Lachlan had trusted him. But enough that he would’ve given his blessing to Leith?
Leith swallowed. How could he even dare think it when he felt so inadequate? He didn’t know how to be a good husband or a good father. His own father had killed Leith’s mother in a drunken rage, and Respen hadn’t been a better example.
What if Leith turned out like his father? If it was something born in him to turn violent to those around him? He was capable of violence. He had thirty-seven marks on his right arm to prove it. Was it possible that he could someday grow angry enough to lash out and hurt Renna?
No. Leith had something his father hadn’t. Faith.
He touched his stomach as if he could feel the ridge of the burn scars through his shirt. He’d been worthy to suffer. Surely he was worthy to live out his faith in happiness too.
It was time to stop dragging his feet. Stop giving in to the doubts. Renna deserved someone who would actively build a relationship, not keep running away because he was too scared to reach for it.
When Leith raised his head, Lord Alistair was still watching him, waiting. Waiting for Leith to gather his courage and finally pursue a relationship with Renna as everyone from Shad to Brandi to Renna had been waiting for him to do.
Stop stalling. Leith drew in a deep breath, swiped his sweaty palms on his trousers, and met Lord Alistair’s gaze. “Renna is eighteen, and doesn’t legally need a guardian anymore. But you’re the closest thing she and Brandi have to a guardian.” He scrubbed his palms on his trousers again. Why was he so nervous? It wasn’t like he was facing Respen and the threat of torture and death. “I want to ask her to marry me.”
There. He’d said it. Out loud.
What would Lord Alistair say? What could he say to that? If he thought Leith wasn’t ready or he didn’t think Leith was a good fit for Renna after all, it would be worse torture than the fiery poker eating Leith’s skin.
“Good.” Warmth softened Lord Alistair’s eyes.
Leith let out the breath he’d been holding in a whoosh. That hadn’t been so bad.
“I’m honored to stand in Laurence’s place for Renna, but did you consider that you might also need someone to be the father you never had?”
Lord Alistair’s tone was so soft, almost vulnerable, that Leith couldn’t hold his gaze any more. He wasn’t sure he dared grasp what Lord Alistair was offering. If there was anyone who was an example of what being a husband and father should look like, it was Lord Alistair. “I…would appreciate it.”
Lord Alistair leaned back in his chair. “In that case, I’m going to have the same discussion with you that I had with Shadrach before his wedding.”
“You mean the how-to-be-a-good-Christian-husband lecture?” Shad’s voice came from the doorway. Grinning, Shad closed the door behind him.
“Discussion.” Lord Alistair raised his eyebrows.
“Lecture.”
Lord Alistair waved at the chair next to Leith. “Since you seem to have a wealth of experience to add to this discussion after your three weeks of marriage, please have a seat.”
Still grinning, Shad sprawled in the chair, his sword clacking against the armrest.
Leith glanced between the two of them, suppressing the urge to bolt.
16
Martyn pushed Wanderer and the pack mule Shad Alistair had loaned him as hard as he dared. Would those Rovers pass Flayin Falls? If they stuck to the Hills, if they followed smoke to Kayleigh’s cabin…
His chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe the air whipping past his face. As a Blade, he’d seen what Rovers did when they raided.
He shouldn’t care. He’d known Kayleigh only a week, and he’d spent most of that riding to Walden and back. But he was responsible if something happened to her. She was under his care, however inconvenient that was.
The Rovers couldn’t be that far ahead of him. Martyn had pushed long after dark the night before and had risen before the sun. Surely he could arrive before the Rovers did too much damage.
A mile passed. Then another. Martyn’s heart pounded in his throat as he neared Kayleigh’s cabin. He urged Wanderer into a canter around the final bend.
His heart stuttered. There, in the hollow in front of the cabin, stood twelve horses. The cabin door swung ajar.
Martyn kicked Wanderer into a gallop, releasing the pack mule’s leadrope. They flew down the slope and skidded next to the other horses. Martyn threw himself from Wanderer’s back, drawing two of his knives as he launched himself through the door.
Three of the Rovers were midway through smashing the door to Kayleigh’s room with their shoulders. The door vibrated, its panels splintering, but held. Several men yanked open the cupboards, dumping everything onto the floor.
One man lounged on a bench by the table, a leg propped on the bench and a bandaged arm resting on the table top. Even beneath the dust, the captain’s bars on his shoulder remained visible. He was slapping the table with his palm. “Put your backs into it. One girl can’t be that much trouble.”
Martyn didn’t give them time to react. He stabbed one Rover in the back and slit another’s throat before the captain’s eyes even widened.
Ten on one still weren’t the best odds, but Martyn charged forward anyway. His pulse pounded. His blood roared. And for the first time in months, he was truly alive.
The door splintered, sending two of the men tumbling to the floor. The third man cried out as a sword jabbed through the opening into his stomach.
Martyn grabbed a man’s arm and smashed it so hard against the edge of the table he heard a crack. The man collapsed, moaning and clutching his arm. Martyn shoved him aside and whirled to face two Rovers charging him.
Martyn kicked one man’s knee, sending him to the floor while grabbing the other man’s arm and clubbing the back of his neck. The Rover tumbled over his fallen partner.
Amateurs. They wouldn’t have lasted a day in the Blades.
Steel grated. Kayleigh balanced herself against the doorjamb to her room and blocked another strike. She was doing a surprisingly good job of holding her own.
Time to end this before the Rovers realized their numbers could overwhelm Martyn and Kayleigh even if their skills couldn’t. Martyn shoved the table and toppled it onto the captain. Before the man could recover, Martyn vaulted over the upturned table, pinned the captain’s uninjured arm to the floor with the knee, and pressed a knife to the man’s throat. “I have no qualms about killing you. Call off your men.”
The captain’s gaze traveled along Martyn’s knife, and his eyes widened. He let loose with such a blistering string of curses that Martyn learned a few words. Since the soap was out of reach and it was only fair the captain got reprimanded, Martyn dug his knife harder against the captain’s throat. “There’s a lady present. If you’re going to use such language, I’ll cut your tongue out before I kill you.”
The captain clamped his teeth shut, but his gaze remained locked on the initials on Martyn’s knife.
Martyn couldn’t care less if this inept Rover knew he was a former Blade. Who would he tell? Other Rovers? All the better if they were running scared.
Two of the other Rovers made as if to attack Martyn. Martyn drew a second knife and prodded the captain, drawing a bead of blood.
“Don’t move!” The captain waved his injured hand.
The other Rovers froze.
Martyn eased to his feet and placed his back to the kitchen counter. He put every ounce of cold conviction into his tone. “Leave. Before I kill you.”
The remaining Rovers glanced between the men Martyn had stabbed in the back and slashed across the throat and the one Kayleigh had gutted. All three were dead. Three others lay moaning on the ground.
As one, they hustled to the door and dashed for their horses, their wounded leader outpacing them all in his haste to get away.
Martyn stepped to the door and watched them gallop up the slope and out of sight, making sure they left Wanderer and the pack mule behind.
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That captain had known to look at Martyn’s knife right away, and he’d cursed like he’d had a run-in with a former Blade. A recent run-in.
Had Leith revealed that he was a former Blade to drive the bandits from Stetterly? Martyn suppressed a satisfied smirk. Leith wasn’t as changed and holy as he now claimed. When cornered, he was more than ready to claim his past.
Though in some ways, Leith had changed. Martyn’s smirk faded. In the past, Leith would’ve trailed the Rovers to their camp and killed them in their sleep. There should’ve been no Rovers left for Martyn to face.
That’s how the Blades had always dealt with Rovers. Kill them all, leaving only one or two to tremble at the arbitrary fate that left them alive to spread the word to the others. A mere two years after Respen had taken the throne, the Rovers had gone from a scourge to a memory.
Martyn bit his tongue to stop himself from swearing. He couldn’t go after the Rovers and finish the job any more than Leith could. His current mission included defense and scouting, but not execution.
“They’re gone. Once we clean up this mess, I’ll scout the area to make sure they’re gone for good.” Martyn turned and stepped back into the cabin. He halted and raised his eyebrows.
Kayleigh leaned against the door frame and scrubbed her sword’s blade clean. Blood soaked through the bandage on her leg. But what had set him to staring was the light green dress she wore, now spattered with blood.
“You’re wearing a dress.” Martyn blinked, but the light green dress was still there. It didn’t fit against her short hair and bloodstained sword.
Kayleigh shoved her sword into its sheath and blinked up at him. “It’s Sunday. I always wear my best, even if I can’t go into town. But those Rovers came and…” She picked at one of the blood spots, her voice low. “This is the last dress I have. I had to sell the rest. And now it’s ruined.”
It wasn’t the only thing ruined. Martyn dragged a hand through his hair. What a mess. Blood. Dead bodies. Wounds. And Kayleigh was in no shape to take care of it by herself.
He righted one of the benches and dragged one of the dead bodies out of her way. “Sit and let me look at that wound.”
She hopped forward. Her mouth flattened into a tight, white line. After sinking onto the bench, she pressed both hands to her injured leg. “Could you drag the bodies outside first? I’d rather not stare at them any longer.”
He started to protest but stopped. Her request made sense. Not the part about staring at them any longer. A dead body was a dead body. It wasn’t that big of deal. But the longer they sat there, the more blood they would dump on the floor, making more work for him later.
He piled the three bodies in a heap outside, away from the cabin. The pack mule snorted and shied, but Wanderer merely twitched his ears and trotted a few steps away before returning to his grazing on the sparse patches of grass around the cabin.
When he returned to the cabin, Martyn set a pot of water to boil, righted the table and other bench, and hauled in a few buckets of sand, which he scattered over the floor to soak up the blood. By the time the water started boiling, he had gathered fresh bandages and a jar of salve, setting them on the table near Kayleigh.
After retrieving the pot and pouring some of the hot water into a bowl, he knelt next to the bench. Blood saturated the bandage on Kayleigh’s leg from her calf to her ankle. “Looks like you messed up all my hard work.”
“With twelve men trying to get me, my injured leg was the least of my worries.” She gripped the edges of the wooden bench.
Martyn eased the layers of bandages off her leg. “Where did you learn to fight like that? You held your own pretty well.”
Better than she could’ve if all her training came from a few weeks in the Resistance army.
“My father taught me. I was all he had, and as a guard for Lord Westin, he was a little paranoid, especially since he spent long hours away from me.” Kayleigh sucked in a breath as Martyn pulled away the final layer. The frayed and broken ends of the stitches stuck out from the puckered edges of the reopened wound. The muscles in her jaw flexed as she gritted her teeth. “I’ll never be strong enough to defeat skilled men, but Father taught me to be good enough to either get away or hold my own until help arrived.”
“Smart man.” The surprise alone of a woman fighting back would buy her enough time to strike that first blow and run.
He dipped a rag in the hot water and dabbed at Kayleigh’s wound. She made a sound in the back of her throat and flinched, but she didn’t beg him to stop. After he cleaned the wound and pulled out the old stitches, he threaded a needle and began to stitch the wound closed once again.
She gripped her knee, her knuckles a blue-white. “Thank you for showing up when you did. It was pretty heroic.”
Martyn scowled as he drew the thread through her skin. There he was again. Doing something almost heroic. What was wrong with him? Had he picked up some disease that was affecting his brain?
Even from several hundred miles away, Leith must still be a bad influence. Next thing Martyn knew, he’d get all self-sacrificial and saintly. He’d already started rescuing people, and he’d even stopped himself from swearing twice in the last few hours.
That had to stop now. No more heroics. They only got people tortured or killed, usually due to an utter lack of self-preservation.
At least, he’d stop helping people right after he finished sewing up Kayleigh’s leg. He had to complete what he’d started, after all.
She was still staring at him, waiting for his response. He grunted and tied off the last stitch. “Not all that heroic. I didn’t want to lose my free meals.”
“They aren’t free. Most of the supplies are yours.”
“I still don’t have to cook them. You got a taste of my cooking the other night.” He slathered salve over the wound. “Besides, it’s my job to keep Rovers from troubling this area.”
Yes. His job. Scare away Rovers. Keep an eye out in case they came back. Watch for Blades. That’s what his life was. Kayleigh was just a means to an end. A way to get hot meals and a clean cabin all to himself.
He wrapped a bandage around her leg and stood. “I’ll bury the bodies while you start cleaning this mess. I don’t want to bring in the supplies until we have a place to put them.”
We? Why had Martyn said we? It sounded too…he couldn’t even think of a word to describe why he shouldn’t have said it.
Running his hand through his hair, he wheeled and stalked from the cabin. Best to get out of there before Kayleigh noticed. She might get the wrong idea. Like he was going soft or nice or something.
Which wasn’t the case. At all.
17
Renna studied the rising wall of Stetterly’s new church. A line of men heaved on a rope strung through a pulley. A large block shifted on the ramp laid out on the hill from the manor’s ruins to the construction site. In a square around the church, several of the holes for the dugouts were finished, and the women and children were hard at work cutting sod to build the walls and roofs. A few others continued to harvest the corn and hay in the fields.
Sheriff Allen strode to her and nodded his head toward the construction. “In a few more days, the walls will be high enough we’ll have to build scaffolding.”
Not everyone had been happy about using their limited supply of wood for scaffolding rather than building homes. But no one complained to Renna’s face.
How had her father managed to stay sane? All the decisions, and no matter what she choose, someone wouldn’t be happy about it. Some days—most days—she wanted to walk away from the whole dratted business and retreat into a cabin somewhere where no one could ever find her.
Instead, she straightened her shoulders and fell into step with Sheriff Allen. “Will we be able to finish by winter?”
“Don’t think so. Not with the amount of labor we have available.” Sheriff Allen’s eyes swept across the line of men. “But a little snow won’t hurt the half-finished walls, and if
we get the beams from Walden, we’ll be able to finish in the spring.”
Renna leaned back so she could see past the sheriff’s bulky shoulders. “Very well. Right now, preparing for winter is the priority. We must have the dugouts completed and enough food for ourselves and the animals stored in dry places.”
That really sounded like a lady, didn’t it? Like a leader. Renna straightened her spine. Even with Leith gone, she still held herself together.
By this time, Sheriff Allen’s stride had led them a ways from the laboring men and around a corner of Stetterly Manor’s collapsed wall. Sheriff Allen halted and cleared his throat. “Before that Blade returns, I had something I wanted to discuss with you.”
This couldn’t be good. Renna lifted her chin. “Yes?”
Sheriff Allen crossed his arms. “You plan to marry him, don’t you?”
“Yes, someday.” Trying to keep the daydreams from melting her spine, Renna crossed her own arms and forced herself not to take a step back to put more space between her and the sheriff. He stood a good foot taller than her, giving her an ache in the back of her neck as she tried to meet his gaze.
“Does he know that? He isn’t just planning on using you?”
Leith’s someday, eventually echoed in her ears. What kind of girl did Sheriff Allen think she was, if he could mistake her and Leith’s courtship for anything other than what it was? “Yes, of course. If you’re trying to accuse Leith of something, spit it out.”
She bit her tongue. Daniel. She had to remember to call Leith by his new name. But when her knees melted around Leith or when her fingers heated and curled as they were now, his real name tended to slip out.
“I’m worried for you. Your parents and your aunt and uncle would expect me to watch out for you now that they can’t.” Sheriff Allen huffed out a breath. “Look. You saw how he took out those Rovers. He can still be violent. Vicious. Is that the kind of man you want to marry? To be the father of your children?”
Father of her children. A black-haired, blue-eyed boy reaching up with grubby fingers…a baby girl with Leith’s green eyes…
Deliver (The Blades of Acktar Book 4) Page 15
