“What’s wrong?”
“The bleeding—oh, God.”
Roland quickly eased her onto her back. He jerked open her bedrobe and saw that the cloths had become dislodged and there was blood on her thighs. “Hold still,” he said.
After he’d bathed her and replaced the cloths, he straightened over her. “Are you warm enough?”
She nodded, turning her face again from him.
“Salin told me today that he’d heard of a band of about ten men a day or so away from here, camping in the open. They weren’t recognized.”
She remained silent, locked away from him.
“From the description he got from a tinker, though, it sounds like your esteemed uncle. A tall blond-haired man with pale flesh and a destrier more powerful than any he’d seen before. I wonder if your uncle would be stupid enough to try to enter the keep and kill me. He’s a fool if he believes he can accomplish it.”
“My uncle would never attack you in the open. He is treacherous and will surprise you. He will seek to take something precious from you, and then he will use it as leverage against you. Perhaps jewels, perhaps coin.”
“You are all that is precious to me and I vow he’ll never come near you again.”
He heard her draw in her breath.
He smiled down at her. “Would you like to play draughts with me now? Like Kassia, I could cheat so that you would win.”
21
Graelam de Moreton waited patiently until Lady Katherine disappeared down the stairs, then walked down the narrow corridor, carefully and as slowly as an old man, his ribs pulling and aching. He slipped into the bedchamber, quietly closing the door after him.
Daria was lying on her back, her eyes closed, a thin cover drawn to her chest. He walked to the bed and stared down at her. Her dark hair was loose on the pillow. Beautiful hair, he thought, darker than Kassia’s, yet mixed with the same vivid autumn colors. She was still too pale, her bones too prominent. As if sensing him, her eyes opened and her breath choked in her throat before she recognized him in the dim light.
“Lord Graelam. You startled me.” She struggled up to her elbows. “Should you be out of your bed, my lord? Shall I call Kassia for you? Your ribs, surely they aren’t healed sufficiently as yet. Shall—”
He smiled at her and gently pressed her back down. Her bones felt so very fragile under his hands. He sat beside her and lifted her hand, holding it between his two large ones. “I would speak to you,” he said.
He saw her withdraw from him in that instant, her expression now carefully blank, her eyes wary, an invisible wall now firmly set between them.
“Nay, don’t retreat, it’s a coward’s way and I know you aren’t a coward, Daria. A coward wouldn’t have thrown aside my men to get to me and heaved at those damned rocks until she was numb with the pain of it.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing left.”
He snorted at that and said something so lurid she blinked, staring at him. He grinned at her and nodded. “Aye, my men told me what you did. Indeed they seem to talk of little else save your bravery. They were amazed, and yea, somewhat frightened, for you seemed possessed to them. Yet you saved me, and for that I think they will forgive you almost anything.” He grinned. “My men are loyal.”
“As is your wife.”
“Very true. She would try to slit an enemy’s throat were I threatened. She hasn’t the physical strength, but her spirit is boundless.”
Daria sa
id nothing more, and Graelam looked away from her, toward the window slit. “I know the truth.”
“Nay.”
“There is humiliation in that one small word, Daria,” he said, looking back at her. “No, your husband didn’t confide in me, though I wish he had. Actually, I listened to your mother speaking to Roland. They didn’t know I was there. She was upset and was pressing him, but he withdrew from her just as you have from me. This is a puzzle, this strange tale of yours, but not unsolvable. I’m surprised you would give up. I’m disappointed in you. It isn’t the act of the woman who saved my wretched life.”
“He won’t believe me. Should I continue to protest my innocence until he retreats completely from me?”
“So, it’s a matter of him not remembering that night. I wonder how to stimulate his memory.”
“Nay, it’s a matter of him refusing to believe me. I’m his wife and I love him, I always have, ever since the moment I first saw him disguised as a priest when he came to Tyberton to rescue me.”