Chapter Two

 

A powerful sorceress? The young woman’s warning froze Luke, though not because he believed her. What indication had he possibly given that he meant to force himself on her? He’d saved her life, for God’s sake!

Yet her heart beat like a bird’s beneath his forearm, telling him her fear was real. He relaxed his hold a little.

“You mistake my intent, lady.” He forced himself to sound calm but, in truth, he was deeply offended. “My army awaits, and we have ridden straight through the night to get this far. We must find a place to make camp and eat what provisions we have left,” he added, “before men start to become careless from exhaustion and, after that, dangerous.”

When she said nothing but simply hung lifelessly in his arms, her mouth set in a mulish line, he added, “You will get back on my horse. Is that understood?”

“I won’t stand trial again!” she said in a rush. “I won’t!”

Ah. Then he understood her fear, so strong that she’d tried to stab herself with his sword. Or had she been hoping to skewer him?

“There will be no trial,” he said against her ear, ignoring the stench of singed hair. “I said so only to appease the prioress, which clearly did not work.” He recalled the fearsome woman’s whip with displeasure. “Fear not. I intend to return you to your family.”

As her mouth parted in surprise and the tension left her, he took the opportunity to swing her up into his arms, where he could better see her. She braced her hands against his chest, resisting his hold.

“Your feet are burned,” he rapped out, impatient with her irrational fear of him. “You shouldn’t walk on them. Can you not feel the pain?”

As her wide gaze fastened on her feet, he noticed how intensely green were her eyes. Her hair, though sprinkled with ash, was a rich red hue. Add to that her pointed chin and soot-blackened face, and she certainly looked the part of a sorceress. He nearly smiled at the fanciful idea.

Striding back to his horse, he set her once more upon the saddle, realizing his men waited at the edge of a dense forest. Even at a distance, he could discern the resentment in their postures. And no wonder—they’d been denied rest at the priory, and still, he would burden them with the need to return this woman to her family. Despite all that, he could not regret his impulse to save her. The spark of life in the spirited redhead shone too brightly to allow it to be snuffed so cruelly. .

He mounted behind her a second time. “Sit back,” he warned, spurring them briskly forward. She fell against him, her body as rigid as a pike.

He caught up to his soldiers by a stream that separated the fells from a sprawling dark forest.

“What now, my lord?” Sir Pierce inquired testily.

Half expecting a reprisal from the ruthless prioress and her flock of nuns, Luke glanced over his shoulder at their proximity to the priory, then he shrugged. He couldn’t ask his men to ride a furlong farther.

“We take our rest beneath those trees,” he told his field marshal, nodding at the rowans on the other side of the stream.

Then he led the way himself, driving his horse through the rushing water.

 

 

Merry knew the forest well. From its ancient growth, she’d gathered plants for her herbal, foraging by moonlight after her privileges to work in the priory gardens had been taken from her. Bilberries, licorice root, and Saint John’s wort abounded there.

“I apologize for stopping so soon,” her rescuer said in her ear, “but my men are beyond weary. After a few hours’ rest, we’ll continue.”

Merry nodded. She didn’t fear that the prioress would immediately pursue them. Inside the priory was only the abbot and the clerics who’d accompanied him, and then her fellow sisters. Nay, nothing short of an act of God could wrest her from this army.

It was her rescuer whom now she feared, though he’d spoken more kindly, his voice as deep and resonant as the forest itself. She recalled the name he’d given to the prioress. Luke d’Aubigny. It meant nothing to her. Clearly, as a king’s commander, he was a nobleman, but she knew not his title, nor from whence he hailed.

Distracted by the chorus of groans that went up as the army dismounted, Merry shifted her attention. The men looked incredibly weary, stumbling about, some collapsing onto woolen blankets they’d unfurled from their saddles, others pausing first to care for their horses. Many wore purple surcoats with a golden emblem of a phoenix and had mail. Others were more shabbily dressed. Vassals and mercenaries, she supposed.

Their leader dismounted also. With his feet firmly planted on the ground, his head still topped her waist. He gave her a quick, enigmatic look. Perhaps he was at a loss what to do with her. There certainly were no other women in the group—no lemans, no servants, no wives.

She looked away, chagrined for having called herself a sorceress and planting such a notion in his head. Truthfully, she should have thanked him instead, except with her future plunged into uncertainty, she wasn’t sure she was even particularly grateful.

“Your mail, my lord,” announced a youth whose voice cracked midsentence. He pulled a packhorse in his wake.

“I will don it after we rest,” the commander said. “Fetch some water for the lady.”

The flaxen-haired youth could not have been a day over fifteen. Curious to the point of being rude, he stared up at Merry, still upon the horse,.

She ignored him, disliking his bold stare. His cheeks were ravaged by angry pustules common to adolescents. A remedy that would clear his complexion within a week flashed into her mind.

“She’s only a girl,” the youth determined with amazement.

Merry flicked him a patronizing look, used to being mistaken for younger than she was due to her stature and the features of her face. “I’m older than you,” she corrected him.

“Erin, fetch the water,” his leader repeated, an edge to his tone this time.

The boy stomped off, bearing a leather canteen to the stream.

That left Merry to bear the warrior’s scrutiny.

Indeed, his gaze moved from her wary face down her body to her feet.

“Show me your feet,” he demanded, reaching for her right heel.

She steeled herself to endure his touch, yet it was not unpleasant. Moreover, it remained gentle. The black bands of his eyebrows came together, and she was struck by the contrast between his hard expression and his tender touch.

She dropped her gaze to her own feet, surprised to see the red, liquid-filled blisters that ridged them. “I can’t feel anything,” she marveled.

“You will,” he answered gravely. Then he asked, “Why have you no hose or shoes?”

Still slightly fascinated by the sight of her injured soles, she answered him, “Mother Agnes confiscated them. Too wasteful to let them burn, she said.”

They both were silent a moment, no doubt thinking the same thing regarding the prioress’s warped values as to what should burn and what should not.

“What about your hands?” he asked.

She held them out for his inspection. As he cradled them on fingers that were warm and sure, a strange thrill chased up her arms, speeding the beating of her heart.

She bore welts from the ropes and four self-inflicted crescent punctures on either palm, but her hands had been spared from burning.

“You will rest here while I procure treatment for your burns,” he said, nodding at a fallen log. Then he cast a gaze over his men, who were already making camp. “Gervaise,” he called to a squat man who had moments earlier lain down on his bedroll, munching on something that might have been cheese. With obvious reluctance, the man got up and ambled over.

“Find a salve for this lady’s burns,” the commander said, ignoring the resentful look with which Gervaise skewered her. Turning back to her, Lord Luke, as she thought of him, raised his arms to Merry to help her dismount.

Bracing her hands on his broad shoulders, she let the warrior take her weight. As he lowered her, their bodies brushed, giving her a shockingly anatomical depiction of his hard male body. She sank bonelessly onto the fallen tree, wondering if he had been affected at all.

He’d turned his attention to his squire who approached bearing the wineskin.

“Water, my lord,” Erin said, handing it to his master. To her, he asked, “Exactly how old are you?”

“Nearly three and twenty,” she said, hoping it would quell his interest as well as his master’s—a man she guessed to be thirty years if he was a day.

“You’re a witch, aren’t you?” the squire persisted. “That’s why them other nuns were set to burn you.”

The cork popped free of the canteen the leader held, momentarily drawing all their gazes.

“Tend to your horse,” Lord Luke ordered the boy, putting an end to his interrogation, and staring hard at the youth until he turned away to unhitch his packhorse.

“What is your name, lady?” the warrior inquired, handing Merry the wineskin.

“Merry,” she said, hurriedly, suddenly eager to drink, to wash the smoky taste from her mouth and soothe her irritated throat.

“As in ‘making merry at the Saturnalia’ or ‘Mary, mother of God’?’” he asked.

She paused, the canteen tilted in mid-air. Why did it matter? Certes, her mother had always said her father thought her a wee, merry babe the moment she came into the world, hence her name, but the latter would be more fitting for a nun. Either way, however, she had failed to live up to her name.

“The former,” she said. “Lady Merry du Boise.”

“I’m Luke d’Aubigny,” he said. “That slightly presumptuous youth is my squire, Erin. My horse, I call Suleyman. And you have soot on your face,” he added, handing her a cloth that had been tucked into his belt.

Her self-consciousness heightened, Merry sprinkled water on the square of fabric and wiped her cheeks. The cloth turned quite black. No doubt she was a grimy mess.

The stout man, Gervaise, returned bearing an earthenware pot. “A salve for burns, my lord,” he announced.

Merry eyed the vial suspiciously. “May I ask what it is?”

“Sheep’s fat boiled with the rind of elder,” said the man.

She had no wish to wound his pride, but it wouldn’t do.

“Thank you,” she said, “but the fat will only inflame the burns. I’ll find something to treat myself.”

Puffing out his chest, Gervaise eyed his lord for instruction.

“Go and take your rest,” Lord Luke advised him. Only the coolness of his tone betrayed his irritation.

Discomfited, Merry continued to scrub her face.

“Have I got the soot off?” she asked absently, wishing she could walk to the river.

His attention focused on her, his perusal courteous, yet unnerving.

“Not quite,” he said, holding out his hand. “May I?”

She relinquished the cloth without realizing that he meant to scrub her face himself. Before she could scoot away, he caught her chin in a firm grasp and ran the cloth along her nose and under her lip. Merry held her breath until her lungs ached.

His eyes were the color of amber, she realized, a clear brown hue, flecked with gold. Long, thick lashes rimmed those eyes, as dark as his glossy black hair, which he wore loose. Its length in no way softened the masculine lines of his straight nose and square chin, which sported the faintest shadowy growth. She had to admit he was interesting to look at.

 

 

Erasing the last smudge from the young woman’s face, Luke realized he had overlooked her quiet beauty. True, her nose had an impudent tilt and was dusted with freckles, but her skin was porcelain under them; yes, her chin was pointed, but her rosy lips were bowed, and the lower one was enticingly full. Her crowning glory were her emerald-colored eyes, which emitted a purity that was most appealing, at the same time sparkling with inner thoughts that could as easily be mischievous as innocent. He found her an odd combination of puckish and sensual.

Erin, who was now laying out the mail on the ground in preparation for oiling, also noticed the color of her eyes. “I’ve heard witches have green eyes,” he volunteered, leaning forward to regard her more closely.

The young woman went rigid at his observation. “I know of an herb that will cleanse those pustules from your face,” she countered tartly.

His squire reared back, clearly mortified that she had pointed out his flaw. “Mind your own business!” he snapped, scowling and turning away.

“Just so,” the disheveled nun muttered, color rising in her cheeks.

Struck by her feistiness, Luke kept his mouth shut. Erin had certainly deserved a reprimand for his rudeness.

The boy turned full circle and sighed. “I can’t find one of your chausses, my lord,” he admitted.

“Look around for it,” Luke instructed.

As Erin retraced his footsteps, scuffling about in the grass, Luke tossed the towel onto the log and made to sit beside his new charge. However, a sound like the cry of an infant had him spinning about, searching for the source. A ginger-tinted animal streaked through the undergrowth and landed on Merry’s lap, causing her to burst into delighted laughter.

The music of her merriment stunned him. He’d never heard such a provocative sound. Indeed, it had every man still awake turning a head in her direction.

“Kit!” she exclaimed, kissing the large yellow tabby between its ears, while rubbing under its chin. “You found me!”

The animal’s purr set the forest to vibrating.

“Is this your cat?” It was a stupid question, but he’d yet to recover.

“We keep company,” she said. “Though one might contest whether he’s mine or I am his.”

Luke watched her as she stroked the feline from head to tail. Why had he not heard of nuns owning cats?

Running a hand through his hair, he sought to control the wild thoughts racing through his brain. Of course, she wasn’t a sorceress, simply because a normally standoffish and skittish animal jumped up onto her lap and became tame. Or because the prioress had declared her a witch and tried to burn her to death, that, too, signified nothing.

Merry was merely an ordinary young woman who needed to be escorted to safety. The sooner he could do that, the sooner he could accomplish his mission and return to Arundel to be with his dying grandfather.

“From whence do you hail,” he asked. “We will take you home directly.”

She stroked her cat, remaining stubbornly silent.

A tickle of alarm skittered through him. “You must have a home,” he prodded.

“I had one,” she finally said, “but they won’t want me back.”

“They who?” he pressed, glancing at Erin, who crawled upon hands and knees, peering beneath the log and searching the tall grasses for the missing mail. “Your family?’

She nodded, a frown creasing her forehead.

Sensitive to her sudden despondency, Luke asked gently, “How long has it been since they’ve seen you?’

She wrinkled her nose, her frown deepening as she considered. “Five years,” she said at last.

So she’d been eighteen when they’d sent her away. Briefly, he wondered why they had done so, for something told him she hadn’t gone to the priory out of a devout desire to be a nun.

“Much can change in five years,” he offered, thinking she only needed reassurance.

She raised her eyes to him then, and he nearly took a step back at the fury blazing in them.

“You ought to have let me burn!” she exclaimed. “’Twould have been better for everyone if I’d died!”

With that startling utterance, Merry bolted off the log, clutching her cat to her slender body, running to God-knew-where. She hadn’t taken but five steps when she dropped the animal with a cry of agony and crumpled to the earth, rocking back and forth over her injured feet. The cat returned to comfort her, rubbing its head against any part of her body it could.

Luke and his squire shared a look of consternation. One minute, this strange young woman seemed out of her mind, the next in need of rescuing. Bent over as she was, Luke couldn’t help but pity her.

“Lady Merry,” he said, hunkering beside her. “Perhaps you should put your feet in the stream.”

When she looked at him, he was glad to see she wasn’t crying though her mouth was set in a grim line of pain. And as she glowered at him, her eyebrows took on a tragic tilt that made his stomach cramp. How odd her birth name, he thought, for she seemed one of the least merry women he had ever met.

Then he remembered the startling beauty of her laughter. “Would that I could make you smile again as easily as that cat can,” he heard himself say.

The notion surprised him, given all that he had done for her already. Jesu! What was he thinking by making such a fool’s statement?

Her frown only increased and then disappeared all at once, like clouds moving from in front of the sun on a blustery day.

“Yes, I would like to put my feet in the stream,” she admitted, betraying the pain she doubtless suffered.

He held his arms open, and she stretched hers out to him with wary trust. Though exhaustion tugged at him, Luke found it scarcely taxed his strength to lift her slender form.

He picked his way around the sleeping men and headed for the stream where sunlight danced on the running water. The cat followed close behind, he noted with amusement.

Wading into the shallows, Luke placed his charge onto a sun-warmed boulder where she slipped her feet into the water. A hissing sound escaped her.

“Better or worse?” he asked, feeling for her.

“Better,” she said, looking up. Her eyes seemed to absorb the green of the forest.

Merry sat in silence then, staring into the clear water. Her cat paced back and forth upon the shore, as if wondering how to join her without wetting its paws.

Luke scraped a palm over his stubbled jaw. He was at a loss as to what to do. His body demanded sleep, yet it seemed unwise to leave her unattended in her present state.

Perhaps sensing his hesitation, she turned a placid face to him.

“Go and take your rest,” she invited. “I will sit and tend my feet. ’Tisn’t as though I can run from you,” she added mocking herself.

Weariness rushed through him, telling him he would be useless to his soldiers if he didn’t seize this reprieve.

He gestured toward the bank. “I’ll sleep close by,” he answered.

She had already dismissed him, giving him her shoulder.

Luke called his squire away from his search. “Take your rest, Erin.”

“I still can’t find half your chausses, my lord.”

“Then it’s gone. You must have dropped it at the priory in your haste. Sleep now,” he ordered. Snatching his cloak from his satchel, Luke shook it out at the foot of an elm. Removing his boots, he left them to dry. Suppressing a moan for his aching muscles, he lay down on the makeshift bed, notched his hands behind his head, and took one last look at Merry.

The cat had performed a marvelous leap and sat comfortably upon her lap. She held her pet, unmoving. Luke suffered a moment’s qualm that something bad would happen if he closed his eyes. However the weight of exhaustion was too much to fight. His eyelids drifting shut, he gave into the blissfulness of sleep.

 

Merry waited for the mid-morning sun to thaw the place in her heart that had been frozen for weeks, possibly years. She called that place despair. Mother Agnes would have said ‘twas Satan’s seed, planted in her on the night the devil took her soul.

A vision of Ferguson panting over her helpless mother flashed through Merry’s mind.

Perhaps Agnes was correct. Not even the sun could thaw her at this juncture. Nothing could dissipate the despair that gripped her given her current situation: condemned as a heretic and with no hope of reprieve even were she to return home.

And her feet were blistered and hurting!

Even the smooth glide of Kit’s fur couldn’t soothe her brittle desolation.

A horse whinnied, and she turned to look at the embankment and at the man who had snatched her from death.

Had she truly been rescued? By a man with no ulterior motive than to see her safely home?

She contemplated him while he slept. Indeed, it was nigh impossible to look away. His face was somewhat exotic with its black brows, sharp cheekbones, and blade of a nose. She marveled that a man could look so . . . so manly and yet seem so kind.

Would that I could make you smile again, he’d said.

Impossible. The momentary exuberance over seeing Kit was a foreign feeling, and her laughter had sounded strange even to her ears. However, circumstances seemed to have turned in her favor.

Her gaze drifted down the warrior’s body, over the broad, muscular chest, the plane of his abdomen, toward his powerful thighs. With arms locked behind his head, his padded shirt had ridden up, leaving the swell of his manhood clearly delineated under his woolen hose.

Merry wrenched her gaze away, mortified that she had looked at him there. What did she think, that he wouldn’t have the same weapon as other men?

It took several steadying breaths to clear her mind. What if he did take her back to Heathersgill as he’d promised? What then?

For a moment, she indulged in the fantasy that her family would welcome her back. Her mother, Jeanette, would run to her with open arms; the peasants would swarm her with welcoming smiles. Her heart clutched with regret.

Nay, they wouldn’t want her back, given what she’d been—a girl mad with grief . . . and a suspected murderess. Ferguson had killed her father, married her mother, and then the world had become a fearsome place. Her stepfather’s men had sought to take her innocence on more than one occasion, and she’d avoided them by living in the woods and by using dangerous concoctions when needed.

Only Sarah, the local healer, had known what to do with her. She’d taken Merry under her care, making her an apprentice to her vocation. With Sarah, Merry had discovered her gift for curing ills, as well as causing them.

She’d found a reason to go on living.

All might have ended well. After two years of tyranny, Ferguson had been destroyed, killed by her own mother’s hand in a strange turn of events. Moreover, her eldest sister, Clarisse, was safely wed to a strong man who could protect her from the evil in the world—though, in Merry’s opinion, he’d perpetrated quite a bit of that evil himself.

Aye, her family had survived the Scot’s desecration. Hope for happiness returned briefly.

Then, without any discernable cause, the infants began to die in and around their keep. Peasants and villains turned their grief-filled eyes on Sarah and Merry, crying, “Witch!” and demanding justice.

If Merry’s mother, with Clarisse’s aid, hadn’t whisked her to Mount Grace, with Clarisse’s husband providing the dowry to the prioress, she might have been put to death sooner. In the end, she’d been condemned anyway.

Merry roused herself from painful memories. The cat had fallen asleep on her lap. The warmth of his fur, in combination with her black robes, was heating her scorched skin. She leaned over the water, craving its coolness.

The sight of her reflection appalled her.

Had her hair turned gray overnight? She lifted a hand to her head. Nay, it was sprinkled with ash, making her look like an old lady.

She glanced at the sleeping men. Who would notice if she slipped into the water and bathed?

Setting a disgruntled Kit beside her on the rock, she peeled off her nun’s habit, leaving on the linen shift beneath. She scooted to the edge and slipped in.

A gasp escaped her. The cold stream made her bones ache but soothed her skin. Her feet touched the pebbled bottom, and she winced. After a few moments, Merry felt her muscles loosen as she acclimated to the water. Enjoying a sensation of freedom, she let the current sweep her into deeper waters, ignoring Kit’s plaintiff mewling when she spied a mound of flowering soapwart on the opposite shore and paddled through deeper waters to reach it.

Snapping off a stalk and several leaves, she crushed the plant in her hand, releasing the herb’s properties, which she rubbed into her scalp, working the lather through her plaits as she unwound them.

This was more than a physical cleansing, she acknowledged. It was a cleansing of her spirit. The past was behind her. God willing, she would start her life anew.

She submerged herself for a final rinse.