“Oh, ravens.” A wave of nausea rolled through her. Her head whipped with a new surge of pain, and she moaned softly. “My head hurts.”
“Be gentle with it.”
She pressed her hands against her temples. Watery mucus flooded in her mouth. “By all the saints, I am a fool,” she muttered.
“We’ve all been the fool one time or another, myself more so than the rest.”
She couldn’t respond. Her stomach was roiling and rolling, its contents burbling and burping and demanding to be freed. St. Jude, not in the middle of the king’s highway!
“Oh God,” she moaned softly, her head lolling to the side.
He lowered her gently to her knees. Palms splayed out in front of her, she knelt on the ground like a dog and rocked back and forth, filling the air with soft moans.
“Go ahead,” he murmured, lifting the hair that had fallen in front of her face. He tucked it behind her ear, but when the curls slipped out, he swept them up and kept them in his hand.
“Oh, I can’t,” she cried, then did.
After, he led her to a hollowed tree trunk filled with fresh rain water and cleaned her up. He helped her wash her face and hands, cooled her head, and made her laugh twice, which was really more than she could have expected, given the circumstances.
“Well then,” she said in a shaky voice, after it all was over. “I suppose we can see to the defence of the bridge now.”
He stared a moment, his jaw opened slightly, revealing even, white teeth, then he started laughing. Rumbling, self-assured masculine laughter. “They wouldn’t have a chance against us, Green-eyes.”
She laughed weakly. “None a’tall.” Then she passed out.
Chapter Six
When she came to, she was sitting on something soft. Moss. She ran her fingers over it, then realised she was propped against the crunchy bark of a tree. She sat up. Her saviour was crouched on the balls of his feet, watching her.
“How long?” she murmured in a broken whisper.
One of his shoulders lifted and fell. “A moment. Two.”
“Good heavens.” She pushed herself straight. “My apologies.”
He rose and brushed his hands across his thighs. “Not required. You’ve had a fright, a fight, a serious knock to the head, and almost got married. ’Tis enough to send any maiden swooning.”
“I didn’t swoon,” she retorted, stumbling to her feet. “I fainted, which I have ne’er done before.”
“Mmmm.”
She looked at him glumly. “What now?”
He clucked to the black behemoth of a horse standing a few paces away. The fur-knotted beast came and her saviour mounted with a graceful swing of his body. He leaned over and extended a broad, calloused hand. “You do not think too highly of men, Green-eyes, but your choices are limited. I will not take you against your will—”
“Then—”
“But I will not leave you.”
Nothing could have stopped it. Tears began pouring from her eyes en masse, like passengers fleeing a sinking ship. She lowered her head and the tears dripped down her cheeks and off her chin. She heard a muffled curse, then felt herself being lifted into the air, slid against the warm fur of a horse, and deposited on an even warmer lap of hard muscle. She started mumbling through the cascade of tears.
“I have to g-get home.”
“Where is home?”
She snuffled. “Saint Alban’s.”
There was the briefest pause. “You, a monk? I wouldn’t have believed it.”