Chapter Four
Someone gave Isobella’s shoulder a gentle shake. “Come on, love. Let us get you out of these putrid clothes.”
She peeled her eyes open to a kindly female face. To stone walls, lit by flickering candles.
Where am I?
The shackles that had kept her chained lay on a floor covered with rushes.
She had a vague memory of being carried out of the dark, of sun on her face and the thud of horses’ hooves.
Of trees rushing by and the wind tugging at her hair.
Of a man, big and bearded, his voice a deep rumble as he told her she was safe.
Who’d pounded the pins from the shackles, freeing her wrists.
She fought against the fogginess in her mind. Had there been two men? Maybe. But where was she? And with whom?
Coals in a brazier in the corner cast the room in a soft glow. The stone walls, the shutters on the windows, the rushes on the floor… She was in a keep. The d’Louncrais keep?
“My name is Marceline.” The older woman squeezed her shoulder. “I will be looking after you until you are well again.”
Mm. The throbbing in her lower back and the sporadic cramps in her abdomen begged to differ.
Recovered from her stint at the hands of Faucher, maybe, but not well.
Not cancer free. But hope fluttered in her chest, rekindled.
Now she was no longer trapped beneath the chapel, there was a chance.
If she found the Langeais wolves. And soon.
“Stand up now, child, and we will get this dress off you.”
At Marceline’s gentle insistence, Isobella got shakily to her feet. She would find them. When she wasn’t so weak. When she could stand up under her own steam.
Marceline unlaced the stays of her dress. “A soak in a warm bath is just the thing.”
Isobella hadn’t been warm in… How long? Days? A week? Two?
“Amelie, run down to the kitchen and fetch some broth,” said Marceline. “And see if Cook has that salve ready.”
Isobella tracked the girl as she opened the door, catching a glimpse of a man in the corridor.
Big, wearing chain mail and a sword, with a beard and long brown hair plaited down his back.
A chevalier. The man who’d rescued her? Dark eyes fixed on her, and she shivered.
The door closed, and he disappeared from view.
“Arms up.”
Isobella obeyed, and Marceline tugged her dress up over her head.
She doubted she’d be able to undress on her own.
She could scarcely lift her arms. Her bones ached, her wrists burned, and the cut she’d made with her athame back in Muir Woods pulsed with the heat of infection setting in.
Hunger gnawed at her gut, and her throat was so parched it was difficult to swallow.
There’d been times, in the dark beneath the chapel, she’d wondered if she’d ever see the light of day again.
No matter how bad it gets, trust me when I say it will all work out.
Stef’s words, whispered in her ear when no one had been looking, had been the only thing keeping her going.
Marceline eased Isobella’s underdress over her head, then her chemise.
A beat of silence, a flash of consternation across Marceline’s face, then warm hands tugged at her panties.
Using Marceline’s shoulders for balance, Isobella stepped out of her practical cotton underwear.
She’d been prepared to dress the part of a tenth-century peasant only so far.
Going commando while one traipsed through keeps, kept company with chevaliers and faced off with a witch hunter hadn’t been on her agenda.
Annabelle or Stef might have pulled it off. Not Isobella.
Marceline muttered over her bra, fiddling with the straps, until Isobella reached up and undid the front clasp, letting it slip from her shoulders to join the pile of clothes on the floor.
Marceline raised her eyebrows, but said nothing, running her gaze over her, lifting Isobella’s arms, walking around her and inspecting her body.
Apart from a slap or two to her face, Faucher’s treatment of her hadn’t progressed beyond denying her food and water.
She’d been lucky. She’d read somewhere the methods used to extract confessions from women accused of witchcraft weren’t for the faint-hearted.
Would Faucher have resorted to torture had she not been rescued?
She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold. Without a doubt he would have.
There was something terrifying about a pretty, baby-faced man screeching at her when she refused to answer his questions.
His taunts, his threats. Isobella didn’t know what had happened to Faucher in his past, but he had a serious need of a good therapist. He had the face that screamed innocence, but his eyes…
The fervor, the vitriol spewing from his mouth like a river of rage, with a hatred for witches—and women—at its core was something else.
The guy had mommy issues. She’d bet her life on it.
In the twenty-first century, he’d have a TikTok account.
Here, he was a witch hunter, and the fate of many unfortunate women would be in his hands.
Unless Isobella did what her coven had sent her here to do. Stop him.
First, she needed to regain her strength.
She would be of no use to the Langeais wolves like this.
Isobella shuffled to the large tub full of steaming, scented water and with Marceline’s help, she climbed inside.
She hissed as she sank into the bath water, the raw skin on her wrists and the cut on her palm stinging.
She bore it with gritted teeth. She couldn’t afford to let an infection set in. Not with her body already compromised.
Had the kindly aum?nier not snuck in on occasion and applied salve to her abraded skin, her wrists would be in far worse condition.
He’d also brought her food—bread, cheese and mugs of water.
Apologizing he could not do more. Could not set her free.
Muttering to himself about finding a solution.
Promising to pray for her. She scooped up a handful of water and flower petals.
Perhaps there was a God, and the aum?nier’s prayers had been answered.
Either way, she’d be forever grateful for his efforts.
After her bath and Amelie’s return, she sat swathed in blankets by the brazier, sticky salve cooling the heat in her palm and soothing her wrists.
Marceline worked a comb through her gnarled hair as Amelie spoon-fed her like a baby—hot broth and chunks of bread interspersed with sips of water.
She was too exhausted to be embarrassed or to insist on doing it herself.
Clean, warm and with her belly full, Isobella let Marceline guide her into the bed. Never again would she take a soft mattress and a pillow for granted. Her eyelids drooped.
Marceline tucked the blankets around her. “Sleep, child. You are safe here.”
Marceline and Amelie hadn’t made it out of the door before Isobella’s eyes closed and she drifted off into a troubled sleep where pretty, baby-faced men turned into monsters trying to kill her while Douglas stood on the sidelines cheering them on.
* * * *
Isobella stirred, the pain in her lower abdomen pulling her from sleep.
A chair creaked. Marceline? She peeled her eyes open, blinking until the large blurry shape by her bedside solidified.
Not Marceline, but the big chevalier, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
His hair was loose about his shoulders, and he no longer wore a hauberk, rather a simple tunic, but there was no mistaking him as anything but a warrior.
Goosebumps rose across her skin, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. More than a warrior.
Werewolf.
She swallowed. It was as obvious as the beard on his face. The otherness. It oozed from him as surely as the musky scent from his pores.
A Langeais wolf? Which one?
She studied him through hooded eyes, fighting the fatigue that threatened to pull her under again.
Not Gaharet. Not from the description Stef had given her.
Nor Aimon or Ulrik. Her eyes closed, and she hovered on the edge of sleep.
One of the Montagne twins? She forced her eyelids open again.
Built like a linebacker, he did remind her of Gabriel.
Without the olive skin and his hair a much lighter brown.
Her vision swam in and out of focus. Maybe it wasn’t a Montagne twin.
She was in the tenth century. Where men wore armor and fought with swords.
She closed her eyes again and drifted on the edge of consciousness.
If it wasn’t a Montagne twin, then who else could it be?
Godfrey? No. He wouldn’t be in a keep. Stef had told her he was missing.
Unease skittered up her spine. Could it be Lance?
The one wolf Stef had warned her to avoid.
Because of him, the Langeais wolves were poised on the verge of extinction.
Maybe he wasn’t a Langeais wolf at all, but another type of shifter.
He could be a— A spasm ripped through her pelvis and she moaned, curling up into a ball.
“She is awake.”
She snapped her eyes open to another man sitting on the other side of the bed. Another warrior. Big, his hair a wild mess about his shoulders and a thin scar cutting through his top lip, he leaned over her. Identical to the other warrior.
The Montagne twins. They had to be. She was safe. She closed her eyes and let the darkness slide over her and dreams take hold. Where Cordelia King wielded a magic so ancient and powerful none could stop her, and big, burly chevaliers sat by her bedside and waited for her to die.