“ ’Tis all right, Matthew.” Hagan reached over Sorcha’s shoulder and shoved open the door to the chamber. Candles were lit and a fire blazed in the hearth, but rain still beat against the exterior walls. Bjorn was sprawled across Hagan’s bed. His eyes were open and he slid a glance toward Sorcha as the old physician touched him with practiced fingers.
Bjorn winced.
“Be still,” Nichodemas, his bald pate shining in the candlelight, ordered. “Looks as if you lost your fight with the beast,” he said, shaking his head and clucking his tongue as if at the boy’s foolishness.
“ ’Twas an accident,” Sorcha interjected. “Bjorn tried to save a little girl.”
“Aye, but he got himself trampled in the process.” He bound Bjorn’s chest with strips of cloth.
“He saved the girl’s life.” Despite a warning glare from the old physician, she walked closer to the bed. “For your nobility, please take this gift, Bjorn.” She placed the knotted string in his callused fingers.
“Bjorn is no nobleman, just a common dung sweeper who wasn’t smart enough to jump out of harm’s way,” Nichodemas said as he tied the strips and wiped his hands on his soiled tunic.
Hagan said quietly, “He saved the child.”
Nichodemas lifted a shoulder, then, for the first time, he seemed to notice Sorcha’s gift. “Red string. Knotted in a special manner? ’Tis the work of Satan.”
Sorcha shook her head. “It will help him heal.”
“And he’ll owe his life to the devil. The old ways are dangerous …”
Sorcha ignored the old man’s warning and curled Bjorn’s fingers over the string. “Wear this until you are strong again.”
Bjorn stared up at her, and his big fingers curled over the necklace, but there was not the hint of a smile in his blue-green eyes, and his color washed grayer than usual.
“I will wait for you,
” she whispered quietly, knowing that he probably didn’t understand, but wanting to give him some hope.
Hagan heard her promise, and the muscles in his neck twisted into painful hard knots. So Sorcha and Bjorn were lovers. His stomach coiled at the thought, but he watched in silence and told himself that hatred of the stableboy was a waste of time, though the thought of Bjorn wrapping his arms around Sorcha caused Hagan’s fists to clench. He looked away from the tender scene at the bed and tried to concentrate on his other worries. The messenger from Prydd had not returned, and soon he would have to ride to visit Tadd himself.
Again Sorcha whispered some kind of endearment to the boy, and Hagan gritted his teeth. Unable to stay in the chamber a minute longer, he turned on his heel and stalked along the corridor, barking at a guard to make sure Bjorn was kept comfortable, though his own thoughts of the stableboy were murderous. Jealousy raged through his blood.
Damn that woman. She truly was some kind of sorceress, the bloody savior of Prydd, because she had found a way to turn his head around so completely.
The steward approached him with news of a squabble between the silversmith and the armorer—some argument about metal—and Hagan yelled at the man, sending him cowering in the opposite direction. Several serving maids scurried out of his way, presumably from the scowl that blackened his features.
He told himself that he had guests and couldn’t be bothered with worrying about a beautiful woman with a damned birthmark, but still her image of silken black hair and eyes as blue as a mountain lake filled his mind.
He’d come back to Erbyn hoping to take a wife, to father children, to settle into the steady life of a baron here at the castle, but never had he intended to come across a wild, half-daft witch-woman like Sorcha of Prydd.
The sooner he could send her back to her brother and her precious Prydd, the better for all concerned. She could do whatever she thought she had to as the bloody savior behind the stone curtain of her own castle. Soon he would wash his hands of her.
“We’ve looked everywhere in the keep. Isolde’s vanished,” Sir Prescott said as he approached the dais.
Tadd gritted his teeth in vexation. “She’s old. She couldn’t have gone far.” He drummed his short fingers on the clawlike arm of his chair. “What about the messenger?”
Prescott frowned. “He’s missing as well. Our men searched the woods and the roads and found no trace of him.”
“The dogs?”
“Couldn’t track him.”
Tadd closed his eyes against the headache that burned behind his forehead. A tic jumped beneath his eye, and he couldn’t stop his cheek from twitching uncontrollably.
“There is some good news, though,” Prescott said, his mouth curving into an evil leer. “Some of the soldiers talked with the traitor again, Sir Robert. We described the messenger to him, and Robert swears he’s certain there was no tall knight in Erbyn with black hair, a broken nose, and cleft brow.”
Tadd wasn’t convinced. He fingered the buckle of his belt thoughtfully. “Robert’s a liar and a traitor, and the messenger could be a soldier who returned from the war with Hagan.”