“Should I?”
“I doubt she would tell you,” she said, turning to meet his steady gaze.“If indeed she knew of one.”
Bayard eyed her for a long moment, then nodded.“I wanted also to ask you what you thought of this.”He spoke quietly, as if for her ears alone, and she found his expression unexpectedly serious.In his hand, he held a small dark bottle that looked to have some liquid within it.
“What is that?”
“A token of the East,” he said.“It was given to me as a gift.”
“By a lady?”Berthe could not keep suspicion from her tone.
Bayard shook his head.“Nay, a keeper whose tavern we favored.We were eight and when we said we rode for home, I think he knew he would miss our custom.He gave each of us a gift.”He held up the bottle so that it caught the light.It was not black glass, as Berthe had originally thought, but glass of a very deep blue.“This was mine.”His gaze met hers and his eyes seemed even darker than she knew them to be.
“What was it like?”she asked on impulse.“In Palestine?”
Bayard exhaled.“I do not think you truly want to know.”
“Aye, I do.The priest talks of it as if it is a paradise...”
“It is no paradise, to my thinking.”His voice was grim.
“Then tell me.”
“It is different from all I knew before,” Bayard admitted, his gaze fixed on the glass bottle.He turned it in his hand, apparently fascinated by the way it caught the light.Berthe guessed that he was sorting his memories and choosing which to share with her.She wondered how many horrors he had witnessed.“Because it is hot and dusty, and I was thirsty all the time I was there.We fought nigh all the time we were there, unless we were idle and waiting for the call to battle.Either I was fighting for my life and that of my comrades or we played endless games of draughts.”He lifted his gaze to hers again.“Men died on all sides, yet I have never felt that any endeavor was so futile.”
“But you must have won battles and regained territory.”
“Aye, and like as not, lost them again afterward.It is, in its way, another endless game of draughts, save that men die when they lose.”Bayard frowned and took a deep breath.“And yet it is familiar, because there are people tilling the fields and harvesting crops, cooking and praying, and living.”
“Then you did not like it at all.”
“I liked that I met my comrades, like Quinn,” he said.“I saw places that I had only heard the priests talk about, places I had never been certain were real.I tasted foods that were unknown to me, and I was glad of all that.”He smiled at the little bottle and her heart twisted at the sight.
God in heaven, but he was an alluring man.If he spoke to her thus all the time, she would lose her heart in moments.
It had to be a ploy to get beneath her skirts, and Berthe tried to remember that.
“But what is best of all is the gift that my comrade Quinn gives to me,” he said solemnly.“For it is both unexpected and my heart’s desire.”
“What is that?”
“He asks me to remain here with him, at Annossy or Sayerne, to serve him.”
“How is that a gift?”Berthe asked, confused.“You served together, but now you will pledge fealty to your friend?”
“And willingly, for Quinn grants to me a home.”His eyes shone then and Berthe’s heart skipped.“I have been without a home for many years, and indeed, that is why I went on crusade.I hoped to find some measure of fortune, but I found better.I came to this place and have been offered a home and a position—and better yet, I met the most intriguing maiden.”
“Here comes the tale!”Berthe scoffed but Bayard shook his head.
“There is no tale.”He offered her the bottle.“And as a token of my intentions, I give this bottle to you.”
Berthe frowned in confusion.
Bayard took her hand and placed the small bottle within it.The glass was warm from his hand, and his hand was warmer as he folded her fingers around it.He leaned closer.“Open it and think of me.”Then he smiled, nodded, and strode away.
Berthe opened her hand and looked at the bottle.Was this a tale he told to all the maidens he desired?Did he tell her this tale because he did not desire her?What an irksome man.She could not fathom what he desired of her at all.
She put down the pot of cider and gently removed the stopper from the glass bottle.It was tight, but then, she supposed it had been sealed all the way from Palestine.She took a sniff of the contents and blinked.
