Love Above All (2 page)

“Oh, heaven befriend us!” Cadwallon said with
an exasperated sigh. “Haven’t we encountered enough trouble on this
mission? First the long delays in Edinburgh, then the cursed rain
slowed us. We were expected in Carlisle two days ago. What are we
to do with a half-drowned female?”

“Since you have a blade in hand,” Quentin
answered, “you may cut the thong at her wrists. I intend to strip
her of these wet clothes and wrap her in my blanket. Next, we are
going to roll up her garments and take them with us. We are going
to disguise this spot so no one can guess that anything odd has
happened here. The log that’s washed up next to her can be dragged
along the ground to obliterate our footprints and the impression of
her body. Finally, we are going to ride as fast as possible to
Duncaron, before this poor lady contracts a chill that will mean
her death.”

“Lady?” Cadwallon repeated.

“You heard her speak,” Quentin said. “No
Scottish commoner would use a foreign language under such dire
circumstances. This must be a noblewoman.”

“Someone wanted her dead,” Braedon said
again. “Who? Why?”

“Those are reasonable questions,” Quentin
responded as he grasped the unknown woman’s gown and pulled it
upward, preparing to remove it. “But all questions will have to
wait until she wakens. Meanwhile, we must see to her care.”

“At Duncaron?” Cadwallon scoffed. “No ladies
live there. If any women enter those gates, they are not the sort
who keep gentle company. Nor will the Scots who man the place be
glad to see us with a woman when they have none. They’ll most
likely murder us in our beds in order to get to her.”

“Not if they value their lives,” Quentin
reminded him with cool certainty. “Don’t forget, we bear sealed
messages from King Alexander to King Henry. As royal emissaries,
our lives are sacrosanct. So is the life of anyone who travels with
us.”

“Do you imagine for even a moment that a band
of wild Scots will pay attention to their king’s seal?” Cadwallon
exclaimed.

“They will have no choice,” said Quentin. “If
nothing else will convince them to honor the rules of hospitality,
the men-at-arms I sent ahead will. Food, wine, and hot water await
us at Duncaron, and a private room for me, where this lady can rest
the night through, with a guard outside her door if necessary, to
keep her safe.”

“And what’ll you do if she’s still
unconscious tomorrow morning?” asked Cadwallon. “How do you propose
to keep her safe then? We cannot linger in Scotland any longer. We
are overdue. Royce will be worried.”

“I know it.” Quentin had the woman undressed
down to her shift. He removed it while Braedon pulled off her
sodden shoes and added them to the pile of wet clothing. Together
they rolled her into the blanket, working quickly, treating her as
if she were a boy who had spent too long in ice-cold water,
completely ignoring the gentle swell of the lady’s breasts, the
neat curve of waist and hips, and the shadow of hair where her
thighs met.

So Quentin told himself, until he was in the
saddle again and Braedon lifted the still form up to him. The
unknown woman’s head lolled on his shoulder in an odd travesty of
an affectionate embrace. Her hair was beginning to dry and a
curling strand blew against his cheek. With an impatient gesture
Quentin tucked the hair under a fold of the blanket before he
pulled his horse around sharply, heading up the rise to find the
road again.

The woman in his arms did not stir. She lay
as if dead, yet almost immediately Quentin began to be
uncomfortably aware of her slender waist tucked into the crook of
his elbow and of a pair of nicely rounded hips pressing against his
thigh. Sternly chiding himself for his physical reaction to an
unresponsive female who could well be dead before the sun rose
again, he kicked his horse’s sides hard and set off for Duncaron,
leaving his companions to hide all trace of the mysterious lady’s
presence on the riverbank before they followed him.

* * * * *

Duncaron was a wooden fortress, little more
than a tower with a palisade fence around it, and it offered few
amenities. Such outposts were common along the border, though they
were no longer as heavily manned as they had been during more
warlike times. Alexander I, king of the Scots, was on good terms
with Henry I of England, who was both his brother-in-law and his
father-in-law, Henry having wed Alexander’s sister, and Alexander’s
wife being one of Henry’s many illegitimate children. Since Henry
was preoccupied with unrest in the lands he held on the continent,
England and Scotland were at peace. Temporarily at peace; what the
future would bring for the borderlands between the two countries no
man dared guess. Not even Quentin would have stated an opinion, and
he knew more about the intentions of the Scottish king than most
other Norman-English noblemen.

As he rode through the narrow gate of
Duncaron, Quentin wasn’t thinking about either country, or about
his just-concluded diplomatic mission to Edinburgh. He searched the
faces of the men who hurried to greet him until he found the person
he wanted to see.

“My lord,” said Giles, the captain of
Quentin’s men-at-arms, “I’m relieved to see you safe. All’s ready
for your arrival. You will be as comfortable as Duncaron can make
you. What’s that you’re carrying?”

“Here; you take it.” After sending a look
toward Giles to warn him not to make any comment, Quentin covered
the woman’s face with the blanket, then lowered her into his man’s
arms. Giles was well trained. While Quentin dismounted he stood
silently holding the bundled-up form as if it were an unwieldy
package and not a human being.

“I’ll take it now.” Quentin reached for the
woman. With a show of carelessness for the benefit of the watching
Scots, he slung the bundle over his shoulder before he spoke again
to Giles. “Have another squire see to the horses; I want Braedon to
come with me. Cadwallon, speak to the master of Duncaron on my
behalf. I trust your judgment on what to tell him. Giles, lead me
to my bedchamber.”

“Aye, my lord.”

Knowing not to question his master’s orders
while they were among Scotsmen whom Quentin had little cause to
trust, Giles headed for the entrance of the tower. When a burly man
in a stained leather jacket would have stopped them, Cadwallon,
rightly assuming he was the master of Duncaron, drew him aside and
began to speak to him in a low voice. Braedon followed Quentin so
closely he almost trod on his heels.

The one and only guest chamber, set high in
the tower, was sparsely furnished with a bed hung round with plain
woolen curtains, and with a table on which burned a wick in a crude
pottery oil lamp. The walls were rough wood planks.

Shutters were closed over a single window. An
empty wooden tub sat between two braziers in which charcoal burned,
providing minimal heat.

A quick glance at the bed told Quentin it was
reasonably clean. He laid his bundle down on it and pulled back the
concealing flap of the blanket.

“She’s not contagious, is she?” Giles asked,
stepping closer to peer at the exposed face. “If we bring illness
in here, we won’t leave Duncaron alive. We are seriously
outnumbered, my lord.”

“She’s not sick, only chilled near to
death.”

“Someone tossed her in the river,” Braedon
added. “We couldn’t leave her to die.” Assuming his duties as
squire, he began to inquire of Giles about the arrangements made
for Quentin’s comfort, until Quentin interrupted.

“Let no one enter this room except the two of
you and Cadwallon,” Quentin ordered. “Say nothing of the woman’s
presence, not even to our own men. Where is the hot water for my
bath? I’ll want a warming pan for the bed, too.”

“These tough Scots will think you’re a
Sassenach weakling,” Giles said with a cheeky grin.

“I don’t care what they think. If you must
tell them something, say I’m suffering from an old battle wound
that has flared up in the rain and cold. Just bring me what I need.
I’d appreciate some food and hot, mulled wine, too, if you can find
it.”

“Here in Duncaron it’ll be ale and not wine,”
Giles said, “but I’ll thrust a hot poker in it to heat it. And I’ll
check with Cadwallon, to be sure our stories match. I’ll also set
one of our own men-at-arms outside the door, so you can be
private.”

When he was alone Quentin threw off his heavy
traveling cloak and pushed back his chainmail coif. Braedon could
help him disarm later. His immediate concern was the woman. She lay
wrapped from head to foot in the grey wool blanket, only her face
and a bit of hair showing. Quentin lifted the oil lamp and held it
close to her, studying her features.

He judged her to be about eighteen or twenty
years old, and she was not especially pretty. Her jaw was too firm
and her nose too sharply chiseled to match the current ideal of
soft, feminine beauty. The faint blue tinge of her lips and the
purple shadows under her eyes proved she’d been in the river much
too long. Quentin could detect no sign of serious injury. Except
for the red scratch along her left cheek and the thong marks on
either wrist, no blemish marred the perfection of her smooth,
waxy-pale skin.

The hair he’d first thought was black was
actually a dark shade of brown with glimmers of red where the light
shone on it. When it was completely dry it would probably be the
same color as her delicately sweeping eyebrows. Quentin touched a
lock of her hair and it curled around his finger as if all of her
waning life force lay in those few strands, and as if they were
clinging to him.

If the woman were to waken, would she cling
to him as her hair was doing? Would she ask again for his help,
imploring him to protect her from further harm? And if she did,
could he in honor refuse her? His primary duty lay in England, yet,
having found and rescued her, he had made the lady his
responsibility and he could not in good conscience abandon her.

“What color are your eyes?” he whispered.

Despising himself for giving way to the
weakness of fantasy, he pulled back his hand, though he imagined he
could still feel the silken texture of her hair sliding softly
across his skin and making his fingertips tingle.

“Foolishness,” he muttered, speaking to her
again while knowing she couldn’t hear him. “You are of interest to
me only because you were obviously intended to die in the river. If
I can discover why a gentlewoman was so violently mistreated, I may
learn some detail to add to the information the others and I have
already gathered during this mission.”

A rap on the door announced Braedon and
Giles, each toting two large buckets of steaming water. After
dumping the water he carried into the tub, Giles went for food and
more charcoal, and Braedon assisted Quentin in removing his
chainmail.

“If you intend to soak her in the hot water,”
Braedon said, “it’s going to take both of us. Dead weight as she
is, she’s too big for one man to handle.”

“She certainly isn’t a dainty creature, is
she?” Quentin responded, his sharp gaze measuring the slender,
unmoving length on the bed. “Toss a few more pieces of charcoal on
the braziers and let’s do what we can for her. I’d like to use the
water, myself, before it’s completely cold.”

Again, as they had done by the riverside,
they handled her with impersonal dispatch, pretending not to see
her womanly attributes. Braedon managed her feet and legs, and
Quentin took her shoulders and tried to keep her long hair out of
the water while they bent her at hips and knees to make her fit
into the small tub. It wasn’t easy. Quentin guessed if the woman
were awake and standing she’d be barely half a head shorter than
his own great height.

When the water had cooled to lukewarm and her
skin was beginning to look less like lifeless marble and more like
natural flesh, they took her out. Braedon held her upright with a
hand at each of her armpits while Quentin dried her with the clean
linen towel he pulled from his saddlebag. Then they tucked her into
the warmed bed.

“Do you think she’ll live?” Braedon asked. As
he spoke he flapped the chest of his tunic in a futile attempt to
dry the soaked wool.

“I hope so,” Quentin said. “I don’t like
unsolved mysteries. See if you can locate a bucket of hot water for
yourself, and put on a fresh tunic before you catch a chill. I
can’t afford to have you sick. I’ll send the guard at the door to
find you if I need you.”

Once the squire was gone Quentin wasted no
time before he divested himself of his own damp undershirt and
hose. He then climbed into the rapidly cooling water. It wasn’t the
hot, relaxing bath he had been looking forward to while riding
through the rain and chill of an autumn night in Scotland, but he’d
endured far worse conditions while on campaign with King Henry.

An hour later, wearing clean hose and tunic,
having eaten the bread and cheese that Giles brought and after
downing a cup of hot ale, Quentin perched on the side of the bed.
Telling himself he needed to check on her condition, he touched the
woman’s cheek. Her flesh was decidedly warmer than it had been
earlier and her lips were no longer their previous worrisome shade
of blue. Now they were a rosy tint that reminded him of the inside
of a seashell he’d picked up once on a beach in Brittany.

Quentin lightly traced the scratch on her
cheek. Next he let his hand slide downward, to rub along her
shoulder, testing its warmth, then farther down her arm to the line
at her wrist where the leather thong had bitten into her delicate
skin.

Her fingers twitched. Her hand moved
convulsively and she made a frightened, inarticulate sound deep in
her throat. From his experiences in battle Quentin knew what it was
like to return from the brink of death, to find oneself still alive
after being absolutely certain the end was imminent. But death in
the heat of battle was one thing; coldly planned murder was
something else entirely. Sympathy rose in him, as spontaneous as it
was unwanted. He warned himself to be cautious. If he was to solve
the mystery of the lady’s presence at the edge of the river,
dispassionate investigation was required, not an emotional
response.