Beloved Stranger

by Patricia Potter

  ROBERT Howard had no problem keeping up with the Charltons, though the trails were treacherous. The horse he had been given was nimble-footed and responded to the slightest movement of his body.

  The moon was past three-quarters, but light clouds were becoming more numerous, and he suspected they would darken the night before long. The breeze of earlier in the day had turned into a cold wind.

  Despite his swollen legs, the Charlton rode at the front with Jock. Robert Howard was well aware that Cedric rode slightly behind him. Jock had told Robert the likelihood of violence during the raid was little. They would quietly approach the Armstrongs during the night and steal away with the cattle. With luck there would be no fighting.

  But Robert suspected Cedric would take any opportunity to rid himself of a man he felt was a usurper who would take all he wanted. The man obviously feared he was taking Will’s place in the Charlton’s regard, along with Kimbra Charlton’s favor.

  Hours went by. Robert’s leg began to ache, and he had to fight to remain in the saddle. Suddenly a shout broke the night silence.

  Arrows struck a man in front of him, and he heard loud oaths from all around him. The Charltons milled about in confusion as swarms of horsemen charged them.

  “Armstrongs!” someone shouted.

  He took his sword from the scabbard and suddenly faced a man in clothing much like his own. The Armstrong wore a black feather in his helmet, apparently to identify himself.

  The raider raised his sword, and for an instant Robert Howard raised his own sword in defense. Another flash of memory. Another sword raised in anger.

  He forced the vision away and parried the first stroke. The Armstrong swung again. Again he was able to block the thrust. The raider was so close he could see his eyes. Steel gray.

  Another blow he was able to deflect. But the eyes . . .

  He saw an opening but shied away, just as another Charlton engaged the Armstrong.

  Then he heard a shout. “The Charlton!”

  He moved his horse forward just as instinct told him to look to his side. Cedric had raised his pike and was coming at him. Robert ducked to the side of his horse, and the pike went harmlessly inches over him.

  Then the Armstrong with the gray eyes that seemed to burn in his mind took on Cedric.

  He turned toward the Charlton who, with Jock, was surrounded by five men. He started to make his way to them when he saw an Armstrong with a pike make a run toward the Charlton.

  He moved in front of it, his shoulder taking the brunt of the blow. He fell from the horse, agony ripping through him.

  A cry rang out. The Armstrongs started to disappear into the night, a number of Charlton horses going with them, leaving the Charltons to tend to their wounded.

  Numb with pain, he looked around for the tall Armstrong whose eyes had stopped him from striking. He was gone.

  The Charlton knelt next to him. “Ye took a blow meant for me,” he said. He took off Robert’s jack, the movement causing him to stifle a groan. Blood poured from a jagged wound. Only the jack had kept it from going through him.

  Jock was there as well and quickly tied a piece of cloth around it. “An ambush. They knew we were coming and which way,” he said with bitterness.

  “Aye,” the Charlton said. “We have a traitor among us.” Those around fell silent.

  “ ’Tis only one stranger here,” Cedric said.

  “That one stranger may have well saved the Charlton’s life,” Jock rebuked him.

  “Convenient,” Cedric muttered.

  “I doubt Robert Howard believes that to be true.” The Charlton looked around. “How many down?”

  “Seven,” said one man who had just approached. “Another ten have lost their mounts.”

  “How bad are the injuries?”

  “One dead. One almost. He will not live through the day. The others will live if there are no infections.”

  “We must go back,” the Charlton said.

  “We should go after them,” Cedric said.

  “Another day,” the Charlton said wearily. “We need all the remaining horses to get home.”

  He leaned down and took Robert Howard’s good hand and helped him up. “Ye will ride with me,” he said.

  KIMBRA felt as if her entire life had been spent in the process of waiting.

  She kept remembering how she’d waited for Will on that last raid. She’d had an odd feeling when he’d left, something she’d never had before. She had that same feeling now.

  She wished with all her heart she could have gone with them. She’d even thought for the quickest instant of time of disguising herself and riding with them. But that thought fled as quickly as it had come. She had Audra now.

  Still, she remembered the excitement of riding along new routes, never quite knowing what was around the next turn. The captains planned the routes with great care, varying the path on each raid.

  She did not sleep during the night, wandering down to the empty hall after Audra went to sleep. She found Claire in the kitchen.

  “I have some of Thomas’s best wine,” Claire said. “Would you join me?”

  “Aye.”

  “It gets lonely when they go,” Claire said. “I wish I had your courage when you rode off with them.”

  “Courage is easier when you are young.”

  “You are still young, Kimbra.”

  “I do not feel young. I am tired of waiting for men who may not come back.”

  “The Howard?”

  “I am tired of death and violence,” she said, avoiding the question. “I want my daughter to be safe. I want the Charlton to be safe. And Robert Howard.”

  “They will be back. It is just another raid.”

  Then why was Claire in the kitchen in early morning hours? Did she, like Kimbra, have a sense that something was wrong?

  “You care for the Charlton,” she stated as a fact rather than a question.

  “Aye, we all do.”

  “Do you love him?” Kimbra asked softly.

  Claire didn’t answer immediately. “We are first cousins. We cannot love each other in any way but as cousins.”

  The break in her voice gave her away.

  “Is that why the Charlton doesn’t remarry?”

  “Men do not feel the same as women. They can love many times, but a woman . . . she loves once.”

  “I think she can love more than once,” Kimbra said softly.

  Claire’s severe face softened. “Aye, but there is only one true love, and I do not think you have had that yet.” She held up her hand to stop Kimbra’s protest. “Will risked much in marrying you, and he enjoyed indulging you. You were an enchanting child, but I think you want more than that in a man.”

  A rush of anger flashed through Kimbra. Claire was wrong. She had loved Will, and he had loved her. Then suddenly she realized Claire was right. She had admired and trusted Will because he’d protected her, but she’d never felt intimately connected to him as she did to the Scot. As if they belonged together.

  She could not tell Claire, however, why it would not, could not, ever be. She could not say that Robert Howard was not the bastard son of a reiver’s family but certainly a Scot and probably one of high nobility.

  “He will be all right,” Claire said, as if sensing her internal agony. “I think we both should be abed.” She paused, then added, “Grab whatever happiness you can find. God knows there is little of it on the border.”

  RORY lagged behind the other Armstrongs who herded the stolen horses ahead of them.

  Jamie rode up to him. “I see you unmarked this time. I lost you for a while.”

  “I fought a Charlton. There was something hellishly familiar about him, but I could not see his face under the steel bonnet.”

  Jamie frowned. “Familiar how?”

  “Just . . . familiar. He seemed to recognize me and stopped when he had the advantage.”

  “Advantage over you?” Jamie said with disbelief.

  “Aye.”r />
  “What are you saying?”

  “If he hadn’t been with English reivers, I would swear it was Lachlan. The way he sat the horse. The way he held his sword . . .”

  “You said he stopped when he had the advantage.”

  “Aye. But if it were Lachlan he would have acknowledged me.”

  “If you have doubts, we can turn around and follow them.”

  Rory shook his head. “I just wanted it to be so. The reiver must have been distracted.”

  Yet as Rory rode back, his mind kept going back to the reiver. He’d sat a small bay horse. There had been nothing to distinguish him from the other reivers. He had been one among many.

  It could not be Lachlan.

  HE was getting far too used to pain. He was among the least wounded, though his shoulder hurt like the blazes. The thought of Kimbra, of Audra at the Charlton tower made it bearable.

  What he was not getting used to were the flashes that were coming faster now.

  The Armstrong’s face kept returning. Pictures flipped through his mind. The Armstrong—he had to be an Armstrong—standing next to a woman who held a bairn.

  His friend? Or someone closer?

  Blazes! Why couldn’t he remember? Why taunting images?

  After far too many hours, they arrived at the tower. Having been alerted by an advance rider, the Charltons left behind came running out. They took the wounded into the tower, where the physician, Claire, and Kimbra waited.

  Robert Howard waited his turn, although Kimbra had rushed over and taken a quick look at his wound. “You cannot seem to keep out of harm’s way,” she scolded, her eyes alarmed at first, then quieting as she saw the wound. “’Tis not so bad.”

  The Charlton stepped in. “He saved my life, moved in between a pike and me. Take good care of him.” He looked down at Robert Howard. “My thanks.” Then he went among the other wounded.

  Kimbra moved on, and Robert took pleasure in watching her quick, confident ministrations. At one point she argued with the physician who once more wanted to combat bleeding with more bleeding by his leeches.

  It was the Charlton who stepped in and sided with her.

  Finally she came to him. The pike had been blunted by the steel sewn into the jack, but it had still gouged a hole in his shoulder.

  Servants had brought clean water, and Kimbra washed the wound, her fingers lingering on his skin as if reluctant to leave. Then she applied a familiar poultice to it. “Stay quiet,” she said. “I will look in on you later.”

  “The others?”

  “Two probably will not live out the night,” she said.

  “Any you know?”

  “Aye. They rode with Will. How did you come to be ambushed?”

  He shook his head.

  “They are saying someone betrayed them.”

  The thought had surely crossed all their minds. How else could the Armstrongs know when and where they would pass? They might have guessed, having raided the Charltons, that there would be retribution. But a traitor was more likely.

  He went up to his room. He had ridden all night and had had little sleep the previous night. He wanted to think. He wanted to see again that face from last night. He wanted to remember.

  He knew now he could not make any plans without knowing his past. He was beginning to feel at home here, much too at home. And Kimbra? He wanted her with all his being.

  If he thought the past was truly gone, mayhap he could stay here and be content. But it haunted him, throwing out tempting morsels one at a time. How could he take a wife if one morning he woke and found he had another?

  Concentrate. Go back to that moment. The gray eyes. They were fighting. No, not fighting, training. The sword was heavy. He was but a boy. He did not want to train. He pleaded with an older man.

  I want to go into the church.

  Not my son.

  I will not fight.

  You will!

  The older man was the same one he had seen in an earlier flash, the one that lay on the ground, bleeding profusely. The sense of guilt flooded back with a strength that almost made him double over.

  Then the important question: If he hated fighting, how had it come that he rode with his king into battle?

  His shoulder throbbed, but it mattered little. He had to discover who he was, whether he had obligations. But how? He could not just ride to the Armstrongs and ask about a man with gray eyes.

  A knock came on the door before it abruptly opened, and Jock walked in. “The Charltons believe there is a traitor. Cedric’s brother is blaming ye.”

  “I’ve not been off the property,” Robert said.

  “He claims ye could have sent someone.”

  “Now who would that be?” he asked reasonably. “You and the Charlton are the only two I see.” He paused. “Cedric’s brother? Where is Cedric?”

  “Cedric’s brother said he followed them, hoping to get some of the horses back.” Jock paused. “I thought ye should know what is being said. I do not believe it. Nor does the Charlton, who has told everyone ye saved his life. But there is muttering. Ye are a stranger. Cedric is not. And some see ye as a threat to their hopes. They will not challenge you directly but with a dagger in the back, or accident of some kind. ’Tis a note of warning. Be cautious, Robert Howard, and for Kimbra’s sake, keep a distance, unless ye want her drawn into it.”

  He left, leaving Robert Howard—or whoever he was—feeling as if he had just jumped from the pot into the coals. His heart plummeted as he realized he might well take Kimbra and Audra with him.

  Chapter 17

  AFTER Kimbra finished tending the last of the some rest.wounded, Claire and the servants told her to get some rest.

  She needed that rest, some respite.

  Her emotions were churning about like clouds in a thunderstorm. She’d just managed to control them when she’d heard the Scot was injured. Thank the Holy Mother that, though painful, his wound wasn’t far worse.

  How many more lives did he have? He seemed to be spending them rapidly. Why in all that was holy did he persist in putting himself in jeopardy? As she’d watched him make his way toward the stone steps leading up to the chambers, guilt assailed her. She should be thankful he had saved the Charlton. But, dear Mother, the Scot seemed to be courting death. And now he had come even more to the attention of the Charlton, as well as the most ambitious Charltons.

  The Charlton’s favor could be a dangerous thing.

  After she wearily washed her hands, she mounted the steep stairs, hesitating at the top of them. She turned to go to her own room.

  But then she reversed herself, finding herself walking down to the Scot’s room. She had not seen Cedric since the wounded came in, and no one else in the tower appeared to be awake. Certainly no one was in the hallway.

  She hesitated at the door, knocked lightly, then went inside. If he appeared to be asleep, she would leave.

  He lay on the bed, but she saw that his eyes were open. He sat up, his lips without the slow smile that so charmed her.

  “Kimbra,” he acknowledged, his voice low and husky.

  “You should be sleeping.”

  “’Tis hard to do.”

  “I can fetch you some rosemary.”

  “’Tis not the pain, lass. I’ve had more memories.”

  “You remember your name?”

  “Nay, but faces. I saw one tonight. He was riding with the Armstrongs.”

  She stared at him. “You saw someone you remembered?”

  “I am not sure, lass. But his eyes . . .”

  “And he was with the Armstrongs?”

  “Aye.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “I saw a younger version of myself fighting him. But it was not a battle.” His brows furrowed together. Each word seemed to be pulled from somewhere inside. “We were . . . training.”

  “A brother? Cousin? Someone who was fostered with you?”

  “I do not know. The more I reach for a memory, the faster it
fades.”

  “There are others?”

  She watched him struggle with himself. Then, “An older man. My father. I think . . . I think . . . I was responsible for his death.”

  He stood, swaying slightly. She took his hand just as she realized he wore nothing but the long shirt. She had seen him naked before when she had first cared for him. Now, though, it was different.

  Now her body was aware of his. Far too aware.

  She took his hand, as much to steady him. Nay, that was a lie. It was not to steady him at all. It was because she’d yearned to do it since he arrived this morning. “I do not believe that.”

  “You know little about me,” he said roughly. “About who and what I was.”

  “I know enough.” She sensed a loneliness and despair in him that pierced her like a hot knife.

  Her fingers tightened around his. “I cannot believe that you have done anything wrong.’Tis not within you.”

  “I was ready to kill someone tonight. I probably did weeks ago during the battle. I know I am skilled at it. And I seem to be as good a liar. You do not know what I was. Or am. And the hell of it is, I do not either.”

  She knew the same desperation. She was a liar and a thief, and she hated herself for it, even though she’d felt she had no choice. She’d lied to the Charlton and to all the men who had ridden with Will.

  She shook those thoughts aside, and her mind went back to the rider he’d seen. An Armstrong who looked familiar.

  How could his ken be with the Armstrongs? Or was he an Armstrong himself? Surely if he was a member of that clan, someone here would have seen him at the games most of the border families—both Scot and English—attended. And his manners were far superior to any Armstrong she’d met. His speech also was too fine for a borderer.

  “You are not an Armstrong,” she said.

  “How do you know?” His frustration and pain at suspecting, but not knowing, was carved in his face.

  She reached over and touched her lips to his. His good arm went around her, clutching her to him almost desperately.