by Sarah Hegger
Arms! His arms struck her dumb. How to explain such a thing, or the intense desire to bite them? He had placed a dagger beside the bath and grabbed it now. First, he lathered soap on his jaw, and then he scraped away the growth of the past few days.
“I can feel your eyes burning a hole in me,” he said. The knife scratched against his whiskers.
“Do you not grow a beard?”
“Nay.” He raised his arm to shave the other side. Such a simple, practiced motion and so very male. “It itches too much.”
Once he’d finished shaving, he rinsed the knife and placed it beside him again. He ducked beneath the water, knees poking out, and came up shaking his head like a big dog. Peering over his shoulder, he said, “You might want to close your eyes again.”
His way of bathing differed so vastly from hers. Where she lingered and let the water soothe her, he kept it short and stuck to his purpose. A bit like he did most things.
Water swished as he stood.
Kathryn got a glimpse of taut buttock before she shut her eyes. Her eyelids flickered in rebellion, and she jammed her palms against them to keep them closed. Dear God, what if his man parts resembled that of the dogs Father kept for breeding—all pink and glistening. Kathryn shuddered.
“You can look now.”
Kathryn cracked open one eye.
Roger had donned his braies. She shoved the nasty man parts image away, and stared at the pleasing flesh in front of her. The men at home looked different. Some had a roll of belly that drooped over their braies, others had a pelt of coarse dark hair, and the younger ones seemed unfinished somehow. Roger looked…seasoned, tough…virile.
Perhaps when she accomplished her goal of being a lady knight, she could take a lover. A lover who looked exactly like Roger. One, who like Roger, did not constantly bellow and beat at her.
“We should sleep.” Roger pulled a blanket from the pack and laid it before the fire. “We do not know when our friend will depart.” Next he extinguished the taper and threw the room into near dark, lit only by the flickering firelight. “Sleep well.”
He lay on his blanket and spread his arms beneath his head. Interesting shadows nestled into loving pockets across the fire-gilded expanse of his chest and belly.
“Are you not going to dress?”
With a smug grin he glanced at her. “I am dressed for how I normally sleep.”
“Oh.” Blast! She did need to do something about her constant flushing. Women who lived by the sword did not blush like sheltered maidens.
Still clothed, she crawled beneath the bed covers.
Noise from the common room swelled and grew softer again. A shout followed by a wave of raucous laughter startled her.
Roger’s eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in a smooth motion.
She had nothing to fear from him, yet she could not sleep. His mere presence filled the room, and pressed against her awareness.
He rolled onto his side and faced the fire.
“Roger?”
“Aye.”
“I cannot sleep.”
He chuckled. “Close your eyes and think peaceful thoughts. That is what Nurse always said to me when I could not sleep.”
“Nurse?”
“Aye,” he said. Affection filled Roger’s tone. “On my mother’s marriage, Nurse came to Anglesea with her. And has ruled us all since we first appeared in the world.”
“Is she still at Anglesea?”
Roger grunted. “Aye, even death is afraid of Nurse.” He shifted onto his back. “I imagine she will have a hand in the raising of my children.”
“Your and Matty’s children.” A curious emptiness happened in her chest, which was ridiculous because of course they would have children. Men and women married to beget heirs. “You and Matty will make beautiful children.”
He sighed, and closed his eyes. “Sleep, Kathryn.”
She tried, she really did, but what seemed like hours later she lay and stared at Roger’s back as the steady huff of his breath rode the silence.
Even the common room had quieted enough for the sounds of the night to penetrate their room.
Framed by the high casement the moon hung as a half crescent in a star littered sky. Mother always said something about wishing on the moon. Father mocked her, called her stupid when he heard. Father did that a lot. At times he used his fists to make his point clearer. Over the years, mother had grown more and more silent, until now she only spoke when father was not about. Even then she did it nervously, always glancing around for him.
Roger wanted to know why she would not marry. Was it really any wonder that she would never let herself be tied to a man like a horse harnessed to pull a plow? Treated no better than the lowliest servant.
Men like Ranulf hid their true face when they courted. If she had not watched for Matty, Ranulf would have succeeded in marrying her sister, and Matty would have become another Mother, a slow dying bloom that faded more every year. A word in Father’s hearing here and there about Ranulf’s pockets being shallow and the danger of Ranulf had been averted.
When the offer came from Anglesea, Kathryn had panicked at first. The ripe prize of a tie to Anglesea turned Father almost genial for a few weeks. She had accompanied her family to Anglesea determined to watch, wait and see. Resolved to extract Matty by whatever means necessary if needed.
Now she found herself buried to the neck in a pig-swill of her own making. The still of the night would no longer allow her to deny what flit around the edges of her mind. Her girlish desires had woken in a shattering roar and aimed their useless selves at Roger.
Poor luck because they could not have him. Roger belonged to Matty. Matty could not protect herself, had no will nor means of escaping Mandeville other than marriage. Of course she could join a nunnery, but Matty was the sort of woman made to have children, and rule with gentle grace over a household. After growing up with father, Matty deserved to be happy.
As for herself? Kathryn sat up and rested her elbows on her knees. She would make her own way, and her own happiness. If she had found a Roger for Matty, surely somewhere in this vast kingdom there would be another one.
Her plan to install Mother at Anglesea would go forward. Father had no use for his wife in any case. He lifted every skirt at Mandeville he could, and keep gossip had him chasing a young widow in the village who proved to be rather resistant to his advances. Let him pursue his widow in peace, as long as mother dwelled safe behind Sir Arthur’s walls.
As a child she had heard rumors of Father having been in love with another woman before his marriage. They said the woman died before they could marry, and Father had never recovered from her death. For years, Kathryn had clung to that story, and had found in it a reason for his constant anger at Mother, and then her. As she grew older, she ran out of excuses for him. Her father took joy in behaving as a loutish brute.
Roger showed her daily that men could be different. In time, she would come to see Roger as her brother by marriage again. Her girlish crush would wither and die like a rose without water, and they could go back to being brother and sister.
Dull weight pressed against her chest. The moon blurred in the sky above her, and Kathryn touched her damp cheek. Tears dampened her fingertips. She hardly ever cried, and to do so now made her laughable. Pointless tears. She had stopped shedding them years ago. Another reason she stamped all those girlish emotions down deep and kept her boot on them.
At Mandeville when her feelings welled to an ache inside her, she would slip to the stables and talk to Striker. Her horse always understood her. He would stand still and let her pour her tale in his large, silky ears, her face pressed into his neck.
Roger said not to leave the room.
However, Roger slept like an innocent babe and the inn had fallen silent hours ago. She needed the peace Striker offered, and she slid out of bed. Using every bit of stealth she had learned from years of avoiding Father, she crept across th
e room and grabbed her boots from beside the door.
Dagger padded to her, and she motioned him back.
The door opened onto the silent night and Kathryn slipped into the yard. Just a few moments with Striker and she would sleep as peacefully as her companion.
Odors of greasy meat, dung, and burnt tallow tainted the fresh spring air as she picked her way through the unidentifiable shapes on the yard floor.
The shadows shifted. A heavy weight thrust her forward.
Kathryn stumbled.
A hand cut off her shout.
“Look what our lord was hiding away.” A strange voice rasped in her ear.
Kathryn forced her mind to calm. She kicked back, but her assailant shifted. Her foot hit nothing, and she lost her balance.
As she struggled to regain her balance, he clamped her sword arm to her body.
Kathryn raked his face.
Her attacker ducked his head to the side. “Bitch!” Mead, onions, and rotting teeth surrounded her. His hand covered her mouth. Filthy fingers blocked her air. “Try that again and I’ll rip your pretty face off.”
He shoved her to the ground. Hard gravel skinned her knees as her hands tangled beneath her.
With his knees in her back, he pinned her with his greater weight.
Her legs were useless, her arms trapped. Dirt and stones ground into her cheek. He was too heavy. Too strong.
Something sharp pricked at the corner of her eye. “Will he like his pretty whore when I cut her up?”
She had to think. Fight. Get him off her. But the knife nicked her skin. A wet trickle slid down her cheek. Helpless. Kathryn fought the dark, sucking feeling. She refused to be helpless.
Except she could not move. The knife pressed a hairsbreadth from her eye.
Legs shoved her thighs apart. “I have never had a lord’s leavings before.” Hard flesh ground against her bottom. “Be sure to tell him how you like it rough.”
His weight lifted. A boot connected her hip in a jarring thud and she rolled free. Two sets of legs churned up a choking cloud of dust.
An awful sharp crack, and a body hit the dirt beside her. Wide open eyes stared at her from a bearded face. The first time she had seen her attacker.
“Kathryn.” Roger’s voice reached her first and then he crouched beside her. “Are you all right?”
A scream caught in her chest and she clenched her teeth to keep it within her. Kathryn was never helpless and she did not scream like a frightened girl. She nodded.
With a harsh noise, Roger scooped her into his arms. He carried her into their room and kicked the door shut behind them.
“I can walk.” Only weak women got carried about like their legs didn’t work. She refused to be weak. She would never be weak again.
He lowered her to her feet.
Her knees buckled. Kathryn fended off his hands stretched out to catch her. “Nay.”
Back stiff, she sank onto the edge of the bed and dug her nails into her thighs. Bested, just like that and with no recourse. If Roger had not come, she would have been at the whoreson’s mercy. His to do with whatever he willed.
“Kathryn?”
Why did Roger speak to her as if she would break? She did not break. “Is he dead?”
“Aye.” He approached her slowly. Strong emotion throbbed in his voice and he held his hands in plain sight as if he gentled a wild thing. “You are bleeding.”
“Cur caught me with his knife.” She swiped at her cheek. Her fingers came away streaked with her blood. She had sworn no man would ever make her bleed again. The blood on her fingers made a liar of her. A weakling. A failure. “Took me unawares.” Her voice grated through her teeth. “Came at me out of the dark.”
Roger sank to his knees in front of her, his gaze intent and searching. “Aye. We are all caught out at times.”
“Not you.” She shook her head. Her throat closed too tight to manage many words.
“Aye, me.” He touched the torn fabric at her knees. It must have happened when she’d been shoved to the ground. “Nobody is infallible.”
Why did he not shake her and bellow at her for leaving the room? Instead he stared at her, so full of compassion and she wanted to punch it away. His caring wriggled past her tightly held shields, and found the damned soft place inside her. The place that wanted to break down and cry. No more tears. Ever. “You will have to show me how to deal with an attacker from behind.”
“I can do that.” He cupped her calves in his warm, strong hands. He broke her with his gentleness. “Kathryn?”
“I am well.”
“Sweeting.”
“Stop it.”
“Nay.” He leaned closer. “I would care for your wounds.”
“I do not need it.”
“Aye, sweeting, you do.”
He wanted to break her, see her weep. Already she shook with the sobs that waged war to be released. “Get away from me.”
“Never.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she did not need him. A low keening wail broke from her, and she could not make it stop. Hunching, she tried to contain it inside her. The fear, the blasted fear that would not go away. It shook her so hard that her breath came in harsh sobs.
The bed dipped beside her, and Roger picked her up and laid her in his lap.
Her head found the dip in his shoulder and pushed into him. Strong arms came about her and held her there, held her together as she shattered.
His cheek pressed the top of her head, as he murmured words she could not decipher. Sweet words that were meant to comfort but made her cry harder.
* * * *
She slayed him. Each sob clawed though Roger as he held her.
God’s bones, he wanted to break the sod’s neck all over again. Shake her for being so foolish as to leave the room. Hold her until the storm passed. Wipe the haunted look from her forever. Comfort her. Protect her.
Love her.
God’s ballocks! Where, by all holies, had that thought come from? Barely a sennight ago Kathryn of Mandeville had cantered into his life. All these years of searching for what his father had, and in a wisp of time his thoughts turned to love.
Impossible!
Except Father had said it took him all of one glance to know he had met his love. Serving escort on the betrothal visit of another man to his mother, Sir Arthur had lost his heart to another man’s promised bride. Somehow Lady Mary and Sir Arthur had made their way into marriage.
Kathryn’s nails dug into his chest as she sobbed. Tiny pinpricks of pain versus the storm that raged through her. Her tears came from deep within her. Aye, the sod he had killed had frightened her, as such an experience would frighten anyone, but there lay more to this. In his gut he understood her hatred of being made to feel vulnerable, frail, like a woman.
His mother embodied the perfect lady, poised, gracious, lovely, serene, and he had never once thought of her as weak or fragile. His mother had steel through her backbone, but still able to bend with life’s trails and not snap beneath the strain.
Kathryn calmed slightly and he stroked the elegant line of her back. This backbone that she hated bending like a curse. True strength lay not in the arm swinging a sword or the shoulder holding up the boulder. Nay, it lay instead in the ability to sway with the hardships, and arise again. The woman in his arms had that sort of strength. Strange, she sought to be strong like a man, when she was already so much more robust. She had a woman’s strength to weather all storms.
Her sobs subsided to soft breaths that huffed against his neck. The tension in her eased until she melted against him. Her breathing deepened and slowed, and in typical Kathryn fashion between one breath and the other she fell asleep.
Roger laid her back on the bed.
Dagger whined softly and shoved his muzzle closer to her.
A mess of tears and streaks of blood from the small cut at the corner of her eye covered her pretty face. Tendrils of hair s
tuck to her cheeks. Paler than the linens beneath her, she slept like one exhausted. Roger tucked the blanket beneath her chin and rose.
Beside the bed, Dagger settled with a sigh. He laid his head on his great paws and glanced at Roger. Dagger had the next watch.
Outside, the body lay where he had left it. Gut heavy and flaccid, the body proved hard to lift. Roger hauled him to the far side of the road from the inn and dropped him three feet within the trees. A man such as this had to have made a multitude of enemies to account for this death.
On his way back, Roger peeked into the common room.
Their messenger lay on a bench against the wall, rolled in his cloak, head pillowed on his pack.
In the morning he would lead them to Lady Mathilda, and more decisions to be made.
He let himself back into the room and mended the fitful fire.
Dagger raised his head and watched him as Roger lay on his blanket.
Drifting halfway between sleep and wakefulness, Roger sensed Kathryn moments before she slipped onto the blanket beside him. He turned onto his side and tucked her back against his chest.
Chapter 13
Kathryn woke to a low fire. A snoring Dagger shared her blanket. The strip of sky visible through the casement blushed the first touches of dawn. As she rose, an ache in her ribs awoke to greet her with a dull throb. Her knees stung, and one hip felt as if she’d been thrown from Striker. She’d had worse.
Glad for the privacy, she stumbled to the wash basin and splashed cold water over her swollen eyes. Last night she had wept like a weak, stupid girl in Roger’s arms. Would that she could wash the shame away as easily as she cleaned the dried tears.
The door opened and Roger walked in. He left the door open a crack.
Dagger padded to him and nudged him for a greeting.
“Good, you are awake.” Roger wore his hauberk already, with his cloak over his shoulder. “Our man is breaking his fast and will be on his way shortly.” He held up a cloth bag. “Dagger and I have already tended to our meals. This is for you.”
“Should we not be going?” Kathryn dodged his gaze. She could not face his condemnation, or even worse, his pity.
