Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (27 page)

From the mists of sleep, Mariana’s voice sounded strange.

“Garth!”

The colors of his boyhood room faded as he was pulled away by the voice. The pain in his chest increased.

“Garth!”

Someone was tugging at him, making him sit up. He didn’t want to. It hurt too much.

“Garth, you have to help me.”

The pungent scent of mint roused him from the vestiges of his dream. He involuntarily inched upward to accommodate the voice’s command…and was instantly sorry. The movement triggered a series of deep, chest-cleaving coughs that brought tears to his eyes.

When the barrage finally subsided, he was left with no strength and a wheeze that grated against his windpipe every time he breathed. It was so excruciating, he almost wished he were back in the agony of his dream.

Then he peered at his tormenter. Cynthia stood over him, wafting the steam from some minty concoction toward him.

She looked like she’d bargained with the devil…and lost. Dark smudges ringed her eyes. Her features were pinched, her skin so translucent that the freckles stood out like bloodstains on linen. In short, she looked like he felt.

There were tears on her cheeks. He would have asked her what was wrong, swallowing against the pain of wetting his throat to speak, but she brushed the back of her hand across her face, wiping them away.

He drew in three more tortuous breaths. His heart pounded sluggishly in his throat and temples. His belly felt empty, besieged, as if underminers had collapsed the wall of his stomach. They must have beaten him as well, for every bone in his body throbbed.

And then he realized why she wept.

She’d used her sight. She’d seen his fate.

He was going to die. She’d felt it, sensed it with her magic.

His heart staggered. She knew.

He swallowed once more, wincing against the pain. His voice was little more than a rasp. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

She glanced anxiously at him. “Are you awake?”

He closed his mouth and swallowed again. “Am I…dying?”

Her tongue flicked nervously across her lip. She set the basin of steaming herbs aside and busied herself wiping her hands on a linen towel.

Damn the wench, he thought.

With every last ounce of his strength, he seized her by the wrist and pulled her near, forcing her palm against his forehead, as he’d seen her do to the sick so many times. “Am I?” he wheezed.

Her fingers curled defensively, and she looked away. Then she clamped her jaw tight, as if she’d fought and won some inner struggle. She looked at him, directly at him, her eyes wild and fierce. “Nay,” she answered. “Nay, you’re not dying.”

She lied. He knew she lied. And, God forgive him, he loved her for it.

The monastery bell tolled Matins. Cynthia’s eyes fluttered open in panic. Lord, how long had she dozed? The last thing she remembered was kneeling to pray. Judging from the stump of the guttering candle, that had been at least an hour ago. She sat up, rubbing the bed linen wrinkles from her cheek, and peered anxiously into Garth’s wan face.

He still breathed, but just barely. As the bell chimed, she bent near to count the feeble breaths whistling through his pain-clenched teeth. His gasps were so shallow, so far apart. He wasn’t taking in enough air to sustain a sparrow. Her weary eyes filled with frustrated tears.

“Nay.” Her voice was so raw with despair she hardly recognized it. She took his slack hand in her two and massaged it. “Please, nay. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. It’s just so hard to…” She bit her trembling lip. “I didn’t mean to leave you. Please don’t die. Please don’t…”

But Garth began to surrender to the formidable foe slowly draining the life from him. In the next moment, he ceased breathing.

Cynthia felt the life leave her as well. A horrible crushing weight compressed her chest, and for a long moment she could draw no breath.

He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.

The room swam around her.

Garth couldn’t be dead.

His light dimmed as she felt the tug of sweet unconsciousness, blessed oblivion.

And then her lungs scraped in a harsh, deep, painful breath, and she was dragged back to consciousness, back to tortuous reality, like a drowning man cast ashore. And instead of grief, this lungful of air was rife with anger.

“Nay!” she groaned, her voice shaking with ire. “Nay! You cannot die! Do you hear me?” She shook his lifeless form. “You can’t!” Tears blinded her, but she continued to rail at him pitilessly. “Your family needs you, damn your soul! The monastery needs you! Wendeville needs you! I…oh, God.” She choked on the words. Grief once again threatened to claim her as she suddenly realized the payment God demanded of her.

Though it tore at her already tattered spirit, she quickly bowed her head over fiercely clasped hands and took a terrible vow over his ravaged body. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her heart broke in two as she murmured the words.

“Please, God, let him live. Give me the strength to heal him. Let him live, and I promise I won’t try to…change him. I promise…” Her voice broke. “I promise I’ll return him to the church. I’ll give him back to you. Completely. Forever.”

Garth felt his body floating in dark, calm waters. Memories of his boyhood pond in summer drifted over him as the waves closed above his head, blocking out the sun and leaving him pleasantly cool. Somewhere deep within, he knew he should break the surface, needed to, but it was so peaceful here, surrendering all care to the welcoming arms of the deep. The light dimmed above, the sun growing fainter and fainter until it was but a tiny white point, and then that, too, winked out.

Then something disturbed his rest, something merciless and insistent. It pulled roughly at him, wrenching him from serenity back up through the cold currents, into the screaming sunlight. A jagged breath rasped across his throat into his starving lungs. Lord, it hurt. His eyelids would only creak open halfway, and his tongue was thick and sour. His ribs ached, his belly was sunken with hunger, and his pulse beat with a dull throb at the back of his head. He wondered what army had marched over him. Just the thought of moving pained him.

His only source of comfort was the gentle hand resting atop his forehead. From that point of contact, a soft energy suffused him, soothing him, radiating outward to bring him ease. For a fleeting moment, as weak as he felt, he wondered if it was the touch of the angel of death. But nay, this was no cold bone claw. It was a hand of flesh, warm and supple.

With great effort, he strained his eyelids open to look upon his benefactor.

It was an angel after all—pale and haggard, aye, but an angel nonetheless. Lady Cynthia. Her tangle of hair sprawled carelessly over her shoulders. Her forehead was etched with despair, her closed eyes limned with purple shadows. Her lips parted over the silent words of a prayer. As he watched, a silver tear stole from the corner of her eye and streaked down her cheek.

Ah, nay—he couldn’t bear to see her cry, not over him. In all the long, exhausting hours spent battling the disease in the village, she’d shed hardly a tear—not when she lost a child or when an old friend slipped away, not when the villagers drained her of even the energy to stand. He couldn’t let her weep over him.

He sluggishly lifted his arm—it was as heavy as a Scots claymore—and reached a shaky hand toward her face. Resting his fingers on her cheek, he caught her tear on a trembling fingertip.

Her eyes flew wide. She jerked her hand from his forehead. A hundred emotions flashed across her countenance…shock, gratitude, disbelief. She searched his face, her eyes red-rimmed and bleary with fatigue.

“You’re…” she whispered, the hope naked in her gaze.

His throat felt like a church bell gone to rust. He knew he’d never push a word past it. But he could probably manage a smile. His lips were parchment dry, but he slowly stretched one corner up in a reassuring grin for her.

Which made her begin to sob in earnest.

He started to pull his arm back, dismayed by the havoc he’d unwittingly wrought. But she clutched at his hand, holding it tightly inside both her own. He watched in wonder as she hailed tear-laced kisses upon his fingers. And as battered and weak and hungry as he was, he still felt a wave of marvelous warmth envelop his body, removing all pain and care, leaving room for only one all-embracing, powerful emotion, an emotion long buried in the fertile soil of his boyhood, an emotion that refused to lay dormant and finally broke through the crust of repression to blossom.

It was love.

He loved Cynthia.

He’d tried to deny it. He’d thought that leaving her would diminish the feelings he had for her. He’d believed she was a daughter of Eve sent to tempt him from his calling. But that wasn’t true. Unlike scheming Mariana, who’d delighted in seducing and abandoning him, Cynthia genuinely cared for him. And he…

He loved everything about her—her compassion, her innocence, her fire, the gleam in her eyes when she planned mischief, the wistfulness of her smile as she gazed at her garden, her quicksilver temper, her nurturing patience, the flowery scent of her hair, the healing touch of her hands, the honey taste of her lips…

Though it seemed ages past, he remembered her kiss. The herb garden. Her welcoming arms. Her sweet breast, bare in the moonlight. Soft. Innocent. He swallowed hard as the memory washed over him like a wave.

His affection must have shown in his eyes. Cynthia stilled, and her own eyes softened as if in answer. Tears clung to her lashes like fragile drops of ice. No breath stirred them. For one aching, bittersweet moment, gazing nakedly into each other’s eyes, into each other’s hearts, they shared their desire. For an instant, a warm presence seemed to unite them in a marriage of nature.

Then, as if a shadow fell across her, the joy in her face suddenly darkened. She pulled back, distancing herself from him. Her brow furrowed, and, in the single beat of a heart, she grew as elusive as mist. She wouldn’t meet his eyes as she rearranged the vials of medicine atop the night table.

“You must be famished,” she said, her voice cracking like brittle glass.

He was, but somehow that didn’t seem so important anymore.

“You’ll have to start out slowly,” she said, half to herself, wringing out a linen rag over a basin of water. “Barley water.” She hung the rag over the clothing peg. “A posset of almonds.”

“Cynthia.” Even to his own ears, the word sounded like a studded mace scraping across chain mail, and hurt worse, but Garth had to know what was wrong.

She wiped away the tears that continued forming in her eyes. “Bits of bread.”

“Cynthia.”

She sniffled and turned her back. “I’ll fetch the prior. He can tend to you now.” She swept up her satchel and began replacing the medicine bottles. “You should recover fully within a week.”

He frowned. She might have proclaimed him fit for the grave, for all the sorrow that colored her words.

“Cynthia.”

“I have to go home now. To my life,” she said, stifling a whimper, jamming the last of her herbs into the satchel. Her next words were more sob than speech. “And leave you to yours.”

He scowled. What did she mean? He had no life without her.

Yet the words she threw at him were his. He was the one who’d told her they couldn’t live in the same world. He was the one who’d left her.

“Nay,” he protested, cursing the feebleness that left him unable to block her path to the door.

Without a backward glance, Cynthia flew from his cell, leaving no evidence of her visit save the faint scent of her womanly skin and the hollow ache in his heart. An ache that pained him more than all his other ills together.

Cynthia wept all the way home, great tearing sobs that felt as if they ripped her very soul from her. By the time she rode through the gates of Wendeville, she was so exhausted, so empty, so bereft, she couldn’t even answer Elspeth’s anxious questions. Refusing the posset of almonds the maid handed her, she trudged up the steps to her chamber and slept for nearly a whole day.

When she finally awoke, it was to the sound of splashing water and the scent of violets. The sun lit her chamber in ripe afternoon shades of russet and rose.

“Are you among the living now?” Elspeth asked, drying her hands on her apron and hovering near to chatter away like a squirrel. “You must have worn yourself out, my lady. At first, we thought perhaps the chaplain had succumbed, so sorrowful was your countenance last eve.” Without ceremony, Elspeth whipped back the coverlet and proceeded to undress her. “But then a prior came, asking after you and bringing a cask of fine monastery wine to thank you for saving Father Garth’s life.”

Cynthia shivered as El peeled off her sweat-stained underdress and handed her a linen towel for modesty. She tangled a hand in her own matted hair. How long had it been since she’d combed it? She ran her tongue across her teeth. Her mouth felt as dry as dust. As she staggered, still half-asleep, to the bath, her belly growled with hunger.

Elspeth must have heard it. “We’ll get you fed when you’re cleaned up.”

The warm water helped to revive her body, but did nothing for her spirits. Even Elspeth’s gentle prodding couldn’t unearth the source of Cynthia’s melancholy.

She supposed she should be rejoicing. She’d won, after all. She’d singlehandedly vanquished almost certain despair, looked death in the eye and beat it back from the door.

But at what price?

“How are the villagers faring?” she asked.

“Not a one lost.” Elspeth beamed, continuing to scrub at Cynthia’s back. “A few are still weak as lambs, but they’ll be up and about in no time.”

Cynthia closed her eyes and breathed a prayer of thanks for that.

El sluiced a bucket of warm, clean water over Cynthia’s head to rinse out the soap. Then she bundled her hair in a linen towel and gave it a twist at the top.

“My lady,” she said, helping Cynthia from the bath and wrapping another towel around her, “may I speak my mind?”

Cynthia arched a brow at her. Since when did Elspeth ever ask to speak her mind?