Read Scoundrel's Kiss Online

Authors: Carrie Lofty

Scoundrel's Kiss (9 page)

BOOK: Scoundrel's Kiss
11.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

"He cut me," she said, her
voice faraway.

"The man who held you
captive?"

She sighed. "Yes. And now he's
dead."

"Who was he?"

The door to her room clanked opened to
reveal a slim man and a stout, whey-faced nun. The man held more in common with
a bird than a person, all sharp angles and quick movements. A hummingbird,
perhaps. Agitated. And all without an introduction.

"What seems to be the concern,
senorita?"
he asked.

Ada burrowed deeper within the shelter
of the sheepskin. "What do they want?"

Gavriel glared when the man pushed him
aside, the nun bumping into place beside him. "This is the physician, I
assume. Here to help."

Apparently.

Ada would not look at the newcomers.
She worried her chapped lower Up and pinned Gavriel with a look of wild fear.
"I hardly
want you
here, let alone strangers."

The bird puffed up the feathers of his
dark robes. "I'm no stranger," he said. "I'm a physician, a
servant of God sent to tend your sickness."

"I've been hearing that entirely
too often," she said

When the physician put a hand to her
forehead, she drew back with a hiss. Gavriel watched with growing irritation as
the man treated her with less consideration than would a shepherd inspecting
his livestock. Ada withstood the curt appraisal longer than he would have
imagined—that is, longer than a breath or two.

"Stop touching me!"

The physician blanched at her
ear-splitting command and jerked his hand away. "She is clearly disturbed
and suffering from a fever. Her humors are out of balance and must be
corrected."

Gavriel curled a fist to his mouth.
"Corrected how?"

"We would make an
incision—"

"Cut me?" Ada's face turned
the color of ash.

"No, no, no. Nonsense." The
physician waved his arms to placate her distress, flapping the wings of his
waist-long sleeves. "A bloodletting is healthful and restorative, not at
all to be feared."

. "No!" Ada tried to jump
clear, but with the stout build of a peasant farmhand, the nun seized her
shoulders and pinned her to the pallet. "Let go of me! You can't do
this!"

The nun glanced over to Gavriel, her
veiled headdress set askew by Ada's violent struggles. "I'll need your
help to hold her steady."

He shook his head tightly, his gut in a
knot.
"Por favor,
wait a moment—"

"Young man," the doctor said,
his voice reeking of condescension. "No matter the origin of her illness,
she is not at all like herself. Do not expect her to react sensibly to proven
techniques."

Frowning, Gavriel tossed his gaze
between Ada's wild panic and the dispassionate duo. "Why shouldn't the
origin of her illness matter?"

"I am the physician to the
Archbishop of Toledo, and I do not appreciate—"

"Gavriel!"

Ada cuffed her female foe and stumbled
from the bed, pushing past the startled physician. The nun lunged after her,
fleeter of foot than Gavriel would have guessed, but she landed on her side,
arms empty. He caught Ada and twirled her down to the floor. She hugged closer,
a mass of shaking limbs and sobs.

"Give her to me," the nun
said, standing and rubbing her hip. "Or I shall call in the guards."

Gavriel denied her demand with a dark
glare. "Wait. Both of you."

"Don't let them," Ada
whispered. He had a difficult time understanding her, between the shivering and
her unusual accent, but her fear was tangible. The sweat on her skin even
smelled different—potent, almost corrosive. "I would rather die
tonight than bear his cure."

"Inglesa,
if
it's for the best."

Feverish eyes met his. She panted,
briefly managing to quell the tremors. "Have I begged anything of you? I'm
begging now.
Please."

He closed an arm around her shoulders,
angling his body between her and the red-faced physician. The nun stood as tall
as she could muster and looked ready to pounce. Whatever frustration or
confusion he had felt only moments before was replaced by a single, instinctual
demand: protect.

"I want you out of this
room," he said quietly.

"You cannot be in earnest,"
the physic said. "This woman's humors must be balanced or she will suffer
the consequences. They are a threat to her health."

"And to the health of
others." The nun's face had squished into a mask of displeasure beneath
her crooked headdress.

Gavriel glanced down at Ada. She had
curled into herself, clinging to his arm as if to a branch in a raging stream.
"Can that be done without the bloodletting?" he asked.

"Bloodletting is the most
effective—"

"Out," Gavriel said.
"Now. Before I assist you."

"You cannot—"

"Cutting her is unacceptable. I
asked for alternatives, and you provided none."

The physician sputtered, his eyebrows
twitching like dun-colored caterpillars. But the nun found voice enough to
speak for both of them. "We will inform Senor Latorre about this, as well
as your novice master. This disrespect will not be tolerated."

"I will not be intimidated by your
threats. Now get out."

The door closed behind them with a
force just short of slamming. The nun's chattering indignation echoed behind
the heavy oak partition and down the corridor, blending with the slashing
tempest of noise in Ada's head. The screams of goblins, the cries of
babies—they demanded the same thing. More. More opium. Anything to
silence the noise, end the pain, banish the nightmares.

She huddled closer to Gavriel, if such
a thing were possible. She wore him, a second skin. Sweat covered her like
drenching rain but not nearly so clean or refreshing. And still she felt cold,
ever more cold—the kind that gnaws on bones and invades even the most
restful sleep. He was her tormentor and her captor, yet he offered the warmth
of his body and stood against those who would do her harm.

Could it get any worse?

Yes, when she did the worst to herself.

"Why did you do it?"

Gavriel shook his head and met her gaze
with a frown. English again. She had never experienced such trouble with her
translations. Keeping thoughts straight and in the proper dialect burdened her,
just like the bootlaces—simple things she knew like breathing. But even
breathing had become a challenge.

I
do this to myself.

She sidestepped the thought and saw the
face of Sheriff Finh.
He
had done this to her. And all the while, people
like Gavriel judged what she did out of fear and desperation— holy men
with more answers than compassion.

Pain burst in her stomach. She cried
out and dug fingernails into flesh. His flesh. A corner of her mind recognized
his sharp intake of air, but another cramp shoved away every concern. She
struggled for a breath that did not pierce and gouge. Colors responded in
frantic patterns, crossing but never blending, shooting into her eyes even when
she pinched them shut.

Patient hands stroked her hair just as
soft words eased past the brunt of her agony. She felt calmer, more in control
with that soothing presence. Peering past the melange of colors, she tried to
see if a kindly nurse had entered the room.

But there was only Gavriel. His touch.
His words. Him.

Stubborn fool.

She raised a hand above her face,
watching it quiver like a flower trembling on its stem. Castilian this time.
"Why? Why did you do it?"

"Too many reasons."

"I have nowhere to be." She
watched as her feet danced a nervous pattern beyond the hem of her kirtle.
Someone else's feet, certainly, except the scars were hers. She felt them
still, the burning. A shiver slid under her skin.

Gavriel pulled her upright. His firm
grip on her forearms permitted no refusal. "I've learned to obey my
superiors in the Order, but no one else. Apparently."

"That's why you saved me? You were
stubborn?"

He caught her gaze, looking deep,
banishing the garish streaks of color with his dark and steady eyes. "And
you said 'please'."

"You require no more?"

He shrugged. "It worked this
evening. Perhaps you should keep that in mind for the future."

He stood and scooped her into powerful
arms, carrying her as warily as he would a burning log. Another cramp coiled
her belly into searing knots. She bent in half and cried out Gavriel held fast
until the pain subsided, his arms as firm as hers were trembling. She sagged
against that effortless strength, wishing to siphon it from him and fill her
veins.

He laid her gently on the pallet and
returned with fresh water from the washbasin. "You'll find another reason
less agreeable," he said

Words spun through her mind in English
and Castilian, a mash of language. She grabbed the correct ones and forced her
tongue to move. "You know me so well already?"

"I thought you would be able to
manipulate the physician into giving you more opium."

She laughed. The unexpected sound
fairly jumped from her mouth. Gavriel tensed. But that was not the sound of
Ada, a girl from Keyworth; that was an unhinged jester. "I'm not thinking
clearly, for I hadn't considered that"

His mouth flattened into a grim line.
Even as he sponged the cloth over her forehead, his expression never altered.
Did he even know how to smile?

Light stabbed her eyes and pain spiked
like an ax at the base of her skull. She flung her arms as if defending against
a blow to the face. An earthenware bowl dropped to the ground and shattered.
But no maneuver shielded her against the torture of those seizures. She had
never come so far before. Never. Jacob had given her what she needed to keep
her well. This fiend, this holy hypocrite wanted her to suffer.

"Do you believe this benefits
me?"

Gavriel pulled the fists from her eyes.
"I look at you, and I wonder who you were."

The openness that softened his
expression invited intimacy. In that moment, she trusted him—trusted him
with her deepest desire. "May I have opium? Please?"

"No,
inglesa.
I'll refuse
you until you can do the same for yourself."

She twisted her neck, left to right to
left again. The noise had returned, and she wanted to shake it from her ears.
"I'll hate both of us."

"You don't already?"

"It hurts so badly."
Anns—hers, it seemed—clenched her middle and tightened. A wolf
writhed inside her, snapping its dagger teeth and slashing without mercy. Tears
wet her cheeks and hair, mingling with sweat, but her mouth was a dry
wasteland. "How did I get this far?"

Gavriel reached an arm around her
trembling body, and she sank, sank into that bastion of comfort. Anything to
keep from doing this alone. He leaned close, the warm breath of his words
skimming over the path made by her tears. "Life takes us to dark
places," he said "We can either stay there until we die, or we can
fight free."

"And how did you fight free?"

All tenderness drained from his eyes,
like a flask turned upside down and emptied. His arm remained in place and gave
her his heat, but there was no mercy to be found in his body of stone and
steel. None for her. None for himself.

"Who says I have?"

Gavriel picked up the last shards of
the earthenware basin Ada had destroyed. He kept one eye on her still body,
watching for her unpredictable return to the world. Her howling pain combined
the violence of high tide and thunder and angered demons, all whirling forth
from one mindless woman. She had lost track of her tongue an hour before,
shouting incoherent phrases in her native language, resorting to shrieks,
moans, and wordless pleas.

He slumped to the floor, his back
against the oaken door.

His eyelids rolled closed, pulled by
the weight of his burdens. He edged toward slumber like a man approaching the
lip of a high cliff, walking along, looking over, but never quite stepping into
the abyss.

He needed to sleep. But what did she
need?

To start, she needed a room made
entirely of linen and straw. No sharp edges.

She wanted no one's help, and Gavriel
had run clean of options. Short of locking her in a windowless room for weeks,
he had no notion of what her care would require. The idea of having to tend to
her needs, to break her of the opium sickness clinging to her like
death—he could not have chosen a more fearsome task.

The door rattled at his back.
"Open up! We demand entry."

Old habits refused to die. No matter
how long he had lived in the safety of the monastery, the sudden clamor in the
corridor set him in search of a weapon. He had scrambled away and grabbed a
sizable shard of earthenware before thought caught up to instinct.

BOOK: Scoundrel's Kiss
11.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Bandit by Ellen Miles
Caleb by Sarah McCarty
Unbridled Dreams by Stephanie Grace Whitson
All Art Is Propaganda by George Orwell
Borderland by Anna Reid
Bad Land by Jonathan Yanez