Heart of Vengeance

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  She knew what was happening to her. She had seen and heard of this from the women who followed Robert’s camp, talking around campfires when the men had gone on mysterious tasks of their own. She had never considered it might happen to her.

  She looked at his face to see if Stephen had noticed her odd reaction—a reaction completely inappropriate for a maiden and a lady of the court—and saw the truth. He had seen it all and understood. He gazed steadily at her, as if he were examining her soul. And his findings? Helena searched his face for an answer but the answer came in another form.

  Stephen’s thumb slid softly across the skin over her cheekbone. It was a light touch. Helena wouldn’t have felt it if her body had not been so alert. She drew in a startled breath. At the tiny sound he snatched his hand away like a man who had placed it in fire.

  Helena dropped her gaze to her lap. Her chagrin and embarrassment prevented her from looking at him. She busied herself with her peach, separating slices as if her life depended upon their parting, wishing she could think of some simple words to speak that would break the silence.

  She could not resist the need to know what his own reaction had been. Helena lifted her head to look.

  He looked away as she did so.

  Her heart sank. He was as awkward as she! Oh lord!

  But her gaze fell to his shoulders, those wide shoulders that reached to the edge of the soft leather jerkin he wore. The jerkin was black, as she had swiftly become accustomed to seeing upon him but today the edges and cuffs of a white shirt peeked at the sleeves and the slashed neck of the jerkin. Above the shirt was tanned skin that rose into the thick column of his neck. Helena had not fully realized before just how broad his shoulders were, or how powerful the body appeared, even in repose. She could well understand the fighting prowess such a body would lend. If not for the studiously turned head, she would have thought him the picture of idle contemplation, for he was propped on one arm, while the other rested on his raised knee.

  Helena looked back at her lap. Until this moment, she had thought she had won an unexpected friend. Had she ruined the friendship now?

  “’Elena.” She heard him clear his throat. “Helena,” he said firmly, correcting himself.

  She looked up. His expression was neutral, eyes wary.

  “Tomorrow I will need to tend your wound again. The dressing must be changed. Will you come?”

  “Where?”

  “I assume you would not wish to meet in Oxford. You cannot allow anyone to see the wound, for that would prompt the questions you worked so hard to avoid today.”

  “No!” she agreed.

  “Then here,” he said. “This is quiet and far enough from the village that it is unlikely anyone would stumble upon the place. Can you make it here tomorrow?”

  “When?”

  “It must be at this time, when the sun is highest and most men are gathered at the council. Neither you nor I can easily escape notice at any other time.”

  “Noon, then,” she agreed.

  He put his other hand on the ground, as if he were about to rise.

  “Why are you doing this?” Helena asked quickly. “Why do you cater to my need for secrecy, without demanding an explanation of me?”

  Stephen stayed seated. “Would you explain yourself if I did demand one?”

  “I cannot.”

  “’Elena, you asked me to trust you to know what was best for me. You judge that telling me who you are would put me in some sort of jeopardy. Very well then, I will trust you in this.”

  “But why? Why trust me when you don’t know me?”

  “I know you,” he said flatly. “You would not play dangerous games of this sort without reason.”

  Helena’s breath caught again. Such respect and acknowledgment had been missing from her life. The bestowing of it now was a precious gift. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  He smiled. “When you come here tomorrow, try not to be seen.”

  She nodded.

  “It isn’t just for the sake of your own mystery that I ask,” Stephen said. “I’m one of the least favored men at court these days. The Lady Isobel would certainly not be seen with me. You cannot afford to flaunt that practice.”

  “You do not seem as bitter today as you did yesterday when you spoke of your disfavor.”

  “I’ve found it has its compensations.” His smile was more definite this time.

  “Compensations such as coming close to having your neck slit?”

  Stephen’s smile broadened. “I was never in danger of that,” he assured her. “You forget to whom you speak.”

  She had forgotten. “In truth, with you sitting before me you do not seem so terribly formidable that other knights quail before you.”

  “In truth, there has been no great danger here for me to show how formidable I can be.”

  Helena pursed her lips against the urge to tell him just how great a danger her company might be, for he was rising to his feet. He held out a hand to her. “It is time to get you safely home.”

  Helena braced herself for the impact of his touch. She slid her hand into his and delighted at the feel of his warm flesh against her palm and the touch of his fingertips, as they curled over the back of her hand.

  “Slowly, now,” he warned and lifted her. Helena found her feet and stood, swaying a little. He stepped closer, prepared to catch her. She shook her head. “I will not fall,” Helena assured him, wishing she could plead feminine weakness so he would take her in his arms and she would feel his body against hers.

  “I know,” he said. His voice was low.

  Helena looked up into his eyes, surprised at the sudden, deep roughness in Stephen’s voice. For the first time since she had met him, she read his thoughts as clearly as a book. The desire there. The temptation to take her into his arms and consequences be damned. Behind that was a fiery maelstrom of masculine wants and urges.

  The layers of feeling frightened her but they also excited her. She knew he read her own thoughts as clearly as she read his. For this man, she would be willing to follow the path of those feelings. With him, she would happily abandon standards and codes of behavior that had been drilled into her since childhood. All for this man.

  For only a second they stood poised thus. Neither of them moved. For only a second or two did their eyes meet. Only that momentary glimpse was needed.

  She busied herself with knotting together the ends of her split sleeve so the damage to her dress was not immediately apparent. Mundane movements. Pragmatic considerations.

  But as they moved away from the river and back into the shadowy land beneath the trees, Helena knew she had emerged from that moment a changed woman. It had left a deep mark on Stephen too. It was too late to go back. This morning, with its almost innocent and sweet motives had long gone. Now they stepped into far more dangerous territory.

  * * * * *

  Stephen and Helena hurried back to Oxford in silence. As the sun touched the treetops, they gained the road just outside the town. Before they stepped out of the trees onto its muddy ruts, however, Stephen grasped her arm. “You must go on alone,” he said. “Gatekeepers have remarkable memories.”

  Helena nodded. Parting made sense, although the thought of losing his company deflated her feelings.

  “It is barely a long arrow’s flight to the gate. You should gain the town without problems. There are so many barons and knights about that once you are inside the walls no one would dare try to detain you.”

  “I will manage,” Helena said listlessly, leaving her gaze upon the empty road.

  “I have no doubt you will. You would inspire confidence if only you smiled a little. ’Elen…”

  She turned to look at him.

  “Until tomorrow.”

  Yes, there was tomorrow to look forward to now. “Until tomorrow,” she agreed, anticipation curling through her.

  “Go,” Stephen said and nodded toward the road.

  * * * * *

  Helena prudently
used the kitchen access door. She slipped into the house unremarked, for when she tried the latch Maud threw it open from the other side and hurried her inside.

  “Thank God! Thank God!” Maud whispered over and over, wringing her hands and glancing back at the kitchen where her staff was occupied preparing the night’s meal. “When ’is lordship said you were ’urt…”

  “It is not a fatal injury, as you can see.” Helena pulled the split sleeve apart so Maud could see her bandage. Maud pulled the veil and wimple from her pocket. They were crushed now but still wearable. Helena donned them without hesitation. They would hide most of her loose hair.

  “Has anyone inquired after me?” she asked as she adjusted the folds of the wimple under her chin.

  “Not to me but why would they ask me? I’ve ’eard naught but the council this, the council that. Right sick of it already I am and ’ere it be only three days in.”

  Satisfied that no alarm had gone up over her long absence, Helena hurried to her room to change her clothes before someone did come looking for her.

  * * * * *

  In the dining hall that night, sitting beside Catherine and Hubert, Helena hugged to herself the warm glow of comradeship she felt for the brooding bear of a man who sat again at the end of the long table, separated from the people there by more than simple space.

  Helena felt a kinship with him she felt with no others in the room. She could not wait for the morrow. She knew she would not resist the need to be there early so she would not lose any time with him.

  * * * * *

  Stephen found himself at the river’s edge early—and alone. He cursed himself for his foolishness. What had taken possession of him that he must spend a sleepless night fretting over a woman’s withheld smile, playing over again and again in his mind the feel of her hand in his?

  Too, there was the astonishment he’d felt when she had landed on his back from behind. That was a move he had not anticipated and should have. Why did he persist in running that small sequence through his thoughts?

  Stephen growled deep in his throat and thumped the trunk of the gnarled oak with his fist. He knew damn well what the matter was. He had known it yesterday, here in this spot. He had seen the knowledge in her eyes too.

  So why was he here? To bind a wound, yes, yes, but if he was honest—and wasn’t his honesty what he had boasted of to her only two days ago?—if he was honest, then he must admit it was not the only reason he haunted this spot by the river, waiting for her to arrive when their appointed hour was yet some time away.

  Stephen dumped the small bundle of implements at his feet, dropped to the ground and plucked a reed to tease the surface of the water.

  The memory of her unexpected emergence from the tiny window of the cottage yesterday flashed through his mind. He had hovered on the edges of the forest, wondering if he should interfere with the soldiers, or somehow extract her from the building where she was trapped, when she had taken care of it herself with astonishing agility. Helena had slid through the window like an otter.

  Bereft of the usual lady’s veil, her hair loose—hair an astonishingly rich, deep brown that shone like sun on water—Stephen had at first wondered if she was not Helena but some other maiden bent on avoiding the sheriff’s constabulary. God knew there were reasons aplenty a virtuous maid would want to evade such a confrontation.

  Helena had checked her arm and then picked herself up, gathered her skirts, while showing a decent portion of long, slim calves and ankles and run into the trees. She’d paused at the forest’s edge and checked over her shoulder. A shout had sounded and she was suddenly gone from that place like a startled fawn, running so freely and swiftly that Stephen had watched with delight for a moment, before it occurred to him that he needed to give chase if he was to stay within a distance where he might be of use to her.

  That had been the first of many surprises Helena had given him. Her responses were all wrong for a simple maiden. They spoke of wisdom and experience only a much older man might have. Yet the old man’s wisdom and experience lived in a much younger and distracting body. He found her unbound hair the most disconcerting of all. Apart from the desire to plunge his hands into its thickness, to feel for himself how soft it appeared to be, the long, silky skeins blowing about her face made her seem more abandoned, more open to new experiences. Had he really seen that willingness in her eyes, or had he merely imagined what he most wanted to see?

  “Stephen!” The call was clear and low.

  He stood and saw her threading her way along the bank, arms akimbo as she kept her skirts from the water. Helena was early, for which he was absurdly pleased.

  She was once again the demure Norman lady. She wore a deep green velvet gown, with her hair bound and covered with a veil of some fine green material so thin he could see the trees behind her through it. She had dispensed with the wimple. Had she removed it for him?

  She came right to where he stood and smiled up at him. The astounding color of her eyes surprised him once again. It had only been yesterday he’d stared into them but now it seemed like years ago. He refreshed himself in their deep blue haze. He saw he had not imagined the willingness in them. There was a sense of expectancy about her. Of course, she could give no overt signal…

  Stephen tore himself away from the spell of her gaze and reached for the bundle of implements. He was reaching for the sanity of the ordinary. It was a familiar sensation, this stretching out for the everyday things. When he had staggered beneath the black, moonless sky, trying to find a way out of the desert, he had used the small, mundane practices of home to keep his mind together. He had shaved every day, using the sharp edge of a sliver of stone. He had marked out the night into the formalized hours with which he had grown up. Morning sword practice, using a bent stick for a weapon. Afternoon study, reciting as much of the Latin lessons as he could remember as he shuffled over the sand. But his mornings and afternoons had been the twilight and the night hours, watching the stars wheel overhead.

  Now Stephen took refuge in the mundane again. He pounded the herbs he had brought with him, grinding them under the mortar and bringing his senses back to an even keel.

  Helena sat in front of him, watching. “Did you have trouble getting away?” she asked.

  “No one cares where I go. I should have been in the council these two days past but not even Hubert Walter has complained of my absence.” Stephen lifted his gaze to her. “Such is my importance.”

  She smiled. “Only to them.” Her smile was full of mischief and Stephen felt the corners of his mouth lift. His exile did not seem so arduous when Helena spoke of it, for she spoke of “them” as if they both stood outside the tight ranks of barons, knights, court officials and churchmen who were the sum of their world.

  It was an odd sensation, being “outside”. It had never occurred to him that he could move away from “them”. The possibility was astonishing. Stephen realized he was staring at her, with the sightless, vacant stare of a moron, so great was his absorption in this new idea. Abruptly he returned to grinding the herbs. “Some water, please,” he murmured.

  Helena reached over the low bank, dipped her hand into the water and swung it, dripping, to his bowl. “All of it?”

  “A drop at a time.”

  She gave him the required drops, gathering more from the river as the liquid slipped from her palm. She was a quick student, for he found he barely had to explain what he was doing. Finally the preparation was ready.

  He looked at the sleeve of her dress. Women’s sleeves were generally close-fitting at the top but hers was looser. “You picked your gown so the bandage would fit beneath and not be detected,” he guessed.

  “Also, so that I may blend in with the trees,” she added. “I used to wear green all the time, once.”

  It was an odd remark, one he stored away to consider later. For now, he studied the dress. “I cannot cut such cloth. I would not deplete your wardrobe by a second gown.”

  Helena reached for the
circlet that held her veil in place and removed it with the veil. Then she turned her back to Stephen. “If you will loosen the ties, I can lower the sleeve.”

  It was a simple, reasonable request. Stephen sat still, looking at Helena’s back, noticing the way it curved into the narrow waist. She waited patiently for him to comply.

  He reached out with hands that trembled and picked up the ends of the ties and tugged them undone. Then he realized he would actually have to touch the dress and physically work them loose. He carefully pulled and eased the dress apart, being careful not to let his fingers brush the skin revealed beneath. But still he felt the warmth of her back transmitted through the material, stinging his fingertips.

  “It is done,” Stephen said at last. He felt sweat bead at his temples.

  “Thank you.” Helena grasped the neck of the gown and pulled it, working it looser. Then she grasped the bottom of the sleeve while she pulled her arm out of both kirtle and gown.

  Stephen watched Helena’s shoulder and arm emerge. The gown sank around her body. His breath stilled as the loosened neck of the gown slid down the pure, white skin of her upper chest, lower, lower, diagonally across the upper swell of her breast.

  Helena brought her other hand across her breast and held the material there.

  Stephen suppressed a sigh. Her arm and shoulder rose from the billow of clothing, bare except for the stained bandage he had wrapped around her upper arm yesterday. Had it been only yesterday?

  He forced his gaze to her face. She looked neither embarrassed nor awkward. Her bearing was almost regal in its serenity. For the first time he wondered about her true heritage, the one she had hidden from him. He had always assumed, by her familiarity with the ways of barons and courtiers, that she had come from a similar background. Perhaps she had a greater ancestry than he had suspected.