Chapter eight #2
I had not told her where we were truly going. I was winning what I wanted by betraying this woman who was stirring something tender, something possessive, something dangerous to feel for her in me.
“James?”
Her voice pulled me back. I realized I had gone still with her sleeve in my hand. “Aye,” I said, rougher than intended. “I have ye.”
The words settled strangely between us. Her throat worked, but she said nothing.
I helped her stand. She bit her lip hard, and I slipped an arm around her waist before she could sway.
She stiffened at once, but she did not push me away.
Her body was warm through the thin linen of her shift, and though I tried not to notice, I noticed everything.
The soft hitch of her breath. The scent of road dust, woman, and faint herbs clinging to her hair.
The way she fit against me too easily. I guided her to the tub, then turned my back as she stepped in.
The water sloshed softly, clothing rustled, and I envisioned her removing her shift and it hitting the floor.
A sigh slipped from her before she could stop it.
The sound struck me low in the chest. “Warm enough?” I asked.
“Aye,” she said, and for the first time since we had entered the room, her voice held no fight, only relief.
I stood facing the wall, hands clasped behind my back, staring at a crack in the plaster as steam curled through the room and wrapped around us both.
Behind me, water moved in gentle ripples as she shifted, and I heard the faint splash as she cupped it in her hands.
I should have been thinking of the road, of Edinburgh, and of how quickly we could travel once she had rested.
Instead, I thought of her in the tub behind me, hurt and proud, still refusing to bend even as pain had already forced her to break.
“When did ye last have a proper bath?” I asked, needing to hear her voice and perhaps even more to know something about her that she had not offered in anger.
She was quiet for a moment. “A long while.”
“How long?”
“Long enough that this feels like the most amazing thing ever.”
“Where were ye when ye had the last one?”
The water stilled, and I waited.
“At home,” she said at last, soft enough that I nearly missed it.
“And where is home?” Her silence was my answer. I looked at the wall and smiled without humor. “That question has teeth, does it?”
“Nay.”
“Then answer it.”
“I had a home once,” she said. “That is answer enough. I already told ye, I’ve been gone so long they likely think me dead.”
That answer only made me want to question her more.
My desire to know more about her was growing at an alarming pace.
I knew the wise thing to do was keep her at a distance, and yet I didn’t want to.
But there was something in her tone that kept me from pressing too hard.
A door had opened a finger’s width, and if I shoved at it, she would bar it shut.
She had mentioned twice now that the people from her home likely thought her dead. “Do ye have family there?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Had,” she said.
That single word held a world of pain. I turned my head slightly, though not enough to see her. “If yer family is gone, then who is it that thinks ye dead?”
“Do all warriors ask so many questions when women are bathing behind them?”
Only this one, I nearly said. Instead, I let out a quiet breath. “Only when the woman is full of secrets.”
“Mayhap ye’re imagining secrets because ye’re too fond of hearing yerself speak.”
I smiled at that tart retort. “I am fond of many things, lass, but yer evasions are not among them.”
She gave a soft snort, and the sound eased something in me.
Aye, she was still hurting. Aye, she was still hiding more than she admitted. But she was there, in warm water, breathing easier. For the moment, that had to be enough.
The room settled into a fragile quiet. The inn below us groaned and murmured with evening sounds: a distant laugh, the scrape of a bench, the dull thud of a door shut against the night.
Rain ticked lightly at the shutter, or mayhap it was the wind rattling loose wood.
The fire had burned low, giving off more glow than heat, but steam from the tub softened the room’s sharp edges.
Then Katrine began to hum. At first, it was so quiet I thought I had imagined it, but the melody rose, faint and lilting, a tune that seemed older than both of us. There was sorrow in it, but sweetness too, the sort of song a woman might sing to soothe a frightened child or calm a restless bairn.
The sound slid beneath my ribs. Without warning, an image came to me so clear I stiffened.
Katreine stood in a nursery washed in morning light, her hair loose over her shoulders, a bairn tucked against her breast as she sang that same song.
Her smile was unguarded, her eyes full of love.
The wanting that rose in me then was different from lust, just as before.
I knew lust. Lust could be satiated with a quick tumble in the hay. This was worse.
It was the desire for a hearth, a future, a place to belong that did not have to be seized with a sword or bought by obedience to a king, and a woman to share it with.
By the gods, why was this woman stirring these things?
Why her? Why now? It was inconvenient and unwanted, given what I must do to have any hope of the future I yearned for.
The water sloshed suddenly, and a sharp yelp split the quiet.
I turned before thought could stop me. Katreine was naked, her shift crumpled by the tub, her foot sliding.
Even as I rushed toward her, I realized her injuries were much worse than I had thought.
“God’s blood,” I breathed as I caught her before she could fall.
I slid an arm around her back and the other beneath her knees, lifting her from the tub despite her startled cry.
“Put me down!” she insisted.
“Nay,” I replied with force.
“I’m wet!” she protested.
“Aye,” I agreed. “I noticed.”
“James!”
“Be still before ye crack yer skull open.”
She snapped her mouth shut, either because my tone brooked no argument or because pain had stolen her strength. I set her on her feet, snatched up the bath cloth, wrapped it around her body, and drew it tight, shielding her as best I could.
Her face was far too pale for my liking. I guided her to the bed and eased her onto her side, then pulled the coverlet over her lap. “Where is the pain worst?”
“Everywhere,” she muttered.
Despite myself, I almost smiled. Almost. Then I looked again at the blood and bruising, and any trace of humor died. “I need to tend yer wounds.”
Her eyes widened. “Nay.”
“Aye.”
“Nay,” she protested. “Ye, ye can nae.”
“Then who?” I demanded. “Irma?”
That silenced her, though her cheeks flamed.
I crouched before her, keeping my gaze on her face. “Tell me what ye need. I’ll fetch it.”
Pride warred with pain on her face. I saw the very instant when pain won. Her lips pursed, and her nostrils flared, as if she had to accept something distasteful, and I suspected that was my help. Luckily, my pride was not so easily wounded.
“There are herbs,” she said grudgingly. “In my pouch.”
I glanced toward her things. “Which ones?”
“The pouch with the blue cord. There’s woundwort, yarrow, and a little comfrey. I need them crushed with hot water. And if the innkeeper has clean linen…”
“I’ll get it.”
“And honey,” she added, her voice reluctant.
“Honey?”
“For the broken skin.”
I nodded. “What else?”
She hesitated.
“Katreine.”
“Pain powder,” she whispered. “If Irma has willow bark, or poppy, or anything of the sort.”
Asking for relief did not sit easily with this lass.
I rose. “Drink some wine while I’m gone.”
“I do nae need—”
“Drink it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are ye always this overbearing?”
“Are ye always this mule-headed?” I shot back, to which she snorted. I noted, as I turned to leave, that she tipped up the goblet of wine.
Irma was below, and if she was surprised to see me return so quickly, she hid it behind a smile that sharpened with interest. I kept my requests simple and my tone even plainer. Clean linen. Honey. A small bowl. More hot water. Pain powder, if she had it.
At the mention of pain powder, her smile faded. “Yer wife is unwell?”
“My wife is road sore and too stubborn to admit it,” I said.
Irma gave a knowing cluck of her tongue. “Women do nae care to show pain before men.”
“Then men should learn to see it sooner.” The words came out before I could stop them.
Irma studied me for a moment, then nodded and fetched what I had asked for without another foolish flutter of her lashes. When she returned, she added a small packet to the linen. “Crushed willow and a bit of poppy,” she said. “Nae too much, mind ye, unless ye want her senseless.”
I took it. “My thanks.”
“And tell her to stay abed tomorrow.”
I nearly laughed at that. “I’ll tell her.” It would do about as much good as telling the sun not to rise.
When I returned, Katreine’s eyes looked glassier than before, but she was awake, tense, and watching me as if I were both a threat and a salvation.
“I have what ye asked for.”
She pointed to the table by the bed. “Set it there.”
I did, then mixed the powder into wine and handed it to her.
She sniffed it suspiciously. “How much did ye put in?”
“Enough.”
“That is nae an answer.”
“It is the one ye’re getting.”
Her mouth tightened, but she drank.
I prepared the herbs as she instructed, and as I worked, she corrected me in a tone that suggested she did not trust me to crush leaves without starting a war.
I found myself amused by her skepticism about my abilities, rather than annoyed, which was unusual for me.
I’d spent my life striving to prove myself, yet for some reason I felt more at ease with this woman I had only just met than with the warriors I had lived among all my life.