Candle in the Window (12 page)

“I’m flattered.”

She could hear the smile in his voice.

“Only in my defense do you become an
effective fighter. I’ll teach you to defend yourself. No
woman of mine will be raped or murdered without a
struggle.”

Woman of mine
.

The words stood out and thrilled her, but beneath
the thrill rested a cold fear and confusion. Did he really believe
any woman was capable of defending herself? Her own defenses were
guile and watchfulness, honed by years of danger. Was she deceiving
him unnecessarily? Should she tell him, before someone else did, of
her blindness? She hated it so much, when one of the slack-witted
fools made a game of her, and she feared he would think she had
done so with him.

They were easy words to say: “William,
I’m blind, too.” But those few syllables could destroy
the cocoon of trust and passion that surrounded them, and so her
innate honesty struggled with her craving to procrastinate, for
just one more night. For just a few more hours.

“You’ve wandered far away from
me,” he murmured, tugging at a lock of hair. “Come back
and sleep in my arms till the morn. Then we’ll discover
who’s made such a torment for us, and after I cure his
pretensions we’ll be on our way.”

Analyzing the emotions from the voices around her
had kept Saura from harm more times than she could count, and now
she heard the false confidence in his tone, the projection of
assurance that he did not feel.

But what could she do? Putting her own assurance in
her voice, she murmured, “Of course, William,” and
drifted off to sleep.

The sun leaked its rosy light through the two arrow
loops, illuminating the sorry furnishing of the room, and William
stared and wondered. It looked so real. Since his accident, he had
dreamed vivid, sighted dreams, but this one looked so real. Since
the days of his boyhood, when William had wakened with
anticipation, he had never shaken his irrational assurance that
each new day would be a landmark day. This morning was no
different. The pleasure had been made sharper, perhaps, by the
events of the night, but still he had stretched and embraced the
morning, and opened his eyes: and seen this.

He closed his eyes again, and the vision
disappeared. His remaining senses, the senses he trusted, fed him
information. Borne on the wind, early morning air brushed his face
with its dewy kiss. Outside, he could hear birds practicing their
salute to the sun with increasing vigor. Beside him, Saura still
slept. He could hear her even breathing and feel her warmth against
his arm. Aye, it was morning.

He opened his eyes. Those damn arrow loops seemed
brighter, the increasing light flattered the
grey stones. He flicked his gaze across the narrow room. Table,
stools, tall empty candle holder. How odd. Wooden buckets. Cocking
his head up, he stared down at the pallet.

Look at that. Two bumps under the brown blanket
where his feet should be, and they moved when he moved. This seemed
so real.

Look at the woman beside him. God’s teeth,
now he knew it was a dream. This woman, this dream Saura, was
gorgeous.
Vers
sprang to his lips under
the influence of her sensuous face. A lovely bone structure,
indeed, and a willful chin. And red lips and long black lashes that
brushed her cheeks. Long, shiny, black hair artfully placed across
her chest, hiding and revealing the proud arch of her breast. Her
skin, all over, creamy and clear, unmarred by freckle or blemish.
What a dream.
What
a dream.

He shook his head at his own gullibility, and his
imaginary scenery rocked back and forth. He lay back, chuckling,
and raised his hands to rub his eyes. But before they connected, he
stopped. They looked so much like his own hands. Look, there was
the scar in the pad of his thumb where he’d broken the skin
polishing a helmet in his squire days. And look, his middle finger
cocked to the side, just a little, from the broken bone he’d
earned in battle five years ago. And look, his hands didn’t
seem as muscular as they had, just as his hands should appear after
months of inactivity. And look, he flexed his whole hand. Look.

Look.

His heart began a slow, hard pounding.

Look. Look at the way his hands obeyed his
commands.

He sat up on his elbows.

Look at this room. Look at this place.

Look at the light.

“Only hope will greet us
tomorrow.” Was it his own incantation that had healed him? Or
was it the love of a good woman, a virgin, that old panacea for
every ill?

William stood and peered out the arrow loop. He
knew where they were. He’d been in this castle once before on
a hunting trip. Below him he could see—dear God, the miracle
contained in that simple word!—he could see the wall walk,
and that told him this room was located at the top of a tower. Far
below the wall curved a river, and he saw a shallow-bottomed boat
preparing to tie at the dock and disgorge its single impudent
stooge.

He couldn’t believe it. Or he didn’t
want to believe it. The villainy of this whole plan astonished him.
The stupidity of it amazed him, too. He’d dressed, then
he’d checked out this prison. There were no restrictions
here, not for a sighted man. If he wanted to, he could break down
the door. If he wanted to, he could rouse Saura, wisk her past
those pitiful
sentries, steal two horses and
ride back to Burke. It would not have been horribly difficult
without the use of his eyes, and now that his vision had returned,
it was ridiculously simple.

But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. This man
who held them, this worm, this misbegotten knave, he would pay. And
he would speak. William couldn’t think of one thing that
could render this
âme damnée
courageous enough to stand against him. A modest man, William knew
that in a rage, he was a force no one, certainly not that filthy
whoreson who imprisoned them, could withstand.

Walking to the bed, he stood and stared at Saura.
Her beauty shocked him. He was a pragmatic man, one who expected no
more from life than it gave. But this woman was a prize.

A maid at nineteen. He’d known she was a maid
by her amazed reaction to pleasure, but the confirmation of her
state made it difficult for him to control himself.

What a reward! The girl became a woman in a burst
of flame, burying him in passion, pulling at him with exquisite
convulsions. She burned him with her erotic flame, but she credited
him with the heat they created, and perhaps she was right. Apart,
they functioned as two normal human beings. Together, their fiery
union lit the night.

A maid at nineteen. Uneasy, he pulled a stool up to
the table and tore off a chunk of bread. Dry, chewy, it tasted like
heaven to a man denied both his dinner and his supper the day
before. But his attention wandered back to Saura, her eyelids
tinted a delicate blue by the tracery of veins beneath sheer skin.
Any heiress with her looks should have been married at thirteen.
Why wasn’t she? The question nagged at him. She seemed
perfect. Beautiful, compassionate, accomplished, rich. How had her
stepfather kept her from mar
riage? Of course, a
bigger bastard than her stepfather had never existed. The distaste
Theobald had given her for kissing was soon vanquished, and
she’d shown a remarkable ability to improvise on
William’s own theme. She’d kissed all the parts of his
body until his muscles ached with rigid constraint. The memory of
it brought him to his feet again, unable to sit with any kind of
serenity beneath the prod of nostalgia. If she weren’t so
new, if she weren’t so tiny, if she were awake and smiling at
him. He swore at himself. With a smidgen of encouragement,
he’d jump on her in a moment. How had he checked himself last
night, when she’d asked for a repeat?

He paced away to the window. Something nagged at
him, something one of the servants had said, but he couldn’t
quite resurrect it. He looked out the window again, down to the
river. Where was that little twirp who had imprisoned them? If he
didn’t come through the door soon, William would have to
break out. He couldn’t bear being in the same room with her
and not slipping the blankets from her body. Clenching his fist, he
pounded his forehead and groaned. What a fool he was, to torment
himself.

A soft sigh alerted him to her waking. Swinging on
one heel, he watched with eager eyes as she stretched like a cat,
first one arm, then the other, first one leg, then the other, then
the whole long length of her in one sinuous motion. Her skin glowed
with health, light against the dark cover over the palliasse. Her
long hair concealed and revealed as it shifted over the mounds and
valleys of her flesh. She was the loveliest thing he’d seen
in—he laughed at himself. She was the loveliest thing
he’d ever seen.

A belated desire for drama caught him unaware. He
wanted to surprise her, please her with the return of his sight.
Hastily, he faced back to the arrow loop, never think
ing that in itself would alert a sighted person, for
what blind man stares out the window?

“William?” Her word sounded with the
musical allure of a flute. When he didn’t answer, in a
frantic tone, “William?”

“Here, love.” He found he
couldn’t face her yet, and rubbed his palms across his face
with boyish glee.

“Are you well?” she asked, concern
lacing the clear notes of her voice.

In answer he turned and faced her. Her eyes
astonished him. The violets of the spring lost the contest for
velvety color, or perhaps the contrast of her black lashes against
her white skin created an unfair advantage. Her lips, like petals
of carmine peonies, drooped with the worry absent in her slumber.
Asleep, her face turned the envious beauties of the world to stone;
awake, the compilation of fine bones, delicate muscles, and fragile
skin created a classic animation he could study for hours.

But she wasn’t really watching him. So he
winked at her. And she didn’t react. So he grinned at her, a
boyish, look-at-me grin. And the worry lines on her face
deepened.

“William?” She threw back the covers
and rose in one swift, graceful movement. “What is it? Your
head?”

She started toward him. His throat closed with
appreciation of her body, and his warning remained unuttered. He
threw out his hand to her. But she kept coming, not seeming to see
his gesture, not seeming to see the bucket until her toes caught
around the leg of the stool, her knee whacked the bucket and the
whole contrivance, and Saura, went flying.

Jumping after her, his mind buzzing with concern,
he was relieved to hear a very normal shout of “Plague take
it!” from those petal-soft lips. Wrapping his arms around the
fallen beauty, he lifted her with tender concern. He let her
stand first one foot down, then the other. “Any
broken bones?” he queried.

“Of course not,” she answered
scornfully. “I’ve done worse. But you, William, are you
healthy?”

“Aye.” He stared down at her shins,
tracing the redness already beginning above the bone.
“T’will be painful.” He realized he wasn’t
looking into her face as he should. A man who wished to surprise
his lady with the return of his sight had to alert her somehow to
his good news. So why was he afraid?

He froze. Afraid? What was he afraid of? What had
he seen, with his new eyes, that he hadn’t wanted to admit
to?

“What ails you?” she insisted, shaking
his shoulder. “You’re stiff as if you were paralyzed.
Is that it? Are there parts of your body not functioning? You must
tell me, trying to keep it from me only makes it worse.”

“All my body parts are functioning. All of
them.” He raised his eyes to her face and saw it there, that
gaze that looked through him, that gaze that didn’t touch
him. His first incredulous thought was that her sight had been
taken so his could be restored, but her very natural demeanor
relieved him of his suspicion. The whiplash of remorse convinced
him. All his scorn and rebellion had been directed at this
beautiful, sightless girl. A shiver ran through him.
“Saura.”

“You’re ill,” she said. “I
knew I shouldn’t have let you love me.”

She tried to disengage her arm from around his
neck, but he stopped her by swinging her up into his arms.

“If you’re ill, let me help you,”
she insisted. “Put me down.”

“Aye, I’ll put you down.” He
lowered her all the way to the
palliasse on the
floor. He pulled the loose cover around her, tucked her tight in
its folds.

She let him, unresisting, not understanding.
“William?” she whispered, touching his face as he knelt
before her.

An immense guilt swallowed him. “Oh, my God,
Saura, you can’t see.”

Saura sat straight and tall, her legs curved
beneath her, hugging the blanket to her bare body until she
understood the import of what he’d said. The bleakness of her
existence rushed over her, and her mind screamed,
No escape! You’ll never escape
.

“And you
can
see.” There was flatness to her voice, but it strengthened as
the elation in his good fortune took her from herself.
“God’s blessing on you, William! You can see!”
She brought his head close with her palms on his chin and kissed
him full on the mouth. Her hands came away wet.
“Tears?”

He leaned his cheek against hers, and she wondered
at the reverse of their positions. When she had the moment, she
would give in to the despair that licked at her existence.

He was crying beside her. The way he cried
astonished her. No sobs, no shaking of the shoulders. Just silent
tears soaking her neck. It seemed to bring him pain, as if each
rare tear ran with his heart’s blood.

She found, to her surprise, that his tears caused
her pain, too. When had anyone cried for her? Since the death of
her mother, nurturing had been a gift she had given to others and
almost never received. Now this man, tough and purposeful, a
warrior in every sense of the word, cried for her. And it
distressed her, more than the evidence of her first selfish
reaction. With shaking hands, she stroked his hair back from his
forehead and cleared her throat. “Why are you
crying?”

He didn’t answer, only his hand rubbed her
knee, his arm hugged her waist. He tried to crawl into her skin and
share her travail.

Her stroking hand grew stronger, tugged at his
hair. “Surely I’ve taught you that blindness limits us
only as we let it.”

“It’s…not…that.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve been a foul-mouthed
knave.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“A beetle-headed malfeasor.”

“Nothing so—”

“A base, proud tottyhead.”

He paused, but she said nothing.

“Aren’t you going to object?”

“No,” she drawled the word.
“Humility is so refreshing in a man.”

Instant outrage brought him to a half crouch, and
then he remembered his harshness and sank back to her. “You
have a distressing manner of teaching humility to a man. When I
think back to all the times I’ve mocked Lady Saura, made fun
of your age and said you didn’t understand my plight, because
you
could see, I want to flog
myself.”

“Actually, you didn’t mock me, you
teased me. There’s a world of difference. To a woman of
advanced years, it would have been flattering. To me….”
She thought about all the barren years in Theobald’s house,
ignored by any eligible men or taunted about her disadvantage. Or
being offered a place in some knight’s bed with the arrogant
assumption she’d be grateful. “To me, your teasing has
been a kindness.”

To her horror, her voice shook with emotion, and
his grip on her tightened. Hoarsely, he said, “I’ve
been cruel to you, yelling at you, being rude.”

Surprised, Saura laughed. “So? Why am I so
special? You’ve yelled at every one of your household, and
hurt your son’s feelings and your father’s,
too.”

His misery abruptly checked. “I have
not!”

“And they’re the ones you really care
about,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard.
“I’ve been quite flattered.”

“Flattered!”

“Aye. It makes me one of the family. If you
didn’t yell at me, I’d think you didn’t like
me.”

“Woman!” he thundered, rearing back
from his position of penitence. “Shut your mouth and listen
to me. I do
not
shout and I am
not
rude, and I certainly am not going
to be rude to you anymore!”

“Of course not,” she chuckled, and with
a groan he settled his head onto her bosom.

“You are,” he said, “a wicked
woman.”

“A beetle-headed malfeasor?” she
suggested, swallowing the tickle of enchantment that threatened to
overwhelm her good sense and reduce her to torrents of
merriment.

“At least that,” he agreed
gloomily.

“I am not. But I am what Bronnie worried
about.”

Her voice lowered with carnal significance, but his
thoughts were elsewhere. “I wish you’d stop trying to
hold in your laughter,” he said, his voice laced with
disgust. He looked up at her. “I can feel it fighting to get
out, and that expression of innocence on your face wouldn’t
fool a friar.”

Hastily she rearranged the muscles of her face in a
gentle smile, and he snorted. “I’ve always wondered
what Saura, the nun, looked like. Now I know.”

“I am not a nun,” she protested.
“And I’m damned tired of having you compare me to
one.”

“Believe me, love, I know you’re not a
nun. No one knows better than I. I’m the expert on your lack
of nun-ness.”

Saura could feel his face approaching hers.

“Not only do I know you’re not a nun,
I’ve ruined your chances to become anything but a penitent
nun with the simple act of—” He stopped, so close his
breath skimmed her face and her lips were pursed in ready
anticipation. “What do you mean, you are what Bronnie worried
about?”

“I’m the sort of woman the priests warn
of.” He drew farther back, and she followed him with her
mouth until she realized her behavior rivaled an effervescent
bubble chasing the blustery north wind.

“How did he know that?”

She didn’t like his tone, and she said,
“By my wanton demeanor, I surmise.”

“What have you been doing with
Bronnie?”