“How did you know?”
“I’m observant, just as you are,” he murmured, noting the pink flush on her cheeks framed by dark, lustrous hair that fell to her waist. “I’m too big for that cot…and you’re born tae nobility. Your fine gown, the way you speak. Does your grandfather have a name?”
“Hubert de Vescy—oh, please, enough. Our names shouldn’t matter to you, just that you’re well enough within a few days’ time to return safely to Scotland.”
She was gone before Roger could utter another word, the door closing firmly behind her.
He could hear the lightness of her footfalls upon the ground as she ran away from the hut…and then nothing but the crackling of the flames in the hearth and the squirrel scurrying behind the bucket in the corner. Roger saw a small wooden cage that Julianna must have crafted for the creature, but in her haste she had forgotten to deposit him inside and latch it. He doubted in his condition he could catch the squirrel, which made him sigh with resignation.
“Aye, you’d better hide or that owl will eat you.”
Surprisingly, in spite of his ribs burning with each breath, Roger felt hungry and rose shakily to fetch some bread from the basket.
“De Vescy,” he murmured to himself. “De Vescy…” He remembered his father speaking that name after he had been gone for several weeks on a raid into England with William Wallace and a host of his men.
Not Hubert, though, but Claude…a border raid of revenge against the barons who had aided Longshanks in wresting Cumberland from the Scots. Roger had been sixteen and wanted to accompany his father, but his fifteen-year-old brother, William, had gone instead.
“You’re my heir, Roger, so you must stay behind and protect what’s ours,” James Douglas had commanded him while William had smirked in triumph…both then and afterward when they had returned with a gory tale of blood vengeance.
William had boasted that he had been the one to drive his knife into a younger boy’s heart, which had sickened Roger. Killing grown men in battle was one thing, but slaughtering children—
“What the devil?” Roger ducked when the owl flew across the small room to another perch near the door, the abruptness of his movement dropping him to his knees in agony.
The pain was so intense that it was all he could do to crawl on all fours to the mattress where he collapsed, groaning.
So much for eating or drinking…or pissing, at least until the worst of his misery subsided.
Roger tried to distract himself by closing his eyes and thinking of Sylvia and his children but strangely, a vision of long dark hair and violet eyes came to him instead.
Julianna de Vescy…his angel of mercy, and yet his enemy.
Dare he continue to trust her? How was it that she was of noble birth and yet allowed to roam unaccompanied through the woods? How had she come to be a healer? What else did she know about the surprise attack on the delegation?
So many questions assailed him, but he would have to wait until Julianna returned for any answers, Roger’s attempt to shift his weight upon the mattress causing him to curse aloud in pain.
The squirrel startled into chattering.
The owl hooting and the fawn bleating, which amazingly made him start to laugh in spite of the pressure of his injured ribs…though in the next moment, he was moaning as once again, the owl swooped over his head.
He heard a piercing squeak and then the crack of tiny bones…och, God.
So much for Julianna’s poor squirrel.
* * *
Julianna had barely snuckdown the hallway to her bedchamber and ducked inside, breathing a sigh of relief that no one had spied her, when a feminine wail and the crash of something hitting the floor broke the stillness of the morning.
She knew at once from where the maidservant’s outcry of distress came—and Julianna flung off her cloak and dashed back into the hallway.
Her grandfather’s door was open, her heart slamming in her throat as she burst into the lamplit room. She didn’t even have to ask the weeping young woman standing beside the bed what was amiss, her instincts already knew.
Her beloved grandfather was dead.
“He…he was fine a short while ago!” blurted the maidservant, a plump girl whose face was reddened with anguish and tears. “He greeted me so kindly as always. I went to fetch him some breakfast and came back…”
Unable to say more for the sobs wracking her, the maidservant pointed helplessly at the tray she had dropped on the floor, Julianna side-stepping the buttered bread and boiled eggs to reach her grandfather’s side.
He looked as if he was sleeping, though already his face bore a grayish pallor. Julianna pressed her trembling fingers to his throat to discern a flutter of life, but there was none.
