the blanket over his shoulders. There. That should end her questions.
“Simply a man in service, my arse!” she whispered across the room.
William learned the limits of his self-control in those next moments as he fought the words that threatened to spill out of him. He had not hidden his secrets for nigh on three years to give them away now for the asking. His sister’s safety was still in question if his life was revealed.
And so, with the greatest of efforts, he closed his eyes and slowed his breathing and waited for sleep to come.
Chapter Five
He was a coward.
With the cold dampness seeping through his blanket and into his exhausted body, it became clear to him, and he smiled grimly as he realized the punishment for his cowardice. The torments of being on this road escorting his lord’s wife on her pilgrimage to Carlisle Abbey was probably as torturous as staying behind and facing the prospect of Isabel in her bath. Turning onto his side and pulling the meager blanket tighter, William knew assuredly that one hell was just as bad as the other.
William’s plans had been to leave before Wenda’s arrival at the cottage the next day. His services, already requested to escort the lord’s wife for a visit to the convent where her sister was prioress and her niece was a nun, was his ready excuse. He’d accepted the lord’s assignment with a speed that surprised even himself. Mayhap he’d known what was to come?
William de Severin, champion of numerous jousts and tournaments all over the Plantagenet kingdom on the continent and in England, was a coward after all. The victim of visions of a woman and a bath. It was all her fault, after all.
He’d been able to think of her as an injured stranger for all the weeks when she lay in his cottage, helpless and ailing. But when she spoke of her anticipation of a bath, a simple bath, his mind was suddenly filled with her as a woman.
He’d been able to fight the images until she asked for his aid in getting off the pallet that next morning. Isabel wanted to be seated at the table in order that Wenda could decide about removing her stitches and so the old woman would have to lean down no farther.
Placing his hands on her waist, he’d lifted her easily from the pallet. When her knees buckled at this first standing and his hands slipped up from her waist, he’d been granted a hint of the womanly attributes still hidden under the loose shift and gown she wore. The reality of the woman shocked him, for he had thought only of her as a stranger and never looked at what was in front of him all those weeks.
His attention followed his hands’ course and then her indrawn breath drew his attention. Without loosing his hold on her, he moved to her side and held out one hand for hers. Balancing her weight as in the step of a popular court dance he once knew, William eased her to the bench and guided her down to it. They were both out of breath when she settled on the bench.
She would not raise her eyes to him immediately, but took a few moments to position her splinted and trussed leg. From the way her lips pressed together and her brows wrinkled, he knew she was battling the significant pain of being on her broken leg for the first time.
William left her and came back with a mug of water. Isabel gulped it down in two swallows and the mug thunked back onto the table.
“Is there aught else you need?” he’d asked her. A strange awareness had been created in that moment of touch and he’d felt the strong need to be away, as though threatened in some way.
“I will just sit until Wenda arrives. My thanks for your help, Royce.” She lowered her eyes and fumbled with her skirt, rubbing on her leg to ease what he knew must be tightness and discomfort.
And then he ran.
Oh, he knew to outward appearances he strode purposefully from the cottage with his sword and scabbard in hand. He knew that he’d maintained a directed, self-composed pace until he’d reached the cover of the trees, and then he’d run as though chased by demons.
Or by the thoughts of a full-breasted woman within his embrace.
William shifted again on the hard ground where he lay and waited for the dawn. There would be no sleep this night, not with the memories of the soft-bodied woman who lay asleep in his home while he lay here. Sitting up, he slid back and leaned against a stout tree. It was not much later when Lady Margaret’s maid approached him with her lady’s call.
Lady Margaret sat within the dry, well-appointed travel tent that he and his men had erected the night before for her comfort on the road. ’Twas obvious that Lord Orrick supported his lady wife’s need to go on pilgrimage and had made her frequent journeys as comfortable as possible. That this was opposite of what was normally expected of pilgrims on their way to holy places for prayer and contemplation had surprised him the first time his escort had been asked. Now he’d grown accustomed to the many ways in which Lord Orrick indulged his wife.
“I seek your counsel, Royce.” Another of the indulgences of Lord Orrick was his lack of opposition to his wife calling his men by their given names. In many circles at court, this would have been an indication of some untoward attentions being given, but not here within Lord Orrick’s sphere of control.
William considered it another of the many eccentricities that seemed to govern life on the fringes of the Plantagenet kingdom in England. Left on their own, close to the wild Scottish borders, those who held land and power lived their lives according to their own standards. So long as their tribute in fighting men or in wealth of one kind or another arrived when requested, the king and his brother bothered them not. With King William of Scotland and King Richard’s agreement some years ago, the north of England lay in relative quiet while chaos in the kingdoms to the south, on the continent, held Plantagenet attentions.
“How may I help you, my lady?” William dropped the tent flap behind him and stepped closer.
“I rely on your opinions, as does my lord husband, and have a question for you.” The lady changed from the rough English tongue and now spoke to him in Norman French, their native language.
He nodded and waited for her question. She played this game often—speaking in a language not heard in the mostly Saxon northwest. If she had revealed this practice to Lord Orrick, he knew not, for Orrick never mentioned it to him and she did this only in private, with her maid as the only witness.
“While at the convent, should I mention or seek out information about a woman having been beaten and left on our property? So many people pass through its gates that surely someone may have heard or known the woman you harbor.”
William thought about her words. Since the prioress of the Gilbertine Abbey was her sister, Lady Margaret would have no problem seeking out information about such a woman. But he knew, just as surely, that someone did not want the woman now called Isabel to live. And that someone might very well still be in the area or be waiting to hear of anything that could link him to the attack. No, until Isabel had some sense of herself, the danger to her life still existed.
“I would listen, my lady, but ask nothing at this time.”
She smiled and nodded. “I understand, though what bothers me is the harshness of this. ’Tis easy enough these days to rid one’s self of an unwanted wife by putting her aside and placing her in a convent or other religious community. Having her killed is a bit excessive.”
“One would think so, my lady.” He had enjoyed her irreverent sense of
