Love Above All

by Speer, Flora

  “Here; you take it.” After sending a look toward Giles to warn him not to make any comment, Quentin covered the woman’s face with the blanket, then lowered her into his man’s arms. Giles was well trained. While Quentin dismounted he stood silently holding the bundled-up form as if it were an unwieldy package and not a human being.

  “I’ll take it now.” Quentin reached for the woman. With a show of carelessness for the benefit of the watching Scots, he slung the bundle over his shoulder before he spoke again to Giles. “Have another squire see to the horses; I want Braedon to come with me. Cadwallon, speak to the master of Duncaron on my behalf. I trust your judgment on what to tell him. Giles, lead me to my bedchamber.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  Knowing not to question his master’s orders while they were among Scotsmen whom Quentin had little cause to trust, Giles headed for the entrance of the tower. When a burly man in a stained leather jacket would have stopped them, Cadwallon, rightly assuming he was the master of Duncaron, drew him aside and began to speak to him in a low voice. Braedon followed Quentin so closely he almost trod on his heels.

  The one and only guest chamber, set high in the tower, was sparsely furnished with a bed hung round with plain woolen curtains, and with a table on which burned a wick in a crude pottery oil lamp. The walls were rough wood planks.

  Shutters were closed over a single window. An empty wooden tub sat between two braziers in which charcoal burned, providing minimal heat.

  A quick glance at the bed told Quentin it was reasonably clean. He laid his bundle down on it and pulled back the concealing flap of the blanket.

  “She’s not contagious, is she?” Giles asked, stepping closer to peer at the exposed face. “If we bring illness in here, we won’t leave Duncaron alive. We are seriously outnumbered, my lord.”

  “She’s not sick, only chilled near to death.”

  “Someone tossed her in the river,” Braedon added. “We couldn’t leave her to die.” Assuming his duties as squire, he began to inquire of Giles about the arrangements made for Quentin’s comfort, until Quentin interrupted.

  “Let no one enter this room except the two of you and Cadwallon,” Quentin ordered. “Say nothing of the woman’s presence, not even to our own men. Where is the hot water for my bath? I’ll want a warming pan for the bed, too.”

  “These tough Scots will think you’re a Sassenach weakling,” Giles said with a cheeky grin.

  “I don’t care what they think. If you must tell them something, say I’m suffering from an old battle wound that has flared up in the rain and cold. Just bring me what I need. I’d appreciate some food and hot, mulled wine, too, if you can find it.”

  “Here in Duncaron it’ll be ale and not wine,” Giles said, “but I’ll thrust a hot poker in it to heat it. And I’ll check with Cadwallon, to be sure our stories match. I’ll also set one of our own men-at-arms outside the door, so you can be private.”

  When he was alone Quentin threw off his heavy traveling cloak and pushed back his chainmail coif. Braedon could help him disarm later. His immediate concern was the woman. She lay wrapped from head to foot in the grey wool blanket, only her face and a bit of hair showing. Quentin lifted the oil lamp and held it close to her, studying her features.

  He judged her to be about eighteen or twenty years old, and she was not especially pretty. Her jaw was too firm and her nose too sharply chiseled to match the current ideal of soft, feminine beauty. The faint blue tinge of her lips and the purple shadows under her eyes proved she’d been in the river much too long. Quentin could detect no sign of serious injury. Except for the red scratch along her left cheek and the thong marks on either wrist, no blemish marred the perfection of her smooth, waxy-pale skin.

  The hair he’d first thought was black was actually a dark shade of brown with glimmers of red where the light shone on it. When it was completely dry it would probably be the same color as her delicately sweeping eyebrows. Quentin touched a lock of her hair and it curled around his finger as if all of her waning life force lay in those few strands, and as if they were clinging to him.

  If the woman were to waken, would she cling to him as her hair was doing? Would she ask again for his help, imploring him to protect her from further harm? And if she did, could he in honor refuse her? His primary duty lay in England, yet, having found and rescued her, he had made the lady his responsibility and he could not in good conscience abandon her.

  “What color are your eyes?” he whispered.

  Despising himself for giving way to the weakness of fantasy, he pulled back his hand, though he imagined he could still feel the silken texture of her hair sliding softly across his skin and making his fingertips tingle.

  “Foolishness,” he muttered, speaking to her again while knowing she couldn’t hear him. “You are of interest to me only because you were obviously intended to die in the river. If I can discover why a gentlewoman was so violently mistreated, I may learn some detail to add to the information the others and I have already gathered during this mission.”

  A rap on the door announced Braedon and Giles, each toting two large buckets of steaming water. After dumping the water he carried into the tub, Giles went for food and more charcoal, and Braedon assisted Quentin in removing his chainmail.

  “If you intend to soak her in the hot water,” Braedon said, “it’s going to take both of us. Dead weight as she is, she’s too big for one man to handle.”

  “She certainly isn’t a dainty creature, is she?” Quentin responded, his sharp gaze measuring the slender, unmoving length on the bed. “Toss a few more pieces of charcoal on the braziers and let’s do what we can for her. I’d like to use the water, myself, before it’s completely cold.”

  Again, as they had done by the riverside, they handled her with impersonal dispatch, pretending not to see her womanly attributes. Braedon managed her feet and legs, and Quentin took her shoulders and tried to keep her long hair out of the water while they bent her at hips and knees to make her fit into the small tub. It wasn’t easy. Quentin guessed if the woman were awake and standing she’d be barely half a head shorter than his own great height.

  When the water had cooled to lukewarm and her skin was beginning to look less like lifeless marble and more like natural flesh, they took her out. Braedon held her upright with a hand at each of her armpits while Quentin dried her with the clean linen towel he pulled from his saddlebag. Then they tucked her into the warmed bed.

  “Do you think she’ll live?” Braedon asked. As he spoke he flapped the chest of his tunic in a futile attempt to dry the soaked wool.

  “I hope so,” Quentin said. “I don’t like unsolved mysteries. See if you can locate a bucket of hot water for yourself, and put on a fresh tunic before you catch a chill. I can’t afford to have you sick. I’ll send the guard at the door to find you if I need you.”

  Once the squire was gone Quentin wasted no time before he divested himself of his own damp undershirt and hose. He then climbed into the rapidly cooling water. It wasn’t the hot, relaxing bath he had been looking forward to while riding through the rain and chill of an autumn night in Scotland, but he’d endured far worse conditions while on campaign with King Henry.

  An hour later, wearing clean hose and tunic, having eaten the bread and cheese that Giles brought and after downing a cup of hot ale, Quentin perched on the side of the bed. Telling himself he needed to check on her condition, he touched the woman’s cheek. Her flesh was decidedly warmer than it had been earlier and her lips were no longer their previous worrisome shade of blue. Now they were a rosy tint that reminded him of the inside of a seashell he’d picked up once on a beach in Brittany.

  Quentin lightly traced the scratch on her cheek. Next he let his hand slide downward, to rub along her shoulder, testing its warmth, then farther down her arm to the line at her wrist where the leather thong had bitten into her delicate skin.

  Her fingers twitched. Her hand moved convulsively and she made a frightened, inarticula
te sound deep in her throat. From his experiences in battle Quentin knew what it was like to return from the brink of death, to find oneself still alive after being absolutely certain the end was imminent. But death in the heat of battle was one thing; coldly planned murder was something else entirely. Sympathy rose in him, as spontaneous as it was unwanted. He warned himself to be cautious. If he was to solve the mystery of the lady’s presence at the edge of the river, dispassionate investigation was required, not an emotional response.

  Again she struggled to say something.

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “You’re safe now.”

  “Cold. So cold.”

  He could hardly understand the whispered words. Then she began to shiver and he knew what she meant. She was returning to life and her body was reacting to the violence wrought upon it. Her teeth were chattering, too.

  Quentin threw extra charcoal on the braziers, but the room remained chilly. The lady whimpered and shivered, the sounds of her distress arousing Quentin’s protective instincts. Here lay a helpless soul, who needed him. Taking up his cloak, Quentin spread it over the blanket covering her. Then he lay down beside her, wrapped blanket and cloak together around them both, and gathered her close to his warmth.

  After a time her shivering stopped. Alarmed, Quentin put his hand on her bosom, to be sure her heart was still beating. The sensation of his palm against her soft breast was so disturbing that he snatched his hand away and almost left the bed. But she needed him, needed whatever heat he could give her, so he held her closer still, until her breath brushed across his throat like soft, sweet gusts of springtime air. He lay there, rigid and wide awake, clasping her against him as the night hours wore slowly down toward daylight.

  The woman in his arms slept peacefully, as if she harbored no worries at all.

  Chapter 3

  “I will help you.”

  The words echoed through Fionna’s confused mind. She lay still, keeping her eyes closed against the intrusion of daylight while she tried to remember where she was and why she was so deliciously warm, so languid and relaxed. A faint alarm at the edges of her consciousness warned of some amorphous danger, but she brushed the impression aside so she could remain as she was, comfortable and secure.

  Not until the wool-covered wall against which her cheek was resting began to move did she understand that someone was holding her, and that what she had first taken for a wall was, in fact, a broad, manly chest. Strong masculine arms enfolded her with a highly improper, yet strangely welcome, familiarity.

  She opened her eyes to meet a questioning grey gaze.

  “So, they are blue,” the man holding her said. “I did wonder.”

  “What? Where?” She choked to a stop.

  “Is your throat sore?” The man’s low-pitched voice was weighted with a confidence that suggested he seldom needed to raise it. “I should think both chest and throat would ache. You coughed up half the river shortly after we found you.”

  “River?” she whispered, bewildered. Then, “Liddel Water?”

  The man did not respond; he just watched her, apparently waiting for her to say something more. His hair was shiny black, cut short all around in the same Norman style she had seen worn by intruders into the borderlands – the intruders her brothers despised. He was a Norman knight, then, with a high-bridged, aristocratic nose and eyes the color of silvery clouds after a spring rain, fringed by thick black lashes. Unable to bear his penetrating stare any longer, Fionna closed her own eyes.

  “What is your name?” the man asked.

  “Fionna of Dungalash.” She responded before pausing to think, and instantly regretted telling him even that much. He was a stranger and possibly dangerous.... He wouldn’t hurt her, she was sure....

  What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she collect her scattered thoughts into a pattern that made sense?

  “I am Quentin of Alney.”

  “Norman.” It was all she could think of to say and she was hard put to get even that much past her trembling lips. She recognized his name, though she had never seen him before. Sheer terror compelled her to open her eyes again and meet his gaze as she wondered what incomprehensible working of time and fate had brought the two of them together.

  “Yes, I am a Norman.”

  She wished his smile wasn’t so dazzling. She wished he was wicked and ugly and smelled bad, so she needn’t care what happened to him, for this was the man her brothers were planning to seize and torture for information, and kill when they were done with him, after which they’d use his death to their advantage. She had overheard Murdoch say his name aloud, clearly and distinctly, just before Gillemore had caught her and accused her of eavesdropping.

  She really did dislike the thought of so strong and handsome a man brought low, with his lifeblood drenching Scottish soil. At the moment, Quentin of Alney was still free and very definitely alive. Did that mean Murdoch and Gillemore had given up their mad scheme? Or had they just postponed it for a time, until after Fionna was silenced by death?

  “So are all the people with me Normans,” Quentin said, “except for Cadwallon. As his name suggests, he is half Welsh. We found you at the edge of the river, with your hands tied behind your back. Would you care to tell me how you got there?”

  She was about to demand he tell her why he wanted to know, when she suddenly realized she hadn’t a stitch on. She was lying naked in a bed, talking with a strange man who was marked for death, though he wasn’t aware of it, and she hadn’t even noticed her state of undress until this moment. If her brothers learned where she was, they’d kill Quentin for taking liberties with her. No, she realized with a hiccup of near-hysterical laughter, they’d kill her first, and this time they’d make certain she was dead. Then they’d carry out their scheme to murder Quentin.

  She sat up so quickly that her head began to reel. Quentin put an arm around her shoulders to steady her, while with his free hand he drew the blanket up to cover her breasts. His long fingers brushed across her skin. Fionna smothered a gasp and grabbed the blanket from him.

  “We left you unmolested,” Quentin said. “In case you were wondering.” The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he was repressing a smile.

  “We?” she repeated. The possibility that all of his people had viewed her unclothed body sent the blood rushing upward from her toes to the top of her head.

  “Braedon, my squire, helped me to undress and bathe you. I assure you, he is a discreet young man.”

  “Only you, and one other man.” It was bad enough, but certainly better than a whole troop of men staring at her. She let out a long breath. But there was something else she wanted to know and she wasn’t sure how to ask. “Did he-?” she began and stopped, unable to say what she was thinking. She didn’t have to say it; Quentin understood.

  “Did he keep you warm on the other side?” he said, finishing her embarrassed thought. “No. You and I were alone last night and as you will note, I am dressed.” He slid out of the bed to stand before her in tunic and hose.

  “But I am not dressed,” she said, fighting against a sense of loss at the removal of his warmth and strength from her immediate vicinity. She ought to be glad he was no longer hovering over her. Disturbed by her longing to have him return to the bed, she made her voice cold and demanding. “What did you do with my clothes?”

  “They were wet. Braedon saw to them. They should be dry by now.”

  “Then have them brought to me.”

  “Not until you answer my questions.” He caught her wrist, turning it over, one finger tracing the red mark. “Who did this to you? Who tied you and threw you into the Liddel?”

  Fionna’s mind was clearing rapidly. Her head ached and her chest felt tight whenever she tried to take a deep breath, but that was most likely the result of all the water Quentin claimed she had swallowed and then brought up again. She remembered everything, every detail of her ordeal, right up to the log scratching her face. She lifted a hand to touch the spot. At that m
oment, as she fully understood her situation, she began to devise a desperate plan.

  Quentin had saved her life. He seemed to be willing to share the credit with his companions, but Fionna had watched a few chieftains leading their clans, so she recognized a true leader when she saw one. Quentin was the man who had discovered and rescued her. Therefore, she owed him his life in return.

  “You needn’t be afraid,” he said. “I can protect you. In addition to my two friends, I have men-at-arms with me. Fionna, who tried to kill you?”

  “They must think I’m dead,” she replied, “so I’m not in any immediate danger.”

  “I wouldn’t wager a single farthing on that notion,” Quentin told her. “You are no peasant girl, to be mistreated by a lord who knows no one will ask questions. Someone will be looking for you.”

  “I’ve been told the Normans habitually mistreat peasant girls.” She spoke without thinking because she was preoccupied with the details of her plan. Almost immediately she saw she’d made a mistake. Quentin’s face went utterly cold, his high cheekbones sharp in the dim light .

  “Do you make a habit of insulting the men who rescue you?”

  Though he spoke in a scathing tone worthy of a great lord, still he did not raise his voice. Unlike Fionna’s brothers, Quentin did not shout at her. Apparently, he was a quiet man. He seemed to be a gentle man, too. So far he hadn’t handled her roughly or threatened to beat her.

  “I’ve never been rescued before,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. My brothers always speak disparagingly of the Normans who have come to settle in Scotland, so I just assumed you’d abuse an unconscious woman. But why should I ever again believe anything my brothers say?” she ended with unconcealed bitterness.

  “I am not a settler. I have been in Scotland on legitimate business, as an ambassador from the English king to King Alexander,” he said. “I am on my way home. Was it your brothers who tried to kill you?”