by Tamara Leigh
“Good,” Christophe said when she finished. “Now cool him as Theta did.”
She placed the basin of water on the floor beside her, wet the cloth, and worked it from Maxen’s moist brow down to his neck.
As she raised his undertunic higher, Christophe stoppered the bottle from which he had emptied powder into the wine Theta had brought and said, “When he awakens, have him drink this.”
“I will give it to him,” she said, silently adding that this time there would be a different outcome to her offering drink to Maxen.
Christophe gathered up his things. “I will return ere dark. Send for me if he worsens.”
Though she preferred he remain until she finished swabbing his brother, she knew he was needed elsewhere. “I shall,” she said.
He crossed to the screen and paused. “Rhiannyn?”
She looked up.
“I had naught to do with Maxen’s plans to follow you to Edwin’s camp,” he blurted. “You believe me, do you not?”
“Of course I do.”
His features relaxed, and he departed.
Rhiannyn rewetted the cloth and drew it down Maxen’s chest to his abdomen above the waistband of his braies. Next, she moved to the end of the bed, turned up the coverlet, and cooled his feet and lower legs.
It was strange to willingly touch The Bloodlust Warrior of Hastings, to learn his body in a way few but lovers would ever know it. But it was necessary. So necessary.
Later, when he rose to partial consciousness, she offered the wine, bracing herself should he attempt to test it the same as he had done that morn. But he was too delirious and eagerly drank as she held the rim to his lips.
“I burn,” he breathed as he settled back to his pillow.
The water in the basin was no longer chilled, but Rhiannyn wet a cloth and laid it on his brow. “Try to sleep.”
As she started to straighten, he reached to her and placed his palm against her cheek. “Angel,” he rasped. “Stay.”
Though she knew the words were formed by an incoherent mind, her hope was furthered that he might, indeed, be reachable. “I will not leave you,” she said. “Now, sleep.”
He closed his eyes, trailed his fingers down her neck to the V of her bliaut, and dropped his arm to his side.
Rhiannyn stepped back and rubbed her hands over her arms.
Cold is what I am, she told herself. Only cold.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The days fell one over the other, Maxen’s illness taking him into an unconsciousness so deep he could not know who assisted Christophe in the cleansing and bandaging of his wound; who cooled his body and wet his parched mouth; who slept lightly beside his bed during the long nights; who coaxed him from dreams in which he called out to Nils; who by sight and touch became familiar with nearly every span of his battle-battered flesh.
He did not know, but others knew it was Rhiannyn who refused him the peace of death, though it often seemed the best end for him. Those who came and went—Christophe, Sir Guy, servants bearing viands, and occasionally Sir Ancel—cast their curiosity upon her. And the eyes with which Sir Guy watched her lost much of their condemnation.
On the fifth day, as night began to give unto morn, Rhiannyn awakened, though what had roused her she could not have said.
“Maxen?” She rose from her pallet alongside the bed and touched his arm. His skin was frighteningly cold.
“Ah, nay,” she whispered, but before the cry rising up her throat passed her lips, his body shook and he groaned.
It was not death come for him. Not yet.
Praying his chill was caused by the sudden breaking of his fever, she looked near upon his shadowed face. “Maxen?”
“Cold,” he said and threw out a hand to retrieve the coverlet he had earlier kicked off.
“I have it.” She reached to the foot of the bed, untangled it from his legs, and pulled it up over him. As she tucked it around him, he shook again, and with more violence.
She snatched up her own blanket and spread it over him, but it was not enough, and there were no more covers to provide the warmth he needed.
There is you, whispered a voice that roused childhood memories of the bitingly cold nights she and her brothers had crept off their pallets to share their mother and father’s bed. The warmth of body cradling body had been unequalled by fire or blanket.
Of course, she could call for more covering, but it would awaken many. And was there not a better solution at hand? Though she would not begin to consider such intimacy were Maxen not so ill, she lifted the covers and, chain rattling, slid in beside him.
With an answering rattle, he turned onto his side, curved an arm around her waist, and drew her back against him.
She held her breath as the manacle on his wrist pressed into her abdomen and he fit his muscled contours to her softer ones. It was almost too much, this embrace made for lovers, but she would give him what he needed.
Slowly emptying her lungs, she tried to relax, but it was impossible with chills continuing to rack him.
When he finally stilled, the only movement his breath stirring the hair at her crown and the thump of his heart against her back, she told her fingers to unclench, her jaw to loosen, her back to unbind. As much as possible, they complied, and she closed her eyes and prayed for sleep to take her far from the disturbing feel of him.
But not the grave of my dreams, she silently beseeched. Not that far.
“I thank you,” Maxen murmured.
His gratitude surprised her as much as his wakefulness. Though she told herself he spoke out of muddled thoughts, without knowledge of the one to whom he directed his words, she was warmed by the gesture. And as she felt herself drift into sleep, it felt strangely right to be here with him. In the arms of her enemy.
The last time Maxen had been with a woman, she had smelled of smoke from tending kitchen fires and sweat from too many hours spent there—far different from the one whose scent now wafted to him.
The kitchen servant had been soft, but not soft like this woman. She’d had dark, straight hair bearing no resemblance to the gilded tresses curling around his fingers. And she had slipped away afterwards, unlike this one who had clearly spent the night with him. A night he could not recall.
Nor did he feel satiated. Indeed, it felt years since—
It has been years, he told himself as the last of sleep slipped away.
It was not a dream he had given his life to God, nor that he had been forced to renounce that life. He was Maxen Pendery, reluctant lord of Etcheverry, and this woman was Rhiannyn—she who would have been lady of Etcheverry through marriage to Harwolfson had the Saxons not been defeated, and again through marriage to Thomas when the conquering was done. Twice, she could have been a lady, and now she was a prisoner.
Why had she come into his bed? And had he truly not taken what she offered?
Searching backward, he recalled hands coaxing the heat from his body and brushing damp hair off his brow; a soft voice beseeching him one moment, reassuring him the next; a lap upon which his head had been raised to put drink to his lips.
Had it been Rhiannyn? Nay, not one who hated him as she did. More likely, Theta. But last eve…
That had been Rhiannyn, for the one who had given her warmth to him still lay beside him. And warmth was all she had offered. Not the use of her body for carnal pleasure, but something he had needed more.
Why? The woman he believed she was should have left him to the chill that was more of the grave than anything he had known.
He pushed up onto an elbow. The movement causing daggers to stab the backs of his eyes, he pulled deep, calming breaths. And prevailed against the darkness seeking to drag him back.
Focusing on Rhiannyn, he swept aside the hair falling over her face. She looked so beautifully innocent, as if she could harm no one. But therein lay deceit, did it not? Or did it?
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
Was it yesterday he had awakened to the
slap of her hand? He remembered naming her witch, more vividly recalled the kiss he had stolen from her under the pretense of fearing she meant to poison him. What had possessed him? Why did he so desire her?
Her low moan swept aside his pondering, and with a rattle of chain, she twisted around, laid her head on his upper arm, and settled a knee atop his thigh.
Maxen clenched his teeth. He could push her away, and he should, but he was loath to do so. Thus, as during the first year at the monastery when his thoughts had turned to women, he determined he would calm his body as he had done then.
Although he had doubted he could maintain more than a bare semblance of faith after all the ill that had befallen his family, he closed his eyes and turned to prayers used in times of carnal weakness. To a degree, they had served him well, though sometimes merely as a result of fatigue from hours spent on his knees.
Unfortunately, they had little effect this day, unlike those others days when he had not had a warm, desirable body at his side.
She longed to keep her eyes sealed against the light of day, to ignore the feeling of being watched, to regain the hours of sleep lost to…
Lifting her lids, she focused on her hand and saw it lay on Maxen Pendery’s shoulder, the flesh being neither hot nor cold.
She raised her gaze to eyes she had not seen the color of for days. In the morning light, they shone blue upon her.
“You are awake,” she said and offered a tentative smile.
His eyebrows rose.
“The fever has passed.”
His mouth twisted. “Disappointed?”
She felt her smile slide away. Having put so much of her heart into his care, it hurt to be confronted by the Maxen with whom she had left off.
Did you truly expect a changed man? she silently chastised. Believe he would let your people go and make no more war upon them? All because you did what Theta could more easily have done?
Feeling tears, she blinked them back, and determinedly picked up her hope and brushed it off.
It is a beginning, she told herself, and that is better than no beginning at all. It was still possible to get to the other side of him. Unfortunately, there was much to do and not much time in which to do it.
Sitting up, taking the cover with her and pressing it to her chemise-clothed chest, she said, “I am not disappointed. I am relieved.”
“Then there must have been a greater threat to your person did I die rather than live. Sir Guy, am I right?”
Though it was as she had been warned, it alone did not fuel her relief. She’d had an ulterior motive in wanting Maxen to live, but it went beyond her people. With each passing day, it had become more personal. She wanted him to live simply that he might live—so the man who had gently set his hand upon her and called her angel, and had thanked her for her warmth, might someday show a similar kindness to others.
“You are wrong,” she said.
“And you lie.” He sat up, grimacing as his swaying body testified to his weakness.
She laid a hand on his arm. “’Tis too soon to rise. You have lain ill five days—”
“Five days!”
“Aye.”
He considered her hand on him, pushed it off. “I prefer your fear to concern. It is more trustworthy.”
The same Maxen—unchanged and ungiving. “You have much to be thankful for,” she forced past stiff lips. “By God’s will you live, and to him you must give thanks.”
“God,” he scoffed. “It is Christophe who should be given credit.” He tossed back the coverlet, and with a clattering of chain, swung his legs over the opposite side of the bed and stood. For a moment.
“Accursed weakness,” he murmured. Face ashen, he dropped back down upon the bed.
“If you are not to undo your healing,” Rhiannyn said, “you need food and rest, Maxen.”
Gaze cold as steel, he said, “Do not pretend to know what I need, and do not make me tell you again the proper way to address me.”
She swallowed the retort that had no place in helping him become human. “Aye, my lord.” She lowered her feet to the floor. “Christophe will be here soon. He will wish to examine you.”
Maxen made no reply, though she felt his gaze follow her around the bed.
She lifted her bliaut from atop the chest, shook it out, and pulled it on.
“Fine clothes for a prisoner,” he said.
She looked up from knotting the sash. “They are what were brought to me. If you prefer otherwise—”
“I do.”
“Then I am sure you will see to it as soon as possible.”
“Indeed.”
Rhiannyn was grateful for Christophe’s appearance that gave her respite from the battle Maxen was attempting to draw her into.
“Give praise,” Christophe exclaimed as he hurried to the bed. “It was feared you might not awaken.”
“You have much to learn about self-confidence, little brother.” Maxen gave him a smile Rhiannyn wished were for her. “It is by your hand I live.”
“And in good spirits,” Christophe added.
“You can thank Rhiannyn for that.”
She stiffened, from the glint in Maxen’s eyes feared he would reveal he had awakened to find her in his bed.
Christophe glanced at her. “You refer to her tending you these past days?”
“Non, I am sure it is Theta I have to thank for that.”
Christophe shook his head. “Rhiannyn cared for you when I could not. She insisted. Did she not tell you?”
The glint fled Maxen’s eyes, but instead of giving answer, he asked, “How do I fare, Brother?”
With a twitch of his lips, Christophe granted him the change of topic. “It seems well, but I will know better after I have examined the wound.”
While he did so, Maxen brooded on Christophe’s revelation. Though under different circumstances he would have been grateful for the care given him, he was suspicious—even angry—for Rhiannyn eluded him at every turn, refusing to stay in the role in which he cast her.
Shortly, Christophe proclaimed Maxen on his way to being completely healed, but was adamant a few days of rest were in order. “I will tell the others,” he said.
And end the speculation over who would succeed him, Maxen mused. “I am hungry.”
Christophe nodded and was gone.
Maxen propped himself against the headboard and asked, “Why did you do it, Rhiannyn?”
Avoiding his gaze, she raked fingers through her tangled curls. “We may be enemies, but it does not mean I am without heart when one is in need.”
“Theta could have tended me just as well.”
“She could not have. I was here, she was not.”
“She could have been here.”
Rhiannyn settled her eyes upon him. “I wanted you to live, for it to be me who helped you back to life.”
“So I would be owing to you?”
“You could not be owing to me after having saved my life. Nay, not owing. Knowing.”
“What?”
She swept her hair back and stepped to the bed. “That all Saxons are not as you believe them to be. That we feel compassion, know pain and hurt, and have only fought for what is rightfully ours.”
Maxen knew it. He had grown up amongst these people, been befriended by them and friendly toward them before Duke William had called him and his brothers to prove their fealty by taking up swords against them.
Caught up in the passion of a battle he had trained for since childhood, he had forsaken those he could more easily have called his own than the Normans. It was something he knew too well, one of two reasons he had been sickened by the carnage of which he had been so great a part. The other reason was Nils, whose dying had opened Maxen’s eyes to the unpardonable thing he had done, the atrocity for which he had spent two years in repentance. However, since learning of Thomas’s death, he had repeatedly fought off memories, anger and revenge guiding him to the point at which he now found himself.
But which way to go from here? Toward the pleading in Rhiannyn’s eyes, or the taking of Saxon lives in payment for Thomas’s?
He felt almost torn. Though he did not know which was stronger in him—the good or the bad—he turned the way of compromise. “I want only the one who killed Thomas, Rhiannyn.”
Tears ran into her eyes, and the flare of her small nose attested to her struggle to control her emotions. “If I knew, do you not think I would tell? Give one life for so many?”
It made little sense she would not, but he found it difficult to believe she had not seen the one behind the dagger. Even had she not, surely the Saxon who had defeated the Norman lord would have made himself known to his countrymen by way of bragging.
“Nevertheless,” Maxen said, “there must be punishment, else there is naught to prevent such from happening again.”
“Hanging innocents will not prevent it,” she exclaimed. “It will drive the Saxons to further warring, bringing more death upon Etcheverry.”
Maxen knew he ought to waste no more time on the matter, but he said, “Who will bring this war upon Etcheverry? Harwolfson is gone, his rebels under my control.”
“He will return. This I promise.”
“I am to fear that?”
She shook her head. “Not if you act upon it.”
“How so?”
“Give the rebels a reason to make peace with you. If Etcheverry is to prosper again, you will need them for planting and harvesting, tending cattle and—”
“Need men more inclined to plant scythes in my back than in the harvest?”
“Aye, they may be more inclined to do that, but if you are fair with them, in time they could serve you well.”
He laughed. “Your sense of reality is as poor as Christophe’s. Never could Harwolfson’s men be trusted.”
“You do not know that.”
“I do, just as I know I am done with this conversation.” Past done. So much that the thought of sleep held more appeal than the need for food.
Though he could see Rhiannyn wished to continue the discussion, she sighed. “I suppose you will return me to the tower.”