Chapter Nine #2
Startled, Emllyn sat up, her eyes wide on his appearance. She hardly recognized him. Somewhere between last night and this morning, he had shaved all of the hair off of his head but had left his beard intact. Rubbing her eyes as if to clarify the shocking vision, she peered at him more closely.
“God’s Blood,” she muttered. “What have you done to yourself?”
Devlin looked up from where he was stuffing the remainder of his possessions into his satchel. The look on her face somewhat amused him. “So you are awake? You slept the sleep of the dead.”
Emllyn didn’t want to talk about that. She wanted to talk about his drastic appearance and she pointed a finger at him. “You are bald!”
His eyes widened and his hand flew up to his head.
Letting out a short, high-pitched scream that would have made a woman proud, he ran his hand over his shiny scalp.
“What happened to me hair?” He embellished the words greatly and Emllyn retracted the pointing finger, puzzled by his reaction for a moment before realizing he was jesting with her.
Rather than giggle at him or ignore it altogether, she decided to play along.
“Mayhap the fairies took it,” she said. “I hear they are all over these lands. Mayhap they shaved you bald in the night. Did you not notice?”
His brow furrowed thoughtfully as he rubbed his scalp. “Am I still beauteous?”
She turned her nose up at him. “I would not know,” she said stiffly as she rose to her knees. “I have never noticed that about you one way or the other.”
He could sense a game afoot, one that bordered on gentle flirtation. “Be truthful,” he prodded. “You have noticed that about me and more.”
She snorted as she stood wearily, wincing when her injured leg pained her. It was swollen and achy this morning. “What more is there?” she wanted to know. “You have your adoring Irish throng to tell you how beauteous you are. You do not need me.”
He fought off a grin. “Aye, I do,” he replied. “I need the rumors of my comeliness to be spread all over England and Wales. Will you start these stories?”
Emllyn looked at him, an expression of utter disinterested on her face.
“I would spread stories of your arrogance,” she said, noticing that he was fighting off a grin.
It made her want to grin, too. “But if you allow me to return home when I have served my purpose with de Cleveley, mayhap I will consider telling everyone that you are generous and pleasant-looking.”
He lifted a red eyebrow. “That is the best you can do? That I am pleasant-looking?”
“I would not consider my captor any better than pleasant-looking. I should not even contemplate that.”
The banter faded as the Emllyn brought about the reality of the situation between them.
He was so willing to overlook it, to morph it into something more than it was, but Emllyn was unwilling to entertain the thought.
She was a prisoner, a concubine as he once put it.
But she had to admit he could be charming when the mood struck him.
She’d seen glimpses if it before. He had a very infectious charm that was difficult to resist.
He was also quite smart and able to read the situation for what it was.
Devlin sensed that perhaps she was softening to him somewhat.
It was in her manner, the way she looked at him.
There were moments when she let her guard down and he could see that intelligent, warm woman that he wanted to see more of.
“At the moment, I am not your captor,” he said quietly.
“I am a fellow prisoner. We are equals. We will enter de Cleveley’s settlement as equals and we will leave as equals.
You want something from me, I want something from you, and we will combine our forces to ensure each of us gets what we want. That makes us equal.”
He was correct in a sense. But it was a technicality. “Then if I wanted to go home now, you would let me, as an equal, of course.”
“If you go home, you will never find out if your lover is in my vault.”
Stymied, Emllyn thought a moment before regrouping. “It has not occurred to me until now,” she said, “but you could be lying for all I know. I never actually saw any prisoners at all. Who is to say that you have any? This could be an overt fabrication.”
“If it is, then you fell for it,” Devlin said, cutting her down. “Who would be the bigger fool? Me for fabricating it or you for falling for it?”
He had her. Emllyn sighed heavily before averting her gaze.
“I am the biggest fool of all for stowing away on my brother’s warships to begin with,” she muttered with regret.
“But you and I have a bargain and I will not go back on my word. Before we enter de Cleveley’s settlement, mayhap you should tell me what it is I am supposed to say so that we have our stories straight. ”
Feeling victorious in their battle of words, Devlin finished cinching up his satchel.
“I touched on it before but to be clear, you will indeed tell them the truth – you are Kildare’s sister and you stowed away on your brother’s war fleet,” he said as he finished with his bag and moved for the hides that had constituted her bed.
“You will tell them that Black Sword captured you and threw you in the vault, where you were stored with other prisoners, of which I was one. We were able to escape when I overpowered a guard and stole his keys, and we escaped in the middle of the night through a postern gate near the kitchens. I have accompanied you because I am a mute and have nowhere else to go. You will stress that I am to be kept with you because you feel safe with me; otherwise, they could throw me in the vault again.”
Emllyn watched him as he rolled up the hides and basically cleaned up their camp. All of it seemed like a very daunting task. “I will admit that I am apprehensive,” she said. “I have never done anything like this before. I am not sure if I can be convincing.”
“If you are not convincing, you will never see your lover again.”
“And they will kill you.”
“I would prefer that not happen.”
It was a wry statement, a bit of levity to break the tension. With a heavy sigh, Emllyn nodded. “Very well, then,” she said, pulling the cloak more tightly about her against the early morning dew. “Let us get started. Where is Eefha?”
She was looking around, trying to see through the mist. Devlin took the hides and his satchel and began heading up one of the small hills that surrounded the vale.
“I do not know,” he said. “She was gone this morning before my men pulled out.”
“Do you think she went back to Black Castle?”
“It is hard to say with her.”
Emllyn began looking around as if she could somehow spot the small old woman in all of this fog.
She felt a strange sense of loss with Eefha gone because she had established something of an attachment to the woman who had saved her from the frightening Irish knight who had come pounding on her door.
She was so involved in scanning the mist that it took her a moment to notice that Devlin had all but disappeared.
Curious, she made her way towards the hill where she last saw him when she suddenly saw the tree on top of the mound rattle.
Peering closer, she could see Devlin up in the branches of the big, old oak.
“What are you doing?” she called up to him.
The branches rattled and one of them, a rather large branch, crashed to the ground. “Hiding my possessions,” he said. “We may need them when we escape and head back to Black Castle. I want to try to keep them safe.”
“In a tree?”
“In a tree. No one ever thinks to look up in a tree.”
Emllyn watched the man fumble around in the branches before eventually lowering himself to the ground. For such a big man, he climbed rather agilely. He brushed the prickly oak leaves off of his ragged clothing as he approached.
“There, now,” he said. “All finished. How is your leg, by the way?”
Emllyn instinctively put her hand down to the painful, swollen spot. “It hurts.”
“We have quite a bit of walking to do. Can you make it?”
“I will have to.”
“If it becomes too painful, I will carry you.”
She looked at him as if disgusted by the suggestion. “You will do no such thing,” she said primly. “I will walk.”
She was being stubborn about it. As she tried to walk away from him, he grabbed her by the arm.
“Wait,” he commanded softly. “Sit down.”
Emllyn frowned. “Why?”
His reply was to direct her to a rock that was jutting out of the side of the hill and pushed her down on it. As she fussed at him, he lifted her skirt to reveal the wrap that Eefha had put on it. He went to unwrap it but Emllyn tried to stop him. Pushing her hands away, he unwrapped the wound.
An angry, oozing injury faced him and his heart sank.
He could see that it was becoming poisonous and he touched it, feeling that it was very hot.
Emllyn winced in pain at his touch and pushed his hand away, but he ended up cupping her face with both hands to feel that she was with fever.
It wasn’t bad but he knew it soon would be.
He tried not to feel an inordinate amount of panic.
“Your wound is developing poison,” he told her as he took his hands from her face. “You have a fever.”
Startled, Emllyn put her hands to her face as if to confirm his diagnosis. “I do?” she felt her cheeks. “But I do not feel terrible, simply tired.”
Devlin’s gaze lingered on her face a moment before returning his attention to her leg. He sighed heavily. “This changes things,” he muttered. “I cannot take you back to Black Castle because it is too far away on foot. De Cleveley’s settlement is closer.”
Emllyn was puzzled by the comment. “We are going there anyway, are we not?” she said. “I fail to see why anything has changed.”