The Warrior's Winter Bride

by Denise Lynn

  When the man didn’t budge, she added, ‘Besides, I would prefer he be whole and completely alert when I cut out his blackened heart with an old crooked spoon.’

  Even though her words were true—to a point. When the time came, she would use his own sword, not a spoon—she’d been seeking to lighten the mood.

  Her ploy wasn’t very successful. While his lips did twitch, he only shook his head.

  Now what would she do?

  Isabella knew that her mother would use the wine to wash the blood from the wound and then make a wax tent to hold it open, allowing any further drainage to run free. Once there was no more seepage, she would remove the tent and then sew, or cauterise, the wound closed.

  However, from the smell of the tallow burning in the lamp she should have realised that there wasn’t any wax at hand. And she didn’t know what else to use.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Dunstan’s man drew her back to the task at hand.

  ‘The only thing I can do is bind his wound after I clean it. For that I need some water, please.’ When the man reached for a pitcher on the small table, she amended her request. ‘From over the side of the ship.’

  She didn’t know how they did things on Dunstan, but her mother preferred seawater when cleansing an injury, claiming it helped to heal and dry out the wound.

  The man studied her carefully for a long moment, then left the cabin.

  While he was gone, Isabella poured the wine over Dunstan’s shoulder and used the clean shirt to wipe away the rest of the blood and the wine.

  ‘Here.’ A bucket hit the floor beside her. Ice-cold water sloshed over the sides, soaking through her already sodden shoes and making her shiver.

  Once the skin around Dunstan’s wounds were as clean as she could get them, she blew on her near-freezing fingers, asking, ‘Is there another shirt or anything?’

  ‘No.’

  She glanced at the weapon now strapped to the man’s side. ‘Then I need your dagger.’

  His eyes widened briefly before narrowing to mere slits. ‘For what?’

  She’d already told him of her plans to wait until Dunstan was healthy before killing him. Did he not believe her? Isabella sighed, then explained, ‘I need to bind his wounds. To do that I need strips of cloth.’ She plucked at the hem of her undergown. ‘From this.’

  Frowning, he hesitated, but finally, with obvious reluctance, slowly extended the weapon towards her.

  Isabella rose and lifted her skirts, only to drop them at the man’s gasp. She glared at him and ordered, ‘Turn around.’

  Satisfied that he did as she’d ordered, she paused. With his back to her, it would be an easy thing to run him through. Isabella sighed, knowing that the other men would hear the commotion and rush to his aid.

  She gave up her brief dream, pulled the hem up and cut through the thin fabric. Wincing at what she was about to do to her finest chemise, Isabella took a deep breath, then tore a good length of cloth from the hem.

  ‘Now, you hold him up for me.’

  Once his man had him upright, Isabella cross-wrapped the cloth around Dunstan’s chest and back. ‘I’m finished. All we can do now is wait.’

  After placing him back on the bed, the man suggested, ‘You might want to add prayer to the waiting.’

  She shrugged. While it was true, for her own selfish reasons, she did want him hale and whole, praying for this man’s health would seem more blasphemous than holy.

  Isabella straightened, preparing to get off the pallet, but Dunstan wrapped a hand around her wrist and pulled her down next to him. She gasped at his unexpected strength. Nose to nose, she stared into the blue of his now open eyes. His pupils were huge, his eyes shimmering from the effect of the medicine he’d been given.

  It was doubtful he knew what he was doing, or was even aware of doing anything, but when she tried to pull free, he only tightened his hold, trapping her hand between them, against his chest.

  Behind her, she heard his man gathering up the discarded cloths and the bucket. ‘I’ll return shortly to check the wound.’

  ‘Wait! You cannot leave me here alone with him like this.’

  ‘It is not as if he can harm you. But if any further harm comes to him, you will be the one to suffer the consequence.’ On his way towards the door, he paused to douse the lamp before leaving her alone on Dunstan’s pallet in the dark.

  The warmth of his breath brushed against her face. Even in the utter darkness of the room she could feel his stare.

  ‘I cannot harm you.’ His deep voice was low, his words slightly slurred.

  His heart beat steady against her palm. The heat of his body against hers nearly took her breath away. She couldn’t remain on this pallet with him. ‘Please, let me go.’

  ‘Too late.’ Dunstan rested his forehead against hers. ‘You had better be worth all this.’

  Worth all what? Being wounded? Isabella opened her mouth to ask, but the steadiness of his light breathing let her know her questions would go unanswered.

  She rolled as far on to her back as his hold would allow, stared up into the darkness of the cabin and tried to ignore the man so close to her side. Before she could stop it, a tear rolled down her cheek, followed by another and yet another. The need to cry, to sob aloud her grief at losing her father and being taken forcibly from her home was overwhelming.

  No matter how hard she fought, her wayward mind always came back to worries and questions—each more heartrending than the last.

  Who would assist her mother in the lonely, sad tasks that must now be completed to lay her father to rest? Who would stand by her side at the service, or lend a hand with those attending the wake? Who would be there in the middle of the night to soothe away the tears and the fears for the future?

  Her sister? No. By now Beatrice would have locked herself into her chamber to give way to her own grief. It would be days before she’d think of their mother.

  Jared? No, her brother would be too busy amassing a force to come after her—and the man who’d torn their family asunder.

  While Jared’s wife, Lea, would no doubt try her best, she was too new to the family to know that if she tried to do too much, in the mistaken belief that her mother-by-marriage would welcome the respite from duty, she would be unwittingly angering the Lady of Warehaven.

  The first time Lea instructed a servant not to disturb the lady, or if she greeted a guest as the stand-in for the lady of the keep, she’d find her help met with near uncontrollable anger. Isabella knew how closely her mother oversaw every aspect of running Warehaven. It was her keep, her home, her domain and she’d not brook any interference, not even if it was offered in the most well-meaning of manners, lightly.

  And what would now happen to Beatrice and her?

  Beatrice was also of marriageable age. While she had her mind set on Charles of Wardham, Isabella knew her parents disliked him and would never permit Beatrice to wed the lout.

  But would Jared let Beatrice have her way?

  What about her? She hadn’t had the opportunity to tell her parents about her decision not to wed Glenforde. Would her brother, who would now be the Lord of Warehaven, take it upon himself to sign the documents and force her into an unwanted marriage?

  Under normal circumstances the answer to that question would be a resounding no. Her brother would never force her into anything.

  However, these weren’t normal circumstances. If he wasn’t thinking clearly, there was no way for her to know exactly what he’d do.

  Which meant Jared might either see her wed to Glenforde or someone else of his choosing.

  His choosing. Another shudder racked her. Why had she not listened to her parents?

  None of this would have happened had she not been so determined to always have her own way.

  When he
r parents had first given her the rare gift of choice they’d done so only because they’d known full well that it would be easier than trying to force her into a betrothal she would fight no matter how perfect the man was for her.

  An odd arrangement to be sure, but one her father had chosen because of his own marriage. As one of old King Henry’s bastards, her father had been forced to wed the daughter of a keep he’d conquered. And while, yes, her parents had learned to deeply care for and love one another over time, he wanted his children to at least know of love before they pledged their future to another. Even though it went against everything considered normal, he wanted them to have the choice.

  She knew that—his wishes for his children had never been a secret. Just as she knew that had she simply gone to him about Glenforde the betrothal would have been called off.

  Instead, she’d let anger at Glenforde’s behaviour with the strumpet get the best of her and she had stormed from the keep.

  And now...

  Isabella clenched her jaw until it hurt, in an effort to keep a sob from escaping.

  Now her father was dead and her mother alone.

  Her chest and throat burned with the need to cry, but she’d not let the murdering lout next to her know the level of suffering and grief he’d caused her.

  She’d sooner throw herself from this ship and drown in the depths of the black icy waters than give him the satisfaction of witnessing her pain.

  If anyone was going to suffer it would be him. Richard of Dunstan thought he’d steal her away from her home, kill her father and get away with it?

  No. Not while she had breath in her body.

  Oh, yes, she would ensure he recovered from his wound—and then he would learn the meaning of pain.

  Chapter Three

  The creaking of wood, the swaying beneath her and the sound of waves crashing nearby dragged Isabella from her fitful dreams. Where was she? Why was her bed moving? What was that sound...?

  Consciousness swept over her like a racing storm, bringing her fully awake with a heart-pounding jolt. She was still aboard Dunstan’s ship, heading towards his island stronghold. A keep that would become her future prison.

  They’d been at sea for nearly three days now. She struggled to draw in enough breath to fill her chest. Three days—three of the longest days of her entire life. She’d done penances that hadn’t seemed as arduous as this forced journey.

  Sleep had been her only escape from the fears and worries chasing her, threatening to tear reason from her mind and send her screaming with misery and anger. She’d sought its comforting embrace as often as she could.

  Isabella knew what caused her heart to race, her breathing to become laboured and her palms to perspire. She was well aware what brought about the darkness tormenting her.

  It was more than just having been captured and witnessing her father’s death. And it was more than the over-warm body next to her on the bed. She stared into the pitch blackness of the cabin. Even without the benefit of sight, she felt the walls closing around her, suffocating her, stealing her ability to think, to employ any rational measure of common sense.

  This airless cabin was far too small, too confining and more of a cell than a cabin. It was a constant reminder of what she had to look forward to on Dunstan.

  And the unconscious man next to her on the narrow bed didn’t help lessen the feeling of being trapped in an ever-shrinking cage.

  Isabella closed her eyes and conjured the image of her airy, open bedchamber at Warehaven. She concentrated, bringing the vision into sharper focus. When the memories of fresh-strewn herbs floated to her nose and the softness of her pillow cushioning her head, along with the warmth of her bedcovers surrounding her, she willed her pulse to slow.

  She drew in a long, deep breath, filling her lungs near to bursting before letting it out ever so slowly, over and over until the trick her father had taught her so many years ago when she was a frightened child cleared her mind and calmed her spirit.

  Once certain she could function with some semblance of reason, she sat up.

  The door to the cabin opened, letting in a glimmer of evening light and air—icy-cold blasts of frigid air, along with Dunstan’s man... Matthew, Sir Matthew as she’d discovered yesterday when she’d overheard the other men aboard the ship talking just outside the cabin.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Without waiting for her answer, he handed her a hunk of dry, coarse bread and a skin filled with what she knew was wine so sour that it rivalled any verjuice she’d ever encountered.

  Shivering, she frowned. It had been so hot beneath the covers that she’d been unprepared for such a cold, bracing wind.

  No. Her heart nearly leapt from her chest.

  Setting the offered meal on the floor, she turned towards Dunstan and jerked the covers from his chest.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Sir Matthew was at her side in an instant, crowding her, hovering like a mother fretting over her sick child.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She placed her palm against Dunstan’s forehead and then his cheek. Biting back an oath at the unnatural warmth of his skin, she ordered, ‘Bring the lamp over here.’

  To her surprise he did as she’d requested and held the lamp over the pallet, allowing the light to fall on a flushed, sweat-soaked Dunstan.

  Sir Matthew cursed, before asking, ‘How long has he been like this?’

  ‘He was fine when last I checked.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Tight concern tinged his question.

  Isabella raised a hand. ‘Give me a moment to think.’

  ‘His wound is most likely infected.’

  What she didn’t require were statements of the obvious. The need to get Sir Matthew out of the cabin prompted her to make him useful. ‘Get me a knife and have someone heat some water. Find something I can use for new bindings. And if no one aboard this ship has any healing herbs, then you must make port immediately.’

  ‘We will be at Dunstan in another two or three days.’

  She turned her head to glare at him. ‘He could be dead by then.’

  The man tossed her his dagger, placed the lamp on a stool near the pallet and then thankfully left without another word.

  Isabella turned to the task at hand—making sure Dunstan lived so he could die by her hand at a time she deemed appropriate and in a manner that suited her. Kneeling over him, she slipped the dagger beneath the bandages, prepared to strip them from his body, then hesitated, fearful of what she might see. What if...?

  ‘Can you not decide?’

  Startled by hearing him speak for the first time in three days, she jumped, nicking the tip of the dagger against his chest.

  Fingers closed around her wrist. ‘I would prefer death by infection, thank you.’

  Isabella lifted her gaze to Dunstan’s face. ‘You are awake.’

  He stared at her with bloodshot eyes that never once wavered. And for a moment—the very briefest of moments—Isabella wished they might have met under different circumstances.

  With his squared jawline, slightly crooked nose, even teeth and full lower lip, the man needed only a bath, a change of clothes and a razor to be what her sister, Beatrice, would call a very fine figure of a man. A description that would have drawn a soft, agreeing laugh from her.

  Neither the fading bruise from the black eye she’d given him, nor the small gash running across his cheek from when he fell, lessened the more-than-pleasing appearance.

  And his voice... Oh, how that deeply rugged voice brushed so easy across her ears before flowing deeper to touch her soul. Even the most pious of women would throw all thought of morals and chastity into the breeze just to hear another word fall from his mouth.

  Dunstan’s eyebrows arched as if he somehow sensed the direction of her thoughts and Isabella felt her cheeks fla
me with embarrassment, shame and not a small measure of self-loathing.

  Sweet heavens, where had her mind flown?

  The man was nothing more than a savage beast. He’d captured her, taken her from her home, from safety and caused her father’s death. And here she sat like some besotted girl mooning over this murderer’s looks and the sound of his voice?

  ‘You are still here.’

  Isabella blinked at his statement. ‘Since Sir Matthew stopped me from jumping overboard, where else would I be?’

  Instead of answering her, Dunstan tugged slightly at her arm. ‘What is this?’

  It was her arm. Was he seeing things? What did he think...oh...he meant the knife. ‘I need to remove your bandages.’

  He released her wrist, then nodded.

  ‘Does that mean I should continue?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘Well, no. I don’t want to do anything for you.’ A quick glance towards the still-open door assured her Sir Matthew was not standing there. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’

  ‘No, of course you...’

  His words trailed off and Isabella realised he’d once again fallen prey to the beckoning spell of the sleeping drug. It was to be expected since very few people could resist the siren’s call of poppy juice.

  She cut away at the bandages, peeling them back as she did so. Holding her breath, she focused on the wound left by the arrow.

  To her relief, while it was an angry red and puffy, there weren’t any telltale dark lines of advanced infection.

  She’d need only to reopen the wounds front and back, let them drain and after cleaning them out, pack them with some herbs—if Sir Matthew found any. And if not, perhaps that verjuice they called wine would be strong enough to burn away any evil humours.

  The bigger concern was his fever.

  ‘What worries you so?’

  And once again Dunstan was awake. As much as she’d like to rail at him for killing her father and kidnapping her, she knew that within moments he’d only fall asleep again and not hear a word she uttered.

  In hopes that he might be alert enough to assist in his own recovery, she said, ‘You have a fever and it seems there is nothing aboard this ship to help banish it.’