Linda Barlow (21 page)

"I certainly didn't do it with you in mind."

He shook his head several times. She could see that his shoulders were shot with tension, his fingers clenched as his eyes devoured her. They alone were enough to make her melt. He didn't even have to touch her.

"Will you help me carry him inside? I don’t think I can manage alone."

"I'm astonished that you expect help from me." Bitter anger flowed from him in waves. "Don't you think it's time I added another brother to my murderous tally?"

"I don't know what to believe! I don't think I care anymore. If you really intend to hurt me, I don't know how I can stop you."

"My dear," he said, "you could stop an army."

With some difficulty, they got Alan into the cottage and laid him down on one of the pallets. Roger turned to build up the fire on the hearth while Alexandra began stripping the wet clothes off Alan's body.

"Can you set his leg?"

"Yes, if the bone's not shattered." She vigorously rubbed Alan's skin as she undressed him.

"Here, I'll finish that," said Roger as she got down to Alan's body linen. "Go over there by the fire, and for the love of God, wrap something around you. If you continue to parade in front of me like that, I won't answer for the consequences. I suppose your clothes are on the other side of the lake?"

She nodded. "I forgot them. Anyhow, they were wet."

"A common complaint. We'll all strip and have an orgy."

But his voice was filled with mockery now, and he seemed to have controlled the impulse that had led him to seize her outside. He had no control, though, over the fire he had kindled in her.

In Merwynna's cupboard she found a plainly-woven peasant's tunic, which she donned instead of her soaking shirt. Roger bundled Alan up in several blankets and pulled his straw pallet nearer to the hearth. Alan moaned and moved his head. "He's coming around. Fortune is with you tonight. 'Tis only the necessity of tending him that's preventing me from beating you within an inch of your life."

Alexandra winced as she selected a strong painkiller from the medicine shelves, mixing it with another drug to make Alan sleep. Oddly enough, she felt better now herself, not as weary, not as sick. Some of her flagging energy had returned. "He may be difficult. He doesn't bear up under pain the way you do. He's had a bad fright, thinking he was going to die out there."

"It's fascinating how oddly people behave when they think they're about to die." He took a step back. "You deal with him."

She knelt beside Alan and placed a small pillow beneath his head. His eyes fluttered and his body stirred.

"I suppose I was wrong." This was not easy to admit. "I suppose you don’t have the slightest intention of murdering me."

"I'm suspending judgment on that," Roger snapped.

Alan groaned and opened his eyes. He looked around blankly for a second, then fixed on Roger. His eyelids flicked shut again. "Alix?"

"I'm here. You're safe. We're going to give you something to drink, Alan. Open your mouth."

"But... Roger..."

"He won't hurt you," she promised.

"I remind you of our agreement, brother," Roger said.

"I'd sooner make a pact with the devil," Alan retorted with surprising energy.

"Nevertheless, you made one with me, and you must, on your honor, abide by it."

What were they talking about? "He's far too weak to be harangued about pacts and bargains, diabolical or otherwise." She raised Alan's head. "I've a medicine that will lessen your pain."

Her patient obediently swallowed the brew. "I feel faint," he whispered a few minutes later. He sounded anxious. "What did you give me, Alix?"

"I gave you a drug for the pain. You’ll sleep a bit, and feel much better when you wake up."

When Alan slipped back into unconsciousness, Alexandra made her preparations for setting his broken leg. Roger strolled over to help. He was still wearing most of his damp clothes, although he had removed his boots and his cloak, and set them in front of the fire. For several minutes they worked in near-silence. She spoke only to give directions, and he followed them without comment.

The break was clean, just above the ankle. When the bone was set, splinted, and bandaged, and the patient peacefully asleep on his pallet, Roger held out his injured hand, saying, "My respect for your talents increases. I expect you can patch me up almost as skillfully as you slashed me. Just don't lace it with poison."

A retort leapt to her lips, but she left it unsaid. There was a persistent pounding in the depths of her stomach, and she felt alive to every nuance about him: the shifting tones of his voice, the light nervous quality of his movements, the slight crinkle of his rain-slicked hair. It struck her that despite all his callousness toward his brother, he had shown nothing but gentleness in helping her set Alan's leg. He had ignored his own injuries—the palm that was still seeping blood, the ugly bruise on his forehead. They must hurt, but he hadn't complained.

I have injured him, she thought, staring at the wound that ran diagonally across his palm. Actually, he had caused the wound himself, seizing the blade with his bare hand, but she was responsible. He had a new line now for Merwynna to read. She wondered if it would change his fate.

She numbed the area with a special herbal ointment before stitching it quickly with Merwynna's stout medicinal thread. He bore the operation in tight-lipped silence. "Very nice," he said as she bound a clean cloth around it as a bandage. "Are you always so tender with brother-killers?"

She sank down on Merwynna's stool in front of the fire. "You came upon me with a drawn sword, Roger."

"I'd been using it to kill a bloody snake."

"You laid the edge of it against me."

There was a silence. The logs on the fire hissed their warmth into the small room, and Roger paced for a moment in front of the hearth, then pulled an empty mattress up beside her and sat down. He had also stripped off his wet doublet, leaving his shirt and his breeches and hose to dry on his body.

"I shouldn't have done that. It was not done with any intention of harming you."

"Then why—"

"There was an odd look on your face when I came into the cave. I misread it, obviously. Some women like to be taken fiercely. Not hurt, but mastered. As a child, you loved it, being tied to trees and such. For a moment I thought you were playing a game with me, an adult version of our antics of long ago." He paused, his eyes glowing with the reflected flicker of the flames. "For a moment I wanted to play."

Alexandra was speechless. He was speaking of things that were beyond her experience, things that made her realize how much of an innocent she still was. And yet she was not shocked. If anything, his words aroused her. She flushed as it occurred to her that the intense excitement he'd engendered in her years ago was not unlike the feelings she had for him now. Her love for Roger had always been tied up with yearning, with passion. In that way it had been very adult.

"But I ought to have known that you of all women would defend your honor with a knife."

"It was my life I was defending. At least, that's what I thought at the time."

"Against me?" He was shaking his head. "Because I am lustful, your honor may be in danger from me, as I've warned you several times. But your life? God's bones, until now I thought I could count on having at least one sensible friend, one person who saw me neither as a god nor a fiend. Your faith in me was something I thought I could depend upon."

Deeply ashamed, she countered, "You told me a few days ago not to put any faith in you. You didn't want it, you insisted. You didn't deserve it, you implied."

"I was in a fury that day. You know how irrational I get when I’m angry. I'd have said anything to be left alone. Anyway, since when do you take my warnings to heart?"

"Then you deny killing anyone?"

"I deny killing anyone lately. I certainly didn't murder Will or your friend Ned. He hanged himself."

"He couldn't have hanged himself. It's impossible. Don't tell me he hanged himself, Roger."

"Anyone can hang himself. Don't let your affections get the better of your reason."

She laughed at the irony of this. "It's my reason that accuses you. My affections are clearly influenced in your favor."

He put his head in his laced hands. "Let's go through it. I want to hear exactly what you're accusing me of."

"It began with Will's death."

"You can't seriously believe I murdered Will. My life has been violent and I've done many things I regret, but I draw the line at murdering my own flesh and blood."

"Don't try to tell me you were out of the country at the time," she went on, determined to have everything out. "I know you were back in England. If you lied about that, you could have lied about a lot of things."

"How the hell do you know how long I've been back in the country?" He raised his head and she saw the tight little lines around his mouth. "I've been at Whitcombe for only a fortnight, and already you have my entire past mapped out and chronicled? Forgive me, but I don't think that's possible, not even for an expert meddler like you."

"You're the only one who gained by Will's death. You're the heir to a wealthy barony now."

"That doesn't make me his killer. Do you imagine I need the Whitcombe riches? Ask around—I made my own fortune long ago. And, by God, if I wanted to murder someone, I'd have chosen a more reliable method. Will died a clumsy, messy, accidental death."

Doggedly, she told him the rest, even though she had lost faith in her own theories. "I thought you had sent him a message asking him to meet you secretly that night. He would have been excited—that's why he got drunk and rode so recklessly. Will would never have acted like that under ordinary circumstances. The proof lies in his character, and in Ned's. An accident happens to a man who rarely drank and never rode wildly out at midnight? Suicide happens to a half-wit who is too simpleminded to conceive of such an act? It smells bad, Roger. That much you'll have to admit."

He stared at her. His expression was unreadable. "Go on."

She continued with her analysis of the crime, explaining about the dagger that had been in the ditch, and Ned's fear. "My mother told you that I was worried about the dagger. You didn't know how much Ned might have seen on the night of the murder, but you learned from her that he was frantic to tell me something. You realized he was a danger to you, so you followed him and hanged him. As for me, I'd guessed too much. You said that yourself out on the cliff. You had to kill me too."

"Why, then, are you still alive?"

She was examining the knuckles on her fingers with great concentration. "There's the rub."

"There indeed. Of course I haven't fucked you yet. I always fuck the women I murder, especially the redheaded ones."

She lifted her head and met his harsh brown eyes. His mouth twisted into a caricature of a smile. "I didn't do it, Alix. I didn't touch either one of them, and that's the solemn truth. When I was speaking of your knowing too much about my doings, I was referring to something else entirely. Disbelieve me if you choose. If you're determined not to trust me, I can't think of any way to change your mind."

Shame and regret overwhelmed her. He wasn't guilty. Perhaps she had always known it, deep down where reason didn't reach. In her quest to make sense of the man he had become, she had ignored what he'd always been: a fundamentally decent person. Like everyone, he had passions and flaws; like everyone, he could be insensitive and cruel. Indeed, he was probably more sinful than most people—"I deny killing anyone
lately,"
he had said.

But he wasn't heartless, he wasn't depraved. His code of ethics might be unconventional, but it bound him nonetheless.
I draw the line at murdering my own flesh and blood.
There were some things he simply would not do.

Her mistake had been in failing to listen to the voice that had occasionally whispered, "But this is impossible." In her efforts to see behind his mask, she'd trusted rational analysis instead of instinct. Merwynna had been right: her excellent judgment had failed her. "Ye are proud," she'd warned her. "Ye will suffer for it."

She rose from her stool and fell to her knees before him on the straw pallet where he sat. "I believe you," she whispered, bowing her head against his upthrust knees and mentally castigating herself for her thick-headedness. "Forgive me."

He didn't touch her, but she felt his entire body stiffen.

"I ought to have known better. I've deeply wronged you, Roger. I'll never doubt you again."

She felt his fingers slip under her hair, caressing her ears, the sides of her head, the nape of her neck. He leaned forward, pulling her close against his body until she was all but sitting in his lap. "I wouldn't go that far. Trust me as far as I deserve, and no farther. I assure you, Alix, I'm very far from being a saint."

"I know." Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

"Some of this foolishness was my own fault. When I came into that cave and found you frozen there, I should have recognized that something was amiss." His un-bandaged hand slid over her shoulders, smoothing the tension away. "I won't soon forget how you fought me. You've the wit and courage of a champion, you know that? Would you were a man, and at my side in battle, lass." He paused, allowing his hand to drift lower, then inward, toward the swell of her breasts. "No, I take it back. I'm glad you're not a man."