Chapter One
Northumbria 1073
“Hang on, Lass,” MacInness urged. “’Tis just through the wood.”
Shards of pain splintered throughout his bruised and battered body. His grip slackened. Ruthlessly pushing the pain aside, he focused on the woman in his arms and tightened his hold.
Ebony tresses lay plastered against her ghastly pale face. His throat closed. Was he too late? “Almost there,” he rasped.
Refusing to give in to his body’s clamoring need to stop and rest, Scots Mercenary, Winslow MacInness, clenched his jaw and his resolve. If he stopped now, he’d drop from sheer exhaustion. He’d not give the bastards the satisfaction of dying. Not now when sanctuary lay just across the open field.
Merewood Keep.
He crossed toward the Saxon holding. He’d been gone for months. Though he wished he’d stayed on in the Highlands, fate had brought him home and had him rescuing the woman he carried.
Would she make it? Duncan hadn’t. He must be losing his mind as well as his life’s blood if he was thinking about his dead horse.
Numbness crept slowly up his shins and his mind drifted. Not paying attention, he slipped on the wet grass, going down hard on one knee. The jagged edge of a rock tore into his flesh. Pain shot through him. Thank God he still had feeling in his legs.
“Hold!” a voice commanded through the mist.
Ignoring it, he placed one quivering leg in front of the other. If he stopped now, he’d never make it. He glanced down; she was still unconscious.
Too long.
The gash on his forehead began to throb in earnest, accompanied by the warm trickle of blood sliding down the side of his face.
The first arrow surprised him. He braced for another. The tip of the second arrow sliced through the bottom edge of his plaid before plunging into the soft earth between his feet. The feathered knock brushed against the top of his thigh and his manly pride.
“Bollocks,” he swore.
The lads are gettin’ better. He shifted his handhold freeing his right hand and gave the signal Garrick taught him when he had sworn allegiance and become vassal to the Lord of Merewood Keep. Raising his fist in the air, he waited a heartbeat then touched it to his heart.
The third arrow sailed wildly over his head and a voice called out, “MacInness?”
“Aye.”
“We thought you dead.” Garrick’s shout was echoed by the grating of wood against stone as the gate opened.
“No’ yet.” His vision grayed as the blood oozing from a dozen places reached a crucial level. Darkness danced at the edge of his sight.
His legs wobbled, forcing him to his knees. The impact jarred the deep wound in his thigh. Razor sharp pain lanced through him as the healing wound re-opened. He gasped for breath.
“Let me help.” A disembodied voice said while questing hands reached for the battered woman still held protectively in his arms.
“Nay.” He fought off a surge of dizziness, pulling her closer to his heart.
“You cannot even hold yourself up. Let me take the woman.”
He focused his gaze and looked into his overlord’s eyes. “I canna,” he whispered half to himself. “She’ll die.”
He closed his eyes against the harsh reality. After finally saying aloud what he’d feared while making his way back to Merewood, anguish lanced through him. Somehow he knew if he severed the physical connection of her limp body tucked against his, she’d let go of the last thread of life she clung to.
MacInness had never seen anyone so fragile-looking suffer so much and yet live to tell of it.
“Winslow?” A soft lilting voice called to him through the fog of pain threatening to swallow him whole.
“Och, Jillie lass,” he murmured.
“Aye,” Garrick’s wife answered. “You trust me, do you not?”
“What about—” Garrick started to protest.
MacInness opened one eye and saw the glare Merewood’s Lady bestowed upon her husband, and the answering look of retribution reflected back at her. He almost smiled.
“With my life, Lass,” he answered.
“And your friend’s as well?” she asked, all the while prying his stiff fingers apart, one-at-a-time.
His gut clenched, “I wilna let her suffer.” He was too exhausted to care that his voice broke over the words.
“Let me ease her pain,” she urged. “I’ve brought my healing herbs.”
Garrick knelt down, waiting. MacInness slowly nodded to his overlord and then looked at Jillian. “Take away her pain, Lass. I couldna.”
Jillian nodded, and touched the tips of her slender fingers to his brow. MacInness sighed and gratefully gave up his hold on the ebony-haired woman in his arms and let the pain have him.
***
The voice stopped. Her mind struggled to work its way through the cobwebs filling it.
The soothing cadence that had helped her hang on since the brutal attack slowly faded until the last words she recalled were, “I’m sorry.”
Her body felt heavy, weighted down. She struggled against the need to sleep and fought to regain consciousness. Aches and pains assaulted her from different parts of her body. She felt as if she had been through a battle of epic proportions, battered about with a cudgel.
She slowly pried one eye open and the room gradually came into focus. The wooden walls were planked … they looked new. She shifted and realized her head rested on something soft. She reached a hand around to touch the pillow; the movement releasing the faint but familiar scent of lavender. Turning her head to the side, she noticed a bowl and cloth lay on the table next to the bed, within reach. But the stool beside the bed was empty. A warm draft of air blew across her face. Instinctively, she turned toward the flames crackling in the brazier.
Sensing she was not alone, she turned her head. A woman stood staring out of the arrowslit, her delicate hand holding back the coarse cloth covering it. She did not know her. Her coloring marked her as Saxon or Scot with hair the color of fire and skin much too pale to be Norman.
Hearing the movement, the woman turned around. “Good,” she said. “You are awake.”
The words poised upon a shaft of pain before they lanced right through her head. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears of agony.
Three more knights emerged through the woods, bows drawn and battle-ready. Strong arms lifted her off her feet and held tight, while her rescuer bounded over a log in their path. She wanted to look back to see if his horse was still alive, though she knew the enemy arrow had pierced its brain.
“This will help the ache in your head.”
She opened her eyes and the woman leaned over her.
She shook her head and her belly clenched in agony, her brave rescuer was gone.
Had they killed him? Was she being held captive? Were they going to drug her to keep her quiet?
Her mother’s familiar warning arrowed through her aching head: Trust not the Saxons. She shook her head to clear it.
The red-haired woman took a step back and tilted her head to one side. The look on her face was confused at first, but then she started to smile. “I would never hurt a friend of Winslow’s. I trust him with my life, as you have trusted him with yours,” the woman paused, moving toward her once again.
“Won’t you tell me your name and where you are from?” The woman’s gentle tone soothed the frazzled nerves that quivered non-stop.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She tried again, but this time a brutally sharp pain speared through her throat. She grabbed it with both hands, and could feel the swelling.
“You’ve hurt your throat,” the woman said. “Don’t worry, you’ll heal, if you’ll just drink some of the herbal draught I mixed for you.”
The realization that she could not speak swept through her like a blast of wind coming down from the north, chilling her to the bone. She started shaking.
The woman pulled the linen cover up to her chin and tucked it around her. “My name is Jillian,” she said softly, coaxingly. “This is my home, Merewood Keep, and you are a guest here.”
Her body was weak and in pain. The shock of her situation had waves of panic welling up from the pit of her belly. She was injured, far from home.
Where was she? Where was Merewood Keep?
Mon Dieu, she could not speak!
Her breaths became shorter and more rapid until her head started to spin.
The woman, Jillian, she remembered, took her quaking hands in her own and held them, quietly murmuring words in a foreign tongue. She had no idea what language it was, but some of the words sounded oddly familiar.
“I was taught to heal when I was very young,” Jillian explained quietly. “People would come from great distances just to have my mother lay her healing hands upon them.”
“I do not boast when I tell you that I, too, have that same ability,” she continued softly. “I will do all in my power to help you heal. Please, drink this,” Jillian handed the cup to the injured woman. “If you but rest, your body would have a better chance to heal.”
Afraid, but overwhelmed by pain, she took the cup and sipped. The taste was one she recognized as a healing herb. The soothing effects were immediate. She patted her throat, blinking back tears of frustration.
“I’ll send Winslow up, mayhap seeing him again will ease your mind.”
The door closed with a muffled click. Silence echoed through the chamber.
My name is Genvieve, she mouthed, though no sound emerged. One tear slipped past her guard, and then another. Her head and throat throbbed, and her body ached in more places than she remembered possessing.
Only one thought kept her from going out of her mind. She had to find the man who’d rescued her. Genvieve wondered if he would know this Winslow her hostess kept referring to.
Weariness engulfed her. Her eyes were growing very heavy thanks to the herbal draught she was given. She stopped fighting against the inevitable and let them close.
Her last conscious thought surprised her. Amber, her rescuer’s eyes were the same pale golden brown as her father’s best cognac. Smiling, she drifted off to sleep.
“You’ll come with us now, Norman slut!” Beefy hands wrapped themselves around her wrists. She was pulled off of her horse … trapped … helpless.
Genvieve tossed and turned while the nightmare held her in its cruel talons.
“Nay!” she shouted back, “my father—”
“Is in Abernathy with King William,” her captor taunted.
“My mother—”
“Who do you think told us how to find you?” The man’s sneer of triumph cut through her, right to her aching heart.
“Nay!” she shouted, denying it.
“Silence her!” the man standing off to the side bellowed.
She looked over at the man and started to protest. White-hot pain slashed across her throat as the man’s elbow hit it dead center. Before she could draw in a breath, pain exploded at the back of her head and blackness engulfed her.
She shook herself half-awake, but could not seem to open her eyes. Was it a nightmare, or did it truly happen? Mon Dieu, she was not sure. She moaned aloud.
“Have a care, Lass,” the cherished, deep voice crooned. “I’ll no’ let them hurt ye.”
The voice was back, promising not to let anyone hurt her, and she believed him.
Genvieve smiled, snuggled deeper into the warmth of his familiar embrace, and drifted off to sleep.
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