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SHADOWS PLAYING ACROSS the ceiling melded, fused, and separated again in a swirling nausea. It was yet dark outside. Drake turned his head. Everything spun anew. He swallowed acid. The chamber came into focus.
Starkly lit by candlelight, Aveline was sitting in a chair beside Stephen’s bed, reading.
“Can you make sense of it?”
Gazing up from the sheaves of parchment, she leaned forward, her face filled with concern. “There you are. I feared you would never wake up.”
“As did I.” The first thing he reached for was his forehead, where a damp cloth lay.
“Don’t try to sit up.” Dizziness sent him crashing back to the mattress. The stabbing pain in his back reached into his bowels. Wide swathing had replaced his chainse and tunic. He reached around. “And don’t touch.” Another warning come too late. He removed his hand. The throbbing pain descended into a bearable ache. “I stitched the wound close.”
“Is it bad?” he asked.
“Very bad.”
“Is this the end?”
“Only a matter of time.” She held Tilda’s book aloft and fanned the pages. They were pierced through from front to back. Around the slash, blood—his blood—soaked every sheet. The damascened dagger lay on the bedside table. She aligned the blade through the manuscript as far as it would go, which fell considerably short of the blade’s full length. At the back flap, the point protruded less than the first joint of a finger. A little finger at that.
“Can I kiss you?” Drake asked. She harrumphed. “A hug will do.”
“In your dreams, mayhap.”
He reached out and took her hand. She let him have it. The taper lit hazel eyes shiny with wetness. “I thought you were dead for sure.” Her voice quivered and halted. Taking back her hand, she said, “When your knight friend saw the wound wasn’t mortal, he left.”
“So much for sympathy.”
Supporting his head, she put a goblet of mulled wine to his lips. “You needn’t be hard on him. He tried to catch Graham.”
“I can’t drink more.”
“Sheriff Clarendon came sniffing around, saw you were still breathing, and told me to be good to you.”
“At least someone in this town cares.”
“Knights are such babes in arms.” She remoistened the compress and laid it across his forehead.
Soothed, he sank back and closed his eyes. “When they’re bleeding.”
“Even when they’re not bleeding.”
Looking at her askance, he mocked himself. “Your bedchamber or my brother’s? You’ll never let me forget what an ungallant boor I was, will you?”
Mirth rose on her lips, turning them cherry red and very kissable. “Do you want poppy juice?”
“No.”
“Martyrs usually go to their graves.”
“Aye.”
She had it at the ready on a nearby table and again supported his head. Her hand was warm yet her fingers, threading through his hair, cooled his scalp. He could have drifted forever in her gentle handhold. When she eased his head back, he motioned toward the volume.
“You can read, Aveline Darcy?”
“You think the daughter of an alewife cannot be as learned as the son of a lord?”
“Truth be known, just the reverse.”
Not believing he was being straightforward, haltingly she said, “Well then, since you ask, I took instruction from the nuns at Fontevraud Abbey.”
“Ah.” Fontevraud Abbey was known for taking in lasses in trouble. Sometimes those same lasses took the vows of a nun. Other times they went home with the babe. “Was it interesting, then, Tilda’s journal?”
“More than interesting.” She propped the manuscript on his chest and turned to two noteworthy sheets.
