A Lily on the Heath 4 (34 page)

A long silence stretched, and for a moment, she thought he might leave. His posture stiffened and he was staring at the ground. “’Tis a great shame, then,” he said at last. His voice was low and grated like metal over stone. “For this man of war…
loves you
.”

His words hung there for a moment, raw and taut. She could think of naught to say, for her insides churned with heat and nausea, mixing and battling.
I cannot
.
 

“Good day, Mistress Tabatha,” he said, turning on the ball of his booted foot. The grinding sound was like a roar in her ears. “I shall not encumber you with my presence ever again.”

“Wait,” she said, grabbing for his arm. Then she dropped her hand, fearful she’d overstepped. The chain mail mitt slid to the ground in a soft thunk.
 

“Aye?” he said, and in the low light, she saw a flare of hope in his eyes. She swallowed hard, forcing her heart back down into its proper place.

“Mayhap…mayhap I should thank you in some other way,” she said, forcing the words from her suddenly dry throat. “Other than answering a question.”

His expression closed off. “Indeed?” He sounded impatient now, irritable; tension emanated from him. The muscles in his jaw were tight.

But before she could think of aught to say, there was a commotion in the bailey. Nevril looked down at her for another instant, then firmly pulled his arm away. “Good day, Mistress Tabatha.”

Wait!
She cried the word inside, but she could not force her lips to move. And then he was gone, out of the lean-to and into the sunny bailey.

When she would have gone after Nevril—though for what purpose, she was uncertain—she found him greeting new arrivals from Warwick. Though Lord Malcolm was not among them, Tabby noticed a pretty blond child riding in a cart, along with her mother. Nevril greeted them warmly and lapsed into a long, intense conversation with the girl’s mother.

Afterward, Tabby watched as he bounced the girl-child from the cart and, settling her atop his shoulders, took her and the mother off into the keep.

~*~

“I have oft seen this malady
of the red-orange spots,”
wrote Maris of Ludingdon. The note was enclosed within a message from her husband, Dirick, to Malcolm.
“It begins with the cattle, on their tongues, as you have noted, and at times is known to spread to men. And though it can be devastating, there is a treatment that will keep it at some bay and decrease the chances of death. You are right to confine those who have it, and to send away those weak and old who have not yet been afflicted.”

Mal read on, appreciating the legibility of Lady Maris’s neat script compared to the scrawl of her husband’s. Both messages, however, were of equal use to him. Dirick was responding to Mal’s message regarding the certainty that Queen Eleanor had attempted to take matters into her own hands regarding his marriage to Judith, and Lady Maris detailed a recipe of bearberry leaves steeped with rosemary as a remedy for the illness at Warwick.

Dirick’s words, however, were not as optimistic.
“I will confer with Mal Verne and Salisbury as to the best course to take while ruffling no feathers or turning over no ugly stones. At the least, if there is any news or rumblings, I shall send to you at once. In the mean while, ’tis best to stay close at home.”

Malcolm’s mouth flattened grimly at Dirick’s last sentence. He was home, aye, but filled with discontent. While at Clarendon, he could only anticipate returning to Warwick, to his home—but now he was here, away from the politics and people, surrounded by his land, attending to his domain…and yet he was discontent.

It was no difficult task for him to realize why. And his foul mood wasn’t simply because he’d been sleeping in an empty bed for the two months since his wedding. That could easily be remedied—there were plenty of willing women in the keep or the village who would be happy to see to those base needs. Every man utilized whores when his wife wasn’t available—or even, sometimes, if she was.

But Mal found he had no interest in such a simple solution. And that realization alone was enough to make his chest tighten, and his mood more foul. Yet, it wasn’t merely the lack of coupling that had him pacing his chamber at night, or feeling unsettled when he sat to meal. He found himself actually missing Judith’s company, desiring to confer with her about problems and issues that arose about the estate, and—most telling of all—wondering about her, wishing to hear about her thoughts and experiences during the days.

It was a shocking realization to a man who’d meant to marry only for the purpose of breeding an heir…and yet, he was filled with a sense of inevitability. For ever since the morrow Judith had manipulated him into playing chess, he sensed he’d been fighting a losing battle.

Indeed. He had no armor against her. No protection.
 

If only she could come to accept him as well.

~*~

Tabatha easily healed the wing
of the sparrow which Nevril had brought to her; it was a matter of making certain the bird rested while the bent wing-vein mended itself. And though, true to his word, he no longer visited her in the animal infirmary, she did make much use of the chain mail mitten and could not help but think of him regularly.

For oftimes when she came to the small lean-to in the mornings after attending to Lady Judith, Tabby would find a basket or cage with an injured animal waiting for her. Or at times, a serf-boy or villager would bring a cat, dog, or even a hen, to her for care.
 

And though she tensed hopefully every time she heard the rattle of chain mail or the heavy footfall of a man outside of the infirmary, and though she looked for Nevril’s curly head in the hall, she never saw him. An ache in her chest that had begun when he walked away continued to swell and grow over the next weeks.

Tabby also noticed that the blond girl who’d arrived from Warwick with her mother often played in the herb garden behind the kitchens. Though she was young, the child, whose name she learned was Violet, reminded Tabatha of an old man named Gentle Ned who used to help her grandfather sew the jesses for Judith’s father’s hawks. Violet liked to wander among the flowers in the herb garden and orchard, but Tabby noticed the girl only ever picked a single blossom.

“My poppy says I must save them for him,” Violet told her one day as she examined a cluster of golden calendula. “One each day.”

“And where do you keep all these flowers for your papa? Does your mama help you find a place?” Tabby couldn’t help but feel a kinship for the girl, for surely her “poppy” was off fighting some war somewhere.

“My mama is with the angels,” Violet told her matter-of-factly, crouching down to get a better look at one of the flowers. She seemed to have honed in on her choice.

“That is not your mama?” Tabby asked, gesturing to the woman named Clara, who was chatting happily with one of the kitchen maids as they shelled peas.

“Nay, my mama is in heaven. That’s only Clara,” said Violet, who’d transferred her attention to a fuzzy orange and black caterpillar. “Soft!”

“Aye, but do not touch him very hard,” Tabby warned as a pudgy little finger came out inquisitively. “Else you might squash him.”

“Oh,” Violet said, retracting her hand immediately. “But could you not fix him then?”

“I? Oh, I could not do that.”

“But Sir Nevril says you can fix any creature,” Violet told her, now fixing her guileless blue eyes on her.

A sudden warmth blossomed through Tabby’s chest, then waned into emptiness. “Only God can fix any creature. I can merely help them. Sometimes. If they are not too sick.”

“My poppy says I had to come from Warwick to stay away from the sick cows,” Violet informed her, once again looking at the flowers. “He didn’t want me to get their sickness.”

“I see,” Tabatha replied. But her thoughts were elsewhere, stuck suddenly on the realization that the little girl’s papa might be off fighting a war…but it was her mama who’d died and left her alone. Not her papa. “Does your papa miss your mama? Is he sad, now that she is with the angels?”

Violet paused from her examination of the calendula and turned to look at Tabby. “I miss my mama. But I have Clara. And my poppy is not sad except when the cows die.”

Tabby drew in a deep breath and might have responded, but a heavy footstep behind her made her turn. She looked up into Nevril’s familiar, bearded, scarred face, and all at once a rush of heat and shivers washed over her. Her cheeks went hot and her knees felt weak.

And all at once, she realized what a fool she’d been.

But Nevril wasn’t looking at her; his attention was fixed on Violet. “Come now, little one. Do you not be underfoot here. The mistress is working.”
 

“But I must get a flower for Poppy,” said Violet, her lower lip coming out mutinously. “He said one every day. And I must find one for him before he comes from Warwick.”

“Now, Violet,” Nevril began.

“My name is
Lady
Vio—” But her words were cut off as Nevril swooped her up into his arms, then the girl was overcome by a gust of laughter following by shrieking giggles.

Tabby felt a quiver of something in the back of her mind and looked up at Nevril. He seemed unusually tense, even as he bounced the child in his arms. “Clara!” he bellowed, stalking away without a word to Tabby.
 

Tabatha rose to her feet, watching them…and listening. At the sound of her name, Clara looked over from the earnest conversation with some of her friends. Her eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet, coming toward Nevril and Violet.

When Tabby heard something that sounded like “Lord Malcolm,” she frowned. Nevril glanced over his shoulder at her, and both he and Clara had guilty looks on their faces. Then they seemed to be arguing—or at the least discussing something very vehemently.

By now Tabby had approached, and she was close enough to hear, “He will be furious when—” before Nevril stopped himself. He thrust the giggling Violet at a frightened-looking Clara, then turned.

“Mistress Tabatha,” he said. “Is aught amiss?”

She looked from him to Violet to Clara and then, that quivering growing stronger in the back of her mind, she said, “Sir Nevril. If you might walk with me a moment?”

He hesitated, causing an icy hand to grip her insides and then squeeze, but then he said reluctantly, “Aye.”

Tabby was aware that her palms had gone damp and her mouth dry. What was she to say? How could she tell him…what she wasn’t quite certain of?

Nevril walked with such lead feet that she was nearly moved to set him free. But instead she continued until they were in a quiet place in the garden, beneath a shadowy rose arbor.

“I hope the girl didn’t bother you,” he said stiffly. He stood apart from her, his hands on his hips, looking just over her shoulder. His cheeks were ruddy and his expression emotionless.

“Who is that girl?” Tabatha asked, seizing on the topic at hand. Though it wasn’t the reason she wanted to speak with him, it would do to begin, while she worked up her courage. “She is from Warwick. Is she your daughter?”

“Nay!” Nevril replied, startled, his attention coming back to her. “I have never been wed.”

Tabby looked at him, and then all at once comprehension dawned.
Lady
Violet. There was only one lady at Warwick, aside from Judith. “She is Lord Malcolm’s child, isn’t she?”

Nevril’s jaw tightened and his lips curled into each other. “Mistress Tabatha, you need have no worry about the girl. She won’t bother you again.”

Tabby looked at him, and all at once she no longer cared about Violet or Lord Malcolm or even, for that moment, Lady Judith. Her insides were aflutter and her heart pounded roughly. She swallowed hard and stepped closer to him, looking up into his stony face. “What I said, Sir Nevril…about—about never loving a man of war…? Do you recall?”

He blanched, then that harsh expression returned as he made a sound of derision. “Do I
recall
? How could I
forget
?”

She shook her head, drew in a deep breath. This was not what she meant to say, how she meant to go about this. Trying to keep her words steady and strong, she whispered, “I…’tis possible…I might find that my mind has changed.”

He stilled, his eyes widening a fraction. “Indeed?” His voice came out in low, rough syllables.
 

Holding her breath, praying she hadn’t waited too long, Tabatha stepped toward him and rested a hand on his chest. She looked up, suddenly lost in his gaze. Then, very slowly, one of his large hands reached out, sliding around to cup the back of her head…and he lowered his face toward hers.

The prickle of his beard and mustache was pleasant and soft, but it was the firm touch of his lips that had Tabby’s eyes closing and her heart thudding madly. Warmth exploded inside her, rushing through her limbs as, after a moment, he slid his arms fully around her, pulling her up against him in a long, earnest kiss.

When he lifted his head, looking down at her with searching eyes, he said, “Mayhap your mind has been changed, Mistress Tabatha?”

“I am not certain,” she replied breathlessly. “Mayhap I must needs more convincing.”