Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (18 page)

He rubbed a tired eye with his palm. He should go to bed. He knew that. But tomorrow’s sermon eluded him, and the troubling war within him kept sleep just out of his grasp.

He knew all too well the name of his demon.

Cynthia le Wyte.

Damn it all! He couldn’t exile her from his thoughts. She reminded him too clearly of the sweet days of his youth—endless hours lounging in the dappled shade of the willow with nothing but larks and squirrels for company, mornings spent conquering Latin as zealously as his brothers conquered the sword, long summer afternoons scented with life and dreams and jasmine.

He’d banished himself from that world as surely as Adam had gotten himself expelled from Eden—also because of a woman. And here was another of her ilk wreaking havoc with a man’s soul.

Yet he found it difficult to utter the names of Cynthia and Mariana in the same breath. They were nothing alike. Cynthia was every bit as beautiful and tempting as Mariana had been, but those were superficial things. There was something beyond that, something more profound in Cynthia that had the capacity not only to wound him more deeply, but to utterly destroy him.

Today, when she’d handed him that poor dead infant, when her anguish spoke to him through her eyes, he’d seen a facet of Cynthia le Wyte he’d forgotten, something that harked back to that time in his mother’s garden and compounded the confusion of his feelings.

He’d seen her vulnerable.

And that made her all the more irresistible, all the more dangerous.

Of course, her subsequent taunting had changed his opinion. The woman had been utterly ruthless, picking and poking and prodding at him until she found the chink in his armor.

Yet she’d been utterly astonished when she’d stumbled onto that chink. Perhaps she’d only been toying with the embers of his sin, never expecting them to burst into flame. And when they did, she was more shocked than he.

In truth, he knew Cynthia didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. He’d watched her work her healing on every wretched soul who requested it over the past several days, whether their ills were real or imagined. She showed uncommon strength, generosity of spirit, genuine compassion.

Still, whatever had inspired her to pry into his personal affairs, she’d managed to expose his sin, stripping him of his dignity and humiliating him beyond bearing.

He
would
bear it. After all, he wasn’t his brothers, who would duel over the slightest slight. He was a priest. Priests bore humiliation all the time. It tested one’s faith, strengthened one’s spirit.

What daunted him more was thinking about the days, weeks, years to come. How could he maintain his propriety, his dignity, his sanity when she flitted about, probing at his soul, whether it was with gentle fingers or prying claws?

Isolation had been his answer before. But it was absurd to think he could hide behind monastery walls now. Now he lived in a secular world, a world flawed and disorderly and riddled with sin, among a congregation to whom, tomorrow, he was supposed to preach the word of God.

Slumping in resignation, he retrieved the rumpled parchment from the floor and attempted to smooth the wrinkles from it. It was a piece of offal, unfit for a priest addressing his flock for the first time, but it would have to do. In a few hours, the sun would lighten the sky.

Frustrated, he slammed his hand flat on the pulpit, putting the candle out of its misery, and made his way by moonlight back to his cell.

Cynthia peered through the veil of steam rising off the surface of the bath awaiting her. The first rays of the sun filtered through the arched windows of her solar and glinted off the bathwater like sparkling jewels. The ethereal haze gave the cloudless morn and the distant tree-covered dales a dreamlike quality.

But the dark hours of the morning had been more nightmare than dream. The Sabbath had begun early for Cynthia. Too restless to sleep, she’d lain awake half the night while images of Garth committing the sin of lust slithered erotically through her brain. Thus, when Elspeth came just past midnight to whisper that the cooper’s wife had begun to birth her child, it was little bother for Cynthia to rise and go to her at once. By candlelight, in the hushed hours long before daybreak, Cynthia and Jeanne the midwife took turns holding the dame’s hand, mopping her brow, giving her sips of a soothing chamomile infusion. While the stars yet shimmered in the ebony sky, a healthy baby girl made her appearance.

Scarcely had Cynthia crawled back to bed when Elspeth shook her awake again. Two young squires had eaten tainted oysters for supper. Rubbing her grainy eyes, Cynthia trudged downstairs.

Carmine thistle helped purge the poison from the boys. She was then obliged, upon hearing their confession, to deliver a stern lecture about the questionable merits of ingesting raw oysters as aphrodisiacs.

No sooner had Cynthia gone to fetch a bite from the kitchen than another crisis reared its head. One of the hounds had snapped at the groom’s daughter while she slept. The puncture, dealt to the meaty part of her hand, wasn’t too deep, for all the ocean of tears the girl wept. She probably deserved the bite anyway. Cynthia knew the lass loved to tease the hounds with bits of meat.

While Cynthia tended the girl, her father decided he, too, might as well avail himself of her talents for his clutched bowels. She gave him dandelion extract.

By the time the sky changed from indigo to apricot, Cynthia was too exhausted to sleep. She popped a morsel of stale bread into her mouth and had servants lug a cauldron of hot water up to her room so she could bathe.

In a short while, Garth would deliver his first sermon at Wendeville. She didn’t want to miss it, but she couldn’t go to the chapel smelling like sweat or blood or worse. She eyed her herbs, lined up in multicolored vials upon the table. Lavender? Cinnamon? Oil of roses. Nay. What she wanted was in the herb cellar.

The cellar door was ajar when she arrived, and candlelight flickered along the plaster wall. Frowning, she peered in.

“Good morn?”

The light jogged wildly, and Cynthia heard a gasp.

“Who’s there?” she asked, venturing in.

There was a rustling, as of parchment. Then Mary, the new maidservant, stepped forward timidly.

“My lady.” She bobbed her head.

“Mary, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing, my lady.” She looked as guilty as Judas. The candle trembled in her hand.

“What’s that you have there?” She nodded toward the bunch of leafy stems clutched in Mary’s fist.

Mary dropped the plant instantly to the earthen floor and took a step backward. “I…”

Cynthia scooped it up. “This is henbane, Mary.” She lowered her brows. “It’s poison. What were you—“

“I…I’ve been feeling poorly, my lady. My belly. I thought—“

“Come.” She motioned the girl closer.

Mary’s eyes widened. She fingered the amulet about her neck.

“Don’t fret. I’m not going to beat you,” Cynthia said. She restored the henbane to its niche on the shelf and began rubbing her palms together. What was one more ailing soul today?

“It’s n-nothing, my lady,” Mary stammered. “It’s gone now.” She curtseyed several times as she made her crabbed way toward the cellar door. “Th-thank you, my lady.” As an afterthought, she ducked back in and snatched a piece of parchment from the shelf, a parchment, Cynthia glimpsed, filled with words scrawled in an unschooled hand. “I’ll just go back to the k-kitchen then.” She nervously bobbled the candle into its wall sconce and scurried out the door.

Cynthia raised a brow. Her new servant was as skittish as a foal. Henbane for her belly? Cynthia shook her head. Henbane would most decidedly end her pains,
all
of them. It was fortunate she’d caught the girl.

Cynthia shook the tingling from her hands, and then scanned the shelf of herbal extracts and oils. Everything seemed to be in order. Some of the vials were stoppered with wood, others sealed with wax. A few, those rarely employed, had a layer of dust on their shoulders, and many were used so often that several identical bottles stood like a company of soldiers, ready at her command. At last she found what she sought in a small, unremarkable amber bottle. She snatched it up and smiled to herself.

Jasmine.

The first rays of the sun shot arrow-straight beams through the stained-glass windows of the chapel, making tapestries of color on the opposite wall. Smoking spices lent a fragrant mystery to the air. Standing in the arched nave before the rows of wooden benches, Garth fingered the worn edge of his Bible as worshippers straggled in in an awed hush of whispering voices and rustling skirts.

He was still discontent with the sermon, despite struggling with it again after Matins, scrawling out long lines of discourse one moment, only to cross them all out a moment later. He’d tried to focus his thoughts. Today was the Sabbath, after all, the busiest day of a priest’s week. And this would be the first sermon he’d ever deliver to his new congregation. It was important to make a good first impression. He’d ransacked his Bible looking for the right verses. He’d broken two quills writing. And he’d given himself an aching head, frowning in concentration over the ink-stained parchment.

But he hadn’t counted on the freckle-faced temptress intruding upon his every thought. He’d hoped the light of day would diffuse her image.

His palm dampened the leather binding of his Bible. Even here, even now, as the congregation slowly filed in, visions of Cynthia surrounded him.

The incense was faintly reminiscent of her sweet skin. The communion wine, poured into a deep silver chalice, rivaled the scarlet of her lips. The double glow of candles in the sun shone no brighter than her hair. Even outside the confines of the chapel, through the open doors to the morning beyond, she haunted him in the delicate hue of the sky, the song of the sparrow, the gentle breath of the breeze. Her face seemed imprinted on the stands of golden oaks. Her laughter echoed in the merry call of a meadowlark.

Yet this was the same wench who had torn his world asunder. She’d caused him more grief and aggravation in the past few days than he’d endured in four long years at the monastery. She’d completely mortified him. She’d unearthed a past he’d rather stay buried. She’d aroused feelings in him that no man of the cloth should ever have. There was no godly reason for him to wish to spend another moment in her company.

But he did.

Indeed, his heart tripped this morn every time someone in skirts came through the chapel door.

He twisted the parchment roll that contained the essence of his sermon. It was an inferior piece about the importance of attending chapel every Sabbath, truly a waste of breath, considering it would be spent on those already in attendance. But it was the best he could come up with in the lean hours on the wrong side of midnight.

He heaved a resigned sigh, stirring the flames on the beeswax candles before him. He let his eyes stray to one of the stained-glass windows, where the sun’s early light was just beginning to illuminate the artist’s scene. It was a portrayal of the Christ as a teacher, his arms outstretched, instructing the children assembled at his feet in the ways of God. A tiny bird perched on the shoulder of one of the children, a pretty girl wearing a garland of flowers in her hair, reminding him of…

Cynthia.

She seemed to float through the chapel doorway, a vision of golden light, a seraph, the sun haloing her snowy veil and blanching her eyes to translucent silver.

Heads bobbed, and maids sank into cursory curtseys as she passed, coming straight down the center aisle toward him. But she spared no one a glance. She only stared at him, a soft smile playing about her lips.

“Father Garth.” She knelt before him then, offering his repaired crucifix in one extended hand. “I believe you lost this.”

For a moment, he was paralyzed. It was strange, her kneeling to him. She was the lady of the castle, after all.

And yet, he realized with sudden clarity, he was master here. This was not the garden. The chapel was his domain. Here, she was the interloper.

With a new sense of authority lending him confidence, he took the cross from her and settled it around his neck, nodding his thanks. He caught a whiff of—Lord, the woman knew no mercy—jasmine, as she rose in a velvet whirl of saffron skirts to sit on the bench at the front of the chapel.

He averted his gaze, glancing again at the stained glass panel. Of course, he realized, as the colors sharpened in the growing light. It was there in the picture. A chaplain was a teacher first. It was a priest’s duty to show the sinner the error of his ways. Lady Cynthia, more than anything, needed a teacher. It was up to him to instruct her, to look after her soul.

She didn’t understand the order of things. She didn’t see how noblewomen were to follow one path and men of the church quite another, how perhaps once there’d been a time when the two of them could frolic together in a summer garden, but that time was gone. Once there’d been a time for chasing dreams and thwarting bees, but now was not that time.

He crumpled the parchment and tossed it aside, his heart lighter than it had been in days. He knew exactly what passage to read. Thumbing through the pages of his Bible to the verses he knew well, he waited for the congregation’s murmurs to subside.

“Omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub caelo,”
he recited. To every thing there is a season.
“Tempus nascendi et tempus moriendi, tempus plantandi et tempus evellendi quod plantatum est…”

Cynthia felt her heartbeat deepen. She sat perfectly still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, lest she break the thread of his voice. She closed her eyes. The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

It wasn’t the Scripture that enthralled her. Nor the musical cadence of the Latin he spoke. She scarcely paid heed to his words. What held her riveted was the bewitching sound of Garth de Ware’s voice.

She’d expected a cool, arrogant tone from him. Or well-schooled false humility. Ill-concealed gruffness. Or an even drone as bland as the mask he frequently donned. Never in her wildest imaginings did she guess he’d possess the voice of an angel.