by Jill Hughey
He knelt next to her, staring intently at her face. She thought he was gathering his strength to stand when he spoke. “I have many plans for us, many ideas of exactly whom will be doing what for whom. In none of those are you providing protection for me.”
He leaned forward, softly pressing his lips to hers as casually as he’d just touched her. His kiss felt as natural as breathing, as wonderful as the sun on her face, as exhilarating as riding Denes at a full gallop on a winter morn. His mouth lingered, then he withdrew. His calloused hand cradled her cheek as his thumb rubbed across her parted lips.
“I will always tell you the truth, Rochelle. No matter how you dislike it. Here is a truth you should enjoy, based on your reaction to my touch a moment ago. I long for you. I desire you and could easily while away this entire afternoon learning every curve and every need of your body. That, my lady, is saying plenty since you know my condition when this interlude began. You are apparently a temptation beyond all physical pain.”
“Temptation!” she cried. Oh Lord, here she was, as simpleminded as her housemaid, Ruthie, lying in the straw of Alda’s stable.
“Aye, temptation.”
“Oh, no, no, no, this is all wrong,” she wailed. “Oh, what have we done?” She swatted his hand from her face then shoved against his chest, finding it maddeningly unyielding.
He pressed her hands to him with one of his own. “We have done nothing. We will do nothing improper until the time comes for you to marry me!”
“I am not going to marry you!” she shouted, her nose inches from his.
“Yes, you are. You are able to help me when no one else has. You ministered to me. You are my succor against this pain. I am not a particularly religious man, but even I can see this is providential. You are obviously meant to be my wife!”
“You are confusing my knowledge of healing with some higher message. If I married every man whom I have cured of one malady or another, I should be the greatest polygamist in history! There are at least ten for whom I have lanced boils alone!”
“You lump me in among your tenants with boils?”
“I do not lump you anywhere. I cannot even think rationally about you at all,” she cried, then bit her lip, knowing she had revealed too much, knowing he had seen the truth by the way his eyes softened and his hand slid first to her shoulder, then to her neck to cradle her jaw.
“Stop that,” she protested weakly.
He kissed her forehead, then whispered against it. “Have you ever tried not thinking for half a minute?”
“I have not,” she replied sharply. But she could not stop breathing in the superb scent of him. She had never thought of what a man should smell like, but here it was: earth and soap and horse and temptation, she supposed. “And I will not let you make me start now. I will not!” She drew a shuddering breath of resolution. “Besides, we should go. The others are waiting.”
David rose reluctantly, a slight pounding erupting in his head again. He offered Rochelle his hand to pull her to her feet. She walked to the guttering fire to heat another cup of water. He watched her don her tunic and belt it. He observed her dressing as only a husband should, and neither of them was particularly perturbed by it. She brewed some medicine for him, then handed it to him without a word. He drank, returning the cup before kicking dirt over the fire.
He shook the pine needles and dirt off of her cloak before wrapping it around her shoulders. As he tied the simple string, he spoke to her quietly. “You are meant for me, Rochelle. Your intellect, and what is in your heart, and what hides beneath this tunic are all meant to be mine. We converse easily, we inhabit the same piece of ground easily, and we ignite each other physically. What else could you hope for in a husband?”
She began to protest. He placed a finger against her lips. “I know, you are not hoping for a husband at all. You can rail against me all you like. The truth will out. One day, soon, you will be ready.” He replaced his finger with one more almost chaste kiss. “Now, gather your things.”
She swiftly packed her pouch, then rushed ahead of him through the woods. He caught her elbow once to correct her direction.
Chapter Ten
They rode all afternoon in silence, pushing through unseasonal heat until nearly dark. They camped near the walls of the monastery at Mainz. After a cold dinner, Rochelle approached David to ask quietly, “Will you walk with me a for a moment?’
He could not imagine what she had planned, but had no intention of missing such an opportunity.
When they were far enough from the group for privacy, she produced a cup of steaming water she had hidden in the large sleeve of her tunic. The scent of cloves wafted up to his nose.
“Thank you,” he said, quickly downing the drink.
“How is your head now?”
“Bearable.” At her wilting look, he expanded. “It still hurts. I can tell it is in retreat rather than on the offensive.”
She nodded curtly. “Drink as much water as you can stand tonight. I will brew another dose in the morning. After that, I will trust you to tell me if you need my help. It is best to begin treatment the moment you feel a headache starting and not wait until it is full blown like today.”
“I understand,” he replied solemnly.
She looked so earnest and serious, her green eyes shining up at him with a hint of panic in the dusky gloam. A filly caught between her romantically untroubled youth and the serious business of having attracted a stud from downwind. She had risked being alone with him to once again save his pride. He could hardly break her trust by ravishing her at a monastery. “Will you give me a goodnight kiss?”
“No. It is unchivalrous for you to even suggest it,” she answered pertly. Her gaze dropped briefly to his lips. “You ate well at dinner. Your stomach has settled?”
“Since it emptied itself on your clothing, it has been fine. I do apologize for that.”
“Give it not another thought. As I said then, I should have anticipated it.”
“And I should have rolled in the opposite direction.”
“Perhaps,” she twirled her finger accusingly at his forehead, “somewhere in that male mind, you were hoping to relieve me of my tunic.”
“How clever of me.”
A reluctant smile finally cracked her face. “We do converse well together. I will grant that much. But, you do not fight fair and I cannot respect you for it.”
He gave her a short bow. This day had begun with pain and fear of her discovery of his weakness. Strangely enough, that very discovery led to the first relief he’d found in eighteen months in tandem with the opportunity to whittle away at her defenses. Miraculously, he had won the field today, however indecorously the battle had been fought.
The overcast morning nearly suffocated them with its high humidity. Rochelle knew it promised rain. Even she was surprised when she began to hear thunder in the distance at midday. She saw David and Theo studying the sky and conversing intently. Marian opened an oiled cloth over the contents of the cart, then mounted her horse. David pointed to a clearing in the distance just as the first heavy drops of rain fell. As Theo urged the cart and others on, David reined Woden to the side of the road, joining Rochelle in the rear. Fierce cracks of lighting seemed to ricochet around them, followed by echoing thunder.
“Go, Theo, go!” David shouted.
“Let us go into the trees!” Rochelle cried. “At least there is some shelter there.”
“No!” he yelled. “We go to the clearing!”
Hail began pelting them. The cart careened ahead into the tall weeds. David leaped from Woden and grabbed Rochelle off of Denes. He all but dragged her to the center of the clearing.
“Lie down!” he ordered.
Magnus dropped to the ground while Rochelle stared inanely, wincing against the sting of hailstones on her head.
David whisked her off her feet and put her on her back in the grass. Just as the hailstones grew larger, he put himself on elbows and knees over her, lacing his fingers
over the back of his head. Pellets the size of grapes pelted her legs and, she realized, his head and back.
“No,” Rochelle cried, “your head,” reaching her hands up to add to its protection, trying to cover any bit his own could not shield. “Not your head!”
“You are the most confounding woman,” he growled. He dropped his head to rest his chin on her forehead.
Rochelle’s eyes, therefore, were in close proximity to his thick neck, muscles slightly strained as he held himself above her. She studied it. To kiss it, she would only have to move slightly thus. She stirred, overwhelmed by his physical presence and the continuous heavy pulse that throbbed between them, day and night.
“Be still,” he warned, his teeth gritted together.
“Is it very painful?” she whispered.
“It is excruciating,” he replied, the stubble of his chin rasping against her skin.
She decided to lie still and wait. The hail already fell less frequently on her legs, but the heart of the storm was upon them. Lightning cracked nearby. Rochelle heard someone speak soothingly to a horse. The crash of thunder to follow startled her.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“No. It is rather loud though, is it not? Why did you bring us here and not into the trees?”
“I once saw ten men killed by one lighting strike to the same tree. They were all waiting out a storm beneath it.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
“Not a pretty sight.”
“I imagine not.”
“The hail has stopped,” she informed him, bringing her hands down, then having no idea where to put them.
“So it has,” he said.
“You can get off me now. I have been in the rain before.”
“I am already soaked through. There is no sense in both of us being uncomfortable.”
“While I appreciate your efforts as a roof, the half of me on the ground is soaking wet. I do not think there is any hope of my avoiding a soggy ride this afternoon.”
David flopped onto his back next to her, the back of his hand over his eyes. Rochelle craned her head, finding the rest of their group some distance away, either huddled under the cart or lying flat on the ground just like her. She gave her mother a faint wave. Marian smiled mysteriously as she looked away.
Rochelle laid her head back down, letting the rain stream down her face. “If it was not such cold water it would almost be pleasant. I was beginning to feel grimy from the road.”
“Now we can trade sticky and sweaty for chafed. The cart will wallow in every mudhole. There will be not a stick of dry firewood and our blankets will be damp.”
Rochelle laughed. “Do not be such a pessimist. It did not rain that much!”
When the storm passed, they set forth again. In truth, their conditions did suffer after the storm. Behind it, the wind became biting as the temperature dropped to a more autumnal level. They stopped several hours early, at the monastery in Lorsch, to avoid being chilled to the bone for the entire night. The monks provided separate rooms in the spartan hostelry so the men and women could dry their clothes and rest in privacy. Few other comforts were available to the travelers, but they were happy enough to be warm and dry.
They met for dinner in the visitors’ kitchen.
As Rochelle passed David, he knew she had managed to wash her hair. Though her veil covered her as usual from the front, deep reddish mahogany locks ended just below the hem at the middle of her back, coiled damply together in thick waves.
To him, she was womanhood perfected, willing to lie on her back in the rain, and chide him, and help him with his headaches, and let him lie quietly against her softness. They would spend tonight separated by wooden walls, held apart more by her independent ideas than physical barriers. And he would lie awake for hours, now knowing exactly what her face looked like when she lay beneath him and what color of hair would spread across the pillow. Every new piece of information increased his regard for her, and his torment. Each touch, inadvertent or otherwise, added to his agony. Each conversational challenge made him want to earn her affection all the more.
She glanced at him across the wide table, a thick piece of the monks’ bread in her hand and a question in her eyes at the fierce scowl on his face. This too, this communication without words, had evolved between them. A smile of shared humor at the fire, a nod of understanding when a task should be done in camp. He wooed her. And he was making progress. But the cost to his mental state was becoming precipitously high.
He purposefully smoothed his expression to let her know all was well. She blushed prettily, returning her attention to her meal. The hell he inhabited must be private until she favored him with the means of escape.
On their last full day of travel before reaching Ribeauville, the little group was quiet. They were chilled and bored.
Rochelle rode behind the cart, Magnus at her side. Vague thoughts of late autumn tasks tripped through her brain, but she couldn’t really catch hold of any of them. She’d whiled away many hours on this journey thinking of very little. Or, at least, very little that she should be thinking of. When David wasn’t trying to engage her in conversation, she mostly stared off the side of the road. Since he was riding point this afternoon, she enjoyed several hours of mindless travel. She entertained herself by trying to identify the plants, and thus she spied a feverfew bush.
“Mother, I am going over there to collect some feverfew. It looks like a large plant and I need it for David’s …for the headache remedy.” She pointed to the location, then glanced ahead to find one of the men. Independent as she was, the rules of travel were clear. No one in the group ventured off alone without telling another. Seeing neither David or Theo, she called to one of Theo’s employees nearly around a bend in the road. He patiently stopped to wait for her return.
She and Magnus trotted back to the bush. She dismounted to pull off the few green leaves remaining, and cut off as many of the smaller branches as her little dagger could sever.
She had nearly finished when Magnus began to growl menacingly. Rochelle whirled to peer in the direction he faced. His hackles were up and his head pushed out flat from his body. His posture made her own hair stand on end in prickly alarm.
A crashing noise approached them through the woods. Grabbing Denes by the reins, she searched for a way to mount: a fallen log, and stump, a rock, anything! She’d become so accustomed to David lifting her into the saddle, she’d forgotten this simple reality. Cursing her own stupidity, she began to pull Denes toward the road, hoping to get out of the way of whatever was coming or at least closer to help. Too late. The crashing stopped close behind her.
Magnus set up a ruckus of barking and snarling as Rochelle turned. She faced two hard and dirty ruffians, scrawny and indistinguishably gray with dirt. They both surveyed the area around them with jerky glances.
“Lookee here,” one of them announced with a gravelly voice, “One of them gentry types caught off by her lonesomeness.”
“’Ceptin’ for that dog,” the other noted, sounding worried and keeping a beady eye on Magnus. And well he should be, Rochelle thought. Until this moment she’d never seen Magnus do anything more aggressive than chase a squirrel, but he was now a slavering, rabid beast, lunging and snapping just out of their reach.
The first man pulled a wooden club out of his belt. “We’ve tookee out dogs afore. And she’ll be wearing jewelry and maybe money under that big cloak. You busy the dog and I’ll club his brains out.”
“You will not!” Rochelle ordered, brandishing her dagger.
They both froze, staring at the blade. She realized too late it was not with fear, but with greed.
“Shiny,” the second one said. “Here doggy,” he began to call as the first lifted his club high. “Here doggy.” Magnus did not fall for the trick. He held his ground, continuing to make a cacophony of noise.
Rochelle’s heart nearly stopped when Woden leaped through the brush by the road to lunge up beside her. David had
his spata readied, its long keen edges glinting in the sun. “Magnus, stop,” he said quietly. The dog immediately silenced and moved to stand with Rochelle. She patted his head, more for her own comfort than anything. He panted up at her as if this was all just part of a normal day.
The bandits began to back away. “Stand still,” David ordered sharply, maneuvering Woden between them and Rochelle. “If you had stopped to talk to us up the road instead of hightailing it into the woods, you would have received this warning, ‘Keep walking, do not bother us, and you will live. Otherwise, things will go badly for you.’”
“Umm, see here now, we was just walking by and that dog set on us something awful and we was just passing through.”
“Which is why this lady has her dagger pointed at you and you had a club waving at her? Rochelle, are you hurt?” David asked.
“No.”
“Did they touch you?”
“No.”
“Threaten you?”
“Only to rob me.” Her voice was firmer than she felt. Now that David was here to handle the men – and for some reason she had no doubt of his abilities in that area – her knees had gone a little wobbly. She could not see past Woden, but she heard sniffling coming from one of the men. Loud hoofbeats pounded on the road, then Theo also burst onto the scene, the feathers in his cap ruffling in the wind.
David didn’t even turn. “I am a newly betrothed,” David said to the men. “I am feeling particularly protective of this female you were accosting.”
Rochelle could barely understand the two men’s jumbled denials to David. She moved to one side in order to see the action. David immediately noted her new location, then turned his attention back to the unfortunate men.
“However, my new status as future husband also makes me feel slightly charitable. I am not sure I should show my bride what a cold-blooded killer I can be.”
