Chapter 21

F or the lady’s comfort, they did not ride hard, but neither did they leisurely distance themselves from that which survived hundreds of years of abandonment only to fall to overturned candle stands. The outer wall and some buildings surrounding the chapel might escape the flames, but never again would the abbey be habitable by men of good or ill intent.

Having secured rooms at an inn, Amaury approached the nearest carrying the sleeping lady he had enfolded in a blanket before entering the establishment. At the door, he paused and nodded at his men and Donal who lingered outside the room that would accommodate them—though not their employer who would keep Fira within reach though it would mean an uncomfortable night in the corridor.

When the three entered and closed the door, Amaury shouldered his way into the lady’s room. As he lowered her to the bed, she murmured something he could not understand for the blanket drawn over her head protecting the identity of she who should not be in the company of men who were not kin .

For that, the innkeeper and his wife were told she was Amaury’s sister and took a fall from her horse en route to a convent. Had they not believed that for the scent of smoke they exuded, they hid it well. And had cause for the generous amount paid for rooms, viands and drink, and items to tend Fira as well as their own fouled bodies.

Turning from the bed, Amaury drew his pack from his back, next that which Donal discovered outside a monk’s cell—a bag holding the lady’s spectacles and other items, including rolled cloths that gave hope the blood on her chemise was of her menses.

After setting both at the foot of the bed, he started toward the door to secure it, but Fira cried, “Pray, nay!”

Seeing she twisted in the blanket like a caterpillar aspiring to wings, he turned back. As he reached to her, her hands shot up around her head and she wrenched the blanket down to her collarbone.

It was then he saw what he had not looked near upon at the abbey—swollen hands and bruised knuckles crusted with abrasions.

“Nay!” she repeated.

That and her cough covering his oath, he reached to her shoulder, but the wild in her eyes made him show his palm to remind her what he wished needed no reminding, “You are safe with me, Fira.”

Her eyes opened, lashes fluttered. “I feared…” She touched her bruised neck. “The false friar choked me…wrapped me in a blanket…put me under the bench.”

For how much that enraged, Amaury almost wished she did not tell it, but it was best she let it out. “I listen, Fira.”

Narrowing her eyes to see him better, she whispered, “Is Drumfiddle dead?”

Her abductor and persecutor and possibly ravisher since the roll of cloths did not preclude violation. “Only one escaped the abbey, and it was not him.”

She opened her mouth as if to ask who survived, but her face crumpled, she clapped hands over it, and loosed a sob.

He longed to take her in his arms, but for recall of their kiss and his fear of exposing her to the dark of him, he resisted. When she lowered her injured hands and once more sought to remove the blanket, he eased onto the mattress edge. “I will aid you,” he said, and when she did not cease, captured her hands. “Fira.”

Red-veined eyes met his. “I feared God and you abandoned me,” she said, then drew a shuddering breath, freed a hand, and set it on his jaw. “You came for me.”

He was uncomfortable with where her words moved his mind and body and where it might move hers—male attraction his side of it, girlish infatuation hers. And more discomfiting that for them being alone with only the act of closing the door to answer desire neither should feel.

Especially me. After what she has endured, she is impressionable.

“I did come for you, Lady Fira,” he titled her. “For failure of the watch set over the inn due to my enemy intercepting the message sent your brother, you remain my problem rather than Baron Wulfrith’s.”

Her eyes widened over words meant to discourage infatuation, then she averted. When she looked back, in a raw voice she said, “You are kind to accept responsibility for what befell me, but I bear much blame. No matter my need, I should not have departed the inn.” She coughed. “Ever one sees better behind than ahead.”

Silently agreeing, he asked, “What need was so great you broke the word given me?”

Her soot-smudged face colored. “When my family did not come as expected and I required menses cloths, I went belowstairs to request them of Alice.”

Relieved her monthly was the cause of her stained chemise, Amaury eased some. Still, that did not mean?—

“As I heard her settling a dispute between workers, I determined to go for them and…see the market.” Her shrug was apologetic. “A good excuse to do what I said I would not bolstered by the excuse my brother did not come.” She coughed again, then drew her other hand from his and once more tugged at the blanket.

Deciding it best not to aid for how thin her chemise, Amaury crossed to the door and closed it to prevent others on this floor peering within. He latched it and, keeping his back to her, said, “Since what is needed for your ablutions and injuries will be delivered soon, put the blanket over your shoulders.”

Shortly, she said, “It is done.”

He turned and was glad she sat on the edge of the bed. Even so and despite fiery hair that was begrimed and face in a worse state, he was drawn to her.

Tongue clicking off her palate, she whispered sorrowfully, “You know my secret.”

“Oui, The Falling Sickness. In tracking your movements, inquiries at the market that led to inquiries at St. John’s made sense of our first encounter when I feared you had been ravished.” He hesitated. “As also feared this day.”

Whatever she felt about that, her face did not tell. “He who believed me a demoniac and sought to purge the evil would not allow me the cloths I obtained at the hospital.”

It was not answer enough to exclude she had been violated, but he had no right to press her. Too, he could do nothing to make a dead man answer for the crime—unless the holy man encountered en route to the abbey was the perpetrator .

Immediately, he cast out the possibility for having learned much from the expiring Eldon whose cry for help was answered by Georges and Raoul—or mostly cast out the possibility since a key that turned the innards of a lock did not always turn all required to open the unseen.

He drew breath. “Would you like to speak of what happened when the Free Spirits?—

“Nay! Not now, mayhap never. ’Tis done.”

Not truly as he knew from what he endured during captivity, but he was not the one to help her rise above these dark days. As soon as possible, he would return her to her family in a way that did not endanger his men whose efforts should save numerous lives and livelihoods.

And avenge the wrong done me and mine, he acknowledged secondarily though it remained at the fore like an itch that demanded scratching. He wished it was not so, especially as he was given to believing the Lord aided in recovering Fira.

Her next cough was so coarse it bent her forward. “I am so…dry.”

Feeling a cur for not getting drink in her sooner, he strode forward, uncapped his skin, and set it in her hand. “Slowly, Lady.”

Slowly she went, and as she drew the spout from her lips, he heard brisk footsteps ahead of plodding ones. “We have visitors,” he said as they slowed. “Cover your head.”

Moments later, he opened the door to the innkeeper’s wife who raised a hand to knock. “We brought what ye ordered.” Her smile was deferential.

Amaury stepped aside. “Enter.”

She was followed by a lad one would think approaching the last of his youth for how tall and thick his figure, but his face was very much a boy’s.

“There and there.” She jutted her chin, indicating where to place what he carried. Once their arms were emptied, she flicked her regard over the shadowed Fira, and the two departed.

After Amaury latched the door, Fira uncovered her head and looked to the tray on the bedside table. “I should have no appetite, but I am hungry.”

Likely for being denied sustenance, he thought and determined not to ask since the answer would rouse greater anger of no benefit to his much-impeded purpose.

See her restored to passing health as quickly as possible and get her back to her family, he silently counseled.

“Will you aid me?” she asked.

“Of course.” After placing a stool between bed and table and lowering to it, he poured two cups of wine and passed one to her, then cut a piece of cheese and set it atop a tear of brown bread. When he offered it, her reach caused the blanket to slide from her shoulders, revealing her thin chemise.

She seemed not to notice her state of near undress that allowed a glimpse of shadowed feminine curves. Were she any other woman—even his departed wife of sometimes coy bent—he would suspect her aware of her effect on him that shamed for all she had suffered.

“I thank you,” she whispered and raised the bread and cheese, once more revealing knuckles whose abuse he could imagine for what the infiltrator, Eldon, told of the purging he witnessed before being sent from the chapel for protesting the manner in which the Free Spirits cast out her demon. Since his end had been near and it was the Lord to whom he would next answer, Amaury had mostly believed his account of what was done the lady. But what happened after he departed?—

Not for me to know in full since her path and mine shall greatly diverge, he told himself .

As they ate and drank in silence, Amaury confined his gaze to her face and injured hand into which he passed food.

When she shook her head at the offer of more meat and returned her empty cup, he said, “I know you wish to sleep, but you must clean yourself and tend your injuries to ward off infection.”

Seeing alarm in eyes she swept to the table on which the required items sat, he added, “As it would be unseemly for me to aid you, I will assist in getting you there, then deliver the bag so you may don clean garments.”

Confusion lined her brow, but before he could remind her that her belongings had been found, she said, “Ah, that is right. I am especially grateful to recover my spectacles so I may look upon you clearly.”

That last putting stiff in his smile, he said, “Once you are settled, I will go to the corridor. If you require anything, call me.”

“What of your ablutions?”

“I will see to them when you are abed with your back to me. Though I regret it must be done here, it is necessary to keep you safe.”

“Until I am my brother’s problem again,” she repeated his unkind words.

Though tempted to apologize, it was best she believe he felt little for her beyond guilt and obligation. “As for sleeping arrangements, I shall be outside your door through the night.”

“And uncomfortable. I am sorry.”

Amaury stood and moved the stool and bag to the table. Next he raised her and, troubled by the close contact, quickly settled her on the stool. “Call to me when you are finished and I will assist you to bed,” he said, then withdrew to stand sentry over she who continued to move him as he did not wish .

Not at this time, the thought pushed through cracks in his resistance.

“Not ever,” he muttered. “Back to her family, and there the end of us.”

Then there was a beginning? another thought struck. If so, what of the middle?

She told herself she was stronger than what she had endured, stronger than the heretical friar who suffocated her and the white-robed Angus who beat her with a rod. Though mostly she believed it, memories of Edgar tore holes in her beliefs.

For an hour, the novice persisted in rising before her as she cleaned and soothed her injuries, pointing an accusing finger that told he would not have suffered so heinous a death had she?—

“Cease!” she hissed and dipped into salve she had applied to her knuckles ahead of bandaging them. “It was he who abandoned the Church’s teachings to become a Free Spirit, who aided Drumfiddle in taking me from St. John’s, who left me to return to the nave. He is at fault for what befell him.”

She lowered her lids. Though it eased the sting of dry eyes, against that dark she saw the light go out of Edgar’s eyes and heard breath hiss from soot-blackened lips.

Opening her eyes, she released the table she had gripped to rise from the stool and cautiously bent forward to hitch up the long tunic Drumfiddle told would sooner be hers if she did not resist the purging. It had required effort to don what had been part of a monk’s habit, though not as much as was needed to fashion that which secured the cloths containing her menses.

Having already endured the shock of seeing through her spectacles the injuries done her legs when she removed the fouled chemise, she merely winced over their scrapes and deep bruises. However, she had to grind her teeth to keep from crying out as she rubbed salve into them. When she finished and straightened, her head went light, then came nausea.

“Not The Gloaming, ” she gasped and caught hold of the table. Hearing its feet screech over the floorboards as she lost her balance, she released it in time to avoid taking it down with her—or so she thought until she landed on her side and heard wood strike wood.

“Fira!”

Amaury was within, meaning the din was of the door hitting the wall rather than the table toppling.

As his boots pounded the floor, she rolled onto her back. All of him dim and blurred though her spectacles, she rasped, “Is it The Gloaming?”

We dropped to his haunches. “What say you?”

“The Falling Sickness,” she spoke the name with which most were familiar.

As he elevated her head, he said, “I cannot know.”

Able to bring him to focus and having suffered no loss of consciousness nor convulsing, she said, “’Tis not that,” then nausea rose again. “Mayhap smoke sickness. Pray, the basin!”

Moments later, Amaury had her up on her hands and knees retching into the bowl snatched off the table.

The Gloaming, he mulled as he held back her hair and waited for her belly to finish emptying so he could get her under the covers and warm away her shivering. Though he had seen only the end of what he mistook for hysteria following what he believed a man’s assault, from what those at market described and Donal told of his own experience, those afflicted with these seizures were much traumatized. Thus, a better name she gave it .

He could not afford to hurt more for her, already spending much thought and emotion on attraction that could delay his travel to northern Lincolnshire’s Port of Grimbsy on the morrow. That in turn would further postpone getting word to her brother—and possibly her relation, Achard Roche, if he was in the vicinity.

Unless he handed her off soon, the distance between himself and the end of Les Fléaux de l’Anglais could become so great he would play no part. Meaning the plan could fail. Meaning the lives of his men would be forfeited. Meaning Gert would win. Meaning England’s waterways and coastal towns would continue to suffer.

Amaury bent near. “Allow me to get you to bed.”

“Please,” she said low.

He lifted her, but it was no straight line between floor and mattress, a jag inserted when her tunic twisted and bared her lower legs as he drew her into his chest. Shapely calves and pretty feet was not what made him pause short of the bed. It was what a rod had inflicted not only on her knuckles but knees and shins glistening with salve. More than smoke inhalation, that beating made it difficult for her to remain upright.

Rage might have put in an appearance had she not lifted her face and, peering at him through her spectacles, said, “I will heal.”

“Oui, you are a Wulfrith.”

“Hmm.” She closed her eyes. “Do you know our…line began with a woman?”

He lowered her to the bed. “I am aware, Lady.”

“Your line as well.” Her lips curved. “It all began with a woman.”

Her lightness—near teasing—beating back the flames licking his insides, he gave little consideration to touching his lips to her brow, moving them to her ear, and saying, “I would not be surprised if most things of great import—the good things—begin with a woman.”