Chapter 5 #3
After drying the foal with a towel and rubbing some warmth and
blood back into him, Alina dipped her finger in the goat milk and
slipped it into the foal’s mouth.
“He’s suckling,” she said, pulling her finger
out and dipping it back into the milk and then his mouth. “He’s
weak, but he’s suckling.”
Fergus breathed a big sigh of relief and went
to tell Gare the good news. Roark held up the drinking horn to show
Alina the hole he’d made, stuffing the tip of his little finger in
and out of it.
“Perfect.” Alina grinned, starting to feel
hopeful.
Roark pulled a strip of linen through the
hole and then filled it halfway with milk. “Here,” he crouched down
beside Alina and held the horn out to her as milk started dripping
from the linen teat.
“If you could hold it to his mouth,” she
said, wrapping her arm around the foal’s neck and bracing one hand
under his jaw while gently prying his mouth open with the other and
stuffing the linen between his lips. “Come on, baby,” she cooed,
inserting a finger into his mouth next to the linen teat. “There
you go, baby,” she said as the foal began to suck. She pulled her
finger out and beamed as the foal continued to suckle. “There you
go, Ash.”
“Ash?” Roark said.
Alina gave him a sheepish grin. “Every living
thing deserves a name of their own.”
“Ash,” Roark repeated. He took in the foal’s
coat, a light roan now that the dirt and mats had been brushed out.
“It suits him. His coloring.”
“Hopefully his spirit as well,” Alina said.
“He’ll need a strong one to survive this and rise from the ashes.”
The foal stopped suckling and she pulled the horn from his
mouth.
“If your spirit rubs off on him any,” Roark
said, plugging the teat hole with his finger, “he’ll be kicking his
heels up and tearing around the paddock in no time.”
Alina grinned at the compliment. “Fingers
crossed,” she said. “How much did he drink?”
Roark eyeballed the horn’s contents. “A
quarter of the half horn. Is that good?”
“It’s not bad. We don’t want him drinking so
much at once that he makes himself sick, especially after days of
going without much of anything in his belly.” She ran her hand down
the foal’s neck and her voice caught when he laid his head on her
knee. “Poor Ash wore himself out getting cleaned up and eating.”
She kissed the foal’s forehead. “We’ll let him rest before we offer
him a little more milk. The trick is to be patient, to build his
appetite and his ability to digest little by little.” She lifted
the foal onto her lap and tucked the blanket around him. “He’ll
need to be fed constantly for the next two to three days at least,
it’d be best if I could stay here with him.”
“I’ll speak with Roger,” Roark said. “The
fact that he let you tend to the foal at all bodes well for him
letting you continue. I’ll be sure to point out how much coin he’ll
make if the foal lives. I’ve already sworn to watch over you and
make sure you don’t try to escape.”
Alina lifted her chin a notch. “I’d never
willingly leave a poor creature alone to die when I might save it.
But I might not be good to my word if Roger isn’t seeking to ransom
me to my father.”
“I understand,” Roark said. He sat down next
to Alina and gently stroked the foal’s head and neck. “I can sit
with Ash if you want to check on Etain.”
“I should,” she said, hesitating.
“I promise to be gentle with him,” he said.
He lifted the foal and settled him on his lap. “Go. See to Etain.
We’ll be right here.”
***
Alina woke in the dark of night to a small
hoof in her belly. Ash was sleeping beneath the blankets between
her and Roark, his back snuggled up against Roark’s belly and his
head tucked under Roark’s chin, having instinctively drawn closer
to Roark’s larger, warmer body. Alina reached under the blanket and
smiled at the living heat of the foal’s body, which had been as
cold as death when she’d first laid hands on him.
She stretched and yawned and lay there
enjoying the sight of Ash and Roark sleeping, and the lack of
wheezing or crackling from the foal that would’ve meant he’d gotten
some of the milk in his lungs.
Ash had taken to the horn with the linen teat
so well Alina had to pull it away from him the last four feedings
to keep him from overfeeding. Roark had stayed by their sides the
entire time, helping Alina feed and care for Ash and watching him
when she would check on Etain, who had calmed down considerably
once she was in her old stall. She even let Alina hot soak her
swollen udder without complaint.
Roark twitched and snuffled, and Alina
reached a tentative hand out and pushed an auburn curl falling onto
his cheek behind his ear, admiring his high, broad forehead, angled
cheekbones, full mouth, and strong jaw. She ran her fingers down
his cheek and through the soft curls of his short beard, and then
dropped her hand and laid it under the blanket over Ash before
doing something really foolish like kiss him.
She closed her eyes with a sigh, reliving
their kiss for the thousandth time. A kiss full of heat, desire,
and passion that still stirred her insides. A kiss seared into her
soul. Which made everything that happened after so much worse.
Roark had betrayed her. Roark, who’d seemed
truly interested in her greenhouse, in her, a woman who rode with
her skirts hiked up and mucked around with plants in the dirt.
Roark, whom she’d had deep, interesting conversations with as they
sailed across the North Sea. Roark, who’d slept beside her on the
pile of pelts in the ship’s hold, who slept beside her now in the
straw on a stable floor. Whose presence she’d missed last night and
couldn’t seem to sleep without, even in a big, soft, comfortable
bed.
Roark, whose rain eyes were staring into hers
as if they could see her every thought and mirror her every
feeling.
He reached his hand under the blanket and
laid it over hers. “It’ll be all right,” he said, his voice low,
deep, and resonate.
“What will?”
He smiled, slow and easy. “Everything.”
Alina chuffed. It was either that or cry.
She was being held prisoner in a strange land
by a man nursing a twenty-year-old grudge against her family and
was likely using her as a trap for her father, surrounded by women
who’d as soon spit at her as look at her. She was lying in a bed of
straw in the middle of the night trying to save the life of a
half-starved foal with a man she no longer seemed able to sleep
without, who she’d kissed once and wanted to kiss again.
“How?” she asked him. “How will everything be
all right?”
Roark gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll
make it right.” He twined his fingers through hers, and though her
breath caught, the tightness in her chest eased. “I swear I
will.”
“You don’t know how badly I want to believe
you.”
“About as badly as I want to prove to you
that you can,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Though I admit I’m
off to a poor start.”
“Only poor?” Alina chided.
“Terrible?” Roark’s grin turned wry.
“Horrible? Abhorrent?”
Alina laughed softly. “Keep going.”
“Unforgiveable?” His grin was gone and his
expression serious.
Alina swallowed her heart and opened her
mouth to say, what? That his betrayal had cut so deeply because she
had believed him, his smile, his kiss, his proposal, and she was
almost as angry at herself for falling for him as she was at him?
That she could forgive him anything when he looked at her the way
he was looking at her now?
Ash stirred and let out a weak whinny.
Untwining her fingers from Roark’s, Alina pushed the blanket off
her and stood.
“Ash needs feeding.”