Finders Keepers (Norman Brides)

by Wood, Lynn

  Nathan wasn’t sure why he was surprised when having reached the gates to the city, he saw his wife’s stallion approaching bearing a prone burden across its back, the long, dark hair of Arden’s burden nearly reached the ground and gave testament to his wife’s claim it was a woman her mount carried. By now Nathan had mistakenly assumed nothing he learned about his wife and her family could astonish him. He wrongfully concluded all of his surprise had been used up in the initial chaotic months of his brief marriage. The only thing that didn’t surprise him about the current situation was that his flighty little wife could still prove all of his carefully held assumptions about how the world was supposed to work were woefully inadequate to explain his wife’s experience of life.

  He let go of his restraining hold on Rhiann’s arm, as seeing the black and its burden, she let out an agonized cry and took off at a run in their direction. Nathan caught up with her as Arden halted before them. Rhiann was already kneeling at the horse’s side, gently pushing the woman’s long hair back from the face of who, Nathan assumed, must be Melissa.

  “Melissa, God, Melissa. Hold on. Please don’t die. I am here with you now. Everything will be all right. Thank God Arden found you.”

  Rhiann raised her shining gaze to her husband, who was regarding her with an expression of mixed astonishment and wariness. She’d been very careful to try to be the kind of wife he seemed to want… to not show him the other side of herself, the side he wouldn’t understand. She didn’t know if Nathan could accept that side of her. She dropped her glance beneath his intense probing one and turned her face back to breathe in the scent of her sister’s hair to reassure herself that this at least was no vision. Her sister was here with her, alive. Melissa moaned and Rhiann pushed her concerns about her marriage aside for the moment and turned back to her husband.

  “She’s hurt. I can’t lift her…” Her explanation trailed off at the flash of anger she detected in her husband’s eyes.

  He stepped forward and gently lifted Melissa from Arden’s back and then cradled her limp body against his strong chest. “No, you cannot lift her, wife. You do not have the strength to carry her back to the keep or up the stairs to the room the king will order for her. Nor do you have the power to protect yourself, and your sister, and the child you carry from the enemies that beset you, but I do, Rhiann. I have an army of highly trained men under my command willing to die to see you safe. Yet you don’t trust me enough to confide your secrets to me. Have I given you reason to doubt my honor? Do you think I’ll betray you and your family? Do you believe I am capable of turning my back on my child you carry within you?”

  Rhiann let his fierce rebuke settle around her, but offered no defense, because there was none. It was true. She loved Nathan, but she didn’t trust in his love enough to reveal her full self to him. The self that saw and heard what others did not. Would he turn from her in disgust if he knew how different she was from the woman he once planned to wed before he was stuck with her for a wife? Now she would add the burden of her sister’s care onto his admittedly broad shoulders, but Melissa was her responsibility, not Nathan’s. She hoped in time, if she proved to be a pleasing wife to him, and gave him the son and heir he so desperately longed for, maybe then she might risk sharing all of her secrets with him.

  “I do not doubt your honor, husband, but it is true I wonder at the limits of your love for me.” When he would have interrupted her she shook her head, and continued. “I know you will say your love has no limits, but you cannot dispute the fact I have already proven to be a troublesome wife to you and now I’ve added the burden of the care of my sister onto the many responsibilities you already shoulder.”

  Nathan reined in his temper with an effort, shocked at how easily his wife raised his ire, even though he recognized the insult she’d given him was unintentional on her part. He also regretfully realized now was not the time to get into the issue of her lack of faith in him, what with her sister’s questionable condition and his wife’s astonishing precognition of it distracting him away from the core of his wife’s fears. “My shoulders are broad enough, Rhiann, to bear your burdens as well as my own. The truth is, to me the two are indistinguishable. It is you who clings to your past, who hesitates to commit completely to our marriage. I understand your grief and I am trying to be patient with you, but I am your husband now, and your first loyalty should belong to me not to a past that can never be resurrected.”

  Rhiann bowed her head in shame at the justness of the charge he leveled against her. “But what if you learn something about me you cannot accept, that you cannot love?”

  Nathan barely heard her whispered plea before the wind carried it away. “My love for you has no conditions attached to it, wife. Perhaps I am the one who overestimates the depths of your love you profess for me.”

  “No, Nathan, don’t speak such. I cannot bear the thought of losing your love.”

  “The secrets you insist on keeping between us, Rhiann, threaten our future more than whatever it is you believe you cannot share with me.

  “Rhiann?” Melissa’s labored whisper put a halt to their discussion. Nathan could see the relief in his wife’s eyes, even as he cursed her sister’s timing.

  “Yes, Melissa. I’m here.” Rhiann was glad of the excuse to put aside the budding argument with her husband. She reached over to gently smooth her sister’s long curls away from her face, only now in the light of the moon, recognizing the evidence of the bruises that lingered there, marring her flawless skin.

  “It’s not another dream? You’re really here?” Melissa desperately reached out a trembling hand to touch her sister’s face and run her fingers over her soft skin. The solid evidence greeting her was enough to convince her. Sobs broke though the wall she’d erected around her heart to keep her terrors at bay as Arden threaded his way through the wilderness and delivered her to the arms of her sister. Rhiann stepped close and cradled her head where she rested in her husband’s arms, whispering words of consolation and reassurance in a soft tone even as she raised a tearful, if wary expression to Nathan’s face.

  Nathan accepted the moment for gaining any meaningful confessions from his wife had passed. Rhiann was in no condition to answer his accusations and her sister was clearly in need of a healer’s care. He could only guess the terrors she faced alone in the wilderness, but he could see from the scratches on her arms, the bruises on her face, and the torn condition of her gown, that her escape from Heaven’s Crest was not a gentle one and did not lead her to the outcome she anticipated. Rhiann was too overcome with joy at her sister’s arrival to have taken in the evidence of her sister’s trials. There would be more grief for her to surmount when she heard her sister’s story, and Nathan very much feared his wife’s reaction if it turned out a fellow Norman was responsible for Melissa’s grave condition. “Your sister needs the attention of a healer. Let us see her settled back at the keep.”

  Rhiann nodded her agreement. The trek back across the courtyard to the keep was slowed to an awkward gait by Rhiann’s refusal to release Melissa and her sister’s equally frantic refusal to let go of her grasp on Rhiann. Their spectacular arrival in the middle of the evening meal was met with predictable astonishment. Nathan met the king’s surprised, but definitely amused glance over his wife’s bent head, and when with a glance he indicated his concern over Melissa’s condition, William motioned for a servant to lead them to an empty bedchamber.

  After climbing the long stairs with his burden and wife in tow, Nathan placed Melissa gently down in the center of the bed and sent the servant who escorted them to track down the king’s healer. Nathan busied himself with starting a fire in the hearth as Rhiann gently began disrobing her sister. When her eyes took in the healing scars on her arms and legs, and the remnants of the deep bruises on her chest and face and throat, she whispered tearfully, “Oh, Melissa, what happened to you?”

  Nathan didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when Melissa failed to answer. Apparently she us
ed up all of her strength in her effort to reach help and her sister’s loving arms. Recognizing Melissa was in no condition for the bath she called for; Rhiann pulled the quilt up over her sister and tucked it gently around her. She met Nathan’s concerned glance from across the room. “Something terrible happened to my sister.”

  Nathan didn’t think his wife would appreciate his pointing out such an outcome was bound to happen when her headstrong sister snuck away from the keep, completely alone in the midst of a war raging outside its thick walls without the precaution of taking even a single guard to protect her. “Yes.” Though he was anxious for his wife to acknowledge it was her sister’s recklessness that led to her current grave condition in the hopes of persuading his wife not to follow in Melissa’s foolish footsteps, he could not add to Rhiann’s grief by speculating as to what he truly believed likely caused her sister’s injuries.

  Nathan watched from his place by the hearth as the king’s healer arrived in a harried manner not many minutes later and quickly set about examining his new patient. After he treated Melissa’s injuries with a healing balm and covered her unconscious form with the thick quilt from the bed, he turned to meet Rhiann’s concerned regard with a grave expression. As gently as possible he answered her questions about her sister’s condition. To Nathan’s more objective ears, the older man seemed more intent on avoiding answering Rhiann’s pointed questions about how long it would take Melissa to recover from her injuries. Left unsaid was the very real possibility Melissa would not recover. Nathan prayed the man was simply being overly cautious in his evaluation. Surely God would not return Rhiann’s sister to her, by what Nathan, if he were not a rational man, would suspect were miraculous means, only to force his wife to witness another family member die in her arms.

  So after the healer left, and unwilling to deprive his wife of what might very well prove to be her final hours with her sister, he did not insist she return to his room to rest, despite his worry she would exhaust herself seeing to Melissa’s care. Instead he summoned a servant to sit with the two women in case Rhiann needed anything during the night, and then approached where she knelt by the bed and bent and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

  “Try not to exhaust yourself, Rhiann. Your sister will have need of your strength to see her through her illness.”

  Rhiann raised anxious eyes to his. By her clouded expression he could see his earlier harshness with her, and the charges he laid against her, remained fresh in her mind. “Thank you for your understanding, Nathan. I promise to take every care with your heir,” she replied hesitantly.

  Nathan swallowed his impatience at her conclusion that his only concern was for the health of his heir. “Thank you, wife, but at the moment I am more concerned with my son’s mother.”

  He could see by her reaction he’d somehow managed to offend her with his pledge and he was unable to completely swallow his frustration when he demanded, “What foolish notion have you taken into your head now?”

  Rhiann could tell Nathan was unhappy with her and she hesitated to try his patience further. There was no denying her plan to be a non-irritating, pleasing wife to him was not going very well.

  “Well, wife?”

  “What if he…? What if she’s not a son? Would you be disappointed in me?”

  Nathan bit down on his instinctive retort and forced himself to remember how young and innocent his wife truly was, despite the fact she was now a married woman. “You insult me, Rhiann, with such a question. Did your father value his daughters less than his sons?”

  He was surprised when his wife didn’t immediately give him the denial he sought that would prove his point. Instead, she shrugged daintily and admitted, “I am not completely certain. He was most patient and generous with us, but I think he wasn’t quite sure what to do with us. The boys he understood. He shared his life, his worries with them. Melissa and I…”

  Nathan was intrigued by this brief glimpse into his wife’s family. He felt instant empathy for his now deceased fatherin-law, and thought the two of them probably had more in common than Nathan previously assumed. It pleased him, at least, to learn his former fatherin-law was as apparently sometimes at a loss to understand his daughters as Nathan was. “Melissa and you…?”

  Rhiann shrugged again. “We were not I think what he expected. Sometimes he would look at Melissa as if she was a complete mystery to him.”

  Nathan’s suppressed the urge to smile, suddenly feeling a great deal of sympathy for the former duke. “And you? Did he not regard you as if you were a complete mystery to him?”

  Nathan understood the barely discernible shrug of one of his wife’s slender shoulders concealed a wealth of secrets she was unwilling to share with him. “I tried very hard to be a dutiful daughter, Nathan.”

  Nathan thought he’d just been given an important hint into his wife’s character. “Just as you are trying very hard to be a dutiful wife to me?”

  Tears stung her eyes and he could see she thought he mocked her with his question. “Rhiann?”

  She turned her face from him and confessed tearfully, “I am trying very hard to please you, Nathan. I’m sorry everything keeps happening to disturb your schedule.”

  As his wife’s face was averted, Nathan thought it safe to grin at her absurd conclusion. He forced his features to assume a more serious expression before he gripped his wife’s chin and turned her gently around to face him. “Rhiann, surely you cannot believe my schedule is more important to me than my wife.”

  Rhiann’s eyes searched his. “You seem upset with me whenever I interrupt your training with your men.”

  Nathan was surprised his wife could read him so easily. He assumed he managed to conceal from her his very understandable frustration whenever one of his wife’s flightier endeavors took him away from his important duties as vassal to the king. “Rhiann, if I have been impatient with you…”

  Nathan stopped his budding explanation at his wife’s horrified expression. She reached out to grip his hand and explained earnestly, “No, no Nathan how can you suggest such a thing? You have been everything that is most kind and patient with me. You even agreed to marry me when you were already betrothed to another.”

  Nathan couldn’t believe his wife harbored such a worry. “I hardly think forgoing my relationship with a woman capable of scheming with a bunch of murderous kidnappers constitutes a sacrifice on my part. Nor do I want you to feel you have to keep secrets from me because you are afraid I will conclude from them you are no longer a pleasing wife to me. I love you. Trust me, wife, my love is strong enough to accept your secrets, and my shoulders are broad enough to carry your burdens.”

  “I love you too, Nathan. Please try to be patient a little while longer.”

  Nathan smiled and brushed his lips across his wife’s. “In the hopes of becoming a more pleasing husband in the eyes of my wife, I will try to contain my impatience for a little while longer. I trust, Rhiann, you understand I am exercising that patience at this very moment by not insisting you return to my bed so I might demand my intimate rights as your husband.”

  Rhiann blushed beneath his intent regard but offered no further response. She wasn’t entirely certain if he was teasing her or not.

  After Nathan left the room, Melissa asked, “You’re pregnant?”

  Rhiann guessed Melissa was awake and heard the entire exchange between her and Nathan. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  Melissa laughed weakly. “Why are you apologizing to me for being pregnant? I imagine you had little choice in the matter.”

  Rhiann’s voice dropped to a whisper when she confessed tearfully, “But I did have a choice. When the king awarded Nathan our father’s estates I was given the choice to wed him and return home. I wanted to go home, Melissa. I didn’t want to stay here, or to be married off to another knight and sent to Normandy. I’m sorry. I wasn’t forced to marry Nathan. I’m not brave like you.”

  “Rhiann, I wasn’t judging you. You’re far more courageous
than I to face your future rather than running from it as I did.”

  “It was awful. I was so glad you weren’t there, even though I wished more than anything I wasn’t alone.”

  “Tell me.”

  Rhiann was clearly reluctant to confide in her, and Melissa, sensing her hesitancy gripped her hand and insisted. “Tell me. I have to know, Rhiann, and you have need to tell me.”

  Green eyes met blue steel, until finally Rhiann laid her head on her sister’s chest and poured out her heart.

  When she was finished Melissa asked gently, “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m happy for you, sister.”

  “You’re not ashamed of me?” Rhiann asked hesitantly.

  “No Rhiann, I’m proud of you, and so pleased you’ve managed to find happiness out all of this death. It’s not a sin to love, sister. It’s never a sin to love.”

  The following morning Nathan stopped by his sister-in-law’s room to check on his wife. He opened the door quietly, not wanting to disturb the two sisters as it was barely dawn. He had not slept well without his wife’s clinging warmth in his bed. He tossed restlessly, his mind going over the circumstances leading up to Melissa’s arrival, and Rhiann’s confession of her uncertainty of her father’s love for his daughters. He understood now why she was so intent on keeping from him anything he might interpret as not being a pleasing trait in a wife, such as how she knew Arden was back at the keep and that the stallion had somehow found her sister in the wilderness. He wanted to demand she prove her love to him by laying aside her doubts and trusting in him completely, but he recognized such an order would be ridiculous given his wife’s recent experiences, particularly with Normans. Even if he was so foolish to make such a demand, his wife would merely stare back at him with those wide innocent eyes of hers and proclaim she did trust him and offer as proof of that trust her willingness to share her family’s history with him.