more comforting hugs, or pats on the arm. Fearful they would hurt her, they kept their distance. It hurt.
Only the innkeepers’ love had kept her strong. Yet with Rhain and his kindness, nothing hurt. She was forgetting her scars. ‘They don’t bother you. My scars, they don’t...affect you.’
She was just starting to realize and didn’t think it was possible. She had to be wrong.
But the mercenaries didn’t act the way the people at the inn did either. Her demands to travel with them didn’t raise a brow.
Was it because they were mercenaries and the less questions they had for her the less she would have for them?
That had certainly been part of her reasoning when she decided to travel with them from her village. After all, she never thought of requesting passage from other travelers.
But she now thought it could be something else. Maybe she decided to travel with them because they had scars and burns from previous battles and fights, and hers were no more or less.
From their perspective, she was beginning to see the fire this way: as a past battle or fight she had survived.
Not from everything, there was too much the fire had taken from her, too much she gave to it when she’d remained with her sister. But this, even if she was accepted for her appearance, this thought felt like relief...or freedom.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she said, stronger this time.
He started to walk away as if to escape, but she wouldn’t let him. She felt a clamouring inside her that was difficult to maintain. Maybe she didn’t have any modesty and didn’t know how to be embarrassed when it came to her body. But right now, she’d use that to her advantage. Because this advantage felt something like happiness.
‘Please,’ she said and he stopped.
He was beautiful. Everything about him powerful and golden like the purest of oven fires. Everything about him wholly opposite of her, but though she didn’t quite believe she deserved him, Rhain looked at her like she did. He looked like he was incapable of looking away.
‘They bother me—’ his smile uneven ‘—but not in the way you mean and not in any way I should tell you.’
‘Why shouldn’t you? Because of some enemy?’
‘A man who will soon kill me should never be disregarded and I’d rather talk of more pleasant matters. Like your childhood.’
No teasing or mockery, but he again was trying to change the subject. This time, she let him. ‘That’s pleasant?’
‘Fair enough. How about something happy then.’
She didn’t know why her scars bothered him in a way she hadn’t meant, but she wouldn’t get an answer from him now. She tried to think of other facets of her childhood, but it all came back to the scars. Instead she said, ‘Do you have any happy memories?’
His jaw tightened before he answered, ‘I had the gardens. I had forgotten that until you reminded me.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Nothing that was remarkable for anyone in my station. My brother is a Marcher Lord in Wales; I grew up with privileges. When it came time, I squired at King Edward’s court, then I returned to Wales.’
But something had happened between the time he’d returned to Gwalchdu in Wales and now; he’d changed. She knew it was then when he shrouded himself in shadows.
‘How did you go from Gwalchdu to now?’
His mouth quirked. ‘You mean how did I go from being the second son of a Marcher Lord to a mercenary? Someone who roams instead of living off the fat of the land?’
They continued to meander, far from the camp and the place she swam. But she didn’t care. She wanted this time with him. Wanted to watch the graceful way he weaved around the trees.
He was deep in thought now. Remembering, maybe. Most likely contemplating how to edit the telling of his life. But her disappointment was softened while watching him because as he thought, he again caressed his dagger’s hilt.
It had the same effect on her. The familiar heat that started with the brush of his hand along his pommel only increased until it flared throughout her body.
This time, in the seclusion of the woods, away from any distractions, it felt faster, deeper...
This time, he caught her watching. She had slowed her pace and perhaps in concern he turned around. Whatever he saw in her expression made him raise one brow. Defiant again.
She didn’t know what she looked like. Too stunned, too affected and breathless to move. Too naive to cover what must be embarrassment in the twitch to her mouth or the blinking of her eyes.
Though why she was embarrassed she didn’t know. He couldn’t
see the heat that was flaring through her body, or the prickling across her skin.
But she couldn’t hide her breath coming in a little too shakily. How it worsened when his gaze locked with hers and more so when his eyes lowered a bit and held before they swung away to the trees again.
Her breath stopped at that moment; everything in her stopped when he looked at her lips. Looked at them as if he studied them as intently as he did her eyes. As if the answer to whatever was puzzling him was entwined between her eyes and lips.
He continued to walk, his hands seemingly restless now. He seemed restless. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Despite how it sounds, it’s actually been quite beneficial for me.’ His voice was low, husky, the only manifestation of whatever had occurred between them.
‘For the last five years as a mercenary, I’ve travelled to Spain, France, Belgium. It’s how I met the men you know today, or rather they met me. I also felt sun much warmer than the clime here and tasted foods much spicier.’
He spoke of a life she could only dream of. Travelling and eating different foods. But she was curious about the friendships he’d formed as well.
‘How do mercenaries work?’
He shrugged one shoulder. ‘Not like ours. Most troops are hastily and poorly formed. Some are gathered from dungeons where the men don’t have a choice between one kind of death or another. Other times it’s villagers too poor to appreciate that farmers can’t compete against trained warriors.’
She swallowed, not sure she wanted to know all the ways Rhain risked his life. ‘And yours?’
‘All trained, all highly selective. Sometimes it only takes our arrival to end a border dispute or an unjust siege. We’re paid handsomely all the same.’
‘So you haven’t always fought,’ she said.
‘There’s more to it than riding the horses and protecting borders.’ His voice warmed to his subject. ‘I’ve heard interesting things along the way. Corruption where there should only be innocence, betrayal where there should only be love. And treasures—no, legends—I thought were only childish games, but that actually may be true...’ He paused. ‘I always meant to follow up with that one.