so close, had pushed her mind from her task. If she didn’t pay heed, the soldiers would be in here before she had managed to move Edith.
The infirmary was deserted. All the novices must have run out to help with the injured soldiers. Darting over to Edith’s bed, she quickly evaluated the frail woman beneath the bedclothes. The old nun had no spare flesh on her, just skin and bone, like a little bird. She would be able to carry her. ‘Let’s wrap you up, Edith,’ Alinor said gently. Bundling the bedsheets and blanket around the nun’s thin body, she eased her forearms beneath Edith’s hips, the other around her shoulders. The old nun moaned softly, her skin stretched like translucent parchment across her jutting cheekbones.
‘It’s all right, Edith...’ Alinor whispered. ‘I’m going to move you upstairs.’
‘Let me carry her.’
Twisting around, Alinor scowled, then straightened up, irritated that she hadn’t heard the knight following her. She should have bolted the door! He stood beside her, his large frame spare and rugged, eyes shining like dark coals in the gloom. He smelled of woodsmoke, the tangy scent of horses. Her belly seemed to turn in on itself; a curious pang of longing dragged at the very core of her.
‘I can do it!’ she spat out, angry, intimidated. ‘We can fend for ourselves here. Go out and help your men, and stop bothering me!’ How jittery he made her feel! He prised away her customary self-confidence, this man whom she barely knew, throwing her off balance, burrowing beneath her practical level-headedness to make her nerves dance with an uncharacteristic anxiety.
Guilhem tilted his head on one side, his mouth twitching up in a half-smile. Her behaviour was extreme, argumentative and stubborn. She reminded him of his sister: the same wayward truculence, the same self-reliance, wanting to do everything herself and fully believing that she could do so. The flash of defiance in that beautiful face, the hostile tilt of her pert little nose. He folded his arms slowly across his chest. ‘Go on then.’ Challenge sparkled in his eyes.
Ignoring him, she bent over Edith again, attempting to hoist the frail body from the bed, praying that her weak arm wouldn’t let her down now, not here, not in front of this man. The ligaments in her spine gripped and stretched; her stomach clenched tightly. Sweat prickled on her brow, but Edith didn’t budge.
‘Out of my way.’ The big man moved in beside her impatiently, shoving at her with a swift nudge of his hip, his expression grim. Alinor tottered backwards, knocking into a stool, scowling furiously as he lifted Edith carefully from the bed, wrapped tightly in a heap of linens and blankets. Only the nun’s poor, bald head peeked out from the top of the blanket.
‘Where do I take her?’
‘I would have done it!’ she protested limply. ‘You didn’t give me enough time!’
Guilhem glanced at the main door, his mouth fixing into a firm, impenetrable line. ‘The other soldiers are being carried in now, so I suggest you lead me in the right direction or this old lady is going to have more of a shock than she deserves.’
He made her sound like a spoiled brat, thinking only of herself! ‘This way,’ Alinor bit out, fuming, swishing her skirts around with a brisk movement. She led him to a curving alcove set in the infirmary wall, indicating the uneven stone steps winding upwards from a central pillar. Daylight flooded down from a narrow, arched window set halfway up the stairwell.
‘It leads up to the second floor; there’s a small bedchamber up there.’
He ducked his head beneath the low lintel, powerful legs ascending the stairs easily, Edith’s head lolling against his thick upper arm, white skin pallid against silvery chainmail. Alinor’s breath caught in her throat; is this how he had carried her, after the Prince had hit her, senseless, unknowing, his hands clasped intimately about her body? Briefly, she closed her eyes in shame.
Kneeling on the bare floorboards, the knight laid Edith down on the pallet bed, adjusting the bedclothes so that they covered her bare feet. As he rose, his hair almost touched the serried rafters of the ceiling. Alinor hovered in the entrance to the stairwell, lips set in a mutinous line, rebellion coursing through her body. What was it about this man that made her behave so badly?
She jerked out of the way as he approached the stairs, whisking her skirts away dramatically to avoid all contact with him. ‘I suppose I should say thank you,’ Alinor bit out, grudgingly. ‘But I could have carried her.’
‘My God, you never give up, do you?’ he said, the toe of his boot knocking against her slipper by mistake. ‘It’s fortunate that you decided to give yourself to Christ, because I can’t imagine any man being able to deal with you. Your father must have blessed the day he sent you to the nunnery!’
Sadness whipped through her, sudden, violent. Her eyelashes dipped fractionally. ‘My father cursed the day I was born,’ she blurted out suddenly, her voice bitter. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
Guilhem thrust one hand through his tousled hair, the colour of rain-soaked wheat. ‘And for that I am sorry,’ he said, watching the raft of sorrow track across her pearly skin. He cupped her chin with one big hand, wanting to smooth the sadness away. His thumb swept across her cheek and, for a fraction of a moment, she stood there, savouring the sweet caress. The temptation to turn her head, to press her lips into the warm skin of his hand shot through her; her lashes fluttered downwards, momentarily. Her flesh hummed, treacherous.
What was she doing? Had she truly taken leave of her senses?
‘No,’ Alinor stuttered out. ‘I must go!’
She whipped away from him then, plunging down into the darkness of the stairwell, hand pressed tight to the spot where he had touched her, tears stinging her eyes.
* * *
The day slipped quietly into evening. Outside the tall infirmary windows, the sun sank, descending into a riot of luminous pinks and golds that streaked the darkening sky. Inside, the infirmary blazed with light: candles flickered and jumped in stone niches, rush torches had been slung into every iron bracket around the walls, revealing every lump and crack in the uneven plaster. A huge fire burned at one end of the chamber. Badly wounded soldiers filled the beds, heaped under linens and coarse woollen blankets, some shivering, some unconscious. Others rested on piles of straw near the fire, conversing in muted tones, or simply staring into space, eyes blank.
‘We were fortunate to find this place.’ Edward sighed, stretching his legs out towards the hearth, crossing his leather boots at the ankles. He brushed at a scuff of earth across his fawn-coloured legging. On a stone mantel, above the hearth, a gold cross glittered, set with pearls.
Sprawled in the oak chair, Guilhem flexed his fingers around the scrolled end of the armrest, the intricate wood carving knobbly beneath his thumb as he surveyed the nuns bustling around the men, amazed at the stoicism, the practised efficiency with which they worked. The sisters moved about gracefully, never hurrying, stiff linen veils like angel wings as they bandaged up bloody limbs and stitched up wounds with fine needles and sheep’s-gut thread. They never baulked at the enormity of the task; none of them had fainted, or turned squeamishly away at the sight of an ugly wound. As his eyes drifted across the space, he knew who he was searching for. The little nun with emerald eyes like limpid pools, whose tough and hostile manner intrigued him. He had seen the dip of her eyelashes as he had cupped her face, the slight parting of her lips, the faintest release of her breath at his brief touch. And yet here she was, trapped behind the veil, never to know of a man’s desire. His loins gripped.
‘Yes, we were lucky,’
