No, she’d be pleased.
This time the words did carry on the chill breeze.
The hairs on Marmaduke’s neck lifted and he started to answer, but already, his new lady had taken gentle hold of his arms and was turning him around.
She wanted to see his back.
A bone-crushing dread took hold of him then – the fear she’d cry out in horror, wholly repulsed. Or worse, that she’d pity him, and such a reaction would lance him deeper.
He held his breath.
“Come, you.” She pulled him now, drawing him away from the peat fire’s meager glow and closer to the nearest wall torch.
The one that burned the brightest.
“The old wounds pain me no more,” he said, strangle-voiced. Already feeling the warmth from the blazing torch, full aware its hissing flames well-illuminated the maze of raised welts criss-crossing every inch of his bare back. “There is no need for you-”
“God in heaven!” Her outrage dashed his dread in one fell swoop.
And swelled his heart.
Not a tone of revulsion colored her outburst. Nor the slightest tinge of pity.
Only indignation.
Then she was upon him, smoothing her bliss-spending fingers over the travesty that was his back. “Your men did this to you?” she railed, the horror in her voice clearly addressing his foes and not his ravaged flesh. “Your own peers?”
“Lords and barons of the land or belted knights, each one.”
“May their bebased souls roast on the hottest hob in hell.”
Marmaduke wheeled about, undone by her indignation. “Saints cherish you,” he said, and rested his hands on her shoulders. “My back…Ido not repulse you?”
“Mercy, nay.” Stepping closer, she traced the tip of one finger down the scar slashing across his face. “I told you once, sir, your scars mean naught to me. Each one is a badge of honor and any who does not see them thus is a fool.”
Marmaduke’s hopes soared, but the crashed to the rush-coated floor when her brow knit in a way that couldn’t be good.
For him, and most especially for his dreams.
Slipping free of his light hold on her shoulders, she moved to the table and filled two pewter cups with wine. She handed him one. “You are much to my liking,” she said in that plain-speaking way he’d so admired till now. “You’ll have seen I do not hide from truths, nor do I offer pretty words meant to deceive.”
Marmaduke waited.
She took a sip of wine. “But whether I am fond of you or nae,” she continued, and his heart plummeted deeper with each word, “I must tell you that I cannot accompany you when you leave here.”
As we told you she wouldn’t, his personal minions of Beelzebub boasted with glee.
Ignoring them, Marmaduke counted his blessings.
She’d forgotten to object to his sleeping in her ante-room.
* * *
And so itcame that many hours later, in the splendid solitude of that self-same little chamber, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow stood before one of the ante-room’s two narrow window slits and held council with the moon.
The distant orb, cold and aloof, sailed from behind a cloud. A lone one, wispy and thin, for the night’s winds had finally chased away the storm.
As he would whisk away his new lady’s reservations.
