Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (7 page)

What trifling pleasantries the Abbot and the woman exchanged, God only knew. Garth was too bedeviled by the chaos in his brain to pay them any heed. But all too soon, the Abbot began to speak of leaving.

“I regret my haste,” he said without a hint of regret, “but I trust you shall see Father Garth settled? I must be off to Charing before nightfall.”

Garth stiffened. Was the Abbot abandoning him, then?

Aye. Indeed. With little more than a curt nod and a sweep of his somber robes, the Abbot managed to make the hastiest escape from Wendeville since Lot fled Sodom.

The chapel door closed behind his swirling cope with an ominous thud, like the portal of a prison.

Garth clenched his fists repeatedly, sorely tempted to rush headlong after the Abbot. But that was a coward’s way out. And he was no coward. He was a de Ware.

Still, left alone with a woman for the first time in four years, he floundered as uncomfortably as a fish thrown from the river. Knotting his restless fingers in the coarse fabric of his cassock, he stared at the well-worn flagstones.

Cynthia broke the ponderous silence, gently clearing her throat. “The chaplain’s chamber is rather modest, I’m afraid.” Her voice sounded as rich and lush as her hair. “The chapel is the oldest part of the castle.”

Unwilling to look at her, Garth feigned an interest in the windows. He might not be able to flee this temptress, but he certainly couldn’t be expected to carry on conversation with her, considering his vows, and he definitely wasn’t going to gaze into her beautiful blue eyes again.

Instead he pretended to inspect one of the panels of stained glass, though for all he noticed, it could have depicted the Last Supper or the Feast of Valhalla.

Her hospitality was apparently undimmed by his disregard. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” she crooned. “The glass came from Sussex.”

She came up behind him in a soft rustle of skirts, close enough that he could smell the fresh earth on her, close enough that he could feel her warmth at his back. He clenched his jaw, studying the narthex window intently enough to crack the glass.

“John had it commissioned when we were first wed,” she told him. “It was his gift…” She broke off, and something in her voice surprised him. Something caught at his heart and stilled his breath.

Sorrow. He’d forgotten. She’d just lost her husband.

“His gift to me,” she finished quietly.

Garth lowered his eyes from the window and let a sigh ease from him. Lady Cynthia was in grief. When the Abbot told him that Lord John had been old and feeble, he’d assumed there was no real affection between the decrepit lord and his young bride of two years. He could see now he was wrong. Cynthia had cared for her husband.

As he turned toward her, she smiled brokenly and wiped at her nose with the back of one dirty hand, leaving a streak where a tear had fallen. His heart softened at once. And he knew, as impetuous as it was, he could no more refrain from consoling her than a sparrow could refrain from singing. Lending comfort was as natural to him as breathing.

He reached out for her as he would to a child, cupping her cheek in one palm, brushing his thumb carefully across the smear to erase it. A wave of guilt washed over him. Compassion was the church’s daily bread. How could he have been so selfish, so caught up in his own troubles that he failed to notice her grief?

But as soon as their gazes converged, Garth’s fatherly instincts vanished. The innocent gesture suddenly seemed perilous. His hand burned with forbidden fire where it touched her cheek. Her skin was velvety and inviting, as smooth and warm as a fresh-laid egg. He could feel the racing pulse at her throat beneath his fingertip. And as he watched, her eyes grew veiled with some unnamable yearning and her lips trembled apart. His nostrils flared, and for one mad moment, as the sun drenched them both in a stained-glass sea, he feared he might lower his head to kiss those lips.

But an intruder shattered the moment, barging in through the chapel door. The two of them parted as quickly as torn parchment, and Garth lowered his gaze at once, praying he didn’t look as mortified as he felt.

“My lady,” the elderly gentleman said. By the jangle of keys at his belt, Garth guessed he was the castle steward.

“Roger!” She sounded strangely breathless. “Come in. Meet our new chaplain.”

“Father.” The man gave him a cursory glance from head to toe, then dismissed him. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but there’s been an accident.”

“Accident?” She straightened.

Garth’s eyes fastened on the steward, suddenly alert.

“It’s Will, my lady. He fell from his mount in the lists. He’s howling something fierce. I think his arm is broken.”

Garth set his mouth. He’d never broken a bone, but he’d watched the physician at Castle de Ware set his brothers’ a few times. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.

“Go and fetch my bag, Roger,” Lady Cynthia said, pulling her hair back and tying it up with a leather thong she dug from her pocket. “And find me wood and linen for a splint.”

Garth stared at her, astonished. Certainly she didn’t intend to treat the lad herself. Setting bones required a strong back. And a strong stomach. It wasn’t work for a gentlewoman.

“This may take a while,” she explained as a small furrow of worry creased her brow. “Please make yourself welcome.”

And before he could incline his head to acknowledge her, she whirled and was off in a whisper of velvet.

All his priestly instincts told him to remain in the chapel. It was where a man of God belonged, after all. This was Lady Cynthia’s castle, and if she was in the habit of playing physician, what business was it of his to interfere? If she could endure the gruesome sight of a fractured bone, if she had the strength to wrench a man’s arm half out of its socket while the wretch thrashed about, if she could turn a deaf ear while he screamed in agony…

With a self-mocking grimace, he bolted out the door after her.

He could hear the boy halfway across the yard, his low bellows of pain cracked by the unfortunate yelps of youth. Four of his companions huddled over him, shifting anxiously from foot to foot, but when Lady Cynthia arrived, they made way for her.

“What happened?” she asked the squires.

They all replied at once, but the gist of it was that the boy had been thrown or fell or leaped from his horse and landed on the hard-packed sod of the list. She knelt beside the victim.

“Can you sit up?”

The boy gasped in pain, but his friends managed to right him.

“We’ll have to remove your—“ she began, halting as Garth caught up to her and seized her shoulder.

He hunkered down between Cynthia and the youth and unfastened the lad’s swordbelt and the buckles of his breastplate. They slipped off easily enough, but the mail hauberk beneath would be difficult. Beckoning with his hand, he summoned two of the squires forward to support Will’s broken arm. While the lad clamped his teeth against the pain, Garth slipped the heavy chain mail off his good arm and over the top of his head. Then, as the boys carefully lowered Will’s arm, he guided the hauberk off the injured limb. The brave lad made no outcry, but beads of sweat stood out on his brow.

“Thank you,” Cynthia murmured as he dropped the chain mail to the ground. “Now, Will, let’s find out where the break is.”

She pressed her thumbs along the boy’s arm, working her way up under his sleeve. Halfway up his forearm, he gasped sharply, and she halted.

“All right. I can feel the break. Just rest for a moment. Roger will be along with my medicines soon.” Then she sat back on her heels, closed her eyes, and began rubbing her hands together as if warming them by a fire.

Garth scowled. What was she doing? The boy was suffering. The steward might not arrive for another quarter of an hour. The longer the delay, the more difficult it would be to snap the arm back into place. Something should be done…now.

He watched the lady for a moment more as she bowed her head over her hands as if in prayer. Then he made a decision. While she continued with her meditative ritual, he wiped his palms on his cassock and handed the boy his swordbelt, directing him wordlessly to clamp it between his teeth. The lad screwed his eyes shut and bit down hard.

Garth blew out a sharp breath. He’d watched the physician at de Ware set bones. How difficult could it be? The trick, he remembered, was distraction.

He braced his foot under the boy’s upper arm and adjusted his hand around the boy’s wrist, preparing to pull it. But just before he yanked, he raised his left hand and clouted the lad smartly across the face.

Gasping in shock from the blow, Will had no time to yelp as Garth hauled hard on his arm. In the wink of an eye, the bone popped back into place.

Garth’s satisfied smile lasted exactly two heartbeats before a female fist cracked it from his face and he rocked backward into the dust.

Cynthia couldn’t believe she’d hit him. But then she couldn’t believe what he’d done. Priests were supposed to comfort the sick, not pummel them. And if she’d knocked Father Garth onto the ground with the full force of the power she’d summoned for healing, it was no less than he deserved.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” she cried as he stared at her in stupefaction.

With a groan of frustration, she turned her attention to poor Will, who lay as pale as linen on the cold ground. She shook her hands. There was still a vestige of energy remaining in her fingertips, but it felt scattered. She’d wasted most of it on that punch, and she knew her knuckles would be bruised tomorrow. In fact, she doubted she could harness the power now at all.

“Are you all right, Will?” she asked, bending near.

The boy’s eyes were glazed as he looked at her.

“He hit me,” he mumbled, spitting the leather belt from his mouth. “That priest hit me.”

“How is your arm?”

Will frowned. “It hurts…but not as much. Why did he hit me?”

Cynthia pursed her lips. She wanted to know that as well. She eased her thumbs tenderly along Will’s forearm, feeling for the separation, and discovered to her astonishment that the bone was set perfectly. Apparently, Garth had been lucky.

“We’ll splint it properly when Roger arrives,” she told the boy with a forced smile of reassurance.

Then she let her gaze slide over Garth, unable to hide her anger. She had many questions, and she cursed the vow that would allow him to answer none of them. Then again, she doubted she’d like his answers. No priestly humility resided in his eyes now. He scowled harshly, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his lip with the back of his hand, and she thought she’d never seen a man of God look so unlikely to turn the other cheek.

Roger loped across the yard, bearing linen, several pieces of wood, and her satchel of herbs. She’d had no time to summon a vision to guide her in Will’s treatment, but she knew she could rely on myrtle, bruisewort, and feverfew to expedite the knitting of the boy’s bones. And, she thought peevishly, Will could probably use a rosemary infusion for the nasty bruise the chaplain had given him.

As for Garth, she supposed she ought to swab his cut as well. Perhaps she would, later, when she wasn’t so vexed with him.

But Garth didn’t give her that choice. As soon as Roger arrived, he came to his feet, beat the dust out of his cassock, turned on his heel and left.

Only much later, after she’d sent Will off with his arm successfully splinted, dabbed extract of mint upon her own bee sting, and begun to gather up her medicines, did Cynthia wonder again at Garth’s cruelty.

What had become of the chivalrous hero with the gentle touch in that long-ago garden? Had the years changed him so much? If this was what the church had taught him, if this was his version of holy works, then she intended to have a long talk with him. Indeed, the fact that he couldn’t argue with her might prove a good thing.

She hefted up her satchel and strode across the grass, still in her bare feet.

What had possessed Garth to make him clout a defenseless lad? What earthly purpose could striking a boy who was already in agony serve?

Halfway across the yard, she halted so abruptly that her satchel of bottles clattered against her thigh.

Of course.

She’d believed it was sheer luck that Garth had managed to set the bone properly. But was it?

Maybe he’d known precisely what he was doing. Maybe he’d simply taken matters into his own hands. From what she’d glimpsed in the moment before she struck him, Garth had known to brace Will’s upper arm and to pull true. As far as punching the boy…

A flush of shame washed over her like warm rain, and suddenly she knew the truth. Garth
had
meant well. He’d done exactly the right thing. And—curse her misguided assumptions—she’d struck him for it. Guilt made her knuckles throb all the worse.

Swallowing her self-righteousness, she straightened her shoulders and glanced toward the chapel. She had to apologize. She’d acted without thought. And she’d completely misunderstood him.

Knowing it would be no easier later, she trudged toward the chapel and sheepishly opened the door.

He was there, kneeling before the altar, his head bent in prayer, the glass-filtered sunlight staining his dull cassock in blocks of cobalt and scarlet and gold.

She hesitated. Though the castle belonged to her, she felt as if the chapel was
his
sanctuary, and she didn’t wish to intrude on his prayers. Perhaps she should come back later.

But she lingered a moment too long, and when he rose and turned, he saw her. He apparently hadn’t heard her come in, for his eyes widened and his mouth parted in surprise. Then a shadow fell across his face as if a cloud had gone across the sun.

“I…I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” she said, feeling suddenly clumsy. “I came to, well…”

Wariness crept into his dark gaze.

She took a deep breath and faced him squarely. “I came to apologize.”

His expression didn’t change, but then, what did she expect? She had clouted him with all the force of her healing power, flattened him with her fist. He no doubt thought her a bully.