HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  He arrived at the house earlier than usual for dinner, hoping to find his mother supervising in the kitchen, which she was, with their servant Ingrid who was such a fixture they all spoke in front of her of any variety of private matters. This room hadn’t changed since his grandfather had been master here, with its central cookfire and corner bathing area, the walls and ceiling blackened by decades of soot. A place of familiarity and comfort, except Patrice was there too, almost the last person he’d hoped to find. But the conversation could not wait. Plans must be made.

  He stole a bite of sweets probably intended for after dinner, and Rochelle tapped his hand with her fingers.

  He smiled and asked, “Will Abril’s family leave tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can invite them for another day if you like, though they seem to feel they are taking advantage of us even visiting as long as they have.”

  “Sundgau is only a few more days travel.”

  “Yes?” she said, pausing in her arrangement of hard, yellow cheese on a board.

  Patrice cocked her head, listening while pretending not to.

  “If you can spare me from the estate, I thought I should accompany them. The roads south are not as well traveled as where they have been, and with a few of Alda’s horses I can shorten the trip —”

  “I can spare you,” she said quickly as if she needed to speak before he changed his mind.

  “With Marian housebound, more of the burden has fallen on you. I’ve no wish to shirk my duties.”

  “Rowan,” Mother said. “I have made no secret of my expectations of you. But I also have dreams for you. If four or five days to accompany a young lady to Sundgau will help you explore one of those dreams, then you have my blessing.” She pulled him into an unexpected hug. “The work will be here. Happiness is not so easy to find.”

  “You cannot be in earnest,” Patrice said. “Happiness? With whom? One of the smith’s daughters?”

  Rowan turned to Patrice as Mother’s mild rebuke failed to discourage her from continuing.

  “No. I will not be silenced,” she stated firmly. “It is horrid enough that Marian will soon bear a bastard. Now Rowan, already set on spending his life coated in soot, considers courting a tradesman’s daughter? Why do we bother living here any longer, pretending to be nobility, when we obviously intend to act like peasants and do whatever we —”

  While Mother’s increasingly urgent interruptions could not slow the diatribe, the smack of Rowan’s large palm nearly cracking the surface of the substantial table ended it.

  “Do not lecture me about living as a nobleman,” Rowan warned as he stalked toward her. “Few of these aristocrats are worthy of your admiration. Your king is the worst of the lot, obsessed by setting aside his wife so he can marry the mistress who has given him a living son. And the women? They do not give a fig for their children’s happiness. Their offspring are pawns to be played, sacrificed for property and position.”

  A true daughter of Alda, Patrice would not cower as his tone escalated in volume and heat.

  “They cannot all be so dishonorable,” she said stoutly. “A marriage with a good family brings connections. It bonds us with other strong people!”

  “Ha. You are not talking about bonds. You are talking about politics, and those kinds of connections are frail. Look at the king and his brothers, his uncles. They are as likely to meet on opposite sides of a battlefield as anything else.”

  When Patrice would have spoken again, Rowan shook his head warningly.

  “I will make you one promise. When you are ready to marry, Father and I will endeavor to find you the mightiest aristocratic snob to give you exactly the kind of bond you desire.”

  “I am ready now,” she cried. “I hate being trapped on this…this…country estate while you go to Metz and Paris, and Marian represents us at royal assemblies.” Her tone left no doubt what she thought of Marian’s representation. “You not only waste the opportunities to elevate yourselves, you seem to actually seek paths to ruination. We could all be so much more if we just remembered how to conduct ourselves.”

  “More what? I have money, security, land, food, servants, and endeavors to keep me busy from sunrise to sunset. I don’t want more. I want a purpose. I want someone to see that purpose and accept it for what it is and think it might be enough,” he retorted in a tightly constrained voice, well aware that Fia and her family were probably somewhere in the house. “I know my responsibility to this family, Patrice, but I will not act simply to impress that lot of noble hypocrites, or you, for that matter, my pious sister.”

  Grandmother eased through the door and shut it quickly behind her. The wrinkled skin around her eyes stretched almost to smoothness as she goggled at them where they stood nearly toe-to-toe, the chain of the argument broken by her presence.

  Patrice dropped her chin, already embarrassed by her outburst, and Rowan turned away, regretting how much he’d revealed.

  Grandmother said, “Come with me, lass. I think I should remind ye of my childhood.”

  Patrice flushed and left the kitchen without a word. Rowan did not envy her. He would rather take a beating from Father than be the target to which Grandmother spoke with ire instead of weeping. Of course, that left him with Mother who, saints preserve him, had tears running down her cheeks. She put her hands firmly on his shoulders, though, and looked up into his face, eyes shining with understanding.

  “It will be enough, son. Whatever you choose, it will be enough.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They left at dawn. Rowan had appropriated three cobs from the stable, reorganized some of the cart’s contents between them, and settled Abril in the wobbly conveyance while he led the mule from Faxon’s high back.

  Fia assumed at least part of the purpose of the horses was to end the journey as quickly as possible for Rowan, though his accompanying them had been his idea. No one had been more shocked than she by his announcement at dinner.

  Curiosity had eaten at her all night, and it was near mid-day before she could maneuver her horse next to Faxon, what with Julius pretending to be a warrior on his short-legged pony, and Stella clinging and whimpering to a plodding steed with a back nearly as broad as the cart. Once the novelty wore off, they lumbered along as most new riders did, their thighs and buttocks getting sore.

  While all was relatively quiet, Fia stole the opportunity to sidle by and look up at him. The sun shining behind his head reminded her of the moment when he’d appeared at the shed in Paris. “Why are you doing this?” she asked baldly.

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “I’ve made myself resistant to you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, wondering if he meant these days as his final punishment of her.

  He must have seen the dejection on her face and lifted his hand from the wooden pommel of his sturdy saddle to signal he meant to say more. “We were friends for years, then you goaded me for years, but I responded to your…offer the other night in a moment. A moment when I was neither calm nor steady. I thought it was perhaps worth a day or two of my time to determine whether we could at least part as friends, at the end.”

  It was not enough, and she did not like the phrase at the end one bit, but it was more than she’d had from him since Metz, perhaps more than she deserved.

  “Thank you, I think,” she said.

  His acknowledgment was a curt nod, no more, and they rode in silence, side by side until, as he always did, he found them a comfortable camp near water. He tended the horses and gathered wood with Julius at his heels while she built a fire and helped Mam heat the dinner Alda’s cook had packed for them.

  She laid her bed in a spot near the fire where an empty area yawned beside her and closed her eyes and prayed that he might see fit to put his blankets nearby, as if they were once again on the road to Paris.

  He did.

  She lay on her side facing him, watched the light of the fire flicker over his deep red hair and hig
hlight the bold plane of his nose. His eyes were closed but she did not think he was asleep. Her arm straightened and stretched toward him, landing her hand in the dry stubble of winter-killed grass, a tiny bit closer to him, at least.

  Through the veil of sleep, something touched her hand. She inhaled sharply as her eyes flew open. Rowan stared at her earnestly. He shook his head minutely, and she somehow knew he wanted her silence.

  “There is someone near the camp,” he whispered. “Stay here, next to the fire. Keep your family with you. Don’t call out for me unless you are in danger.” His expression demanded her acknowledgement.

  She clutched his hand, instantly terrified. “Don’t leave me.”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat, then squeezed her fingers. “I will be well,” he said as he gently extracted his hand from her grip.

  She nodded, then whispered, “Be careful.” But he was already gone, silent, the silvery gleam of his spata in one hand and the wicked semi-spata in the other.

  Her senses sharpened to a fine edge. She heard the restless stirrings of the horses in the direction he had gone. The sound of flesh meeting flesh, a grunt. Her mother rolled over. She must keep them quiet. Without planning, she crawled toward the lumps of her family. All the while, her mind reached out through the dark.

  A cry, the sharp crack like a thick piece of kindling breaking, only muffled, was quickly followed by a piercing, masculine scream.

  Was that Rowan’s voice?

  “Hush,” she said to her mother and again to Stella who sat up with wild hair and terrified eyes. Julius came up to his knees and for a moment she feared he would bolt toward the fray, but instead he scrabbled toward them, just as she had when she’d woken from her nightmare months ago, moving to the only safety he knew.

  Another cry sounded. How many men might there be? How many could he manage on his own?

  Her family clung together. They shifted, nervous.

  “Hush,” she repeated. “Rowan will be back.”

  After a few more seconds of silence, she whispered toward the darkness, “Please.”

  A horse whinnied. Fia’s straining ears barely heard the dull thud of hooves in the loam of the forest floor, then two male voices taunted each other, Rowan shouted, the whine of blades echoed through the trees.

  In the circle of firelight, the four of them quailed in a knot, and for Fia’s sake, it was a good thing. “Stay here,” he had said. Every instinct she possessed said she must go to him. She must risk everything to help him, to make sure he was safe. But her mother, Stella, and Julius held her.

  Silence.

  “No,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Something crashed through the brush. It could be a man or a boar or a wolf. And then Rowan took shape from the darkness, and she shook off her family like a sow rising from a litter of piglets and ran.

  “Rowan?” she cried in anguished relief. She slammed into him and wrapped her arms around him, reasonably whole and safe.

  He did not return the embrace. Instead he stood with arms slightly extended. Then he explained, “Careful of the blades.”

  “I don’t care about the blades.”

  “And those the words of a weaponsmith’s daughter,” he chided.

  Mam, Stella, and Julius crowded around them and she reluctantly considered letting go of him, then noticed her left arm felt sticky where it pressed against his ribs. She moved her hand to his side, along the ribs and up.

  The breath hissed between his teeth.

  “You are hurt!”

  “A scratch under the arm, but yes, it’s starting to sting.”

  Their little camp erupted as the four of them, unused to nighttime battles and fresh wounds, fluttered around him with cries of dismay and offers of help.

  “Quiet,” he ordered. “I killed the leader and the other two ran off, slightly worse for wear, but I need to listen in case they come back. The horses are all accounted for,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Who cares about the horses?” Fia asked sharply.

  His mouth quirked in a smile. “I do, as a matter of fact.”

  Mam helped him remove the under tunic he’d been sleeping in. Stella gawked while Fia lowered her eyes. God in heaven, he was beautifully wrought. Pale skin stretched tightly over iron muscles. The streaks of blood marking his side stopped her lustful musings cold.

  “Oh no, Rowan.”

  He lifted his arm to look. The movement widened the slash across the long muscle below and behind his armpit, letting the blood flow more freely. “Not so bad. In my pack, Fia, there’s the ointment of my mother’s. A bit of that, and Abril, it looks like it might require some stitching.”

  While Mam worked, Fia held his hand on the good side, ending up with her cheek against his bare shoulder staring at the darkness where the would-be thieves had been. Even through the violent trembling she couldn’t seem to stop, she felt his occasional wince as Mam’s needle, too coarse for the sewing of a human, pierced his skin.

  He looked away from Abril’s work. Fia thought for a moment it was because he didn’t want to see his own flesh sewn, but when she lifted her head to see how he was coping, his dark eyes were on her.

  “It is not so bad, my only,” he murmured. He squeezed her fingers.

  Mam looked a tad queasy when she finished, so Fia wiped the blood away and smeared the wound with the green ointment. Mam helped her wrap several layers of cloth around his chest, and they eased him into a clean tunic. It felt as if days had passed since he’d woken her, yet no suggestion of dawn tinged the sky.

  Rowan insisted on checking the horses. He took Julius to carry a torch for him.

  Julius’s complexion shone pasty white when they returned. “We moved the dead man farther from camp,” he reported breathlessly. “He was making the horses nervous.”

  Rowan placed a steadying hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I doubt they’ll bother us again. Go back to bed, everyone, and get what sleep you can.”

  “I may not sleep for a week,” Julius declared. “I wish I’d been with you at the start.” He feinted clumsily forward as if he gripped a weapon in his hand. “I would have taken care of one of those rascals while you —”

  “Julius,” Mam interrupted. “Remember, Rowan asked us to be quiet.”

  They settled in their blankets. Except Rowan didn’t. He sat a distance away, back against a tree with his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. At first he cleaned his spata, then he sat, hands atop the blade where it rested across his thighs. His chin was tilted slightly down casting in eyes in deep shadow, but Fia felt him watching her, felt not only a question, but also a bond like the one she’d seen between his parents, back at Alda. Perhaps she only imagined it, but while she could, she would at least close the gap.

  She didn’t know if her mother slept or not, and didn’t care what she thought anyway, as she gathered both their sets of blankets and walked toward him.

  Rowan sensed her decision before she rose. His heart thudded deep in his chest with a vibration that passed through his whole body like the beating of a drum. He laid the spata to the side when she spread his coverings over his legs. She settled with her legs curled to one side, facing him. Her knees pressed against his calf.

  “Shouldn’t you sleep?” she asked.

  “Killing a man isn’t something I take lightly,” he said. “I’ll be awake for the rest of the night. Probably best with his two cohorts still on the loose. And my side burns like fire at the moment,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Is there something in your pack that will help the pain?” she asked anxiously.

  “No.”

  She put her hand on his knee, felt the knob of it with a searching touch that incited his manhood from restless interest to acute attention.

  “I understand now why you did what you did,” she said.

  “Tonight?”

  “No.” Her hand distractedly patted his knee as she searched for the
right words. “Why you told my father what you believed about Victor.”

  He frowned and turned his face away from her, disappointed as the old topic cropped up yet again.

  “I only mention it because I want to understand all of it, not to renew our differences.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Victor did not die peacefully, did he?”

  He looked at her sharply. So, not the old familiar, wearying argument but mortally dangerous territory, nonetheless.

  “I want to hear your side,” she said softly. “To make certain I understand everything.”

  He sighed, wondering if he’d be damning himself for a fool again soon. “It was very much like your father, I imagine.”

  She nodded, holding her expression steady, not surprised and not devastated. “And you were with him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You stayed with him and comforted him.”

  “To the extent I could, yes.”

  She nodded again, understanding too well what little could be done. “And then you came to tell me the news, in spite of everything I’d said to you.”

  He looked at her hand still cupped over his knee. There was no need to answer. She knew he’d been the one to tell her, that he’d come to face her instead of sending a message. He would have held her and consoled her, if she’d have let him. Which she hadn’t. She shivered, remembering the terrible scene she’d made, though blissfully ignorant of what specific accusations she’d hurled at him in her maelstrom of loss.

  “You were a good friend at the end,” she admitted. “Thank you.”

  He grunted and cleared his throat.

  “I understand why you did what you did,” she said again. She slid her hand slightly north and squeezed his thigh as if to press the truth into his flesh. “Tonight, when you were out there alone and I heard fighting and screaming and you had forbidden me to help you, I would have done anything — anything! — to see you safe. My body, my blood, my happiness…I understand now. I was too stubborn to see it from your point of view and understand, you acted from selflessness, not jealousy. It doesn’t even matter which of us is right about the sort of husband Victor would have been. When you talked to Papa, you probably knew you risked your friendship with all of us, even him. Yet you did it anyway, to protect me.”