Noble Hearts 03 - The Courageous Heart (11 page)

“The boy is called Wulfric,” Joanna growled as she cut past him and knelt in front of the trunk. “And he should not be running around half-dressed, dripping wet. The last thing I need is for him to catch cold.”

She worked the fastenings on the trunk and tossed the lid open. Wulfric shuffled back to Ethan, who didn’t know what else to do but pick him up and hold him close. He didn’t want the child to get sick, no matter who he belonged to.

Joanna rifled through the contents of the trunk. It was filled with clothes,
women’s dressed and kirtles, hose, and tiny shirts and chausses. Joanna picked out a few, laying them over her knees, and dug deeper.

“What the…?” She pulled out a bundle wrapped in something dark gray-green. It unraveled as she lifted it. A small shirt, vest, and pair of chausses dropped to the floor. “What is this doing in here?” She scrambled to shove the strange outfit back into its cloak.

Ethan smirked. “Was Aubrey planning on storming London as the Derbywood Bandit? Or Madeline maybe?”

“No,” Joanna
snapped
. She stuffed the costume back into the trunk and continued searching until she found a child’s shirt. “
It must have been there already.
It’s an old trunk. I had to pack in a hurry.” She slammed the lid shut, earning a sharp look from Rebecca, and stood. “Come on, my lord, let’s get you dressed.”

Wulfric fussed, clamping his arms more tightly around Ethan’s neck. Joanna huffed in impatience, wiping a vagrant strand of hair off her forehead.

“My lord.” She rolled her eyes
when Wulfric stayed put in Ethan’s arms
.

“Here, let me do it.” Ethan held out his free hand to take the clothes.

“Do you know how to dress a child?” Joanna drawled.

“No,” he answered simply. “Give me the clothes.”

She thrust the tiny things at him as if willing him to fail. Ethan snatched the clothes from her. He sat Wulfric on the cot and knelt to figure out how to stuff a two and a half year old into
chausses
.

“Where did you find the trunk?” he asked as he
slipped
a pair of drawers over Wulfric’s feet.

Joanna took far too long to answer. “At Arthur Pennington’s
estate
.”

“What?” he shouted, twisting to face her.

“Ssh!” Rebecca scolded. “The lady Madeline needs rest and so does her babe. If you two start a row I’ll send you downstairs to have it while scrubbing out chamber pots.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ethan answered
penitently
. He frowned, lifting Wulfric to
slide
the drawers under his bum. “What were you doing at Pennington’s
estate
?” he asked with far more restraint than he felt.

“
I followed Prince John th
ere from the Tower this morning,
”
she answered in
little more than a whisper.

Ethan goggled at her. “You followed
Prince John
to Arthur Pennington’s
estate
?”

Even Rebecca stared at her in surprise.

“What business do those two have?”

“
Prince John
was fleeing the Tower.”
Joanna’s
face contorted in misery at the revelation. “He’s fleeing England,
Ethan
.
”

For half a heartbeat she looked to him with the same pleading that had flushed her cheeks when she’d
begged him not to leave for the crusade years ago
.
The jumble of emotions in
Ethan’s
chest flared hotter.
He jerked his focus back to dressing Wulfric.

“
The prince’s
horse threw a shoe and he stopped at Pennin
gton’s
estate
to get a new
one
,” Joanna went on.
“
Matlock is staying there as well.”

Anything could have happened to her. She could have been seen or captur
ed or worse. If Toby knew he….

“This is why you never should have left the inn,” Ethan rumbled. He yanked his shirt
off
over Wulfric’s head and put the boy’s own shirt on in its place.

“It’s a good thing I did leave the inn,” she argued as quietly as she ever had. “Prince John said he would
have helped
if he could
, but now he’s gone to Normandy
. He also said that Matlock owes him for something, that there’s something he’s meant to be doing for him.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

Their argument fizzled. Ethan
knew too much about Sir Stephen of Matlock to assume he was in London for the sights. Maybe Joanna was right to worry, dammit.

He
slid the miniature chausses onto Wulfric’s legs one at a time and set about tying them. Joanna sank to sit on the cot at Wulfric’s side
, rubbing her eyes
.
Wulfric was now studying him while picking his nose.

“Are you a knight?” he asked.

“No,” Joanna began, “he’s a-”

“Yes, I used to be a k
night,” Ethan interrupted her.

“Where’s your armor?” Wulfric asked on.

“I sold it,” Ethan replied.
“
T
o pay my way home from the Holy Land.”

“Do you have a sword? My papa has a sword.”

Ethan shook his head and finished tying his chausses. “Sold it.”

“Why?”

“I needed the money to get home.”

“Do you have a horse?”

“No, I sold that too, to pay for passage across the Channel.”

Pink patches splashed Joanna’s cheeks as she listened, studying her hands.

“Is this your home?” Wulfric asked, his head cocked to one side.

“No, little man,” Ethan shook his head, “this is not my home.”

“Did you run out of things to sell?”

“Yes, I did,” Ethan whispered.

“You can come home to my house when my papa and mama come back,” he told Ethan. “My home is called Windale.”

“Is that so?” Ethan choked.
As desperately as he wanted to stay away from it, the pull of Derbyshire politics held
him
in an iron grip.
Exile or not, it was still his home.
There was no way out.

He stood, decision made.
“I need you to do me a favor,” he murmured to Joanna,
scowling.

“What?”
she croaked and cleared her throat, blinking rapidly.

He took a breath and swallowed his pride. “I need you to cut my hair and give me a shave.”

She
stared up at him.

“I’m serious,” he answered, stomach knotting. “I … I need you to shave off this beard.”

“Do it yourself
.
”
She stood and moved to sort through the trunk
.

Ethan swallowed. “I don’t know how.”

“What?” She
blinked up at him
.

“I don’t know how to shave myself.” All she did was gape. “Toby always did it for me.”
The ever-present sting of grief sapped the last of his energy.

Joanna’s
face lost all color save for two bright patches on her cheeks. “Oh.”

An over-long silence followed. Ethan shifted from Wulfric to
crouch by Joanna’s side
. As fast as a summer storm her anger had passed. In its wake was that look of desolation that he
felt
all too
closely
.

He lay a hand on her shoulder
. She jerked away and stood with a gasp.

“I’ll find shaving things.” Her voice cracked as she marched for the door.

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” he called after her, but she was already gone.

Once in the hall
and out of sight of Madeline’s room, Joanna
slumped against the wall
. She
squeezed her eyes shut and hugged
herself.
Pleading with Prince John and stealing from Pennington’s
estate
she could handle.
Nothing had prepared her for
the grief and guilt of Ethan
.
He was the one thing she could never do anything about
.
Toby handled him much better than she ever had. Her heart ached at the thought.
She missed her brother. She missed Ethan.

She swallowed and pushed
her tears
down, straightening and pursing her lips over the pain.
There was work to be done. She
searched through the inn, avoiding people as long as she could without finding what she needed. When David stumbled upon her he was all too happy to find the tools she ne
eded without asking questions.

By the time
she entered
the room off of the kitchen with scissors, a razor, and a bowl of steaming, soapy water Ethan was sitting at the table.
He wore a distant look of melancholy, as if his thoughts had taken the same track as hers.
Her heart rolled in her chest but had nowhere to go.

“Let’s get this taken care of,” he muttered.

Joanna
nodded,
crossed to the table and set
the shaving things in a neat line. She couldn’t
meet his eyes. “I’ll cut your hair first.
”
She
took up the scissors.
“
It will be short because it’s so matted.”

“Do what you have to,” Ethan spoke.

She didn’t know where to begin. She had watched Toby cut Ethan’s hair at least a dozen times before. Every time he had worked the scissors deftly while she had sat in front of Ethan, laughing and joking at the process. She didn’t know what she was doing any more than Ethan did.

One by one she clipped the long matted locks
weighing Ethan down
.
A
s
handfuls of
dead
fuzz
came off
,
soft curls sprang to life.
His hair had curled more when he was younger but had been heavier when he’d returned from the crusade. She remembered the warmth of her fingers in his
curls
.

“I’m surprised you don’t have lice,” she
sniffed
, sounding softer than she wanted to.

“So am I,” he answered in an equally hushed tone.

“Why cut your hair now? Why not find someone to do this earlier?”

For a moment the snip of the scissors was the only thing that answered her.

“I had to sneak into the Tower yesterday to follow you,” he
half—
explained in a mumble. “If I’m to go back I’ll have to look presentable.”

A tremor of hope caught in Joanna’s chest.
She didn’t want to nurture it.
“Go back?
Why?
”

“To help you.”

She stepped
away from him
.
It was suddenly hard to breath.
All the hope she wanted to feel caught in her throat.
After being alone for so long had Ethan finally come back to her?

“Turn the chair around,
”
she croaked.

He did as she requested. Still she avoided his eyes, studying
her work and
the dense hair of his beard.
Ethan couldn’t be trusted. He’d made sweet promises before and look where believing them had gotten her. She frowned and focused on
the job in front of her
.

Ethan
tilted his head up and she used the scissors to cut the bulk of
his
shaggy
beard
away.
She had to touch his face to do it.
She knew every line and contour of his cheek and jaw so well.
The heat of touch stirred the bi
tter and the sweet in her gut.

“Why do yo
u want to help me?” she asked.

“I’ve always wanted to help you.”

“You have some way of showing it,” she mumbled.

His eyes flickered up to her as he kept his head still. She caught his glance for a fraction of a second, her heart rate jumping.

“I’ll go to the Tower and find out where Crispin, Aubrey, and Jack are being held and
if they are in any real danger
.”

The temptation to relax, to rejoice that at last she would not have to face her troubles alone, was almost too much for her. “What makes you think you can get into the Tower
and find them
when I couldn’t?
”