“Beth!”
Her eyes widened at his shout, her gaze snapping up to find him.
Robert drew the hand holding the axe back and let it fly. In a move that was stunningly graceful, Beth dropped to the ground and landed neatly on her toes and splayed hands as the axe whistled through the air above her head, spinning end over end until it embedded itself deep in the archer’s chest.
The fellow’s crossbow fell without releasing a bolt as he collapsed.
Robert ran forward. Beth rolled onto her back and sat up, raising her weapon as he passed her and aiming it at the fallen man.
But the man did not move.
Upon reaching him, Robert studied him closely.
He looked to be no older than Marcus, his features plain and unremarkable.
“Who leads these men?” Robert demanded, watching him struggle for breath.
“I do,” the boy said, glaring up at Robert with venom.
This boy led them? “Who are you? Why have you attacked my people?”
“Th-Thief,” the boy hissed.
“You are a thief?”
A sound of frustration burst forth as the boy struggled to speak. “Y-You.”
Robert stiffened. “I am no thief, boy. I am—”
“Fosterly… sh-should… been mine. H-Hurley… was… m-my father.”
Robert frowned. “Lord Hurley had no issue. Had there been someone to inherit, King John would not have given me the land and title. Fosterly would have gone to Lord Hurley’s heir.”
“B-Bastard born.”
This boy was Hurley’s bastard? “Did your father acknowledge you?”
Mutinous silence.
“You know you could not inherit.”
“That b-bastard witch… that W-Westcott wed will… inherit L-Lord Everard’s holdings,” the boy snarled.
Fury ignited within Robert as he shifted his sword until the tip pressed against the boy’s chin. “’Twas a similar slur that cost your father both his holdings and his life. And, unlike you, Lady Alyssa has been acknowledged by her father and is loved by him as well.”
The boy spat a slew of angry curses.
“Who is the man being held at Terrington?” Robert pressed.
“S-Sellsword.” The boy coughed, spewing forth blood. “Should have… k-killed your whore… instead of… p-precious squire,” he ground out. “W-Wanted you… to suffer.”
Then he breathed no more.
Robert stared down at him, finding it hard to believe that this boy had truly been responsible for so much destruction. Finding it harder to believe that it was all finally over.
“Is he dead?” Beth asked in a shaky voice behind him.
“Aye.”
“Are you sure?”
He met her gaze as she rose. “Aye, Beth. ’Tis over.”
She nodded, lowering her weapon until it dangled loosely along her thigh.
Robert made a motion with his hand that sent Michael and Stephen into the forest to confirm that all had been routed while Adam remained with the prisoners.
Sheathing his sword, Robert started toward Beth.
As he approached, she turned away in a slow half circle, her movements stiff and jerky as though she walked in her sleep. Then she stilled and just stood there.
“Beth,” he broached softly as he came up behind her.
A breeze ruffled her hair, sending dark strands that had broken free of her braid streaking across her face. She made no move to brush them back as her gaze made a slow foray over the clearing, taking in the trampled wildflowers, the grass painted scarlet with blood and flesh, the weapons that glinted silver and red in the sunlight, the lifeless bodies sprawled wherever they had fallen.
Her face blanched. A muscle in her jaw twitched. Her throat worked with a swallow.
“Beth, love, turn away,” he implored gently, reluctant to touch her and soil her with the blood of his enemies.
Again she swallowed. And again. She squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. A single tear fought its way past her lashes and trailed down one cheek.
“Please, Beth.”
Opening her eyes, she blinked several times in quick succession to hold further moisture back. And still she stared.
It reminded him of the moment she had first seen Fosterly, as if her eyes relayed something her mind could not grasp.
For one who had never been exposed to such a battle, it was a gruesome sight. Many a squire and young knight had emptied his stomach when confronted with similar scenes.
Robert cursed himself.
He should never have let her accompany them, should not have put her so at risk.
Reaching up with one quaking hand, she swiped at her damp cheeks.
Robert’s heart lurched when he saw the ruby smears she unknowingly left behind. “You are injured?” he demanded. Grabbing her wrist, he swung her around and searched her slender form as fear inundated him. “Where? Where are you wounded, Beth?”
He could not lose her. He would not lose her!
When she failed to answer and he did not immediately locate any rends in her clothing that might indicate the blood’s origins, he glanced up and found her regarding him with wide eyes. Robert jerked her hand up to draw her attention to the blood that coated it. “Where are you wounded, Beth? Tell me!”
Beth stared at the blood on her hand.
How many times had her fingers been coated with the crimson liquid in recent weeks?
Removing her hand from Robert’s hold, she shook her head. “It isn’t mine,” she whispered, wiping it on her kirtle. “It’s Marcus’s.”
“Are you certain?” he pressed.
Nodding, she moved away to kneel beside his prone squire.
Robert followed and sank onto his haunches across from her.
“I accidentally broke off the arrow in his shoulder when we fell,” she explained as Robert tore away Marcus’s tunic and went to work on his mail.
“’Tis probably for the best,” Robert muttered. “I can feel the tip protruding from his back. With the shaft broken off, we can just push it through.”
Sheesh. That was going to hurt like hell. As if Marcus wasn’t in enough pain already.
Beth looked to Marcus, who bore Robert’s tugging as stoically as possible.
Carefully removing his mailed coif, she stroked the squire’s short raven hair back from his face. He was just a kid, really. A teenager.
In her time, boys his age spent their time texting, screwing around on the Internet, playing video games, partying, binge drinking, smoking, getting laid, driving too fast, and doing all kinds of stupid crap to rebel against their parents’ so-called oppressive rule. Yet here Marcus studied the art of war, learned how to defend himself and prevail in hand-to-hand combat with all of the seriousness of a man twice his age, and nurtured a strong sense of honor that was becoming more and more rare in her time.
With two arrows already imbedded in his body, he had not hesitated to throw himself in front of Beth to protect her and shield her from their attackers.
“You did well, Marcus,” Robert murmured as he cut a substantial patch from Marcus’s padded gambeson, finally exposing his wound.
Though Robert’s face and voice were calm, Beth recognized his concern.
“You did, Marcus,” she praised. Giving his undamaged shoulder a pat, she willed her hands to stop shaking and turned her attention to the arrow in his thigh. “You were very brave.” So brave he had almost lost his life trying to protect her.
Marcus sucked in a breath as Robert probed his wound. “Aye, it takes great courage to fall from one’s horse.”
Robert frowned. “Do not make light of what you did today. You protected my lady when I could not.”
Beth scowled as she parted the broken links in Marcus’s chainmail around the arrow shaft. His lady, she thought, could damned well protect herself. And even if Beth failed, she did not want anyone else to lose his life in an attempt to save her. Not Robert. Not Marcus. And not Josh.
Tears blurred her vision once more. Swearing, she blinked them back.
The trembling of her hands increased.
“Beth?”
Looking up, she found Robert and Marcus both watching her. As one, their troubled gazes dropped to her quaking fingers, then rose to her face.
“I’m fine,” she assured them. Of course, the tears over which she apparently had no control chose that moment to spill over her lashes and pour down her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she reiterated, trying to sniff them back. “It’s just…” Reaction. Delayed reaction to the terror of battle. Of almost losing Robert and Marcus. Of killing a man. And of seeing all of the bodies and body parts littering the field.
But she didn’t say that. If she did, they would fall all over themselves trying to comfort her, and then she really would go to pieces.
Instead, she motioned to Marcus’s leg. “I just can’t get his chausses off.”
A shadow fell over her. “Ah. A common complaint. Many a maid has wept on my shoulder because she could not remove Marcus’s chausses.”
Color suffused Marcus’s face at Michael’s dry remark.
And Beth was surprised to find she could laugh.
Michael squatted beside her. “Mayhap I can be of some assistance, my lady.”
She offered him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”
As Michael worked, Beth’s eyes strayed to Robert and took in the immense amount of blood that coated him. “Robert, were you wounded?”
He sent her a reassuring smile. “Just a scratch, love. You can clean and bind it for me when we return to Fosterly.”
She nodded, relieved. “What about you, Michael?”
“I am well, my lady.”
“And Adam and Stephen?”
“I have heard no complaints from them, my lady. They are well.”
She glanced around, trying not to look too closely at the bodies that littered the clearing. “Where is Stephen?” Adam was busy binding the prisoners. But she didn’t see Stephen anywhere.
“Once we ensured that no more assassins lurked in the forest, he left to track down our horses.” His gaze dropped to the 9mm she had set on the grass beside her. “’Tis quite a weapon you have there, my lady.”
She exchanged a look with Robert. “Aye, it is.” And would no doubt require an explanation. The question was, how much should she explain?
The ride home seemed to last days rather than hours. Of necessity, they took it slow. But Beth knew every movement must cause Marcus agonizing pain.
One of Beth’s classmates in college had had to have an emergency appendectomy. And Beth recalled the woman confiding that every tiny little bump the car had hit on the ride home from the hospital had sent pain rippling through her.
Poor Marcus didn’t have the comfort of a cushy car seat in a shock-absorbing vehicle. He rode atop a constantly shifting and moving warhorse, Michael and Adam on either side of him ready to brace him should he begin to fall.
Beth chewed her lip the whole time, afraid the brave teenager would die before they could get him home. But they made it.
Once at Fosterly, she helped Robert and Michael clean and bandage Marcus’s wounds while Adam and Stephen saw the prisoners safely installed in the dungeon. Both Robert and Michael were remarkably proficient at rendering first aid, and Beth marveled at the difference being raised around a gifted healer had made in the two men—both in their actions and their attitudes. Before bandaging the wounds, Robert opted to coat them with healing herbs Alyssa had given him instead of honey or Beth’s ointments. Since he had used such in the past with success, Beth offered no objection. But she did encourage him to let her give his squire some ibuprofen for the pain.
“What about you?” she asked Robert. Hadn’t he mentioned receiving a scratch? She didn’t want some wound he deemed negligible to get infected and end up killing him.
“’Tis paltry,” he said with a shrug.
“I want to see it.”
Smiling, he looped an arm around her shoulders. “Come. You are weary. You may tend my wound upstairs.”
Weary didn’t begin to cover it. Once the adrenaline had worn off and her hands had stopped shaking, exhaustion had assailed her. Feet dragging, Beth felt as though she had spent the past twenty-four hours working road construction in Houston in triple-digit temperatures.
She leaned into Robert’s big body and let him lead her upstairs to his chamber, where a warm bath awaited them. Robert insisted she bathe without him, letting her wash away the day before he befouled the water, as he put it, with the blood of battle that coated him.
Beth wouldn’t describe the wound on his arm as paltry. She didn’t think it needed stitches, but it took several butterfly closures to seal it.
A boisterous meal followed in the great hall, one with a great deal of merrymaking as Robert’s people celebrated the long-awaited defeat of his enemy with toasts and song and dance.
Beth said little, ate less, and couldn’t even manage to muster a smile.
The battle today had driven home yet again just how foreign this time, this way of life, was to her.
And she had killed a man. Again. Had seen the blood spurt from his forehead and life leave his eyes as his knees had buckled and he had crumpled to the ground.
Robert did not comment on her silence. He seemed to understand that she sometimes grew quiet like this when she needed time to think or process events that threatened to overwhelm her.
He really did seem to know her better than anyone else in the world. Perhaps even better than Josh, who had always poked and prodded her into talking about it whenever he thought something troubled her.
Robert just held her hand, his thumb stroking her skin, his fingers giving hers an occasional squeeze to let her know he was there for her.
Damn, she loved him.
Stephen, on the other hand, pretty much made her want to smack him. He either didn’t understand or simply didn’t care that she had no desire to talk, because he would not let the subject of her weapon go, constantly peppering her with questions.
Beth sighed and looked up at Robert. “We’re going to have to tell them, aren’t we?”
“Not if you do not wish to, love,” he countered.
She found a smile. “If we don’t, Stephen will drive us mad, asking about it every five minutes.”
“Not if I knock him on his arse.”
She laughed. “I’m actually tempted not to tell him just so I can watch you do that.”
“’Twould be my pleasure,” he told her with a wink.
Stephen muttered something under his breath.
Robert laughed.
Beth shook her head. “Let’s just do this and get it over with, then.”
She, Robert, Stephen, Michael, and Adam retired to the chamber Marcus had been given for his recuperation, where Beth plunked down her backpack and told them as succinctly as possible that she had traveled back in time from the twenty-first century.
Marcus slid Robert a look.
The three knights all stared at her blankly.
Then, leaning toward Adam, Stephen muttered in a loud aside, “I was right. She is as mad as the miller’s daughter.”
Beth laughed. Taking out her cell phone, she knelt in front of the trio with her back to them and held it up to take a selfie.
None were impressed at first, thinking the phone a small mirror of some sort when they saw their reflections. But once she snapped the picture and showed it to them, along with the picture she had taken of Robert and some of
the pictures that were already stored on it—including images of herself and Josh that clearly displayed modern buildings and cars and a thousand other things that just didn’t exist here—they believed her.
The men’s enthusiastic examination of her futuristic possessions and the ensuing barrage of questions regarding the twenty-first century roused her spirits. By the time she and Robert retired to the solar, she felt almost like herself again.
Of course, she also got a nice burst of energy when Robert made passionate love to her. How wonderful it was to shut her mind off and just let her body feel and burn and need. No worries. No regrets. No images of blood and violence bombarding her. Just Robert. His big, muscled body moving over her and stealing her breath, his tender words strengthening his hold on her heart. She really did love him. So much.
The quiet of the keep she had found so unfamiliar in her early days now soothed her and coaxed her toward sleep as she snuggled into Robert’s side.
“Beth,” he whispered.
“Hm?”
“Do not fall asleep yet, sweetling. There is a question I must put to you first.”
She smiled. “You were great. It was wonderful. I loved every minute of it. Just let me snooze for a few minutes, then we can do it again.”
A chuckle rumbled through his chest. “The question did not involve my prowess, though ’tis good to know I pleased you.”
“Mmm. Pleasing me is an understatement.”
He nuzzled the hair atop her head. “Beth.”
Soooo tired.
He shook her a little. “Beth?”
“Hmm? I’m awake,” she murmured. Were her words a little slurred?
“Then open your eyes and look at me,” he said, a smile in his voice, “or I shall think you are simply answering me in your sleep again.”
Beth tilted her head back, pried her heavy-lidded eyes open, and offered him a sleepy smile. “You are so beautiful.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “As are you, my love.”
Reaching up, she caressed his stubbled cheek.
Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones Book 2) Page 29
