32. Baron
BARON
It was dawn.
Something had gone wrong, I knew it. I paced the perimeter of my tent until a shallow groove was worn beneath my boots. James should have come and gone by now. Laurel should have reached him, passed over whatever papers she had stolen, and slipped back to Sherwood Forest.
But James had not come. The sky had already begun to pale, and every moment that passed sharpened the dread lodged beneath my ribs.
Part of me wanted to abandon the campsite and return to the castle at once so I could question the guards, search the cells, and find out whether any prisoners had been taken.
If Laurel or James had been captured, they might already be in Prince John’s hands.
Were they being tortured at this very moment?
Not knowing was going to drive me insane.
An inkling of doubt held me back. Being delayed didn’t necessarily mean something catastrophic had happened.
James had been waiting for Laurel before coming to me.
Perhaps she simply had to wait for some guards who were chatting in the wrong place for too long, or she and James were reviewing the documents.
If it was merely a delay, I needed to stay here and wait.
But if it was more than that, I was doing more harm by waiting. My mind filled the silence with every terrible possibility it could invent, from Laurel being whipped and screaming for mercy to so much worse than even that.
Why had I agreed to this plan? I should have cautioned her against this instead of going along with it.
When she had told me about Peter, I had pulled away and focused so much on trying not to feel the pain of her kissing someone else that I’d failed to consider all the dangers that Laurel was walking into.
If I lost her now, the last memory I would have of her would be of her trying to confess something and of me pushing her away. Just as I thought my head might split in two, a figure emerged from the trees.
It was James.
I strode toward him at once. “Where have you been?” I demanded. “You’re hours late.”
“It’s Laurel,” James said urgently. He spoke in his usual quiet tone, but there was nothing calm in his face. Then he finished with the words I had feared. “She’s hurt pretty badly.”
The world narrowed. “Where is she?”
James began leading the way back through the trees. “I left her near our meeting place; I can’t carry her myself all that way and I had to make sure you were alone. Hurry.”
My heart beat wildly against my ribs. “What happened? Tell me.”
“I’m not sure,” James admitted. “She collapsed the instant I saw her. I only had time to hide her before everyone came searching.”
“They knew it was her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who hurt her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are people still looking for her?”
“I don’t know.”
I threw him a dark look, but the expression on his face stopped me.
For the first time since I had known him, James looked truly shaken.
“She’s here,” James said, pointing ahead to a dark shape lying motionless on the ground at the base of some shrubbery.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. I have no idea how she made it as far as she did. ”
I ran the last few paces.
Laurel lay still beneath the trees, her skin so ghostly pale that for one heart-stopping instant, I was terrified I was already too late.
The rising sun spilled over her face and showed the colorless curve of her mouth and the blood soaked through the front of the servant’s tunic she wore.
James had already torn a strip of fabric from her tunic and bound it tightly around her middle, but the cloth was stained through.
“No,” I choked. I dropped beside her and pressed two fingers to her throat. For one breath, I felt nothing. My own pulse was pounding too hard in my ears, too wild and frantic to let me sense anything else. Then there it was. Her heartbeat was faint, but it was still there.
“She’s alive,” I breathed.
I gently pulled back enough fabric to examine the wound beneath.
Blood still seeped from several deep tears across her side and middle, and the skin around them was stained and raw.
My stomach twisted, but I forced my hands to remain steady.
Panic wouldn’t help her. I had seen field wounds before and I knew how to bind them.
But I knew enough to understand how much blood she had already lost and the danger that caused.
Without hesitation, I tore off my own shirt and ripped it into long strips.
James copied me at once. I started to remove the old stained bandage, intending to replace it, but the movement made the bleeding worsen, so I stopped immediately and bound the fresh strips over the top instead, pulling them tight and pressing both hands against her side.
Laurel didn’t react at all, which frightened me more than if she had cried out in pain.
“Get water,” I ordered James, and he ran to obey.
“Don’t die,” I whispered. “Don’t die, Laurel. Don’t die.”
Her chest rose faintly then fell. I bent close, listening for every breath, counting each shallow movement as I waited for James to return.
Don’t die, don’t die, I repeated silently, over and over again.
She still didn’t move. This was a nightmare come to life.
I could see Laurel’s life slipping away but was powerless to stop it.
James sprinted back with a water skin, his face pale. “Is she…?”
“Not yet.” I grabbed the water from him and lifted Laurel’s shoulders carefully. “Hold her head.”
James obeyed instantly. I coaxed a few drops of water into Laurel’s mouth but her head sagged to the side, and the water trickled out onto her already soaked tunic.
“No.” My voice nearly broke. I adjusted my grip and tried again. “Come on, Laurel.”
This time, her throat worked faintly and she swallowed. We repeated the process several times, each tiny swallow feeling like a tiny victory of its own, then I laid her back down and resumed pressure on the wound. She still didn’t wake.
Neither James nor I spoke for a long while. The sun climbed higher, and the forest around us brightened as though this were an ordinary morning. Far away, the castle would be stirring, servants would begin their duties, and everyone would be abuzz about the break in.
I rubbed Laurel’s cold hands between mine.
They felt clammy despite the warmth of the day, and that frightened me.
I dripped water into her mouth whenever I could coax her to swallow and kept whispering her name again and again, trying to force her awake through sheer willpower.
She had always been impossible to command.
But for once, I needed her to listen to me.
Hours passed.
“Baron,” James said eventually. “You should probably go back. I can take care of Laurel. Won’t your men be wondering where you are?”
“No. I’m supposed to be surveying land. I’m not due back until tomorrow night.” But I didn’t care about anything but Laurel. I touched her face. “I’m not leaving her.”
It was late afternoon before Laurel stirred. It was so slight I almost thought I imagined it. It was only a slight shift in her fingers, but it was there. “Laurel?” I asked instantly, my eyes riveted on her face.
Nothing happened. She had gone deathly still again. I closed my eyes and fought the sudden wave of despair that came with hope being snatched away so quickly.
“Should we take her back to your tent?” James asked quietly.
I glanced up. Gray clouds had begun swelling across the sky, blocking the sun and pressing low over the trees, threatening rain. “Yes.”
I lifted Laurel carefully into my arms. Her head rested against my shoulder, her body limp and frightfully light. When we got back to my tent, I laid Laurel on my bedroll and draped every blanket I had over her.
Please live, please live, please live.
I sat beside her, determined to stay awake for days on end if I had to.
Raindrops began pattering against the top of the tent.
Every so often, water soaked through the canvas and dripped onto my head or shoulder.
I didn’t move. I held Laurel’s cold hand between both of mine and stared at her unmoving face.
As I sat, James pulled a thick sheaf of papers from his satchel. Many had clearly been crumpled and smoothed again. I recognized Prince John’s signature on the topmost page.
“Where did you get those?” I asked.
“From Laurel,” James responded. “It’s what she went there for, remember?”
I did remember. Suddenly I wanted to snatch the papers from his hands and fling them into a fire.
Laurel was actively dying, and it was all because of those flimsy sheets of parchment.
They were the reason she lay comatose on my bedroll, fighting for every shallow breath.
Smears of her blood stood out on a several of the pages and my vision turned red.
“How can you think about that right now?” I demanded.
James’s expression tightened, but his voice stayed quiet. “She wouldn’t want her work to go to waste.”
“Well, I don’t want her life to go to waste.”
James looked from me to the papers, then back again. “I think a walk would do me good,” he said, then tucked the papers into an inside pocket of his cloak, pulled the cowl low over his face, and stepped out into the drizzling rain.
I returned to Laurel. I rubbed her hand for what felt like an age.
The only promising sign was the faintest touch of color that eventually appeared in her cheeks.
I told myself it meant she was improving and kept staring at her face, desperately hoping.
I didn’t think I would ever fall asleep with how anxious I was but eventually, exhaustion from the day overcame me and my head began to nod.
“Baron?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but I snapped upright at once, fully alert.
“Laurel.” I could not contain the relief in my voice. “You’re alive.”
Her eyes opened only halfway. They looked unfocused and clouded with pain, but they were open. I leaned closer. “How are you feeling? What happened? Who did this? What went wrong? Can I get you anything? What do you need?”
The questions spilled out before I could stop them. It had been nearly a full day since James brought the news. A full day of waiting, fearing, pressing bandages, forcing water past her lips, and trying to stop myself from imagining the worst case scenario.
“Slow down there, you,” she murmured. She began to smile, but it turned into a grimace.
I wanted to gather her up and never let anything touch her again. I wanted to shake her for scaring me this badly. I wanted to apologize for how I’d handled our last conversation and for pulling away when she’d finally been trying to come back to me.
But instead, I swallowed hard. “How are you feeling?”
“Fantastic.”
A breath of laughter escaped me. “Liar.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “Okay. A little lousy,” She admitted. Her voice was barely audible, and even that small effort drained what little color had returned to her cheeks. What I wouldn’t give to have her at full health, complete with her impossible attitude.
“Rest,” I told her. “Just rest.”
“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” she breathed.
“There’s this girl I know who needed bandages, and that was the closest I had,” I told her. “You really need to stop bleeding before I run out of clothes entirely.”
She smiled briefly then squeezed her eyes shut as I went to check her bandages. I worked as gently as I could, cleaning only what I had to and binding the wounds firmly again. At least the bleeding had mostly stopped.
“The papers…” Laurel whispered when I finished, already straining as if she meant to sit up.
I placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her still. “James has them. Don’t worry about anything.”
“But…”
“You did enough.” I didn’t remove my hand. “It’s your turn to take it easy. Do you want water?”
She shook her head. Her lips were dry and cracked.
“Too bad. Drink some anyway. You need it.”
“You’re such a…” Her words faltered, and she seemed to lose the thread of them. “Mother hen. It is only a s… s… scratch.”
I lifted her shoulders slightly and brought the water skin to her mouth. “If this is a scratch, I would hate to see what you consider serious.”
She swallowed several small gulps, then turned her head away, exhausted by even that.
Her eyes drifted shut, and her body relaxed against my arm.
With the last bit of energy she seemed to have, her fingers found mine.
I held her hand tightly, hoping to convey wordlessly that I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “About what I said before.”
“You already told me that.”
Her eyes stayed closed. “You were right.”
“We both said things we shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, too.”
Laurel was silent for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. Then her fingers tightened faintly around mine. “Kissing Peter was a mistake.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want him.”
I closed my eyes. The relief that moved through me was tangled with grief, shame, and love so fierce it hurt. “I know,” I repeated.
“I’m glad you’re here, Baron,” she murmured. “You make me feel safe.”
That was all I needed to hear.