A Family for Christmas

by Winnie Griggs

  As the bear reared up, Luke shot again, this time sinking the arrow deep in the fur of the animal’s chest. The bear slumped to the ground.

  The woman had run off.

  Luke took off in the direction in which he’d seen her disappear. He couldn’t lose her, not now, when he’d come so close after such a long search. He rounded a clump of bushes, hoping to catch sight of her far ahead, but she’d turned, looking back at the fallen bear.

  She spun toward him as he burst through the bushes.

  Fear flashed across her face, but she didn’t scream this time.

  “Please don’t run.” He extended one hand in a peaceful gesture.

  The woman watched him warily, her mouth open slightly, the fear in her eyes fading to something akin to recognition.

  Surely she had to recognize him. She’d saved his life. He recognized her, and he’d been on the brink of death, hardly conscious while she’d sewn his side back together.

  “I shot the bear,” he assured her, glancing back to see the bundle of black fur still unmoving in the clearing beyond. The bear had been poised to strike, one swipe away from defacing the woman’s beauty forever. She ought to realize that he’d helped her, even if it was his fault for frightening her into a run toward the bear in the first place.

  But when he turned to face her again, she only shook her head.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Luke began, but the woman cut him off, talking rapidly in a language he didn’t recognize.

  It wasn’t Illyrian. It certainly wasn’t Lydian, nor was it Latin. As second in line to the throne of Lydia, Luke was fluent in those three languages.

  If anything, the woman’s words sounded like the Frankish tongue Luke’s sister-in-law, Gisela, had spoken as a child. She’d taught him a few words, but that had been weeks and weeks ago. He tried frantically to remember.

  “Peace,” he said, cringing as he butchered the accent.

  But the woman stopped talking and listened.

  “Peace,” he repeated, his inflection perhaps a little better that time. Try as he might, he could only remember one other word. “Cheese.”

  The woman made a face, half uncertain, half amused.

  “Sorry, that’s all I know,” he confessed in Lydian, then repeated the Frankish words. “Peace. Cheese.”

  The woman laughed, her eyes alight.

  Luke sighed with relief, though questions filled him. What was this Frankish woman doing here on the borderlands between Lydia and Illyria? Her heritage explained her pale blond hair, a rarity in their part of the world, but her background raised more questions than it answered.

  “You are good with languages.” The woman spoke in halting Illyrian. “Do you know any Illyrian?”

  “Yes.” Relieved, he switched to the familiar language of his enemies, chastising himself for not trying the tongue sooner in his excitement. “Do you recognize me?”

  She looked away, glancing to the carcass of the bear lying still in the clearing, then back in the direction of the village of Bern, where she’d saved his life. She stared that way for some time, not looking at him, nibbling at her lower lip uncertainly. Her dress was coarse, patched, befitting a woman of low station. A puzzle, indeed, for rarely did women of low station travel far beyond their homelands...unless they’d been sold as slaves.

  He couldn’t bear the thought that the woman who’d saved him might be owned by someone else—not when he had the means to buy her freedom.

  “You saved my life.” He stepped forward tentatively, fearing she might bolt again. “Please allow me to repay you.”

  But the woman shuffled backward away from him, shaking her head, her face pale again. “No,” she whispered, “no.”

  * * *

  Evelyn rubbed her eyes, blinked, looked at the man again. She had to be dreaming. She had to be. She’d dreamed of him plenty of times before, but this dream was different. She was certainly awake this time. This dream felt real.

  “You are not the man I helped,” she told him frankly, looking him full in the face and denying the way her heart leaped inside her. Granted, this stranger looked like the soldier she’d sewn together, but plenty of other men looked like him, too, at least at first glance. She’d stared at other men for months, thinking she’d seen him, then feeling foolish for hoping to find him alive knowing she couldn’t possibly see him ever again.

  He was dead. He’d died. Her efforts had failed, and the enemy had returned. In the battle that had erupted, the hut where he’d been sleeping had burned to the ground. There’d been nothing left of him but charred bones and ashes.

  She’d prayed there had been some mistake. But though her hope-filled eyes had spotted plenty of men who resembled him from afar, on closer inspection none of them were as handsome as the soldier.

  “I am,” the man insisted, stepping closer.

  Evelyn stumbled backward. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but she didn’t like it. “You can’t be. That man died.”

  He stopped advancing, scowled, reached for his shirt. “I’m not dead. You saved my life. I can show you my scar.”

  A wall of brambles prevented her from retreating further, so Evelyn turned her head and pinched her eyes shut. She couldn’t see, wouldn’t look, refused to resurrect the grief she’d felt at his death. It hadn’t ever made any sense, anyway, why the death of a stranger should tear so deeply at her heart. Her prayers for his recovery had gone unanswered, but her disappointment shouldn’t have been any deeper than what she felt daily, reduced to the status of a lowly servant in her grandfather’s household.

  God hadn’t rescued her from her position. Why did it hurt her heart so much that God had failed to save the soldier? Sorrow had stung her deeply when she’d heard of his death. Thoughts of him could drive her to tears even still. She certainly wasn’t going to revisit those raw emotions, not in front of this stranger. She kept her eyes closed, her head turned away as she sought to control the sadness that rose up inside her.

  The sun had warmed the day, and the wren that had sung to her as she’d dug valerian roots hopped closer, singing exuberantly again.

  Fingers brushed her hand, the light touch so shocking she nearly screamed again.

  “Please.” His voice was low, gentle, far too close to her. “I owe you for my life. What can I do to repay you?”

  She shook her head and kept her eyes closed tight. “You are not that man. That man died.”

  “How do you know he died?”

  “They showed me the charred bones and ashes. There was a battle. The hut burned.”

  “The hut didn’t burn. Or maybe it did, but I was gone by then.”

  “You were too weak to walk.”

  “My men helped me out.”

  “Your men?” She peeked back at him, assessing his clothing, trying to determine his rank. He spoke with words that would indicate he had soldiers serving under him. But then, her grasp of the Illyrian language was tentative at best. Surely she’d misunderstood. His dress was no different than a common woodsman’s, not even that of a soldier.

  But the man she’d tried to save had been similarly dressed, and they’d told her he was a soldier—and an important one. They’d wanted him to live so they could use him as a tool for bargaining.

  She had studied his face in the firelight as she’d prayed for God’s mercy on his life and wondered then what made the man so important that they’d threaten her, a life for a life. If she failed to save him, they’d promised to kill her. When she learned the fire had killed him, she’d half expected to die then, but it hadn’t been her fault, so they’d let her live.

  Besides, with her knowledge of healing, she was useful to her grandfather, even if he purposely gave her the hardest, most demeaning jobs at the fortress as she worked to pay off the infinite debt her father owed h
im.

  Fingers brushed her hand again. She froze and pinched her eyes more tightly shut.

  He cupped his hand over hers and drew her arm toward him, settling her fingers over the scar. “Do you recognize your handiwork?”

  She opened her eyes cautiously, looked at the scar, blinked and inspected it more closely.

  He’d been cut from just above his navel to his ribs, saved only by the thick wall of muscle that had kept his organs from being spilled. The scar followed the exact line, etched with feathered strokes marking each neat stitch.

  Yes, she recognized her handiwork. She’d prayed over each stitch, over each carefully chosen herb she’d pressed to the wound to ward away infection and speed his healing.

  The man had survived.

  Did the Illyrians know? Did her grandfather know? Either they truly believed the man had died, or they’d lied to her about his death. But why lie?

  No, they must not have realized he’d escaped before the hut burned.

  She pulled her hand away from the scar, though he still held her fingers in his. For the first time she examined his face in the full light of day. How could she ever have thought that any other man looked like this man? His clean-shaven jawline was strong with a slight cleft in the middle in his chin. His nose was straight, his brow line high, intelligent, his complexion healthy, cheeks slightly flushed. And his lips...

  No, she’d best not look too long at his lips.

  The concern on his face slowly spread to a smile. “You recognize me?”

  “Yes.” Cautious joy rose inside her as she spoke.

  “I owe you for my life. Tell me, how can I repay you?”

  Evelyn thought quickly, her happiness at finding him alive tempered by fear for his continued safety. Her grandfather, King Garren, had wanted this man alive so he could barter his life for political gain. He thought the man was dead. If the king learned that the man had lived, he’d only try to capture him again to keep him prisoner or, worse yet, to exact his vengeance for the lands Illyria had lost to the kingdom of Lydia.

  She couldn’t let that happen. And yet, this close to the fortress of Fier, he could easily be spotted, recognized and reported to her grandfather. Her mind made up, she met his eyes as she made her request. She’d lost him once before, and it had grieved her in ways she still didn’t understand. She couldn’t risk harm coming to him again.

  “You must leave this area immediately and never return.”

  ISBN: 9781460320518

  A FAMILY FOR CHRISTMAS

  Copyright © 2013 by Winnie Griggs

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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