Chapter Seven #3
and jumped the first and lowest pile of logs without slowing. He
reined the Black toward the second, higher jump. If he couldn’t
reason Lara out of his head, maybe he could ride her
out.
Trouble was, the harder he rode, the
deeper the stallion’s hooves pounded Fulrad’s vile words and Lara’s
flushed cheeks and flashing eyes into his brain. Talon couldn’t
wait to send the damned drunkard packing. His only qualm would be
setting him upon his poor horse. The rangy bay was a foul-tempered
beast, but Talon had always put that on Fulrad, for he’d seldom
seen a horse go mean for lack of reason.
Lack of reason was certainly what he
was suffering from, keeping that thorny beauty in his bedchamber
night after night. Despite what he’d told her in the tent the night
of Mallus, he did want her, badly. He’d hoped the more he was
around her, the more he’d get used to her and the less he’d want
her, but the opposite had happened. Every time he so much as looked
at her or thought about her, which was about a thousand times a
day, he wanted her. It was driving him mad. She was driving him
mad.
He sent the Black straight at a jump
he could make in his sleep, yet even in his sleep he dreamt of
Lara. He looked up to where she sat on the windowsill, the creamy
oval of her face framed by her wild mane of auburn curls. Curls
that smelled of rose that he itched to bury his nose in and run his
fingers through. The Black pushed off his powerful haunches, and
Talon leaned over his withers as the stallion took the jump.
Midjump, Talon glanced up at the window. Next thing he knew, the
Black shied right, and he was sailing over the stallion’s head,
tumbling head over ass as he hit the ground and cracking his
forehead on something hard. He lay there as the world spun around
him until he could see one cloud in the sky where there’d been
three and then two, then he pushed himself up to sitting, holding
his head with both hands as the world resumed its spinning.
Something warm and sticky coated his left hand and he lowered it.
Blood smeared his palm. His blood. He considered standing, then
decided to sit a while longer.
“Captain?” He tried to
lift his head and squinted to see who it was that called him, then
closed his eyes against the too-bright glare of the sun. “Talon,
lad, you all right?”
Only Anglbert called Talon lad. He
raised a hand in answer, knowing the pain his own voice would cause
him.
“He’s alive, at least,”
another voice, Phillipe’s, said. But it was a woman’s sandaled foot
that stopped toe to toe with his boot.
“Captain?” Lara loomed
over him, blocking the sun so he was able to look up at her. She
leaned down and gently touched a fingertip to his forehead. “You’ve
got a nasty gash on your head. Which happens when you butt heads
with a rock.”
“Good thing it was my
head, then, eh?” Talon managed to croak out, and she laughed and
didn’t disagree as a pounding pulsed from his forehead to his crown
and down his neck. She pressed a cloth to his wound, and he noticed
her bag of medicines at her feet. “How did you come to bring your
bag?”
“I saw you
fall.”
“Oh. Indeed.”
Wolf sniffed his boot where his blood
had dripped onto the toe, and Talon reached out to pet his head and
missed. He heard men’s laughter as Anglbert and Phillipe reached
down and grabbed him underarm.
“Slowly, slowly,” Lara
told them as they lifted Talon to his feet. Concerned hazel eyes
stared into his, and Talon was glad to see there were only two of
them. “Can you stand on your own?” she asked him.
He shifted his feet into a wide
stance, braced his legs, and shook off Anglbert and Phillipe. “I
can stand.” He took a step, then another. “And walk.” He wobbled
over to the Black, who was holding his right front leg up. Talon
started to bend over to take a closer look but had to stop as the
pounding in his head turned into the loud rushing of blood. Bracing
himself against the stallion’s shoulder, he slowly straightened and
surveyed the distance back to the stables.
“You know, friend,”
Anglbert said loudly enough to make Talon wince, “Talon really
should be wearing his helmet and gloves if he’s going to go around
falling off that mule of his.”
“That he should, friend.”
Phillipe smirked. “But then that is the very devil of it, for I’ve
never known him to fall off anything with four legs before, even
with a horde of bloodthirsty Saracens trying to knock him
off.”
“Nor I.” Anglbert eyed
Talon. “’Tis the curse. He worsens daily with it.”
“Aye,” Phillipe said
solemnly. “It’s the curse, poor bastard.”
“What curse?” Lara glanced
amongst the three of them, innocent of their game. But Talon
wasn’t. He knew exactly what Phillipe and Anglbert were playing
at.
“It’s the curse of two
braying asses forever at my ears,” he growled. He took the Black’s
reins and stumbled toward the stables.
“Take care, lady,”
Phillipe called out as Lara followed him and the Black. “He can be
a cursed grump.”
“Cursed is right,” Talon
grumbled as he led the limping stallion away. Cursed and damned by
the sway of those very skirts following him.