The Warrior and the Dove - A Short Novel (Medieval Chronicles)

by Julia Byrne

  “Ohhhh.” Unbidden, tears sprang to her eyes. Her heart, already trembling on the brink of something hidden, slipped over the edge before she realized what had happened. “Oh, my lord, what girl would not…I mean… If things were different…”

  At her first words something fierce flashed in his eyes. She quivered in response and knew he felt it, but she wrenched her gaze from his, determined to finish.

  “But how can I marry you when I remember nothing about my life? For all I know, I have a husband already.”

  He released her hands, rose and resumed his seat beside her. “Martin told me your memory is gone, but I’m sure of one thing, sweet girl. You are not married.”

  “You cannot know that,” she said, frowning at his certainty.

  He reached out and touched his fingers to her brow, smoothing the frown away. Then lifted her chin on the edge of his hand. “I do know it. Your innocence shines from your eyes.”

  “But I could be betrothed,” she breathed, wondering that she could still breathe. He was so close she could see the green and gold striations in his hazel eyes. She could gaze into those eyes for the rest of her life, she thought, and still not fathom this warrior who touched her so gently. Herleve had been right; this was a man who kept his own counsel, whose emotions were buried deep. She felt a sudden yearning to bring light to those depths, to touch his soul.

  “Betrothals can be broken,” he said. He lowered his gaze to her lips, before releasing her. “Indeed, ’tis possible you were running from a contract into which you were being forced. I can think of no other reason why you would be out in the world alone. Unless you were escaping from captivity of some sort.”

  “I have thought of that, too,” she said on a sigh. She sat back, unconsciously rubbing the scraped patch on one of her hands. “But thinking is not knowing.”

  He glanced down, captured her hand, and turned it over. The healing abrasions on her palm had him frowning. “What have you done here?”

  “Oh.” She followed his gaze, feeling foolish. “I fell out of bed.”

  “You fell out of bed?” he repeated, both amused and incredulous. He seized her other hand and turned it over. “And crawled around on the floor?”

  “I have bad dreams,” she confessed gruffly.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Very gently he passed his arm around her waist and drew her closer until her hands came up to rest against his chest in an instinctive movement that could have been protest or uncertainty, she wasn’t sure which. His lashes were lowered, shielding the expression in his eyes, but she knew he was gazing at her mouth. Something quivered again deep inside her, anticipation and nervousness combined.

  When he stroked his thumb over her lips she parted them on a tiny gasp as a frisson of excitement rippled through her. And as soon as she looked up in question, he bent his head and touched his mouth to hers. Only for a moment. The most shatteringly sweet moment of her life. She didn’t need her memory to know she had never felt like this. As if something soft and yielding had stirred to life within her.

  She blinked up at him when he drew back a little. He looked very serious, she thought, very intent. She could feel his heart beating hard against her palm, and there was something leashed about him, an unyielding tension in his face and in the arm across her back.

  “I’ll banish those dreams for you,” he said very low. “Marry me. Give me the right to care for you, to protect you.”

  The magic was doused in an instant.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  For a moment longer he held her gaze, as though he would compel her by sheer force of will. She felt the unrelenting purpose she had seen in him yesterday, surging against her small protest like an incoming tide, before he put her gently from him and rose to pace over to the window.

  “Then I’ll have to come up with a reason to change your mind,” he said, propping himself against the window ledge. His fingers flexed once around the wood on either side of his hips. “Because I do not intend to return to my lands without you.”

  “Oh?” she said, the spirit he’d just mentioned raising its head. She might want to go with him with all her heart, but she would not be carried off if she didn’t think it right. “You can hardly stay here until my memory returns.”

  “Then we’d better see what we can do to bring it back,” he retorted. And grinned briefly at the doubtful look she gave him.

  There was something ruthless about that quick, predatory grin, she decided. The hunter in him had been roused. He would track down her missing memory as he would a precious heirloom that had been stolen from him. And not rest until he found it.

  “Come,” he said, holding out an imperative hand. “We’ll find Martin and Herleve and see what we can come up with together.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later they were all sitting around the kitchen table, sampling Herleve’s honeyed pears while Martin told them a humorous tale about a customer who had changed his mind three times in a day about the fletching of his arrows.

  Annith wasn’t listening. She was too quiet, Hugh decided, but he had wanted her to have this small space before he started questioning her. And, if he was honest with himself, he needed to have other people around them for a while. One tiny taste of that soft mouth had had all his senses straining at the leash for more. But he wanted to gentle her to his touch, give her time to grow used to him.

  He’d managed to surprise himself with that ambition. With other women he’d made sure they were pleasured, but he hadn’t wasted time in lengthy pursuit. He had expected little difference when it came to his future wife. Marriage was a business. It had to do with acquiring lands, wealth, and advantageous connections. Most girls of gentle birth were aware of that fact. They expected to submit to a husband’s demands, bear his children, and run his household in an efficient manner.

  With Annith everything had been turned on its head. As far as anyone knew, she had no lands, she brought him no dowry, and she hadn’t even seemed to notice his interest in her until he’d walked into the solar this morning. Such complete and utter innocence had tethered him as nothing else could. But then she had trembled in his arms and he’d had to put the width of the small room between them until he was sure of his control.

  And that control was still teetering on the brink, he realized, when he looked across at Annith in time to see her lick a drop of pear juice from her finger with a delicate swipe of her tongue. He closed his eyes, but it was too late. His body was already hardening to the imagined caress of that little tongue.

  It was past time to think of something else.

  He caught Martin’s eye and the fletcher nodded. “Where do you want to start, my lord?”

  “With what we know.”

  Annith looked up. “That isn’t much.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “For a start, we know there are nuns involved. Remember when I remarked on your piety yesterday? ‘I doubt the nuns at—’ you said, and added they would stare to hear you were pious; which makes me think you’ve spent enough time in a cloister for the sisters to know you well. You may even have been reared in one.”

  “Oh!” she said, startled. Then, on a note of discovery, “Aye. I do remember a nun…Sister Margaret.” Her face lit with delight, but an instant later clouded over again.

  “Don’t try to force it. We’ll put the theory to the test. If you were raised in the cloister ’tis likely you were taught to read.” At his signal, Martin got up and went into the shop. He came back with a piece of vellum and handed it over. Hugh glanced at it then placed the sheet in front of Annith.

  She looked down. “I can read!” she exclaimed, and leaned closer. “I think you’ve been over-charged for these feathers, Martin. Grey geese are not rarities.”

  Hugh smothered a shout of laughter as Martin’s jaw dropped.

  “And I can write and figure, as well,” Annith said. “I was in a convent. I was taken there as a small child, and—”

  The words came to an ab
rupt halt. She pushed the vellum toward Martin with a sigh. He smiled and patted her hand encouragingly.

  “Could they have brought pressure to bear on you to become a novice against your will?” Herleve asked. “Was that why you fled? If indeed you did.”

  “I don’t feel ’twas so,” she answered uncertainly.

  “I doubt you ran from your convent,” Hugh said. “Martin told me you were in boy’s clothes, and you certainly didn’t get those in a cloister. Do you remember a journey, or—”

  She drew in a sharp breath, staring at him.

  “Close your eyes,” he said softly. “Think about a journey.” When her lashes lowered, he asked, “Are you riding?”

  “Nay, walking, running. All last night…today…” Her voice took on a dreamy note as though she spoke only to herself. “’Tis farther than I thought—on foot.”

  He was about to ask where she’d started from, when her lips parted. The almost silent whisper that emerged raised the hair at his nape.

  “Stay away from the roads.”

  Hugh held his breath. He had the feeling that Herleve and Martin were doing likewise.

  “So many leaves falling,” she murmured. “Winter will be early this year.” She frowned. “There’s another road. I think I have to cross it.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “To go north. Don’t wait for nightfall. I need to find somewhere to sleep. A barn, or…”

  He exchanged a grim look with Martin. “Are you alone?”

  “Aye. Nay!” Her eyes flew open and she jerked back on her stool. “Nay. There were boys coming along the road. I hadn’t heard them until then. They saw me and waved. I thought it best to stand. If I’d run—”

  Hugh shoved to his feet so violently his stool fell backward with a crash. He saw Herleve give a startled jump, but, thankfully, she remained silent.

  “What happened?” he ground out, forcing himself to stillness. The only thing stopping him from seizing Annith and dragging her across the table into his arms was the quick fear on her face when he’d moved. But it was gone in a flash, and her gaze clung to his as if he was the only anchor in her world.

  “I remember,” she whispered. “They greeted me as they would a friend. They thought I’d come from some manor to join them. They were boisterous and worked up about something, but I wasn’t afraid. I kept my hood well forward and made my voice gruff, and they were too intent on reaching their goal to bother about one not familiar to all. I think they assumed if one group didn’t know me, another would.”

  Somehow Hugh managed to keep his voice level. He knew, now. Knew what was coming and dreaded it. “And then?”

  “More boys joined us along the way.” Her gaze turned inward as memory returned. “I tried to stay on the edge of the crowd, hoping to slip into the forest unnoticed. But before I had a chance, we came to a field, and men were there with horses. One man kept riding up and down, shouting and getting the boys more excited. Nay, not excited, they were angry now. Then he motioned to everyone to follow him, but before we went more than a few yards, men on horseback charged at us from the trees.”

  Hugh closed his eyes. His hands were gripping the edge of the table so hard he wondered the wood didn’t splinter. He had led that charge. Never mind that as soon as he’d seen who they were closing with, he’d signaled his mounted knights to veer off toward Corbel’s horsemen, while his foot soldiers engaged the youths. For some of those boys it had been too late.

  “I tried to get away, but someone struck me,” she went on. “I remember falling and being unable to move.”

  “Holy Mother Mary,” Herleve breathed. “But, child, you must have managed to get away from the battle. Martin found you in the forest.”

  “Aye.” She shivered. “I woke up and couldn’t move. I could barely breathe because I was face down in the grass, and— Oh! Mayhap that’s what brings on my dreams,” she exclaimed. “I tried to get up and couldn’t, and then I realized I was beneath two boys. They must have fallen when I did. Fallen dead, or senseless,” she added, as though taking care to be accurate. “The fighting had moved off a little way by then and I managed to free myself. I wasn’t sure if I could stand. Everything was dark and hazy and the ground kept tilting beneath me, so I crawled into the forest as far as I could go.”

  She looked at each of them in turn. “That’s all I know,” she said with devastating simplicity, “until I woke up here.”

  Hugh couldn’t be still a moment longer. Every possible disaster that could have befallen her was running through his mind in hideous detail. He was never going to forget her story as long as he lived. She could have been killed.

  Unclenching his hands from the table, he strode around to the other side, seized Annith by the wrist and hauled her off her stool.

  “We’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Martin and Herleve. And towed her after him into the shop.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Annith only had time for a small startled squeak, before the door closed behind them and she was in his arms.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, when she stiffened instinctively, her hands braced against his chest. “I need to hold you. When I think about what might have happened—” He broke off, pulling her closer. “I need to know that you’re safe, that you’re here, warm and alive, mine.”

  She barely heard him in her struggle to control her reeling senses. She had never been held by a man before in her life. She certainly didn’t remember this feeling of being uncomfortably crushed.

  And if she had ever imagined such an embrace, she didn’t think this was what she’d had in mind.

  She tried an experimental wriggle.

  Hugh raised his head and looked down at her. “What—?”

  “I can’t move.”

  To her relief, some of the tension left his face and he smiled. His hold loosened a little. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  “Oh.” Carefully she shifted her hands to his shoulders. The power she felt there had her fingers flexing in tentative, delighted discovery, before she wound her arms about his neck. She had to stand on tiptoe to do it. The position immediately brought her body against his.

  Her lips parted on a sigh of pure pleasure and her eyes half-closed as she savored the male heat and strength that supported her.

  “You, sweet innocent, are going to drive me right over the edge,” he muttered.

  “’Twas you who seized me,” she protested, looking up at him. Then sighed. “But embracing like this feels far too pleasurable to be permitted, so you’d better let me go. The nuns were forever telling us that we must stay untouched, and we seem to be touching in a lot of places.”

  “You can rid your mind of what the nuns said,” he ordered, but now his voice was unbelievably tender. “Between husband and wife anything that gives pleasure is allowed.”

  “But we’re not—”

  “Not yet, but we will be husband and wife. You have to marry me, or I’ll never have a moment’s peace wondering whether you’re running about the country getting into God knows what sort of trouble.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “That, my lord, is not fair.”

  “I know, but right now I can’t think of anything else to convince you.”

  She laughed a little at that, although it was a struggle to keep a wistful note out of the small sound. “But I haven’t remembered everything. I still don’t know who I am or where I came from. Or if I’m already married,” she finished forlornly, letting her brow rest against his shoulder.

  “If you aren’t a virgin, little maid, I swear I will change my sword for a monk’s habit.”

  “And if I am not a maid, I will don a nun’s robe,” she murmured.

  She didn’t have time to realize the meaning behind those unguarded words. Hugh tilted her face up to his with one hand and brought his mouth down on hers.

  All the strength left her legs. A tide of sweet hot pleasure took its place. His mouth was hard and demanding, his arms iron bands holding he
r locked against him. She felt the touch of his tongue and parted her lips without thought. And with a low growl deep in his throat that set every nerve quivering, he was tasting her, enticing her to respond with gentle forays of his tongue, and all she could do was go limp against him, while she trembled in response to the intense sensations winging through her body.

  When he finally lifted his head, she thought she would feel the force of that kiss forever, through her entire body, as if he had marked her as his.

  “I don’t think either of us need worry about taking holy vows,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “Except those we exchange before a priest.”

  He was relentless. How could she make any decisions when she was still shaking with desires and needs she had never felt before? And what of him? Would a man marry a woman he knew nothing about merely because she was running from something? Was it only gallantry on his part?

  “How can I answer you?” she asked, trying to put her confusion into words. “All this is beyond my knowledge. I don’t know why you would want to do this for me?”

  “I know you don’t understand,” he murmured. “But you’ll know more of me after we’re married. You just need to trust that I’ll never hurt you.”

  She did know that, Annith thought. She did trust him not to hurt her physically, but he was asking her to put her entire trust in him, and from some ancient well of feminine wisdom came a nudge toward caution. She sensed there might be a different risk involved here, something she couldn’t name.

  Before she could try to explain, Hugh bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. “We had best return to Martin and Herleve,” he said, releasing her and taking her hand. “They’ll be wondering what’s happened to us.”

  How could he be so calm after that kiss, Annith wondered, as she followed Hugh into the kitchen. She still felt shaken, utterly overwhelmed. And yet…from the moment he had taken her in his arms, she had also felt cherished.