“Father!” Mavis gasped. “Tamsin is the most honorable, virtuous—”
DeLac sat up abruptly and glared at his daughter. “More virtuous than you? Are you a whore, too?”
“No, of course not, Father, and neither is Tamsin!”
Lord DeLac threw himself back in his chair and reached for the wineskin at his elbow. He lifted it to his lips and drank, ignoring the wine spilling down his already stained tunic. “Well, whatever she is, she’s gone and now you have to marry Blane.” His mouth slid into a terrible smile when he saw the look on Mavis’s face. “Yes, my daughter, an agreement has been made, a contract signed. One of you has to marry the man, and since Tamsin has found a way to avoid it, you must take her place. Not so loving toward her now, are you?”
“You have no proof she wanted to go with Rheged, and I’m sure she didn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s gone and her reputation is ruined, and I must have the alliance with Blane, so you’ll have to marry the man—and don’t even think of trying to run. I’ll lock you in your room. Maybe I should anyway, just to be sure. Who knows what that little slut’s put into your head?”
He was right to think Tamsin had influenced Mavis, but not in the way he imagined.
She straightened her shoulders and regarded him with calm dignity and resolve, just as Tamsin would. “If I agree to marry Sir Blane, will you pay a ransom for her?”
“I don’t need your agreement. And I told you, she’s worthless to me.”
“But I’m not, and although the betrothal contract has already been signed, surely you can seek better terms if I am the bride, especially if I make myself pleasing to the groom. I give you my word that I shall do my utmost to do that if you bring Tamsin home before Sir Blane arrives. If you don’t agree, I may have to marry the man, but I don’t have to pretend to like him. What do you think he’ll do if I refuse to speak to him? Or bar the nuptial chamber door?”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“There is more I could do, too,” she continued, desperate and determined to save her cousin. “It’s not difficult for a pretty girl to make herself ugly—and I will. I can feign a squint, or lisp. Or forget to wash.”
Simon DeLac stared at this daughter he didn’t really know and who had always meant far less to him than a son would have. It was like discovering a puppy had the fangs of a wolf, and every intention of biting. And if she chose to make trouble with Blane... “I’ll pay whatever the Welshman demands for Tamsin’s safe return. Within reason.”
“Whatever he asks,” Mavis insisted.
Her father scowled, until he realized that with Mavis for the bride, he should be able to lower the dowry, or perhaps even forgo it entirely. “Very well, but if you refuse to marry Blane, or make any difficulties about the marriage, I’ll leave Tamsin with the Welshman, or any other man who wants her.”
Mavis nodded. “Then, Father, we are agreed.”
“Good. Now get back to your sewing or whatever it is you do all day.”
“Yes, Father,” Mavis replied humbly.
As whatever love she bore him began to slip away.
* * *
In the faint light of early dawn, Tamsin gingerly unwound what was left of Rheged’s shirt from her throbbing calf. She had spent a restless, nearly sleepless night watching the half-naked Rheged as he sat on the far side of the hut. He was equally awake but still as a statue, and mercifully silent. She didn’t want to hear more words of warning or descriptions of her future husband and his family. She didn’t want to think about the future at all, or Rheged, either.
Wincing, she pulled the bandage away from the wound, and what she saw made her feel worse. Her calf was swollen, the wound red and angry-looking, and there was pus around the edges. Wiping her sweat-slicked brow, she swallowed hard as she began to rebandage it. She would be home soon. Her uncle would send for the apothecary and he would make her well.
A shadow loomed over her. “Stop,” Rheged commanded as he squatted down in front of her. “I need to see.”
“It’s all right. I’m sure—”
“I’m not.” He took hold of her ankle, and she bit back a cry of pain.
He quickly undid the bandage and drew his breath in sharply when he saw the wound. He felt her forehead, his touch surprisingly gentle, even though he muttered what must be a Welsh curse. “You’re feverish.”
“My uncle will send for an apothecary when we return.”
Rheged took a knife from his belt.
She skittered backward. “What are you doing?”
“This needs a fresh bandage, at the very least,” Rheged replied. “I require some of your shift after all, my lady.”
“No! I can’t return with a torn shift or people will be sure—”
“I don’t give a damn what people will think, and neither should you. If this isn’t tended to immediately, you may lose a limb, or even your life. Now sit still and let me make a new bandage.”
Gritting her teeth, she said no more as he lifted her skirt and, with the tip of his sword, cut her shift just below her knee. He sheathed his sword, then ripped her shift all the way around. He tore it all the way around again, and tossed away the muddy hem.
He glanced up at her while he rewrapped her leg. “You need a physician, my lady, not an apothecary. Sir Algar’s doctor is one of the best in England, and we can get to Cwm Bron faster than Castle DeLac, so we’re going to Cwm Bron.”
“You said you’d take me home!”
“I will brook no argument in this, my lady,” Rheged said as he finished tying off the bandage. “I won’t risk your leg or your life on a point of honor. When is Blane expected to arrive?”
“Soon!”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow,” she lied. “Maybe even today.”
His wry expression revealed his skepticism. “I’m sure Blane will stop at every brothel and tavern along the way, so I think we should have time enough to get your wound seen to and you back to Castle DeLac before he arrives.”
She wanted to insist that they return to Castle DeLac, but she remembered the servant whose wound had festered and turned to gangrene. In the dark hours of the night, she’d heard his howls of pain as they cut off his leg. The poor man had died anyway, in agony, a few days later.
Blane would surely balk at marrying a woman missing a limb and she would be no use to Mavis, or anyone, if she were dead. “Very well,” she said. She pulled his tunic from beneath her and held it out to him. “But once my leg is healing, you will take me home.”
He nodded and rose, put on his tunic and buckled his sword belt around his waist. He kicked the fire out, then bent down and scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child.
She opened her mouth to protest, but she wasn’t sure she could make it to the horse on her own, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry her out of the hut to his horse. After he lifted her into the saddle, she grasped the saddle board with both hands, dizzy once again.
“Are you going to be sick?” he asked warily.
“No,” she replied, determined not to tell him that she hated being off the ground, or up high, and this horse seemed very tall.
“Good,” he muttered, and mounted behind her. She shrank away from him as he reached around her for the reins and turned the horse toward the path leading north. “I’ll go as fast as I can when we’re in the open. Tell me if it hurts too much.”
“I can endure a gallop if it gets me to a physician all the sooner,” she said, gritting her teeth and holding on for dear life.
* * *
Rheged rode as quickly and easily as he dared, yet by the time they had reached the river that flowed past Cwm Bron, Tamsin had slipped into another swoon and he muttered the earthiest Welsh curse he knew.
At the same time he spotted Gareth waiting on the wall walk of his fortress. Unlike the last time he’d returned, though, the gates were closed. No wonder, given his anger and the way he’d ridden off. Ga
reth must have been afraid he was going to make an enemy and start a battle.
So he had done, in a way, God help him. Over a golden box and a woman betrothed to another.
He never should have returned to Castle DeLac, regardless of the bogus prize. He never should have tried to reason with that sly cheat DeLac, and he should have ignored the impulse to take Tamsin. She had nothing to do with the prize, and although he wanted to save her from a terrible marriage, surely he could have found some other way. If she lost her leg—or worse—she would never forgive him and he would never forgive himself.
He heard Gareth order the gates to be opened and ignored the few staring villagers who watched him ride past. By the time they rode under the portcullis, Gareth was in the yard, with Dan by his side, and several soldiers nearby.
Rheged’s friend trotted toward him, his eyes wide. “God save my beating heart,” he murmured when Rheged pulled Myr to a halt. “What the devil—”
“She’s hurt,” Rheged interrupted. Answers to Gareth’s questions could wait. “Take her, will you?”
Rheged lowered Tamsin’s limp body into Gareth’s arms while Dan held Myr’s reins to keep him steady.
“Who is she, Rheged?” Gareth asked.
“I’ll explain later,” Rheged said, dismounting. Once on the ground, he took Tamsin in his arms. “Close the gates.”
Gareth’s eyes widened. “You’re being chased?”
“Maybe.” He’d heard nothing in the night like the sound of a mounted party riding past, but it was well after dawn now, and DeLac’s men could be on their way.
“God, Rheged, what—”
“Later,” he repeated as he turned and strode quickly toward the hall. He had to get Tamsin inside and to bed, then send for Sir Algar’s physician.
He was nearly at the keep when Sir Algar himself appeared at the door. “Blessed Savior, Rheged!” he cried, staring. “Who is that and what have you done to her?”
“This is Lady Thomasina, Simon DeLac’s niece,” Rheged replied as he started up the stairs of the keep. “She’s been wounded.”
Sir Algar swiftly moved out of his way. “My God!”
“I fear the injury’s infected and beyond my skill,” he continued. “We need your physician at once.”
“Yes, yes, of course! I’ll send a man for Gilbert immediately!”
Sir Algar rushed down the steps as Rheged kicked open the door to his hall in the middle level of the keep. “Hildie!” he bellowed. She was the oldest and presumably wisest of the maidservants, or so he hoped.
The brown-haired serving woman with a mole on her left cheek appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, her green eyes widening when she saw Rheged’s burden.
“Fetch plenty of hot water and clean linen for bandages,” he ordered as he hurried toward the stairs that curved around the inside of the keep and led to the chamber on the upper level. The upper room that served as both his solar and his bedchamber was the only place that offered any privacy.
He gently laid Tamsin on his bed and wished that it was new and as comfortable as the one he’d had at Castle DeLac.
Her eyes fluttered open. She raised her hand as if to push him away, then almost immediately fell back into a restless slumber, crying out when she moved her leg.
“Oh, God,” he muttered, wondering what more he could do to help her until the physician arrived.
“My lord?”
He turned to see Hildie waiting at the threshold, a ewer of steaming water in one hand and a pile of linens over the other. “Fill the basin and bring it here. And the cloths,” he said. He raised Tamsin’s skirt and began to undo the blood-soaked bandage, and nearly groaned himself when he saw the wound. It was definitely worse.
Hildie approached warily. “That looks bad, my lord.”
“Help me hold her still while I wash the wound again.”
“Going to take more than washing to fix that, I think, my lord,” Hildie said as she obeyed.
“Which is why Sir Algar’s sent for his physician. Now try to keep her from moving,” Rheged commanded.
He set about cleaning as much of the blood and pus as he could. Although Tamsin struggled a little, he was sorry she didn’t struggle more. Her lack of reaction had to be a bad sign.
He rebandaged her leg and then, sitting on the side of the bed, wiped his brow with his sleeve while Hildie heaved a sigh and stepped back. “I’ll fetch Elvina to help me undress her. We should do that, my lord, shouldn’t we?”
“Aye,” he muttered.
After the servant left the chamber, he took a clean cloth and wiped Tamsin’s perspiring face, then her neck.
And he prayed. Fervently, as he never had for himself either before a battle or when he was wounded, or even when he’d been scaling that castle wall in France. The last time he’d prayed this hard, he was a boy trying to wake his parents, thinking they were only asleep. Praying that they were, although they were so cold.
Sir Algar entered the room and Rheged swiftly rose. “I’ve sent a man for Gilbert asking him to come at once. He should be here before nightfall. Now, what happened at Castle DeLac and why is this young woman lying on your bed with a wound in her leg?”
Chapter Seven
Rheged quickly and briefly told Sir Algar what had happened when he returned to Castle DeLac. “And I was so angry and disgusted with the man,” he finished, flushing with shame, “I took her.”
Sir Algar’s thick white eyebrows drew together in a frown. “What do you mean, you took her?”
“I pulled her onto my horse and rode out of the gates with her.”
“Good God, man!” Sir Algar cried. “You abducted her and right out of DeLac’s courtyard? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” Rheged admitted. For once, he’d only been feeling. “DeLac is a cheating rogue and she deserves better than Blane. You know the lord of Dunborough. Would you want to see any woman married to him?”
“I know that it was not your place to interfere, unless she asked you for aid. Did she ask you?”
“She believes she must honor the agreement. In fact, she insisted that I return her to her uncle as soon as possible and she threatened me with imprisonment if I don’t.”
“Justly so,” Sir Algar replied. “Would you not seek to honor any agreement you made and threaten anyone who tried to stop you?”
“This is different.”
“To you, perhaps.” Sir Algar’s eyes narrowed. “And last night? Where were you both last night?”
“We had to take shelter in the wood. I found the remains of a coal burner’s hut and we stayed there.”
“Despite her wound?”
“It was pouring rain, my lord, and dark. I tended the wound as best I could and bandaged it with my shirt.”
Sir Algar paced with agitated steps. “My God, man, whatever your reasons, you’ve put both the lady and yourself in a terrible situation! Her reputation may suffer and DeLac is a powerful man, with influence at court.”
A low cough interrupted him, and they turned to see the slender, middle-aged physician standing at the door. Gilbert was plainly attired in a long black woolen robe of fine quality belted about his waist, and he carried a wooden box with leather handles, his medicinal chest.
“Ah, Gilbert! Thank you for coming so swiftly,” Sir Algar said, moving to meet him. “Sir Rheged will explain what’s happened. I’ll be below.”
“Explanations can wait,” Gilbert said after Sir Algar had left the room. The physician’s voice was deep and soothing in spite of the shrewd interest in his deep brown eyes. “First I want to examine the lady.”
Rheged nodded and told Gilbert where she’d been wounded.
“The blood has dried,” the physician noted as he began to untie the makeshift, bloody bandage. “She might awaken from the pain when I remove the bandage, so please stand by her shoulders and, should it be necessary, hold her still.”
When Rheged put his hands on Tamsin’s slender shoulders, she
opened her eyes and stared at him with confusion. “Where am I?” she asked like a lost child.
“Cwm Bron,” he replied softly, her vulnerability making another dent in the wall around his heart. “You will be safe here, my lady. A physician has come to help you.”
“My leg hurts so....”
“He will help you,” Rheged repeated.
Despite Gilbert’s efforts to be gentle, Tamsin screamed and tried to twist away as Gilbert pulled the bandage from the wound. Biting his lip, hating himself for being responsible in any way for her pain, Rheged laid his body across hers to prevent her from moving, until he realized she was no longer trying to, and her eyes were closed.
“Thank God she’s swooned again,” Gilbert said as he examined the wound carefully and probed it with his fingertip. “This could be worse, my lord, much worse. Fortunately, thanks to your immediate attention, the infection has been confined to the area around the wound. It will need to be cauterized, but that should be all that’s necessary for her to heal, except for rest.”
Relief filled Rheged, but only for a moment. “Will her leg be permanently damaged?”
“I think not, although she’ll have a scar.”
Gilbert took a clay vessel from the wooden medicine chest he’d set down by the washstand and measured a powder into a small metal cup to which he added water.
“This will dull the pain and reduce her fever,” he explained as he gently raised Tamsin enough to drink. When he poured some of the potion he’d prepared into her mouth, she coughed and spluttered a bit but didn’t wake up.
“Why doesn’t she awaken?” Rheged asked, some of his anxiety seeping into his voice.
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