Anice's Bargain

by Madeline Martin

  “They bound me.” James’s voice was thick and when he looked up, his eyes were glossy with tears. “They held me down and all I could do was watch. Helpless.”

  He knelt at her feet. Her powerful husband, who towered over every man, whose body was carved with raw strength, gazed up at her. “I thought they would kill ye. That I would lose ye forever.” He pulled in a ragged breath. “My God, Anice, I would move the earth for ye.”

  It was too much. He was too much. An anguished cry released unbidden from her throat and the sword tip drooped to the ground.

  No sooner had the weapon dipped away from him, his expression shifted from tenderness to determination. He snatched up the dagger and leapt at her, fist pulled back with the dagger in it ready to attack.

  Instinct kicked in. The limp hold on the weapon in Anice’s hand tightened as she drew it up once more and swung.

  30

  James had caught sight of his father coming up behind Anice at exactly the right time. The old man’s sword raised, his eyes bright with the effects of bloodlust. James hadn’t thought, he had only acted, lunging toward his father with his weapon drawn to protect the woman he loved.

  Gaze fixed on his father, he flew through the air with all the strength he possessed. Something struck him in the side, a nudge he barely noticed, but enough to knock him slightly off his aim.

  “Ye turned my son against me.” Laird Graham brought the blade down toward Anice.

  Though James held only a dagger, he leapt in front of Anice with the paltry weapon held aloft to block the blow. The old man still had strength in him, wiry and determined, and the sword came down with more force than James could stop and sliced his chest.

  James staggered back. For that one moment, the entire world slowed, the same as it had when he’d been struck at Lord Bastionbury’s castle. Anice spun around in surprise, then directed her attention from the danger of Laird Graham to James, her expression crumpling. Laird Graham angrily shifted his gaze from James to Anice and lifted his weapon once more. The army of reivers at Anice’s back rushed forward to aid him in killing her. In killing all the people of Werrick, no doubt.

  James’s chest and his side blazed. “Nay.” He tried to run forward, cry out, anything that might stop them. But the ground was too slick, his body too tired, his voice only a whisper.

  “James,” Anice cried. Seemingly oblivious of the danger behind her, she tried to go to him, but Laird Graham caught her by a fistful of hair and yanked her toward him with such force, the sword fell from her hand.

  The momentum pitched her backward and she threw her elbow into the old man’s face. He staggered away, nose gushing with a spurt of blood. An arrow flew from somewhere unseen and sank deep into the aging laird’s throat. The old man hadn’t even had a chance to cry out before falling.

  James’s own weight crushed down on legs that could no longer support him and he fell to his knees. Anice reclaimed her sword as several Werrick soldiers broke off from the melee in the courtyard entrance and stood at her back. Ready to defend her as well as their home.

  “More men are coming from the east.” The masculine voice echoing down from the battlements was pitched with tension.

  James’s mind reeled. More men? How could there be more reivers coming? Hadn’t they all arrived?

  He looked to his father’s prone form where he lay face down in a growing puddle of blood. Were there more men joining them that Laird Graham hadn’t told him about?

  “Nay.” James’s voice was too weak. He drew himself up, though it cost him dearly to do so. Every part of his body was leaden, and each breath he drew was like fire. Regardless, he filled his lungs and said more forcefully: “Nay.”

  The word boomed out over the bailey, echoing over the warfare. He tensed the muscles of his legs to remain upright and straightened his back, though it made his entire body scream in agony.

  “As new Laird of the Grahams, I command ye to cease.” The last word rang with authority.

  The reivers opposite Anice regarded him warily, even as their dead laird lay at their feet.

  “I’m yer laird,” he roared. “And I declare this battle finished.” The intake of breath to speak once more was like inhaling flames, but he continued. “On pain of death, all reivers will cease this fight and leave the inhabitants of Werrick Castle in peace. With my father’s death, so too dies the years of reiving and pillaging.”

  As he spoke, the clatter of weapons began to quiet, and the courtyard went still.

  “I want peace.” James’s voice was beginning to fail. So too was his energy. He stepped toward Anice, but then faltered, fading.

  Anice cried out and ran to him.

  “Forgive me.” Her arms came around him, enveloping the haze of pain in her sweet floral scent, easing his suffering with her beauty, her love and her incredible strength. A whimper caught in her throat. A sob.

  “Forgive me, my love,” she whispered. Her cool hands stroked over his face. “Do not go to sleep.” There was a bright intensity to her gaze, as though she could will him to comply with her request. “For you may never wake if you do.” Her voice choked off.

  “The reivers who are coming.” James gasped through the pain of his wounds. He had to tell her to act in his stead. As his wife, his consort, Lady of Caldrick Castle and a member of the Graham clan. He had to keep her and all their people safe.

  Except he could speak no more. His tongue would not form the words and the strength of his neck couldn’t support the weight of his head. As darkness closed around on him, he clung to one very important thought: he must stay alive.

  For if he were to die, Werrick would fall.

  Anice had stabbed James. She had been part of the reason he had collapsed, why he might possibly die.

  This last thought burrowed in her brain and left her frozen as she cradled James in her arms. His legs jutted out on the bloody cobblestones before them. He needed to be taken to Isla, and quickly. Werrick was still not safe. And yet she could not bring herself to move.

  As though hearing her concern and putting it to voice, a soldier on the battlements cried out, “The army is descending upon us!”

  Drake squatted opposite Anice and grabbed hold of James’s ankles. “I’ll help ye carry him inside.”

  Two soldiers came forward, one wearing the fierce black hawk of the Werrick crest, and one reiver. Together, the four of them hefted James’s massive body into the expansive great hall where Isla had the floor prepared with makeshift beds for the wounded. Already men were strewn about, their blood bright against the freshly laid rushes.

  Isla darted toward them, a basket of bottles clinking at her arm as she did so. “Set him there.” She waved toward a dining trestle that had been covered with a blanket. “As is fitting for a laird.”

  Her somber tone shook Anice’s memory of the brief affair between Isla and James’s father.

  “I’m sorry, Isla,” Anice offered softly.

  Isla shook her head as though the matter was of little import. “Just because a man is good at warming a bed doesna mean he is a man worth living. I imagine yers is, though.” The older woman offered a knowing smile with her brilliantly white teeth and went to James.

  She yanked open his gambeson to reveal his gore-soaked leine. Anice’s mind spun at the visible wounds, at so much blood

  The air was coppery with it, the metallic odor filling her nostrils and causing bile to rise in her throat. Bile and panic. For this was too similar to Mama when she had died.

  Anice’s world wavered around her. She shifted her gaze to James’s eyes, which had slid closed. Like Mama’s had.

  Mama’s skin had gone waxy. She didn’t cry out anymore; she didn’t grip the sheets or push. She was asleep, amid the sea of white sheets and blood.

  But it didn’t seem right. “Mama?” Anice asked.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Mama, please rouse.” Still she did not move.

  “Mama,” Anice pleaded. “You must rouse.” />
  Marin put her arm around Anice’s shoulder. “She’s dead, my dear sister.”

  She had died so quickly, so easily, without a word of protest.

  That couldn’t happen to James. She couldn’t let him slip away so easily. He was too powerful for such a simple death; too patient, too wonderful. There hadn’t been enough time for them yet.

  He would never call her mo leannan again, or cradle her in those powerful arms, or see things in her that she never saw in herself. She was a better person with him. She could not lose him, not now, not ever.

  Fear gripped Anice. He couldn’t go to sleep. “James, open your eyes,” Anice whispered. “Open them.”

  He did not. Isla gripped a dagger in her gnarled fist and split open his leine. The ruined linen drooped from his body, sodden. But the powerful chest Anice knew every dip and curve of was now marked with wounds and blood.

  “Open your eyes.” Anice had not realized she’d said it aloud until Drake was at her side, offering her his arm.

  “Let us leave him with the healer, my lady.”

  A knot burned in her throat. “My mother,” Anice said. “When she had Leila. She lost too much blood; her body was too traumatized to live. She closed her eyes and…” Anice pressed her lips together, unable to speak. Instead, she went to James’s side. She took his limp arm in her hand, his ring sparkled beside that of her mother’s. “Wake, James. Wake. Please.”

  He did not respond. His arm in her grip was loose, offering no resistance to her subtle shake. A shadow loomed in front of her.

  Isla’s tawny eyes met hers, clear and bright beneath wrinkled lids. “He’ll no’ die on my watch, my lady.” She gave Anice a pat on the head, the way she had so often done when Anice was a mere girl. “But ye may verra well kill him if ye keep shaking his arm like that. I canna keep my stitches straight.”

  Heat flared in Anice’s cheeks and she immediately dropped her hold on him. A clatter of feet sounded outside, pulling her attention briefly from James. Panic raced through her anew. Had the new band of reivers broken through so quickly?

  Grabbing a nearby sword, she raced with Drake to defend the great hall as best they could. For beyond the wounded and dying within the great hall were the deeper rooms of Werrick and the women and children hiding within them.

  The footsteps did not come with the frantic thundering of marauders storming the castle. Figures filled the doorway, including her father’s familiar frame. Anice stopped short.

  At his side was Lord Bastionbury.

  “The battle is over.” Her father clapped the other earl on his back in the age-old show of camaraderie among men. “Bastionbury showed up at the perfect time to put an end to it all.”

  “You got James’s message,” Anice said.

  Lord Bastionbury was a man only slightly older than her own father, with kind green eyes that crinkled in a smile at the mention of James. “Aye. I told him I will always be there should he need me. I was pleased to get his missive and came posthaste.” He glanced about. “Where is he?”

  Injured. Perhaps dying. Maybe dead. Anice’s throat went thick. Rather than try to answer, she glanced back toward the great hall.

  “He’s been injured, my lord.” Drake answered for her.

  Anice heart squeezed as though in a vice. She had been the one to injure him. Suddenly, she regretted her decision to leave his side. He no longer needed her to protect him. There was no danger from an attack, only from slipping away as he slept. The same as her mother.

  Anice dropped her sword and ran. Down the hall, through the doors of the great hall, and not stopping until she stood directly in front of Isla. The healer had a needle in hand, pulled taut while securing a stitch in James’s torso.

  Anice locked her gaze on James’s face, yet unable to take in such a sight. “Is he still alive?”

  Isla’s hand swept down to James’s body once more in Anice’s peripheral. “Aye, my lady. I know yer Ma dinna wake up when she slept, but this is different, aye? His sleep keeps him from feeling my stitches. He’s away from the pain. Let him be.”

  Away from pain, but also hopefully away from death. Anice wanted to hold his hand, to feel his embrace as it had always been, warm and strong and curled around hers like armor. She stared at his limp hand and stood helplessly at his side, for there was nothing to do now, but wait to see if he would live.

  31

  The sun shone on James’s face, drawing him from the darkness with its brilliant heat.

  “James,” a soft feminine voice cried out.

  One he knew better than any other.

  Anice.

  He turned his head toward the sound, the back of his skull grinding against something firm beneath him. Pain engulfed him all at once, burning, white-hot pain. His chest, his back, his side, every bit of him.

  “James.” Anice’s voice again.

  He groaned, a rasping snarl of a sound and blinked his eyes open. His gaze was waist-level. On his side. Confusion wracked through him. “What—”

  “Nay, do not move.” Anice’s face appeared in front of him. Her eyes and nose were red, as though she’d been crying. She grasped his hand and lifted it to her mouth in a gentle kiss. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I thought…”

  His fingers moved over the softness of her lovely skin, sweeping away the tear and savoring her.

  Her eyes closed as more tears slipped silently from beneath her lashes. “I feared I might never feel such a caress again,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, my love.”

  He shifted on the hard surface beneath him and pain screamed through him.

  Anice leapt to her feet. “Don’t move.” She glanced about anxiously. “Isla, please come.”

  He frowned, not able to recall what happened to bring him to this hard table. A glance at his torso revealed two rows of neat stitches lining his stomach and side. “I was injured,” he stated.

  Anice pressed her lips together and lowered her head. “I stabbed you.”

  “Ye stabbed me?” he asked.

  “And so did yer da,” Isla replied as she approached. “Though it was yer da’s blade which nearly did ye in.”

  It rushed back to him then, searing through the fog of confusion with startling clarity. His father had attacked Anice with the intent to kill. Except Laird Graham was now dead and James was laird.

  “The reivers coming to attack.” He wriggled on the table in an attempt to stand.

  Isla gave a sharp hiss and put her hand to his arm to still him from moving.

  “It was Lord Bastionbury.” Anice smiled. “He came. Because of you. We are all alive because of you.”

  Not everyone. There were soldiers who lost their lives. Soldiers, and reivers too. But he did not state as much. “Together we have saved as many lives as was possible to save,” he replied instead.

  A man strode up behind Anice. Nay, not just any man. Lord Bastionbury. James tried to sit up.

  Bastionbury shook his head. “Rest easy, lad.”

  “This is disconcertingly familiar,” James grunted.

  The earl smiled at that. “You’ve got a penchant for putting yourself in front of others to save them.” His head nodded with approval. “’Tis the mark of a good man.”

  The praise warmed through James and settled over his wounded soul, a balm for the hurt put there by his own father.

  Bastionbury placed a solid hand on James’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

  The words glowed through James and filled a deep, wounded part of him that had always longed those words. Emotion caught at the back of his throat. So many years had gone by for James where he’d been told he wasn’t good enough, strong enough, man enough.

  I’m proud of you.

  How many times had he craved these very words? And now he heard them, not only from his wife, but also from Lord Bastionbury, who had helped straighten James’s life from a path of crooked morals.

  James shifted his gaze away. “Thank ye.”

  “And I’m sorry for
your loss.” Lord Bastionbury spoke with a gentleness that conveyed his genuine sympathy. “It is always hard to lose a father, even when they are difficult to love.”

  Anice’s hand tightened on James’s, there at his side as he needed her most. This time, James could only nod, not trusting himself to speak.

  “I must go see to my men.” Lord Bastionbury removed his hand from James’s shoulder. “We shall speak again when you are more recovered.”

  “Anice!” A feminine voice cried out.

  Several girls edged around Lord Bastionbury as he made his departure. Three petite, chain-clad young women, two with blonde hair, one with dark hair. The daughters of Lord Werrick. Of course. James smiled in spite of himself.

  They enveloped Anice in a hug so fierce, it pulled her hand from his. He let his arm fall and watched the reunion take place. Though they had shared a month of happiness at Caldrick Castle, this was what Anice had been craving. This was what James had never truly known for himself: a family.

  Anice’s eyes were glossy with tears, her face bright with the brilliance of her smile. All three younger sisters chattered on with so much energy, it made James feel even more exhausted than he already was. All at once, they ceased their talking and came to him.

  “Oh, James!” Ella put her fingers to her lips. “You nearly died protecting Anice. It was terribly romantic of you, but you could have been killed.” She pulled something from a large pouch at her side, a bit of red fur, and plopped it beside his face.

  A ratty looking beast stared at him with bright, black eyes, frozen with bewildered confusion at its new location.

  “Don’t put that there.” Anice plucked the thing away from James, while Ella pulled it from her hand and back into her arms.

  “This is Moppet,” she said in a surly tone. “He was going to try to make him better.”

  “James.” It was Catriona who spoke now, her face more solemn than he’d ever seen. “Your da. I’m so sorry, I—”