My True Love

by Karen Ranney

  “And who might you be, sir?” the leader asked, surprised that Stephen seemed to know Penroth.

  “The Earl of Langlinais. Give my regards to the good general,” he said, his voice sharpening. “Now get off my land.”

  He didn’t move until they’d reluctantly turned and cantered off. His men remained mounted and watchful even as Stephen slowly dismounted and walked to where Anne knelt on the ground.

  He stood looking down at the three of them, his glance focusing upon Hannah’s still paleness.

  “Has she been wounded?” he asked, his voice pitched low. Anne shook her head.

  The sun was behind him, his features obscured by shadow. Such a pose should have diminished him. But oddly it did not. She recalled the last vision she’d had of him, in which he’d been cloaked in darkness. An image not too dissimilar to this moment. A chill skittered over her skin and lodged near her heart.

  He stood before her, a man of some power. An earl, he’d said.

  She could hear him breathe. Not a vision. A person and not a myth. Nor a dream.

  “Stephen,” she said softly in amazement.

  He made no move toward her.

  She had stood at her window at Dunniwerth and longed to be at his side. She’d fervently prayed for one opportunity, just one, to touch him, to see if he breathed and was real, or only a creature she’d imagined.

  She stretched out her fingers now.

  Her hand wavered in the air between them. It felt as heavy as an anvil. He frowned, then stretched out his hand. Their fingertips touched. Just that. A brush of naked fingers. A tentative touch between strangers. One certainly allowed.

  But voices entered her mind. Those of caution and prudence and sense. His men stood behind them, watching. Hannah lay senseless at her feet. Not a time to become bemused.

  The silence between them was complete. She trapped in her wonder. He, in restraint.

  She pulled back her hand. It trembled even as she brushed Hannah’s hair back from her forehead.

  He spoke first. “I will send for a wagon,” he said. He bowed to her, and she in turn nodded. A gracious greeting. An expression of kindness. An act of protection.

  When he walked away, she raised her head and looked after him. Ian frowned at her. No doubt as fiercely as Hannah would have frowned had she not been senseless. She did not doubt her heart was in her gaze. She was a laird’s daughter, a woman of Dunniwerth. A Sinclair. Brave, fearless. Proud. But pride had no place in these moments.

  When the wagon arrived, two of the soldiers gently picked Hannah up and placed her in the bed. Anne scrambled in beside her. Ian led the horses. She looked around for Douglas, but didn’t see him. Was he with the mounted men? A thought before she was distracted by Hannah’s low moan of pain.

  Anne didn’t ask their destination, bemused in a way she’d never before felt. She placed her hands beneath Hannah’s head to act as a cushion against the jarring of the rough planks beneath her as the wagon began to move. Her regret and guilt was balanced against a feeling of wonder. That he might be real, and she had touched him. Heard his voice. But coupled with that was an odd and profound sadness. One that confused her even as it kept her silent. She should have been suffused with joy.

  Instead, she felt like weeping.

  Chapter 3

  “Why in hell did you not get treatment for this, Stephen?” Richard asked angrily, glaring down at his arm.

  He had ripped the sleeve from Stephen’s shirt. A necessity, for the simple reason that his arm refused to work. Stephen had no experience with suppurating wounds. Richard’s horrified look, however, conveyed the fact that it was as bad as he’d feared.

  How did he tell him that there had been other things occupying his mind? Greater concerns than pain had intruded, such as getting sixty of his regiment through enemy lines and burying five of his men. By that time, nothing had cured it, not Betty’s treatments or Ned’s commonsense approach.

  He leveled a look at Richard. “My duty,” he said flatly.

  Richard only frowned at him.

  “So you would die for your duty.”

  “Has it come to that, then?” He hoped to God he would not die for so silly a reason. Defending his country? An acceptable demise. In the cause of the king? Less acceptable, but he had been prepared to do so. Guarding his home? An act of which he might, conceivably, be proud. But not a rotting arm.

  “I’ve never seen a wound so far gone. Are you fevered, too?”

  “I know better than to lie to you, my friend. My thoughts are increasingly not my own.” He allowed his eyes to close. The light from the candles seemed almost glittery. As if he viewed them from beneath water.

  “You damn fool.”

  The knock on the door halted the remainder of his diatribe. Richard began to give orders with the briskness of a battlefield commander. Stephen opened his eyes. In the doorway stood Betty nodding at each command from Richard. Behind her stood the woman from the meadow.

  Richard had asked for more candles, and the room was ablaze with light. The glow followed her, swathed her in radiance. She sparkled as an angel might, the luster gifting her dark hair with a radiance that brown hair did not ordinarily have. Was it the heat that caused her cheeks to be tinted a lovely rose, or were heavenly spirits equipped with such earthly beauty? He was indeed beset with fever, he thought, as she came closer. No angel, merely a stranger.

  “I came to thank you,” she said, stepping forward. The second time he’d heard her speak. The first time she’d said his name. Just that. One word. A lovely voice, one that held in it the sound of bells. He smiled at the whimsy of that thought.

  The rest of her words faded away as she glimpsed his arm. Did she pale? He wanted to ask Richard to cover it up. Or her to turn away. He did not speak, to demand either would have been to reveal his shame. He had not neglected his arm intentionally, but it seemed, in hindsight, an act of such rampant stupidity that it now embarrassed him.

  He was grateful when she fixed her gaze on his face instead.

  “Have you any experience in caring for wounds?” Richard asked her.

  The woman nodded. “But none as bad as this.”

  “I doubt you’ll see as bad again,” Richard said.

  He disliked being talked about as if he wasn’t present. Protest, however, was easier with a thought than an action. Men are measured not only by their actions but by their thoughts. He had a penchant, evidently, for remembering odd scraps of knowledge when he was fevered. An altogether idiotic ability.

  Betty stood there looking horrified, her fists clenched in her impeccable apron. She had known he was ill, but he’d concealed the degree of it. To spare her the anguish she was obviously experiencing now.

  “What is your name?” he asked the woman from the meadow. It was somehow important that he know. So much that he formed the words with great precision and uttered them carefully, strung together with the tail of one gripping the front of the other.

  Another oddity of fever that he could so clearly see things that were not there. Like dancing words and angels’ wings.

  She came around the desk and stood at his right side. His fingers wiggled in the air, the tips of them brushed against the fabric of her serviceable brown dress. A soft wool that echoed the color of her eyes.

  “Anne,” she said. “Anne Sinclair.”

  Not bells in her voice, but the barest trace of accent.

  “You’re a Scot.” There, another sentence of some sense. He was absurdly proud of himself. His smile spread across his lips and was answered by hers. As if she had caught the idiocy of it. Or had great empathy for his simplemindedness.

  He was Stephen Harrington. He’d spoken with impassioned zeal to Parliament. He had shouted commands in front of armed troops and motivated men whose only wish had been to turn and run from war. Yet lucid speech was absurdly difficult at the moment. He had uttered a tiny intelligible sentence and felt as if he should be knighted for it.

  “I was knighted once
,” he told her. A confession uttered before he could think it. But the announcement of it hadn’t reached him in time, so he was fined. A way for the king to fill his coffers. To be so honored in absentia had cost him a great deal of money.

  She smiled then. He was grateful to her for her kindness, for the sweetness of her smile. So much that he wanted to thank her for it. He started to speak again, but she bent down and pressed her fingers against his lips. The gesture silenced him in its impudence.

  Did she often get her way? She did not look stubborn so much as confident. Perhaps strong-willed. Today in the meadow, she’d looked angry with the soldiers who’d waylaid her. Not fearful. Not one tear, one sob, had marred her face. Instead, her eyes had changed, been filled with wonder. What would cause such a look?

  Why did her eyes seem so deep now?

  “You should not be here,” he said. The treatment of his wound would not be pleasant. He knew that only too well, having been versed on it a few minutes earlier.

  “Do you wish me to leave?”

  He should. He should smile and banish her with a look. Even stubborn, she would not be able to mistake it. She would leave the room with the same grace as she’d entered it. Perhaps even apologize for witnessing the nakedness of his vulnerability. But he remained silent, instead, for one reason. She was lovely, a powerful distraction, and she made him think of things other than the pain to come.

  “Do you think you will faint?” she asked him. A profound question and an earnest one. But an inquiry, nonetheless, that few people would have dared to ask. He rewarded her courage with bravery of his own. An answer steeped in honesty. He was a man beset by that characteristic. If he had not been, his life would have been much easier to bear.

  “I may,” he admitted. “I’ve never been wounded before.”

  “Or known how to treat it,” she said, glancing over at his bared arm.

  His startled laughter came from deep inside him. Yet another oddity of this experience. Laughter eased the pain.

  “Is it true that your regiment is called the Blesseds?” Richard asked, laying his instruments upon the desk one by one. Stephen glanced away from the preparations, kept his attention on the night-darkened window.

  “It’s a regrettable name,” Stephen said.

  “Why so?”

  “It gave my men a feeling of invincibility. Until Seddonby. Then too many of them died.”

  He glanced at Anne. She was wide-eyed, her gaze fixed on Richard’s preparations. He wanted her attention on him, not on those instruments of torture. A petulant thought, one entirely in keeping with his sudden wish to pretend he was somewhere else. Not here in this room of glittering light and stifling heat.

  “Will he lose his arm?”

  “I am rumored to be favored by good fortune,” Stephen said, before Richard could reply. “He will not cut off my arm,” he said. A comment that was reinforced with a look toward Richard. His friend frowned but nodded all the same.

  Richard turned to Betty. “Stand behind him,” he told the housekeeper, “and wrap this strip of cloth around his chest. Bind him tightly to the chair. He must not move. If you need more help, then call for it now.”

  “I will not move,” Stephen said.

  Betty stood before him, the strip of cloth in her hand, the look on her face one of pained indecision.

  “It’s all right, Betty,” he said wearily. He dropped his head against the tall back of the chair. What words would reassure her? He did not wish to be bound in place like a trussed fowl. His word should be enough. Even weakened and fevered as he was, his vow meant something.

  “He won’t move,” Anne said, as if she’d heard his thoughts. She knelt beside him, braced herself against the side of the chair. Both her forearms bracketed his right arm, her fingers linked together behind his elbow. She moved closer, her body pressed against his knuckles. Distraction. A welcome one.

  Their faces were only inches apart. He kept his attention on her eyes. He didn’t think he’d seen such a shade before. A deep, dark brown, but in their centers a tiny gold circle. A coronet? Regal eyes, perhaps, to better suit the nature of their owner. He won’t move. How certain she had been. How trapped he felt now in her confidence.

  The first cut was unexpected. The pain was not.

  “I come from Dunniwerth,” she softly said. He stared at her lips. They parted for words. Sometimes a breath. Or a half-hidden gasp. They were, these lips, the most fascinating shade of pink. “My home is a huge, sprawling place of red brick, aged over the years until it is almost black. Nothing as lovely as this place.”

  “It was built nearly two hundred years ago,” he said, congratulating himself on the placid nature of his speech. Not a hint of the fiery agony of his left arm.

  “Dunniwerth is much older,” she said, smiling as if she’d won the point.

  He should show her Langlinais, and then she’d concede to age. The castle was nearly six hundred years old.

  “My father loves its idiosyncrasies. My mother grumbles at its tiny rooms.”

  Such a lovely smile she had. He wondered if she knew it, practiced it as some of the women at court were wont to do. He’d caught a courtesan doing so one day in a part of the palace not swarming with people. She’d made faces at the mirror—delighted, surprised, suffused with joy. Her expression when she’d turned slightly and seen his reflection had been nowhere near as charming.

  Another cut. This was the best of it, he suspected. From this moment on it would be worse.

  She barely held him, yet he felt as bound as if she had linked chains about him. The tyranny of womanhood? Or his own masculine pride being held up to scrutiny? He would not scream, even as Richard scraped and prodded.

  She had such lovely skin, unmarked by scars or the unhealthy pallor caused by the ceruse so often used at court. She had no need of artifice. Her cheeks were dusted with color. Her nose had a proud tilt to it.

  “When you speak of your home,” he said, “there’s more Scots in your voice.” Each word seemed chiseled from his throat for the effort it had taken.

  Please, do not let me scream in front of her.

  He opened his eyes fully and looked into hers, using that odd gold ring in them as a point of reference. His fever must be mounting that he would think himself lost in the warmth and the welcome of her eyes.

  He felt, somehow, as if he knew her, and that he should give her some greeting to acknowledge that fact. Her look was compassionate, but there was something else about it. An understanding, as if she could peer inside his soul and see all the holes there. All the worthwhile things he’d done, and all the lacks and omissions of his life. With that look, she forgave him in an instant, offered absolution and forgetfulness.

  He closed his eyes, willed himself away from the temptation of senselessness. It was too easy to drift into idiocy. He did not know this woman. Until today had never seen her.

  He felt her cheek against the back of his hand. The softness of her skin lured him to think of the last opened petals of a rose in summer. How eloquent his thoughts when paired with pain. At least he was not so foolish as to utter the words aloud. He was no poet.

  Upon his knuckles the faintest brush of her lashes. One side of his body too alert. The other adrift in searing agony.

  He opened his eyes, studied her. Her eyes were closed, the look on her face one a madonna might wear, peace and comfort and effortless ease. He wanted her to take him to that place where she dwelled.

  “Are you a student of poetry?” he asked, the words no more than a rasp of sound. Would she know how much they cost him?

  She looked up then, her eyes warm with empathy. He wanted to tell her that such a look would not make him braver or urge him to silence. He was at that mark now. A line, perhaps, scratched in the dirt with his sword. Beyond this point he could not go. But it appeared as if he could, after all.

  “No,” she said, “Not truly. The only words I know are those of Alexander Scott, and they are not appropriate for this mo
ment.”

  “Tell me anyway,” he said.

  Her cheeks grew a deeper rose as he watched. He smiled, charmed by it. So she was not as filled with confidence as he’d thought. It equalized them—he, with his wish to scream, and her with her embarrassment.

  “I came to thank you for your kindness,” Anne said. Did she understand his sudden wish for any diversion? A conversation about rabbits would not be amiss at this moment. “And for intervening this afternoon. I do not know what would have become of us.”

  Psalm singer or Royalist, either side in this war was capable of atrocities. Two women in a sea of men were not safe. But surely she knew that.

  “Has your friend awakened?” Richard asked.

  “A while ago,” she said, looking up at him. Stephen noted that she kept her gaze carefully averted from what Richard was doing. If he could have distanced himself from the preparations, from this very moment, he would have. “She is in some pain, but I think she is more irritated with her horse than she is with her injuries.”

  “A good horse is a good thing,” Stephen said. His ramblings were those of a schoolboy conjugating his Latin verbs. The trunk of my sister. The book of my father. A good horse is a good thing. He closed his eyes in disgust.

  “I have a good horse,” he said. An expression of speech not appreciably better, but at least it would lead to another topic. “Faeren,” he said. “All the horses belonging to the earls of Langlinais are named Faeren.” There, an entire sentence. One with some lucidity. “A legend, perhaps. One that stretches back so far no one knows its origin.”

  He opened his eyes again. Her face was truly lovely in candlelight. All shadows and cream. Her hair, curled about her shoulders and tied back with a crimson ribbon, was the deep brown shade of her eyes. Were they a matched pair, requested at the moment of birth? Chestnut eyes, please. And hair to match. Here, then, an infant of promise. She will be a beauty when she grows. Is that what you wish? Yes, please.

  “Do you favor your mother?” Another whole sentence. He caught Richard’s compassionate glance out of the corner of his eye. The worst, then, was to come shortly.